What I Learned about Press Hacking

Thanks for everyone who attended our Press Hacking Hangout yesterday. It was a privilege to work with Adam and Nathan to produce it, and a ton of fun to take your questions live.

If you’re new to “Press Hacking” this is the post that started it all

Here’s the recording, including bookmarks for each of the questions we answered (show starts at 1:35:38):

Subscribe to participate in our next Hangout: Email or RSS

We also wanted to summarize our key takeaways from the session.

My Learnings

I used to think press was a great way to get customers – now I feel the opposite.

Press is another form of advertising; an expensive one.

It costs fewer $’s than Adwords, but it costs much more time and mental energy…plus I have much less control, and it’s not a sustainable source of leads. Press is great for brand building, buzz building, and ego building. For customer acquisition though, I’ll be focus on solving a “hair on fire” problem and telling customers about it via a sustainable customer acquisition channel. If I do that, my next adventure will fair much better than ThingWeStart (even if it did get piles of press coverage).

My Favorite Press Tactics

Tactic #1: How will I measure success for my next press campaign? (hint: just getting press is not success) I’ll think of press like any other experiment (Success = x new customers at y% conversion rate).
Tactic #2: Pick 2 blogs my customers read. Start leaving value-add comments on both of those blog articles each time they post. If I help these bloggers, they’ll help me.
Tactic #3: Test your press pitch. Before you start a campaign, test it with reporters you’ve built relationships with – see if they bite. When you do, send different versions of the pitch to different journalists, see which pitch resonates the best. When you launch the campaign, use the pitch that resonated the best.

Adam’s High-Level Thoughts

Use the “trail of breadcrumbs” approach to press: Use press coverage to lay out a series of data points that will lead people to your company or product. You may not see direct or immediate results, but the real value will show out in the longer term.

Adam’s Favorite Tactics

Tactic #1: Find the narratives in and around your company and match them up with publications, i.e., the local paper in your founder’s hometown, the alumni publication for your business school, the amateur musician news site that your top customer is a part of, etc.
Tactic #2: Be your own journalist: Generate research and data that has value for news outlets, customers or other members of your industry in the form of reports or infographics. Share them through your own site or a press release service.
Tactic #3: Make yourself discoverable as an expert and resource through sites like Helpareporter.com and Newswise.com and by having information for media inquiries on your site (phone #, location)

Adam will be following up on his blog with more information about maximizing press. Subscribe there for more information, or shoot us any additional questions the comments below. Our next post will be…How to Interview Customers! Subscribe to make sure you get it Email or RSS

First time to Customer Development Labs?

Check out our most popular experiments:

  1. MTurk + Google News = Press
  2. Interviewing 100 customers in 4 hours with MTurk
  3. Finding Customers to Interview

Hacking Press is a Waste of Time

Our MTurk + Google News = Press post got quite a bit of attention – all supportive, some supportively critical.

Adam Drici has been the most supportive critic and as a journalist, he took us to task. 

[Update] Adam and I recently did a Google Hangout hashing out our thoughts on getting press. Watch it here: What I learned about Press Hacking.

Adam Drici – Journalist, Ball Buster

I really liked the first half of Justin’s hack. It’s a smart and efficient way to identify reporters writing in your space and collect their contact info, which can be a hugely valuable resource if you’re smart about how you use it. But while getting your launch day announcement picked up by the big tech blogs is nice, it just scratches the surface of how you can use the press to help grow your startup.

Show, Don’t Sell

A reporter’s primary job is to serve his or her readers. The best way to get them writing about you and your company is to show them how you can help them do their job better.

Be an Expert and a Resource. You can make yourself available to reporters through websites like Newswise.com and Helpareporter.com. These services are free to reporters, but there is a fee for companies and experts to get listed, so they may not be the right tool for everyone.

Find the reporters that are most relevant (in terms of subject matter, geography, demographics, etc.) to the work you’re doing. Develop a relationship with them. Journalism is a small world, everyone’s only a degree or two away from everyone else, and if you build a few of those relationships and demonstrate your expertise, other reporters will call or email you. When you have a good story to tell involving your company, they’ll be there to listen.

Tech sites aren’t always the best when it comes to the value of your press coverage. About half of the articles Justin got were on sites with a lot of crossover in readership. Some of those readers could have seen pretty much identical stories about the site seven times in one day, which:

  1. makes it way less special and
  2. means you potentially missed out on six additional sets of eyeballs.

Plus: if your target users/customers are “normals,” you have an incentive to get into the “normal” publications they read on the regular, i.e., general news sites, and local news outlets in particular. Tech and the web get very little coverage on that level, but those are the publications that often have the highest reader engagement. Reaching out to a targeted handful of local outlets could pay big dividends.

