Hello everyone and welcome to Better Done Than Perfect, a podcast for SaaS marketers and product people. Our awesome guest today is Sneha Sehgal, co-founder of Geeks and Experts, and we're going to talk about PR strategies for founders today. This show is brought to you by UserList, an email automation platform for SaaS companies.
It matches the complexity of your customer data, including many-to-many relationships between users and companies. Book your demo call today at userless.com. Hi, Sneha. Hey, Jane. Nice to be here. Thank you so much for having me. I'm excited to chat with you. We're very thrilled to have your advice on this narrow topic.
topic with a lot of legends and myths in it. But before we dive in, tell us more how you got started with Geeks and Experts and what your background story is.
I'd love to share that. So I guess Geeks and Experts was in the making ever since I started working in marketing and PR like almost a decade ago. And it was always with early stage companies, with startups, being scrappy and doing pretty much more than what your role involves. And specifically when it came to PR, I realized that
early stage companies, kind of like you mentioned, it's very mysterious. There's a lot of, you know, wishy-washy information out there about you need to spend $10,000, sign annual contracts and, you know, pay to get into top tier outlets. That's when I realized that there is a market here to build out a platform that works specifically with these audiences, has, you know,
agile budgets that are affordable for them and does PR basically on whatever they need and what their goals are. So that's where Geeks and Experts was born. And we work with startups, scale-ups across industries, right from fintech going to pet tech. And these are companies that are at the seed stage, or maybe they've raised their series A, B, C rounds, and they're just looking to get started on PR. Yeah.
So the goal for this episode today is to figure out what the DIY strategy looks like, what the layers are, and which parts of that, narrow parts, you can delegate on a budget to specialists that can be found on your platform or elsewhere. So let's just give an overall view what PR looks like for a software company, like what PR even means.
Absolutely. And I love to give this example, if you'd like, Jane, is the difference between marketing and PR. So if I were to tell everybody that Jane is a fabulous cook and she makes amazing steak, that's
That is doing PR for your stake. Whereas marketing is if you are telling everybody that I make amazing steak, you should try it out. Now, both have their own place, but one is a recommendation, a referral. Somebody is giving you that credibility or stamp of authority that you are the person in this domain. So think of PR from that lens. It's that word of mouth marketing that is being done organically for you. And I'm a strong advocate of
Doing some of this on your own before actually going out to find an expert or, you know, even going to an agency and spending tons of money, which on the early stages, your budgets are scrappy. We know that. So in a nutshell, DIY style PR is amazing.
putting yourself in that shoe of being the storyteller for your brand, whether it is talking about your founder journey, building out yourself as a thought leader today. And media is so fragmented, right? From Twitter to LinkedIn to podcasts, there are so many opportunities for you to go out and talk about your brand story. That is all building up your PR and your narrative. So when you're at that early stage, those are the things you can be doing on your own. And then when you're at that stage, when you think you need to get an expert,
you can hire somebody to do that fully focused on what your domain is. So since you mentioned software, that is something that I love to chat about in
in terms of how specific you need to be. Because for founders, sometimes getting PR means, oh, I want to be on the front cover of Fortune or Business Insider. Well, why do you want to be on the front cover? What is your objective of doing PR? So start with understanding what your end goal is and then work backwards from that so that you're actually getting ROI from
spending those resources on PR. So it should be focused on earned media, not paying somebody to put your photo on the front cover, but actually figuring out if you're in SaaS, which industry are you in and which publications should you be reaching out to? So if you're in cybersecurity, you want to go after trade publications that are specific to that domain and that vertical. If you're in HR tech, you want to go after publications that speak to that audience. So
In a nutshell, what I'm trying to say is figure out your brand story and your why. See what you can do on your own when you're starting out. And when you're ready to level that up, reach out to an expert who can do this for you in a more professional capacity.
I'm definitely not an expert in PR, especially traditional PR. But if you can tell us how traditional PR industry works, is it all about outreach? So is it just a PR specialist reaching out somewhere all the time so that you get featured in media outlets? Is that the essence of the industry or is there more that we don't see?
Yeah, there is definitely digital PR specifically has a lot of that give and take. So you have your editorial calendar, you have events that your company has lined up and you want to be promoting those all the time. And that is the moment when you want to be connecting with journalists, you want to be pitching to them. So there are a lot of tools out there, which people I think often underestimate.
