Yousuf Khan
An awesome strategic comms pro should be your first marketing investment.
Without clear, concise and compelling messaging, your business loses the majority of its impact. Forget press and analysts — you will struggle to land customers or investors if your value proposition isn’t positioned correctly. Even if it’s too early to add someone full time, seek outside help from someone with a level of seniority that matches your own.
The processes of early messaging/positioning and early product design should not be treated as entirely separate. Allowing these messaging sessions to expose shortcomings or uncover new potential will help ensure all your future marketing efforts are rooted in truth and accuracy.
When it is time to add a full-time comms person to your team, look for a strategic partner rather than a manager. Hire someone who understands your business, not just theirs. Even though they’re not a spokesperson, they’ll often be the first representative from your company with whom reporters, analysts and influencers will interact.
They should be able to discuss your product and industry as well as anyone on your sales team. If that sounds like a tall order, it is — yet another reason to properly invest in the role.
Media relations is a small piece of the puzzle
Too many people treat communications and PR as if they’re interchangeable when the latter is actually just a fractional percentage of the former. Traditional media relations is simply much less important than it was a decade ago.
The number of employed business journalists in the world dwindles every day, while the number of publications that accept paid and contributed content grows. The reporter you simply “have” to meet today might well be running PR for one of your competitors tomorrow.
Those left are stretched thin. They don’t even have the bandwidth to cover everything they need to. The days of a sure-fire business press story or guaranteed trade coverage around a product launch are long gone.
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All tech companies think they’re doing something unique and incredible, and many are. But no matter what you’re doing, there’s always someone out there who can bump you from the news cycle.
Figure out a way to measure the output of your communications program beyond the number of articles placed; those mentions are meaningless if they’re not aligned with your message. Relationships and creativity are the key to a strong media presence in today’s landscape. For the same reason they don’t have time to cover everything, reporters have to rely on a network of people they trust to tell them what’s important.
Familiar, trusting relationships between influencers and executives generate exponentially more impactful press than your average product launch. Schedule meetings without an agenda. With permission from your PR team, reach out directly to reporters and invite them to coffee. Go the extra mile here, and reporters will start to view you as a trustworthy resource who they can call for input and comment.
Preparation is a two-way street
A few years ago, I was at a vendor event as a guest and found myself in the press room hunting for Wi-Fi. A spokesperson from the company and their comms lead came in to take a media call. It was clear within a few moments that the reporter wanted to discuss a topic that wasn’t in the executive’s wheelhouse.
Without panicking, the comms person opened their computer and began pulling up press releases, key messages and other materials to help redirect the conversation. The executive was able to get back on track and deliver an impactful briefing. Despite starting on the back foot, the comms person understood exactly what the reporter wanted to know and therefore knew which way to pivot.
Moments like these are why it’s so critical that you include your comms people throughout the process of positioning a new product or solution. It’s not just because they’ll ultimately be the ones to pitch and defend the messages to press. It’s because the better they understand the product and technology, the more accurately they can convey that information to a sophisticated and influential audience.
If your comms person would be tripped up by a reporter’s follow-up question, you probably haven’t done your job — and neither have they.
On the other side of the coin, it’s your responsibility as an executive to prepare and focus. Read your briefing materials, and ask questions if you don’t understand. Review a reporter’s previous work and get a feel for their style. Learn something personal about them. Never take a media or analyst call from the car or while doing something else, and respect the time of the person whom you’re speaking with.
Don’t be a loose cannon
As executives, we’re often inclined to believe that we have the final say. And while that’s true to an extent, we have to give our domain experts control over those domains.
If you’ve put together a strong comms team, they have a strategy and a plan. You can help them execute that plan incrementally, but you can undo its progress in the blink of an eye.
Always check with your comms team before promising any sort of joint activities with partners, customers or vendors. And never speak to a reporter, analyst or influencer without looping in your comms team first. They may well know something you don’t, which could make the difference between good press and a disastrous interaction.
Bond with your comms team
It’s not just important to have relationships between executives and media — you should have solid relationships with your comms people, too. Allow them to get to know you, your likes and dislikes, the environments in which you thrive and where you feel most comfortable.
They can use this information to set you up for success, from customizing your prep materials and picking the right venue for a conversation to insulating you from an ornery reporter.
I was speaking at a media dinner in San Francisco along with executives from a few other vendors a few years ago. Most showed up with a full PR entourage, but it was like there was an invisible curtain between them. The PR folks all huddled around each other, phones in hand, while the executives sat alone and prepped.
I walked in, saw my go-to PR guy across the room and gave him a big hug. The other PR people in the room looked at us like we were aliens.
It almost made me a little sad. Executives and PR people spend a lot of time together — it’s weird not to be friendly, to not make any effort to get to know one another. Aside from being sort of rude, it’s a missed opportunity to invest time and effort into a critical part of your organization.
Unfortunately, this is par for the course. It again comes back to the way most companies view external comms, which is as a late addition to the party. When working with a comms or PR team, most executives don’t expect to find senior strategic partners; they expect to find young operational employees early in their careers who add little strategic value. That’s not really fair to anyone.
Imagine for a moment that you’re 24 years old and tasked with moderating a conversation between a multimillionaire CEO and some famous reporter for the New York Times. How do you jump in and redirect if the conversation starts to go off track?
That would terrify me, and I’m sure plenty of PR folks feel the same way every day. Make an effort to make them comfortable. However much pressure you’re feeling to deliver a good briefing, they’re feeling even more acutely about their entire job. And a person sitting there stressed about what’s unfolding in front of them is probably going to miss something important.
So when working with your comms team, remember to communicate! Hold each other to high standards. Lean on them as strategic partners and trust their expertise. Keep up your end of the bargain. And — if they’re vaccinated, of course — give them a hug.
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