People like reading about other people, not websites Startup weekend customer development

Don’t waste column inches having your CEO or co-founder tell people how your website works. Instead, use them to share a story about how your product helped some user(s) achieve a goal, preferably one that readers can relate to or that they face in their own lives.

One of the area’s where ThingsWeStart’s press was lacking was its velocity.

I didn’t feel compelled or motivated to take any action after reading those articles. But if I had just read about how someone saved their farm by connecting on Kickstarter through this site or a small town or inner-city neighborhood banded together to crowdfund a new park or addition to the public library, I would head to the website and try to find some meaningful local project that’ll make me feel like the star of my own story.

Know your users/customers. Who are they and how are they using your product? Find the ones with interesting stories, and either shine a spotlight on them yourself through your company blog or point them out to the relevant reporters.

On Press Releases

In the 13 write-ups for ThingsWeStart, there were only two narratives:

  1. the press release about the company, maybe with a fresh quote or two thrown in
  2. stories about the infographics where the company was not the main attraction

Both are easy, throwaway stories that reporters crank out in 15 minutes because the story they want to be writing fell through or hasn’t come in yet. The results would have been the same, if not better, had they opted to run the press release and infographics on a service like PR Newswire or even just sent one email the night before embargoed until 6:00 a.m.

The underlying issue, though, is that those 13 articles only generated two unique data points. When I Google “ThingsWeStart,” I get headlines from a bunch of different sites, but they’re all pretty much the same story. If I’ve read one, I’ve read them all, and if that one story doesn’t grab me, neither will the other nine that say the same thing. Ten unique stories, on the other hand, will offer ten unique angles on your product or service.

In general, I think it’s fair to say that research, reports, rankings, infographics, etc. will outperform product or launch announcements because they can generate a greater number of unique narratives, which can in turn run in a greater number of unique publications. Using the materials you folks generated for ThingsWeStart as an example, each of the infographics could be pitched by its title, i.e., “Top 10 Kickstarter Cities in America,” but they can also be pitched by the individual cities and their rankings, i.e., “Chicago #3 City for Crowdfunding.” Push out the same information under multiple, location- or subject-specific headlines to increase visibility for reporters covering those places or topics.

Trulia is particularly good at producing this kind of third-party research and analysis on the real estate market for its Trulia Trends blog.

You can also be effective by staying on top of the news cycle and pushing out releases offering expert analysis/reaction to big or breaking stories that intersect with the space you work in. Again, using the ThingsWeStart example, if Kickstarter makes a big announcement, I have to post something on it, but so does everyone else who got the press release, and we’re likely to have very similar headlines and stories: “Kickstarter Launches [X].” But I want something more newsy so my story stands out. You, as an expert on the platform, can give me that something. Now my headline is: “Expert Says Kickstarter’s New [X] Will Change [Y] and [Z].”

Some practical tips:

Don’t spam reporters with multiple form emails. The three emails from the article were worse than the average press release because they were both too informal and at the same time clearly not personal. Why should I write a story about your company if you couldn’t even spare 3 minutes to bang out an email to ask me? Aim for conversational but professional in terms of tone.

Don’t try to write the story for us. We know how to do our job a lot better than you do. We know what people read and how to present the narrative in the most effective way possible. You can give hints or suggestions, but all we really want is straight information. When you try to write the story for us, you also run the risk of missing out on a much better story the reporter could have written by bringing their area expertise to bear, putting your project in a larger context or analyzing why and how it’s important and who it will affect.

Send press kits as attachments. But include the 300-400 word press release and couple paragraphs of background on our company in the body of the email. PDFs for documents, high-res .jpgs or .pngs (300dpi) for images and graphics. It’s more professional and easier to work with. And by making me open up a new tab to read and retrieve your info, you’re giving me one more (tiny) step to do, which is one more opportunity for me to not do it. Attachments get your materials in front of their eyeballs.

Let’s Hangout

Big thanks to Adam for his post, and for the follow-up Google Hangout he did we with answering everyone’s questions about getting press. Watch it here: What I learned about Hacking Press.

Also, join the Customer Dev Labs experiment – subscribe via Email or RSS. Our next post will be…How to Interview Customers!

First time to Customer Development Labs?

Check out our most popular experiments:

  1. The Hacker’s Guide to Getting Press
  2. Interviewing 100 customers in 4 hours with MTurk
  3. Finding Customers to Interview

How to Find Customers to Interview

We know we need to “get out of the building”, but where do we go? From personal experience, finding customers who are willing to be interviewed is daunting.

Turns out, that’s one of my favorite things about interviewing customers!

The harder customers are to interview, the harder they’ll be to monetize

The process of finding customers to interview is a preview of what it’ll take to sell to our customers. Will we need to stand out on the street, do cold calls, create meetups? Just getting customer interviews is a test in-and-of-itself!

