PR & Marketing for Startups

PR & MARKETING
FOR STARTUPS
Courtney Boyd Myers
Director of Audience Development, General Assembly

Friday, December 7, 12

INTRODUCTION 3

COURTNEY BOYD MYERS
DIRECTOR OF AUDIENCE DEVELOPMENT,
GENERAL ASSEMBLY EUROPE
‣ Member of #10’s Tech City Advisory Group
‣ Mentor at BBC WorldWideLabs, Ignite100
‣ Recovering Technology Journalist
‣ The Next Web, The Huffington Post, Forbes
‣ @CBM


AGENDA 4

‣ Mission, Vision + Values
‣ Branding, Design + Messaging
‣ Traditional vs. Inside Out Marketing
‣ Social Media
‣ Analytics + Tools
‣ PR

‣ Relationships, Relationships, Relationships
‣Q &A


PR & MARKETING FOR STARTUPS 5

MISSION, VISION + VALUES
‣Vision: The company’s long-term, aspirational business goals. What's
the change you want to make in the world?

‣Mission: The company’s purpose and reason for being. What are the
big ﬁrst steps to make that change?

‣Values: How will you make those choices, changes and ﬁrst steps?

Source


MISSION VS. VISION EXAMPLES
‣Fitocracy

‣ Vision: Create a world where ﬁtness is possible for anyone
‣ Mission: Empower everyone to reach their next level of health & ﬁtness

‣One Fine Stay
‣ Vision: Become the world’s largest network of “unhotels”
‣ Mission: Provide quality sensitive travelers with a “live like a local”
experience while taking care of the home for homeowners.


GA’S MISSION
We empower individuals to ﬁnd purpose and meaning in their work in the
context of a global community inspired by the entrepreneurial experience.
We provide direct instruction from top practitioners and engender a culture of
collaboration and mutual support.
We provide multiple touch points to engage with our content and community
—which in aggregate form an iconic and aspirational brand.
We offer robust educational programs to build competency in Technology,
Design, and Entrepreneurship.



GA’S VALUES
-People Before Machine
-Learning By Doing
-Journey Over Destination



“Many companies try to dive into driving
awareness for their product or service
before they ﬁgure out who they are, what
they stand for, and what they are driving
for. At Eventbrite, we set out 6 years ago
to democratize the ticketing industry
through innovative products and top
notch support. The great news is that
through all the growth we’ve had – in
customers and in company size – these
are still our primary areas of focus.”
-JULIA HARTZ, CO-FOUNDER OF
EVENTBRITE



BRANDING
‣ Understanding a Brand
‣ Creating Strong Brands
‣ What You Believe
‣ What You Say
‣ What You Do
‣ How You Appear
‣ What You Make
Source


BRANDING EXAMPLES



BRANDING
EXAMPLES



POP QUIZ
‣ What do Airbnb, Square
and Foursquare all have in
common?



POP QUIZ
‣ They were all started by
designers.



DESIGN



WHAT YOU MAKE



MESSAGING
It’s is the one thing you want to tell people about your
startup.

-It needs to be compelling (NO BS!)Text different from
and
your competition.

Source


MESSAGING
It’s is the one thing you want to tell people about your
startup.

-It needs to be compelling (NO BS!)Text different from
and
Text
your competition.

A fun online world where kids can adopt their very
own monster, go on adventures, play games, solve
puzzles, be creative, and communicate with their
friends.

Source


Text
Text

Source


MESSAGING FOR A TWO-SIDED MARKET



WHY MESSAGING?
‣ According to the NY
Times, people are
exposed to 5,000+
marketing messages each
day. With new platforms
and screens in front of
our faces, our attention
spans are only getting
worse.



“It’s the hardest thing to build a company. I could give
this advice time and time again, which is that a lot of
people when they’re starting a company think they’re
starting a product. And that’s really kind of what you’re
doing: you’re building a product, you show traction, and
you think OK I’m gonna build a product. But really, in the
long run, you have to build a company, and that’s way
harder than coding a few lines and building the design
out, and I did all the design for our app, right. I had to
stop doing that and say to myself - we need an office, we
need to recruit people, we need to think about vision and
where we stand in the ecosystem. That’s building a
company, and it’s a very different mindset and a very
different set of skills. And frankly, you have to enjoy it.
Our biggest competitor is ourselves, because we’re
building a company now. It’s not about product
competition.”
—
Kevin Systrom, CEO of Instagram



“TRADITIONAL” MARKETING

‣L



“TRADITIONAL” MARKETING
‣ Backspaces

‣L



INSIDE-OUT MARKETING
‣Your actions speak
louder than words.