Because traditional PR is thought of as just, you know, pitching to journalists, blitzscaling them, sending them mass media, you know, narratives about your story. But there's a lot of give and take involved. Very often journalists are actually looking for credible sources and they're on a tight deadline. They have...
to send out a story by the end of the week, and they're looking for credible sources. So when you switch it to that mindset and you become the person who's offering that information, you actually build that relationship with them. So that is the way I would see PR is more of a relationship building. It's more about not an on and an off switch, but actually just consistently building
building out that narrative and that draft core with people in the industry who write about the topics that your business is in. They featured founders who you admire, who are in the similar space. So that is the difference that I would say that it's evolving so much right now, especially with so many content creators, building their personal brands, becoming the face of their own companies. It is evolving every day with the number of
different audiences that you can reach out to and different formats that you can reach out to. So if you're a SaaS targeting like a physical industry, for example, I don't know, pets or...
I know there could be a physical magazine or something that really publications that really exist. But if your software targets, let's say marketers or software, other software companies. And honestly, my friends don't really consume any such publication. There is definitely no print media being distributed around the globe. And honestly, I can count like,
good blogs on the palm of my hand and they're only good because there is no PR happening inside them and these are like genuinely authentic founder like stories or something like that what are the publications that we're talking about well podcasts are probably a separate story but like part from podcasts what else can we target
Yeah, so this is where you need to specify which industry you're working in. So for those specific publications, they can be something as specific as for marketeers, there's the drum, there's modern retail, there's all of these platforms that talk about storytelling or advertising and case studies in that domain. So it doesn't have to be just the top tier outlets like Forbes, Fortune, Business Insider. So if you are in that specific industry, it is about identifying people
where can you actually get high quality backlinks? Where can you actually get more of a digital footprint that increases the hits to your website? And like you correctly pointed out, those are places where the specialist can help you identify that these would be the needle movers for telling your story. And it depends from industry to industry, like for the pet industry. I mean, there are so many outlets that speak about managing pet healthcare, managing tools for pets,
apart from the top tier, you know, CPG companies,
kind of blogs that we would see like PopSugar and all of that. But in the pet domain, there are many specific ones that, you know, retail content, even about right from the food to healthcare, like even pet vets, right? I mean, they have a different kind of publication probably that they tap into and they read about. So depending on what your product is and who it serves, I would go very, very hyper-focused and narrow down which are those publications that we can talk to.
There's so much going on these days with link building outreach and other types of outreach. When you have a PR outreach campaign happening, how do you make sure it stands out? Well, not stands out, but just differs from link building because essentially the goals are roughly similar. How do you tell a decent PR pitch from like, I'm going to write you a guest post because I have 20 links to plug in. Yes, that's a great question. So in terms of
getting your pitch out there. One is not relying solely on a press release. I think very often people imagine that writing a great press release is going to do most of the job for them. Well, that's just a starting point to actually get a feel around how your pitch is landing, how your press release is being taken by the people in the industry. And so what I would do is use that as just one portion of it and not
put all my investments in that and then not actively reach out to journalists who are talking about the industry that I'm in. So that is something that I would definitely consider as a goal that people miss out on, because there are a lot of platforms out there who will charge you a high upfront fee to just get your press release out there. And that works if you're a household brand, if you're a well-known brand. But if you are, like many of our clients are startups, that is one portion of it. There's a lot more that needs to be done with crafting their pitch and
Most importantly, staying relevant with the industry. I mean, I'll take an example of what happened a few weeks ago with the Baltimore Bridge. That was a very, very unique case in point. And it was so relevant for the maritime industry, for the supply chain industry. Just talking about how a simple event like that has so many repercussions on people.
