10 Entrepreneurs Tell You The Best Ways To Do SaaS PR

Last updated on July 6th, 2023

Building relationships with journalists is a must in promoting your product,
it is essential to have a strategy in place. Learn how to be effective in your
PR plan with this guide to SaaS PR. This roundup includes links to all of the
articles and lessons from some of the best in the industry.

1. Create your personality that is future focused and pioneering

Benioff, the founder of sales force’s talks take-no-prisoner tactics on PR.

“If the company’s facts (speed, price, quality) are superior to the
competition, any good competitor will duplicate them, or worse, improve upon
them. What a company can own, however, is a personality. We own NO SOFTWARE —
not because we are the only one doing it but because we were the first to
think it was important to customers. By consistently delivering an attitude
that is future focused and pioneering, we have created a personality.”

2. Don’t forget your big ideas and tell your stories to the world

Slack posted a story on everything you need to know about Stewart Butterfield,
the founder of slack. This includes how Stewart dealt with his failures, his
determination and how it is important to treat your staff with humanity.

‘‘Butterfield and a skeleton crew of Tiny Speck let about 30 employees go, but
spent a chunk of the VC money and a solid month finding every exiting employee
a job–a move this reporter has never seen in any startup.’’

3. Know who you are pitching to or lose them

Contrary to slacks PR strategy of ‘tell your story’ to the world. HubSot
founder, Dharmesh Shah believes that it’s not about you — it’s all about
knowing who you are pitching to. Know the journalist and know the readers.

‘Flip it around and focus solely on how you can benefit readers. When you do,
your company will benefit by extension.’

**4. Use Webinars to allow journalists and customers to know your

product**

Companies such as Raven and Slack promote Webinars to engage with their
clients and leads. The use of creativity for webinars out there at the moment
is endless — use visuals, guest speakers and engaging text to grab your
audience.

5. Pick the best time and day to get their attention

Elena, the founder of a technology PR agency notes the importance of
understanding different time zones when sending out emails to journalists.

‘Media with different geographic coverages will have different timing needs.
Local media will be more approachable at the last minute, compared to global
media’.

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6. Make sure your key message is clear

Brooke Hammering the founder of Brew Media Relations hones in on how important
it is to develop a message that resonates, for tech companies this can be a
challenge. Your product may have many capabilities but you need to make the
key message clear.

‘PR isn’t about hits and it isn’t about placement. It’s about focusing your
voice. It’s about finding your place in the market.’

7. Use social media to engage influencers

Journalist, John Boitnott explains how important the use of social media is
for creating a hype around your product.

‘Regardless of professional public relations support, all businesses can use
their social media accounts to help manage public opinion. Don’t wait for
others to create stories about your brand. Create interest with some public
relations influencing tactics. Create flattering and engaging stories about
your brand, react to other large stories, and react publicly to negative
comments.’

8. Building relationships is essential for success

Jason M.Lemkin, the CEO and founder of EchoSign gives us an insight into his
PR failures and how building relationships is the key to PR success.

‘You have to give more than you receive. Do you really think TechCrunch or
Business Insider or Bloomberg wants to write about your boring company? Of
course not. And why does every single YC company get covered? Relationships. I
cannot tell you how many PR firms ask >me< to introduce them to
journalists. Think about that.’

Read more: A SaaS Founder’s Guide to
PR

**9. Know how to reach out to journalists in the right way to get

responses**

Sujan Patal gives us an insight into his own experiences of receiving PR
pitches and how we can learn from this.

‘PR pitches are not a time for subtleties. Playing games is for kids — be an
adult and be up-front about what you’re looking for. You’re going to gain more
respect that way, and you’ll be more likely to get what you want’

10. Understand how tech PR differs from other companies and make sure to

stay on top of the newest trend

‘Tech PR’s writing requirements encompass domain expertise for white papers,
blog posts, web copy, or social media. Further, innovation within the tech
industry moves with much greater speed, with far more industry jargon, than
any other market. And the pace of obsolescence means that the strategies or
tactics that worked yesterday have little leverage on moving the needle
tomorrow.’