While I went through the dos and don’ts from my 20+ years of being on both sides — both as an entrepreneur who has done their fair share of press hits and as an entrepreneur who writes a lot about entrepreneurship for pubs like Inc. Magazine, Built In, TechCrunch, and others — her question made me ask another question.
Will a gushing news article about your startup in result in a big increase in your top line sales?
And the honest answer to that second question, like a lot of answers to a lot of questions about startup is: It depends.
It’s actually kind of a crapshoot, for a lot of reasons. But there’s a THIRD question you need to ask that will give you a definitive answer on much a press hit will result in additional revenue:
How many potential customers read the publication your business is being featured in?
Reading about someone else’s startup is like reading about someone else’s fantasy football team
It’s just human nature. The less a story has to do with us and our real lives, the less we’re inclined to care about it.
But just like entrepreneurs, fantasy football players are always looking for advice, tips, and ideas on how to construct a winning fantasy football team.
We entrepreneurs read a lot of articles for those same reasons. For example, you’re reading this post right now. And if you got past my rambling about fantasy football, I’m going to reward you with the advice you came here for.
Look, unless our customers are other entrepreneurs, they’re not lurking around TechCrunch and Inc. and Built In, clicking on articles about startups they’ve never heard of raising money they won’t ever see or releasing the latest version of a product they’ll never use.
The Catch-22 of becoming newsworthy
When we read gushing news articles about up-and-coming athletes or celebrities, the story is almost always about some kind of milestone or accomplishment they’ve already achieved or are on their way to achieving. The bigger the milestone, the more newsworthy the story.
But the more newsworthy the story, the less that athlete or celebrity needs that story to fill stadiums, movie theatres (or I guess streaming queues), or concert venues. That kind of press is reactive, and some of the more successful celebrities actually eschew it, because they don’t need it. In fact, the press needs them. For clicks.
The ones that do need it, the ones who need that extra push to land that next breakout role in their career, often struggle to get it, That kind of press is proactive, and sometimes paid for, because the purpose of the press hit is to build a little momentum on their way to that next milestone that will, in turn, produce even more (reactive) press hits.
The right, targeted press hit can indeed deliver that little bit of momentum, one that might prepare a startup to hit another level.
But here’s the problem
Sports, movies, music, and the rest of the pursuits that create celebrity have a broad universal appeal. We all (or most of us) follow sports, watch movies, and listen to music. In those industries, there is no such thing as bad press.
But in business, most press is quiet press. Outside of a few broad consumer-driven exceptions, the target audience of a startup’s appeal is comparatively limited. So the audience a startup needs to target, the one that will impact top line sales, is rarely large enough for a proactive press hit to make an outsized impact.
A press hit can be good for you, it’s rarely great for you, and most of the time it doesn’t make a difference either way.
So adjust the time you spend chasing press accordingly. And spend that time chasing your company milestones instead.
This article was originally published on Medium by Joe Procopio
Joe Procopio is a multi-exit, multi-failure entrepreneur. He is the founder of startup advice project TeachingStartup.com and is the Chief Product Officer of mobile vehicle care and maintenance startup Get Spiffy. You can read all his posts at joeprocopio.com
If you want more direct advice and answers, look into Teaching Startup.