the supply chain logistics is something that, you know, if you are in that industry, you want to be actively talking about what are the risks, what are, you know, some ways in which we can combat an event like that from occurring in the future. It's just about being thoughtful and relevant about what people are interested in talking about and what actually makes sense. So I wouldn't just force fit
getting into a guest blog post because somebody is maybe charging you upfront to get into that blog, it won't always deliver the results as opposed to something that actually speaks and positions you as a thought leader or as an expert in your domain. So for example, if you were to talk about SaaS marketing, it would make sense for you to
you know, have that credibility, it would make sense for you to talk about that from a very authentic standpoint, as opposed to just force fitting you in a list of 20, 30 other people who are in a similar space, but not necessarily come with the same credibility. Summing up, let's walk through these steps, what activities one needs to undertake to consider this
a PR strategy slash action plan? Yes, absolutely. So point number one is identify which are some of those outlets that you want to speak to. And these can be a combination of top tier as well as niche publication. So if you're in FinTech, you want to go very specific. Is it Yahoo Finance? Is it FinExtra? Are there speaking engagements that you can tap into? Are there top 20
startups in fintech? Are any of these platforms out there specifically talking just in that domain? And if you're in fintech, what kind of fintech are you? Are you consumer fintech? Are you, you know, working on debt reduction? Are you working on helping companies save money? Which domain do you actually focus on? So work backwards from that and craft a pitch that
just showcases your credibility and your background. So the first thing you have to lead with is your founder story. Why are you the most reliable person to be talking about this? And why is this important right now? So if you're talking about finance, we all know like the Fed is not cutting interest rates.
There's a lot of uncertainty about what is happening in the economy right now. Can you offer some inputs about why it is relevant to talk about what your company does specifically? Does your company help startups reduce churn? Does your company help reduce costs in acquiring customers? What is that spiky point of view that you can bring and why is that important right now? And other than that,
Is there something that you can offer as social proof? Like maybe you have some case studies that you've worked on that show the success of your startup or your product. Can you loop that in your pitch? And all of this should be pretty much like, you know, three different paragraphs just
giving it all in one go without, you know, sending like, you know, long email with tons of documents attached, very simple pitch, just writing to the journalist and offering them to be a resource for any articles that they write in this domain. And, you know,
treat them as humans. I mean, they are humans. At the end of the day, you don't want to be being rude. You don't want to offer up money that, hey, I'm ready to pay if you just add my company to your article. So don't do that. And obviously, be mindful about following up because journalists, of course, get so many pitches in a day that it is hard for them to respond to everybody. But I've had some journalists respond to me after months and saying,
hey, you know, that story that you pitched to us is actually helpful right now. We'd love to chat if that's still of interest. So I think there's a lot of power
power in maintaining those relationships. And they're so active on LinkedIn, on Twitter, that there are many opportunities for you to be able to read their content, see the kind of work that they've published before and how you can be a resource for them. So those are the three things that I would focus on if I were to start out DIY style. What's your opinion on Harrow slash help a B2B writer as platforms? Does it work?
Are they still alive? Yeah, that's a great question. Actually, HARO is now turned into HERO, which has helped every reporter out. So it is starting out. Yes, it has been kind of revamped. There's somebody new who's building that out. And I strongly feel like there is value in those places as well, because
especially for somebody who's not done PR before. You don't know where to start with. You don't know who are the journalists that would be the best point of contact for you. These lists actually help you identify who are the journalists writing for different topics because they break it down in that style of travel, fintech, travel.
healthcare, biotech. So you're able to narrow down that, okay, this person sends queries based on this topic. So maybe they're a good point of contact for me just to stay connected with in the future. So I would treat that as a starting point and not like the only strategy.
Because, you know, at the end of the day, everything is about staying relevant, right? If you plan out your editorial calendar as well, when you're writing content for your startup, you know that every month there's something new you want to be talking about. So the same applies for journalists. I mean, there's different topics that take priority. So in this month, we're going to be talking about mental health a lot. You know, how are pitches going?
actually serving that purpose of staying relevant. So I would take that as a two-pronged approach of proactive is when you're actually pitching to them and staying connected. And the reactive one is when you're reaching out to them when they're looking for a source. When you hire a PR expert, are you buying their work or are you buying also their connections with the journalists? What is the ratio between those?
Yeah, that's a great question. I would say you are not buying connections. I think that is maybe a different way to put it. Yes. Humbly paying for them to stay connected. Yeah.
Absolutely. And there are a lot of PR specialists, including ours, who will offer you up some of their contacts once your engagement is done, because they understand that some of these pitches take months to materialize. So at the end of the day, it's not about necessarily buying those contacts. Of course, there are agencies or there are companies out there that will sell you a whole database. But I think more than that is having quality contacts.
of meaningful connections, as opposed to like a 500 email list, which is not updated. I did not mean, for goodness sake, that word was very poorly coined. I did not mean buying the database. I meant like paying for their access to like humans and friends and whatever social capital they have.
