When Should a Startup Hire a PR Agency?

Hiring a PR agency can offer numerous advantages to a startup, particularly in the realm of building brand awareness, credibility, differentiating it from competitors, and targeting the right audiences. For scaleups, determining the optimal time to enlist the services of a PR agency is crucial, and selecting the right agency is equally pivotal.

With journalists being incredibly influential, PR people play a pivotal role in nurturing relationships with media, ensuring favourable coverage, managing the company’s reputation and spotlighting the business.

If you’re a startup considering hiring a PR agency, here are some top things to consider:

1. First Impressions Count: Make Sure Your Product or Service is Watertight

Media work with news, so ideally your first engagement with journalists should be to launch or introduce your service or product. Before covering it, a publication will review your company. If there are any issues with the technology, user experience, product offering or any misinformation, your business instantly loses credibility and trust. Hiring a PR agency will enable a comprehensive review of your business, allowing for necessary improvements to be identified before media outreach.

2. Market Entry: Hire a PR Agency Ideally Three Months in Advance (Minimum)

Often we work with startups that are launching into the market as challenger brands, by offering new technologies and customer experiences to their sector. Others are completely disrupting their industry.

Building the right strategy to help with growth efforts is crucial for a safe landing into a new market, so we would advise a startup engages and potentially hires a PR agency with a minimum three months lead time, ideally longer. This is because PR often leads the narrative, market position and messaging. For example, a startup might be ready to launch, however stakeholder engagement may be needed before speaking with media. This will change the lead time for the launch. Also if you are launching a product, you may need a few months for media to do reviews under embargo. 

3. Funding Announcements: How to Not Ruin a Media Launch

Some startups have not officially launched their company to media, however, they have had some coverage via a Seed Funding announcement, or a partner may have mentioned them in an article. We would advise that before an introduction to media to have a strategy in place for short, mid and long term. Ultimately, this will help amplify efforts and potentially increase coverage opportunities. For example, by shooting out a release may garner two or three pieces of media coverage, however with the right approach it could result in double or three times the awareness and with higher reaching audiences. Ultimately a business has one chance to launch so maximise the opportunity.

4. Freelancers vs Agencies: Where is the Best Bang for Your Buck? 

To begin, find a freelancer or hire a PR agency with a proven track record in your sector and industry. Also, ask if they can share client case studies, tangible results and references. 

If you have a nimble budget, and your product or service is straightforward, a freelancer can be a great option. However, if you have ambitious growth targets, a competitor landscape, and regular board / investor meetings, an agency offers a team with different expertise and contacts to hit targets, vs a freelancer who works solo. Agencies can also offer more complementary services to have a 360 marketing approach. 

If you’re a startup looking to hire a PR agency, or would like to find out more, please email lisa@thisisbanjo.com