A Startup's Guide to Breaking into Top-Tier Media

By Trish DaCosta

Can an upscale clothing company for outdoor adventurers save the environment?

The verdict is out but that’s not stopping Patagonia founder and billionaire, Yvon Chouinard, from trying. Last week, the company announced he’d donate the entire company - an organization worth an estimated $3 billion and with 1,000 employees - in the fight against climate change. It’s a bold and noble venture never done by an American business, but what’s most striking is the public relations effort behind this momentous event.

Pundits might call it a PR stunt, but Patagonia doesn’t need a gimmick to resonate with its customers. The company could have made this announcement rather quietly via customer newsletters or a press release, but the Patagonia PR engine saw an opportunity to tell an aspirational and much-needed story that would connect emotionally to its current customer base and draw more fans to its brand.

That’s the power of what a thoughtful PR campaign does. It connects to customers and tells a powerful story that can make your business look good.

In an industry analysis by IBISWorld, there are 54,581 PR firms in the U.S as of this year - a jump of 4.8% since 2021. While these firms range in size, speciality, and industry, it’s still quite intimidating to source the right PR agency for your business today without the Patagonia-like budget. Small businesses and startups are often overlooked by the mid-to-large PR agencies, and most of the smaller PR firms often lack the resources and experts to do a great job. The question is, how can a small business owner or startup founder assess the right PR agency that will grow with their company and give them Patagonia-like creativity without the need for a Patagonia-sized budget?

Hint: Find the best storytellers with proven relationships and with the happiest clients. Here are the four “green flags” to look for in a PR firm before you hire and start breaking into top-tier media.

Identifying a PR Agency’s ‘Green Flags’

Green Flag: Senior members are personally involved in your business

Oftentimes, small business owners are in need of PR to develop their brand’s story and get its thought leadership out there in the press. Founders have told us that they are priced out of the larger PR firms and upsold on things that won’t move the needle for their business, which at the end of the day is media exposure.

Media is the bread and butter of all PR firms, but that doesn’t make them all equal. In fact, big firms, while well-funded and well-staffed for any size budget, tend to push the most important and valuable media outreach to its junior staff. Meanwhile, senior leaders are left out of the trenches and pop in occasionally to provide strategic guidance and oversee the junior members’ work. It’s a hierarchy that works for some but certainly not a small business or startups looking to scale with meaningful coverage and brand storytelling. When your budget is tight, every dollar must count towards meaningful outputs.

A great PR agency will have senior members deeply involved in the work of your PR campaign and have actual relationships with reporters online and IRL (in real life). This is an important distinction to make when assessing a firm as senior team members are often pulled into the business development aspects of an agency and are therefore unable to connect with reporters on a regular basis - let alone meet with them in-person.

Green Flag: Industry veterans that write great content

The written word is among the most powerful tools that a PR professional owns. While larger companies stress about how to go viral on TikTok or Instagram, a startup founder needs the fundamentals - a strong, well written press release and content that clearly communicates its key messages to the right audience. 

PR professionals are usually great writers, and it certainly helps to have a creative professional - either a former copywriter or journalist - working closely with your brand on content. Press release announcements, for instance, have the power to convey the most important elements of your company’s news to its intended audience: the media. A customer or investor might come across that announcement via a search, but a great press release needs to be written with a critical eye towards the end audience, and that’s always the journalist. 

Knowing this, small business owners may not need a press release every month or quarter. These valuable pieces of content can take hours to get right through the editing and approval process and most PR distribution wires are incredibly expensive. As such, a great PR agency will tell you what is press release worthy and what isn’t, then offer you additional ways in which to communicate the news through great writing. 

Our clients use a combination of bylined articles, sponsored posts, corporate blogs, and insightful reports which we ideate and create. We do this based on the value of the information and take into consideration how to best distill and share the message for each unique client. For example, we took this approach with a big piece of content for PivotalPath, which sought to challenge the expectations of traditional hedge fund indices. We penned an OP-Ed in Pensions & Investments, issued a 4-part content series on the website, drafted previews to the content that were shared on LinkedIn over a 6-week period, boosted the posts with paid support, and worked critical points into complementary media coverage.

Green Flag: They’re not just well-connected with reporters, they’re human with them, too

If you’ve ever been cold pitched on LinkedIn or another social platform, then you have an idea of how slimy it can feel when PR pros cold-pitch a reporter without demonstrating any knowledge of their work or beat. Cold-pitching is a common two-way practice between journalists and PR professionals, but not every company does it well.

We emphasize treating journalists like they’re human first, and a reporter second. Journalists are just as affected by world events as we are, have families and personal lives to balance outside of work, while also having the desire to tell great stories and be recognized for their work. Unfortunately, the world of remote work has made it more challenging to go out and meet with reporters for coffee and build those relationships in-person. Email pitches start to take a robotic tone as a result, and suddenly the relationship between PR people and reporters feels more transactional than personal.

A PR agency makes media relationships their business, because well, it is our business. That means our “cold” pitches treat the receiver like they’re human. We might reference a previous story, a mutual connection, or mention how much we enjoy their cat updates on Twitter (yes, this happens and we love all the pets). It’s our way of humanizing the relationship when we can’t meet in-person, and we focus on engaging with those journalists outside of the traditional PR exchange. Be human, be empathetic, and be brief should be every PR pro’s pitching motto.

Green Flag: Their pitches provide thoughtful information and great story ideas

This ‘green flag’ works hand-in-hand with the previous one about acting human with reporters, but it involves a bit more nuance. Journalists are pitched by hundreds of PR pros a day, so you can imagine how annoying it is to have a completely irrelevant email pop into your inbox - during the hangriest time of day no less. 

Since our team is made of seasoned PR people and strategists, we have great pitches dialed in compared to other big firms loaded up with entry-level, junior employees. It’s critical to us that we offer journalists great story ideas that would resonate with their readers because a good pitch reflects on the quality of our professionalism, and we take our reputation seriously. Most importantly, we care about offering reporters something they can use in order to make their work easier. The more we help them, the more memorable we become to the journalist.

As a small business owner, you want to be included in the articles about your industry, especially when there’s breaking news. An agency “green flag” is simply to offer great, creative ideas that journalists can actually use. This requires input from your startup’s executive team and the agency’s expert creativity to let a journalist know, this is an angle worth going after!

Not too long ago, we saw that the U.S. Treasury Department and Securities Exchange Committee (SEC) were holding several meetings throughout the year about regulating cryptocurrency. Armed with this industry knowledge, we secured multiple interviews and articles for digital assets hedge fund, ZX Squared Capital, by offering unique angles about how more regulation would help and not hurt the cryptocurrency industry. Armed with a great spokesperson and his perspectives, this client appeared in articles for CNBC, Forbes, MSN, CoinTelegraph, Blockworks, and other national and trade outlets.

This is how a great PR agency can benefit a small business or startup, by looking ahead, cultivating a bit of ingenuity and giving media thoughtful angles and content that they want to use in their articles!