Absolutely. So I would put it as that and also to their expertise, right? Their vision of how they see a pitch is crafted. So this is how we would start out if we were to engage with the client. And I'll give you an example. Some of the clients we've worked with, they have worked with big agencies. And these are, I'm talking about startups and scale-ups, of course, don't have the biggest budgets. And they had an agency on board, which would have maybe seven or eight people on a call
with only about one or two of them engaging and actively giving feedback or biweekly updates to the team. And that's when this company realized that maybe we need somebody a bit more hands-on who can actually be the point of contact and give them updates on what is going on behind the scenes, because that is the interesting part about PR is
Very often, you don't know where your resources are being allocated. So you want to make sure that the PR specialist you get on board is ready to give in that cadence to you, is ready to update you with where all they sent your pitch, what are some of the strategies they're working on, and are they actively getting feedback on the pitch? Because if one thing is not landing, there are different ways to change that narrative, to edit it, maybe to try a different approach. And that is what you want to be doing, is having somebody who's more like a partner and
plugs into your team as opposed to, you know, works in silos because that's not going to give you the results. And at the end of the day, you want to start with first identifying what is the objective? Where do you see yourself? What does success look like for you? So this would be, you know, crafting out a very realistic plan of these are the three months, these are the goals we have in mind, and what are the steps we can take to get there? Because
Some of it involves like level setting and just getting realistic about what you can achieve. So that is where the PR specialist would come in. So not just the access to that network, but definitely their expertise in how they can best utilize your story and make it relevant right now.
One aspect of this is that most founders and businesses I know, successful founders, are extremely boring. The businesses are super boring. They're probably the least spiky or controversial you can find out there. They're just focused on doing their work, heads down. Therefore, it's a complete mystery for me how this can be made exciting for the new sources. So...
any like tips, tricks and approaches on extracting this spice from like a completely boring, sustainable business. I,
I love that. And I feel like we all love a good challenge, right? And I think there's a lot of merit actually in working on something like that because you think it's boring and unexciting, but there's definitely going to be something in that founder's journey that stands out because everyone has their unique, you know, kind of journey of navigating and getting somewhere. So it could be that,
just telling their story of the product. Like, how did it start and where has it reached now? It could be about maybe a lot of the trials that they had in-house that never actually saw the light of day. And eventually, the product that they came out with must be very different from what they started out with. So what I like to do in such cases is to document a startup's journey or a founder's journey from how they started, what are the experiments that they ran in-house,
What are some of the challenges that they faced that you can actually talk about? Because I think it's very helpful not just to talk about your wins and your successes, but also to talk about your lessons, the losses, the setbacks, because that is what makes you actually more relatable and more authentic. And, you know, that is why a lot of founders now talk about being vulnerable, like being
And it doesn't have to be just restricted to their nine to five, right? I mean, it's not just about their startup journey. There could be something about how they're managing their work-life balance. You know, if you think that they're boring or if they have like a very set routine of things, like how do they actually manage such a big company and how do they keep things engaging even outside of work? So there's a lot of elements in one founder's story that one can tap into. It just has to make sense and be a good fit.
I have three kids and I usually never talk about family at all. Well, apart from mentioning maybe the number. I once went on a psychology podcast and talked like for half an hour. It was the main topic, managing work-life balance. I felt so overshared and vulnerable. And what's worse, the episode never saw the light of day, which made me feel even worse. So I swore like, no, I'm not going to.
Just tell everybody that the recipe for success is hiring nannies to help you. That is so boring and also privileged at the same time. Well, I will guarantee if that episode aired, you would get a flood of inbound messages from a lot of people who have been in your shoes who kind of probably similarly see, you know, just amazed at how you manage everything and then realize that, oh, it's not easy for everybody the way it seems. So I think...
If that, honestly, if that episode came to life, like you will be getting inbound requests from people who are in the same shoes and just asking you that, you know, thanks for sharing that. You make it look so effortless. At the end of the day, everyone loves to see, like, you know, be feel, you know, seen and heard and understood. So at the end of the day, storytelling does exactly that, right? It just makes you more human.
