Thriving in the business world is all about strategy. As an entrepreneur, you have to be strategic about what products/services you offer, who you are selling to, and even how you sell. What many business owners don’t immediately think of is a tech press release strategy.
The way many of us see it, check PR is simply a byproduct of the business strategy. You decide to put out your project and then publish a press release as a result. But the truth is that your press release distribution journey as a tech business has to be just as strategic as anything else.
Why You Need Tech PR Strategy
Many entrepreneurs do not see the benefits of a press release strategy, but in reality, it saves businesses a lot of trouble in the long run. Here are some of the reasons:
Choosing the Narrative
In this day and age, we don’t just want to engage with businesses for the sake of it. Typically, we want to buy into a story or a narrative about them. Maybe it’s an underdog company founded by college friends. Maybe it’s a high-class brand looking to bring luxury to the masses.
But the thing about a business narrative is that if you do not frame it yourself, the market will do so for you. Having a tech press release strategy means that you can shape your business’s public perception even before it launches. Having a handle on your business perception will benefit you for years to come, and so, it shouldn’t be ignored.
Capturing Public Attention
One thing we’ve always emphasized here at XpressWire is that PR is a marathon and not a sprint. As much as we might like, rarely can a business cultivate public goodwill overnight. Instead, it has to be meticulously pursued over many years. Having a PR strategy isn’t just deciding to publish press releases at any time.
Instead, it is deciding how you plan to go about pursuing goodwill, or putting out press releases and other such PR efforts without a strategy, means that you might lose out on the chance to curate this goodwill and might struggle to catch up to your competitors.
SEO Benefits
In the age of the internet, tech PR is not just about getting visibility but also playing the SEO game. These days, it is nearly impossible for a business to gain a footing without having some sort of search engine optimization strategy. And this is where tech press releases can come in.
These press releases, if properly written, can drive relevant traffic and backlinks to your various web pages. This, in turn, means that you will rank higher on search engine results and thus can gain all the benefits that come with it. This means integrating your tech PR strategy into your overall online marketing strategy, so that each benefits the other.
Resource Management
When you are engaging in a tech PR strategy, you’re not only managing the flow of information but also the flow of resources. It costs money to issue press releases, host press events, engage with journalists, and much more. If you go about PR activities without a strategy, you might find yourself blowing through money without any thought or care. This is why a PR strategy involves a fixed budget, a review of results, and adjustments to plans as needed. If you’re a business that wants to be prudent about how it uses its resources, a tech PR strategy will help.
Public and Investor Trust
To succeed as a tech business, you need both the public and potential investors to believe in you. One way to make this happen is through a proper tech press release strategy. Having the right strategy means that you can position yourself as an industry leader and a trustworthy partner.
If you allow your narrative and overall public perception to unfold without any care, you could easily come off as shady, wrongly portrayed, and so on. Having a tech PR strategy means that you will refuse to be associated with certain projects, platforms, and much more. You will also put out the most professional version of yourself, which can earn you the trust of possible investors and get the public to support you. For this reason alone, a tech business should never be lax about its press release strategy.
Developing a Tech Marketing and PR Strategy
Now that you understand the benefits of these strategies, it’s important to know how to develop them. While this should certainly be customized to your unique needs, your tech marketing and PR strategy should include the following:
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Long-Term and Short-Term Goals
No strategy is effective if you don’t know what you are trying to achieve in the first place. The first thing you should do is define what your short and long-term goals for your company are. Perhaps your short-term goal is to drive a certain number of clicks to your website in the first quarter of the year. Maybe your long-term goal is to become a major player in your subniche and gain the respect of potential customers. Once you define your short-term and long-term goals, make them actionable and time-bound.
For example, break down the goals into yearly, quarterly, monthly, and weekly goals. You should also review these goals periodically to make sure you are on track, and if you are not, decide what needs to be done.
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Decide Your Narrative
As we said, one downside of not having a tech PR strategy is that the market or competitors will decide your story. Instead, decide what sort of perception you want. Do you want to be seen as an aspirational or relatable brand? Do you want to be seen as very serious or as a playful brand? Do you want great accessibility or exclusivity? Once you decide these, you should develop a mission statement and a brand identity statement. This will go on to guide every other decision you make and lead you towards your goals.
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Decide a Budget
Because, as we’ve said, putting out tech PR efforts is not free. To avoid wasting resources, decide how much money you are willing to dedicate towards your PR efforts both now and in the future. How much do you want to spend per week? How much do you want to spend per year? How many press releases are you looking to get out of that?
Knowing this means you’ll know when you are going off budget and when things need to be reviewed. A good idea would be to reach out to a service like what we offer here at XpressWire. We cannot only help you determine an adequate budget but also make sure it will meet all of your needs.
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Decide on Press Releases and the Platforms
Naturally, tech press releases are a cornerstone of tech marketing and PR strategy, and so, you have to prepare yourself to put out a good number of these. Press releases are essentially a cheat code to getting publicity because you can put them out for both big and small developments.
A well-written and well-distributed press release can gain you thousands of dollars in publicity that you otherwise would have missed out on. If it’s published on the right sites, you can target both your current audience and people who haven’t engaged with your business before.
This is why you should also consider what platforms you want your press releases to show up on. There’s the option to target tech-focused publications or more generalist ones. Many tech PR strategies employ a mix of both, but this differs from one business to another.
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Develop Your Team
Every great strategy needs a team behind it, and so you’ll want to find these people early on. Some tech businesses choose to have an in-house PR team to meet their needs, while others find it easier to hire external agencies. By deciding what your strategy will be early on, you can have alignments across the organization at every level.
Final Thoughts
On the surface, tech PR strategy seems daunting or unnecessary. But for any business that wants to make it in the long run, it is inevitable. Not having such a strategy means that time, effort and resources can be misused or wasted. It also means that a company can spend years having a false narrative crafted about it or miss out on all the benefits that come with a proper strategy. For all these reasons, every tech business should develop a strategy as soon as possible.
There are several moving parts to an effective strategy, including setting a budget, defining a narrative, exploring different platforms, and assembling the team. Some businesses choose to do all of this in-house to control all the variables, while others choose to outsource. If you’re looking to issue press releases or develop an overall PR strategy, feel free to reach out to us at XpressWire. From giving you access to the top publications to guiding your PR strategy in the long term, we’ve got you covered.