Key Takeaways
- Tier-1 press that reaches your actual customers is worth 100x coverage that reaches your peers.
- The best PR is newsworthy work, not newsworthy announcements.
- Journalists write for their readers, not for you. The pitch has to serve their readers first.
The press coverage most startups pursue is vanity coverage: profiles in tech publications that their investors and peers will read. The press coverage that actually moves a business reaches the specific people who would buy from, partner with, or invest in the company, and there is rarely overlap between these two audiences.
Saim Abbasi built SA Media's reputation through a combination of content and strategic press that targeted the specific audience the business needed to reach, not the audience that would be most impressed by the press.
Who You Are Actually Trying to Reach
Before pursuing any press, the question is: who needs to see this and what do I need them to think or do after they see it? If the answer is "potential customers need to see it and understand that we solve their problem," the right publication is one that reaches those customers, not one that reaches other founders or investors. If the answer is "potential investors need to see it and understand that we are a credible company," the right publication is one that investors read.
The Story That Journalists Actually Want
Journalists write for their readers, and their readers are not interested in a company's funding announcement or product launch for its own sake. They are interested in what that announcement means for them: how the trend it represents affects their industry, what it says about the direction of a market they care about, or what surprising insight it reveals about how things work. The pitch that leads with the reader's interest, not the company's news, is the one that gets a response.
"Coverage that impresses your investors is not the same as coverage that brings you customers. Know which one you need."