‣ Company culture
‣ Social good
‣ Hiring process



INSIDE-OUT MARKETING EXAMPLES

‣ WarbyParker



PRODUCT AS MARKETING
• Hotmail’s growth was almost entirely due to a “Get your free email at
Hotmail” sentence at the bottom of every email.

• Airbnb reverse-engineered Craigslist to let users post listings
automatically despite no public Craigslist API.

• Allowing users to embed videos was key to the success of YouTube
and Vimeo.

• Slideshare included a plain-text link in their embed code, driving traffic
back to their site to get an SEO boost to boot.

• Dropbox incentivized referrals by giving free extra storage space – a
strategy they claim accounted for 60% of their growth. Source


GROWTH HACKING

Source


SOCIAL MEDIA
>Facebook
>Twitter
>Pinterest
>Tumblr
>LinkedIn
>Foursquare
>YouTube
>Instagram...and more.


FACEBOOK BEST PRACTICES
> Implementing Facebook Login on Your Site

> Showing who else “Likes” your page with Facebook connections

> Facebook’s Open Graph

> Facebook Page: Engage Community
+ Play w/ Promoted Posts

> Facebook Advertising



INSTAGRAM



YOUTUBE

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=ZUG9qYTJMsI

-Viewed more than 7 million times
-instantly went viral + jointly conveyed the brand personality and the beneﬁts of the service deﬅly.



ANALYTICS + OTHER TOOLS
>Google Analytics
>Google AdWords
>LaunchRock
>Wufoo
>PunchTab
>Shopify
>Goodsie
>Jux and more...

LAUNCHROCK


PUNCHTAB



GETTING PRESS
‣ Hiring PR? - Internal vs Agency
‣ Story Time?
‣ Messaging

‣ It’s
the one thing you want to tell
people about your startup.
‣ Company Context
‣ Choosing Outlets
‣ Think non-traditional!


BEFORE THE PITCH - ARE YOU READY?
“Patience is important. Media coverage is easier and more
effective once you have a killer product. If you’re trying to
create buzz too early, you’re doing it wrong.

In terms of a great tip that companies don’t do enough:

Create content early. Build an audience by writing interesting
content, even if it isn’t about your company or product. If you
establish yourself as an expert on a speciﬁc industry,
programming language or topic, then you’ll have an easier
time hiring and building a reputation for your product once
you’re ready to scale.”

-MICHELLE ZATLYN, CO-FOUNDER OF CLOUDFLARE



THE PITCH
“Great products and companies do 1 of 3
things: Get you laid (Sex), get you paid
(Money), get you made (Power). “How does
your solution tap into the emotional,
powerful, evolutionary needs that we as
humans have?”

-Dave McClure, 500 Startups



THE PITCH
1. Do your homework
2. Be a human
(Cocktail party rules apply)
3. Talk like a human
4. Keep it short + to the point
5. A press release isn’t a pitch
6. Give them everything they
need in one go?
7. Timing



WRITING THE PITCH
1. Subject line.
2. Give us a reasonable time frame
3. Say why it's DIFFERENT
4. Avoid jargon like DISRUPTIVE,
CURATED, HYBRID, INNOVATIVE, GAME-
CHANGING etc.
5. Give an offer if you can: Beta invites.
App Codes. Exclusive details, etc.



Courtney B of the deep blue sea,
Would you could you should you if
you please
When you’ve got a moment so free
Let known when you could lend
your ear to me?



AFTER THE PITCH
1. Follow up! - Appropriate time on
this? One week? 3-4 days?

2. Handling multiple outlets. Tell
Multiple Stories. And don’t be
misleading.

3. Don't break your own embargo.



BAD PRESS?

When I Get Bad Press


INTRO TO THE LONDON STARTUP SCENE 46

RELATIONSHIPS, RELATIONSHIPS, RELATIONSHIPS
>Get Involved



>Get Involved

>Make Friends with Founders, Investors, Journalists, Startup
Wannabes, Coworking Space Heads, the Cleaning Ladies and
everyone in between



>Get Involved

everyone in between

> READ, FOR THE LOVE OF GOD READ.



>Get Involved

everyone in between


> Tweet.



>Get Involved

everyone in between


> Tweet.

> Write.



>Get Involved

everyone in between


> Tweet.

> Write.

> Be happy. But know it’s OK and TOTALLY NORMAL to be sad,
angry, frustrated, disappointed and insanely crazy too.

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