PR Masterclass for Startups with Juliet Fallowfield

Summary

PR expert Juliet Fallfield provides tips on PR strategy for startup founders in a webinar. She explains the difference between paid, owned, and earned media, emphasizing that earned media where someone else endorses your brand is most powerful. She advises goal-setting, knowing your audience, timing pitching correctly, repurposing content, and building relationships with journalists. Fallfield also details her agency's approach of training clients to do their own PR for maximum effectiveness. The webinar finishes with a Q&A session covering topics like justifying PR investment and making the most of media coverage.

Takeaways

• 😊 PR is someone else saying you're good, while advertising is you saying you're good
• 📝 Create tools like mission and vision statement, brand lexicon, audience personas to clearly define and describe your business
• 🎯 Set tangible PR goals based on brand awareness, community building etc. and prioritize accordingly
• ⏱ Budget your PR time like your finances to maximize efficiency and avoid wasting time
• 🔎 Use free tools like Google Alerts to monitor media coverage of your brand and identify pitching opportunities
• 🗞 Read publications you want coverage in to ensure your business fits their audience before pitching
• 🗓 Plan PR activities factoring in typical lead times of 4+ months for print features
• 💡 Repurpose owned content like podcast interviews to earn coverage in other publications
• 🤝 Build genuine relationships with journalists by being helpful and reliable to earn their trust
• ✅ Track PR results to quantify reach, guide strategy and further leverage successful coverage

Q & A

What is the difference between advertising and PR?

Advertising is paying to promote your business while PR is earning media coverage through outreach to journalists and publications.

What tools does Juliet recommend for startups to manage their own PR?

Google alerts to monitor news mentions, media lists to track journalist contacts, coverage tracking docs, calendars to plan PR campaigns, banks of pre-written content, and using scheduling tools to manage outreach.

How can startups best justify the ROI of PR to their leadership?

Explain the long-term brand awareness benefits PR provides and have leadership buy into goals upfront rather than trying to directly correlate PR to immediate sales.

What considerations are important when developing an initial PR strategy?

Know your target audience and messaging, set realistic objectives aligned to business goals, and dedicate sufficient time and resources.

What tips does Juliet have for pitching journalists effectively?

Personalize emails, lead with angles relevant to the publication, follow up politely, and provide information the way journalists want it.

How long does it typically take to secure a major feature story?

Start pitching 4+ months in advance to allow for research, writing, and editing. Juliet shared an example that took 7 months from idea to publish.

What legal precautions should you take when promoting editorial coverage?

Be careful not to directly republish content. Instead, link back to the original article from your site and social media.

How can you build relationships with journalists over time?

Engage genuinely with their content, share relevant industry information, demonstrate reliability, and look for opportunities to be useful.

Why does Juliet recommend brands learn to do their own PR?

Business owners tell their own story best. DIY PR meets journalists' needs better than agencies and builds internal skills.

What ongoing effort is required to maximize PR results?

Have a process to repurpose coverage into owned content across your website, social channels, and newsletter to extend reach.