RISE PR IN ACTION – STARTUP FUNDING ANNOUNCEMENTS

Posted by on 1st August 2015 / 0 comments

For any startup, achieving funding is the culmination of months (or years) of hard work – establishing and growing the business, building credibility, meeting investors and demonstrating potential and the ability to scale.

So when the funding deals are finally signed, whatever round of funding that happens to be, startup founders are nearly always keen to make as much noise as possible about it. It’s a high pressure period for PR consultants, balancing client expectations with investor input and media expectations.

Managing stakeholders, addressing challenges

When PR’ing funding announcements there are usually a lot of stakeholders involved. The client, the investor(s), customers that might be mentioned in the announcement, as well as the PR agencies of all those stakeholders.

That’s why clear communication is more important than ever in such an important period. Who is responsible for what? Which PR agencies are dealing with which media? How will the timings of the announcement work? Should you offer an exclusive?

Rise PR had to juggle these challenges and more, when recently working on a Series B funding announcement on behalf of its retail tech client, Mirakl. An additional issue was gauging UK press interest in a French company’s funding – Mirakl has a strong UK presence with some high profile UK customers, but is not a UK company.

Making funding announcements work

We were able to manage the overall process, collaborating with our US and French PR agency counterparts and establishing clear lines of responsibility. Rise PR drafted the press release, securing approval from all relevant parties, and leaving plenty of time for translations.

The release was pitched under embargo to select key titles, with the intention of securing high quality coverage at the time of launch. Following publication we would then target other titles – vertical press and other business publications.

The results were hugely impressive in all territories, with 40+ articles globally. The impact from some of the UK outreach was particularly strong, with widespread interest (and traffic) resulting from articles secured with Forbes and TechCrunch.

Successful funding announcements can be stressful, but it’s a chance to not only deliver great results for the client but also to showcase your expertise with their investors too – who knows when they might need a smart PR for one of their portfolio companies?

Tagged: startups PR funding strategy

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