As more startups continue to litter the business landscape, getting the right exposure and communicating great value to your audience is crucial to future success. We asked seven successful entrepreneurs from Young Entrepreneur Council (YEC) what the single best outcome a PR agency has ever achieved for their startup, and why.
1) Redeveloping Our Brand Aesthetic
I've always been a sucker for good graphic design, but I never knew what I was dealing with until I handed the reigns to someone else who made it their profession. Once we got our aesthetic rejiggered, I couldn't believe it -- nothing changed about the product, but it was like opening up a whole new door to walk through as a business.
– Rob Fulton, Exponential Black
2) Going Viral
They created a campaign that went viral. We had over 100 top-tier publications write about us and push our product online. It was amazing and helped our product do over $100K in additional sales in a month. They pushed it hard and went above and beyond. It helps to have an amazing product to sell!
– John Rampton, Host
3) Landing an Article in the Wall Street Journal
Getting an article in the Wall Street Journal was a great PR win. It gave us additional credibility and led to a nice spike in organic traffic.
4) Being Featured on "Good Morning America"
In 2012, we were raising a small round of funding. We'd been in business for two years and had received serious press, but we hadn't yet broken through with national exposure. Then, our PR firm, Entertainment Fusion Group, landed us a spot on "Good Morning America." We had our biggest sales day ever. And being able to highlight that interest from new customers helped us close some investors.
– Aaron Schwartz, Modify Watches
5) Getting Local Coverage with High Viewership
We had a great feature in the San Francisco Business Times. It was still early in the business, so for us to get exposure like that -- one talking about our explosive growth -- really helped solidify us as a player in the fitness bag space.
6) Landing a Key Business Development Deal
One of the best outcomes our PR agency was able to achieve was helping us to land a key business development deal with a publisher. Our PR agency is of course savvy about landing press for us, but when we met with a writer from one of the magazines about being featured in an article, they ended up telling their editors about our work, and it led to a much deeper collaboration with the publication.
7) Amassing Amazing Content
Contributed content. When we hired our firm, our goal was to win awards, interface with the press and get our ideas out. We never imagined we would be published more than 300 times and create a content library as extensive as we have. We are writing the book on marketing automation.
These answers were provided by members of Young Entrepreneur Council (YEC), an invite-only organization comprised of the world’s most promising young entrepreneurs. In partnership with Citi, YEC recently launched StartupCollective, a free virtual mentorship program that helps millions of entrepreneurs start and grow businesses.