Another question is about writing the trend and attaching what you have to say to things that are currently on the agenda. And you've mentioned that a few paragraphs above. So what are your tips for doing that? If there is like a bridge equivalent in software industry, like what do we do with it? That's a great question. So in terms of writing something that is relevant, I would say,
See if your company has any insights or research reports that you have run or any data points that you can actually use. Because as a software company, there's probably a lot of information that you're seeing or trends, and you can build out your own in-house capabilities or your in-house report or study of a trend.
and use that as a starting point. So even if nothing is hot and exciting to talk about right now in software, you can make it by just seeing what you're seeing. And this can be maybe through your customers, it can be through some other partners and stakeholders, talking about
What are some predictions? You know, what is the year gone by? What did you see? What did you learn? So those are some things that I would do in that space to actually make it more relevant and informative, because that is going to be information that is very helpful to your potential clients as well. If they see your capabilities and what information you have and how you're using that to maybe offer
offer them a better product or increase your service, you know, to make it more meaningful for them. So these are some things that I would look at. And I would not use AI to write a lot of those pitches and to look for those trends and predictions. I mean, you can use that as a starting point, but don't make that your go-to because everybody can read through how that sounds.
By the way, we do have a fabulous episode with Becky Lawler from a while ago about making survey-based research projects work for you, like how to create them, run them, and then, well, less so PR them, but that's like how you build that material you were describing. Let's talk money. I know that retainers with PR experts on your platform start from $50.
1500 per month for the low end side up into the infinity if you have unlimited budgets. What do you feel the ranges are for some healthy PR activities that a founder can afford?
Yeah, I think the healthy starting point is A, if you're just starting out, do some of it on your own before you decide to just put money into a specialist's hands. And I'm a strong advocate for that because there's a lot that you can actually try out, experiment with. And when you're ready to get that expert, I would say budgeting like close to maybe three or four thousand per month is a good starting point. And this is
just doing maybe a three-month engagement. So the unique thing about the way we work is we don't have minimum 12-month annual retainers because we understand your budgets are a bit more scrappy. You don't know what your needs are. They could be evolving. Maybe you've done...
a fundraise and you want to make an announcement of that, or maybe you have a new feature that your startup product is launching and you want to talk about that. So I would start with budgeting around that much just to begin with. And once you see what that is offering you, you can decide whether you want to put a pause
and do some of it on your own. Or if you want to actually level it up, let's say you are, you know, a founder is writing a book and now he wants to do a book tour as well, or he wants to do a podcast tour, you know, depending on what your timelines are, I would map that out for your PR budget. Podcast tours are probably a separate topic for discussion for another episode. Let's not go into that direction.
So one of the assumptions I had before talking to you was that you can get a PR firm support a one-off launch, like your public launch or a big feature launch or something like that. But then this myth was very obviously busted because you said that no, PR is an ongoing activity. So any sentiments around that part?
Yeah, there's definitely, you know, there's no one size fits all. That is what I would say. So if you think you need PR support to get that initial launch and buzz out, sure, you can take somebody's support to get that press release, to send out a few pitches, but it doesn't end there because maybe you launch something now and maybe there's something very exciting that happens two months from now, which actually makes your launch even more meaningful. So that's the reason why
Once you send out that pitch, you want to continue following up. And that's the reason that, you know, doing that initial launch should just be one part of it. But the follow up and the relationships that come should be a chunk of it after as well. As we're wrapping up this episode, could you tell us one do and one don't when it comes to startup PR?
Absolutely. So do engage with the journalists that you want to connect with. Do offer them up introductions. Maybe you see that they've written an interesting article. Share that article with your network. If you've seen that they're looking for interviewing somebody who's in a particular industry or a particular space, see if you can offer them that introduction. So do build those relationships and engage.
don't offer to pay upfront to get into their articles. That is not the best way you want to start out. That's starting out on a very wrong footing because it is going to come across very transactional and you don't want to be doing that because that's just going to burn bridges for any future potential opportunities that they saw you as a good fit for featuring. It's not going to land well. Where can people find you and your company online to learn more?
Absolutely. So you can find us at geeksandexperts.com. And if you have any specific PR questions or if you're looking for a specific expert, just fill out the form and our team will be in touch with you. And if you want to connect with me, I love connecting with founders. I love chatting about PR strategies or just everything.
founder journeys in general. So feel free to reach out to me on LinkedIn. You can find me at Sneha Saigul. And yeah, if there's anything else that we can chat about, I'm happy to be your resource. Thank you so much for sharing all your wisdom and have a wonderful rest of your day. Thank you. Thank you so much.
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