Here are the Reasons Your Startup Is Not Getting Media Coverage

You own a fantastic startup or have just created a new product that aims to help your customers achieve X, Y, Z - why is no-one listening then? You craft and recraft your press release for it to fall on deaf ears and now what, the world will never know about your fantastic news!?

This is a very common scenario and as we move ahead with bigger and new tech and more people having more to say we become lost in a limbo of pitching news and creating news. A lot of the mistakes you make when pitching the press with your press release tend to be quite common, they are also repetitive and rarely get addressed unless you take a long hard look at your efforts.

Below are some examples of why you never get coverage and what you can do to fix these issues. (Additional reading: 7 PR Challenges in 2019).

Media Relations, What Media Relations?

One of the biggest problems in the world of Public Relations is that everyone with a startup feels that they can develop a story and blast it out to the media outlets and await the tsunami of calls.

It doesn’t happen. Why? Because you are probably not fixing the world, you are not radically changing mankind. You are probably making a daily process more fluid, easier to complete, less-stressful and so on. There’s nothing wrong with this at all. But the honest truth is that you need to sit down and think about a day in the life of a reporter.

They inevitably get many, many emails per day, so they just let their inboxes basically wallow in its misery (a lot of journalists now use Gmail to combat the avalanche of cold emails) and try to make some sort of an attempt at finding a story. Often this fails and they just give up, when #journorequest exists why would you wait to find the perfect story when you can just request it, right?

If a lack of media relations is a problem and causing you to miss out on coverage, what can you do about it to fix it?

The first one is the quick-n-easy. Don’t buy media lists, never use PR wires that supposedly blast your press release to every media outlet and media contact your mind can think of. Rarely do they work and most of these platforms provide little feedback on your press release.

The second fix is to focus on your media relations. Building a contact list manually which also has conclusive notes to ensure you understand each and every contact in your database. 10,000 reporters mean nothing to you if they don’t know or care who you are.

The third fix is to ensure you are engaging and interacting with your target media contacts. This isn’t phone calls or taking them out for lunches, but it’s simply for you to interact when they release a new article or share something on social media. Interact and engage in conversation - if they are industry-specific then there surely are topics and thoughts you can discuss - no?

No Substance Behind Your News

So you have overcome the fact that a serious lack of media relations is enough to put a halt to your press release coverage. Now it’s time to face the music and bluntly say this - you have no substance or reason to be in the news.?

Sounds harsh and it is. But there are plenty of mega-corporations that run in the background with you probably never hearing of the name or even knowing what they do. But I can assure you they are making big, big money and changes to everyday life and not a single news story are out there.

Another factor is that your news has little to no relevance today. Today or this week specific events could be taking place and if all eyes are on that event, it’s highly unlikely your company who may not be taking part in the event will get coverage or interest.

The king of all media coverage is relevancy. If today or this week something big is happening and all media attention is on this then you need to find (not force) a way for you to be relevant to the story. Use competitors coverage or any similar stories to explain the relevancy of your story to your contact.

Be brutally honest with yourself. Is this even news? Bar the fact you are ingrained with the company and it’s mission - does this matter in the real world?

Your Pitching Is Poor

Let us say that you have now fixed the first 2 issues mentioned above but you still can’t get any media coverage. What can it be? Now it’s time to look at your pitching. For many years press releases have had a very standard format.

The majority of which are plain-text, headline, subtitle, intro, content, information, contact. That’s it. Don’t forget you cannot add attachments to the email as nobody, especially from a media outlet, will ever open these due to security fears. So what you have now is a short piece of content that has to provide all of the required information of your story - no wonder people struggle with this some much.

In a study of 8.5 million emails which were analyzed to determine what makes for the best and most effective email pitch, here are some key (they even seem basic) tips to consider when pitching.

• Personalize with a first name.
• People who regularly hear from you, open 30% more of your emails.
• Short and to the point.

Review and address the tips above and you should start seeing an increase in open rates and potential coverage.

You’re Not Helping the Reporter Out

#Journorequests and Help A Reporter Out have become very popular from both sides of the fence, PRs and journalists because it’s a centralized location for both parties to find opportunities and to have questions answered.

Imagine how wonderful it is to be able to find a request for an industry CEO or expert and you have all the details in place. All you have to do is simply reply with your response and hope for some feedback.

However, as much as these systems and options are great. They are not good. People again spam these requests with complete and utter no-news that I would hazard a guess there is a decrease in the effectiveness of these platforms.

One thing I would say here is that a lot of us PRs fall foul of simply doing the legwork. Making sure that we treat journalists as they were our customers - a reporter needs to buy into your company as much as your customer does.

So how can you fix this problem and increase your chances of media coverage?

Do all of the heavy lifting, the legwork or whatever image you want to use for this. But make sure you deliver all of the information or as much relevant and initially useful information as you can.

Thereafter find a way to store relevant and key information online, for example, an online newsroom which can house all of your historic press releases and provide the media contacts with easily referable information. No more chasing to get the details, no more trying to find the right spokespeople within the company - all the information is there and if there are any additional requirements, they know who to call.

These are common problems and issues that any and every department faces to be totally honest. Salespeople buy lists with contact information but have little luck, marketing people do anything for an uptick in traffic or sessions but have no conversions and so on. So PR is no different but as technology changes and the number of people conducting PR activities increases you need to ensure you get the little things right - media relations.