With that in mind, Customer Discovery Hack #2 is all about finding customers to interview, whether you’re B2B or B2C. This video, in partnership with Startup Weekend NEXT, will explain it all but the text version is below:

Prequil

Before I get into the hacks, let me say introductions are almost always the quickest way to get customers. If you can, get introductions for the first couple interviews. Once you run out of introductions, give these a try.

B2B: The Webinar Honey Pot

The idea here is simple:

Solve customers’ hypothetical problems with a webinar. Then hit ‘um up for interview.

Building a service to help small businesses with online marketing? Put together an SEO webinar.
Selling accounts receivable software? Hold a Google Hangout on the Top 5 SaaS Invoicing tools.
Building a Social Media Analytics tool? Host a webinar devoted to the right times of the day to tweet.

Keys to this technique:

  • If it’s easy to get people to show up – you’re solving a problem. If it’s not…you’re not.
  • Know what you’re talking about and blow attendees away with your knowledge of the space, and the generosity of your time.
  • Make sure you get attendees’ names and email addresses. Don’t use LiveStream, YouTube, etc.
  • Don’t pitch a product, try to solicit feedback, etc. This is entirely about you earning trust by providing value – free of charge.

Once you’ve impressed the pants off your potential customers, send them a personalized email a couple days later:

Hi Susan,

Thanks for attending our Facebook for Photographers webinar. Your question about getting permission before sharing pics was really great – spawned an interesting discussion.

My partner and I are thinking about building a service to help Photographers share their photos online (<– note: vague) and we’re hoping to get your input.  Do you have half and hour to chat next week?

We’re available at 10:30 am Wed, and 2:00 pm Thursday if either of those work for you.

Thanks again for attending, and please let us know if we can help you at all with your Facebook page.

All the best,
Justin & Steven

I’ve done this before it worked well. In addition to getting attendee interviews, because I’d earned the trust of the people who attended the webinar, when I ask for referrals to their peers to interview, I almost always got them.

The downside of the Webinar Honey Pot is simply that it takes time. Time to know the space, time to get the word out about your webinar, etc. That said, everything in a B2B play takes time, so it’s good to get used to it now before you bet the farm.

B2C: Mechanical Turk Interviews

If you’re a new reader of the blog (welcome!), this is the hack that put us on the map: How to Interview 100 Customers (in 4 Hours).

Read it. It’ll change your business.

Bonus Hack: Cold Emails

I’m too scared to do cold calls (tips anyone?), but cold emails I can do…and I love doing them.

Why? because they’re an indicator as to whether I might be solving a problem.  I once sent out a set of 10 cold emails asking for meetings and as a result, got 5 meetings (that’s a better conversion rate than birthday party RSVPs).

Cold email tips:

  • SPAM Warning: if your domain gets associated with spamming, it’ll haunt you for the rest of your life. Don’t do it.
  • Personalize each email with a specific comment about the company, the person’s twitter profile, etc.
  • Highlight the problem you’re trying to solve quickly (2nd sentence) but keep it vague
  • Keep it short (4 sentence max)

For example:

Hi Susan,

I saw your picture of a train crossing a tunnel at dusk [link to pic] on Facebook and was blown away – absolutely gorgeous lighting. I shared it on on my wall. (<– don’t lie)

A friend and I are trying to help photographers share their photos, and were wondering if we could talk to you about the hardest part about doing that today.

We’re available at 10:30 am Wed, and 2:00 pm Thursday if either of those work for you.

Thanks (and thanks too for your beautiful photographs),

Justin & Steven
[Optional link to your good looking website with vague value proposition]

Summary

Finding customers to interview is a challenge, but one that will immediately tell you if you’re on the right track.

Can’t find customers willing to talk about their problems? You can’t find customers. Startup weekend customer development

Tried any of these before? Any tweaks or suggestions?

Join the experiment – subscribe via Email or RSS. Our next post will be: Everything that’s Wrong with our Press Hacking Post!

What’s Next?

Want help getting interviews? Schedule a 1-on-1 mentoring call.

This is Part 2 of our series of on Interviewing Customers. Check out the rest:

  1. Which Customers Should you Interview (The SPA Treatment)
  2. How to Find Customers to Interview
  3. Getting Customer Interviews with Cold Emails
  4. How I Interview Customers
  5. You’ve Interviewed Customers. Now what?

We want to Help

If you want help finding customers to interview – you’re not alone :)

 

There’s a group of us who are asking, and answering, questions about interviewing every week:

  • Will your customers be on MTurk?
  • What’s the best way to tell businesses about your webinar?
  • How do you ask for an interview?
[smartslider2 slider=”1″]

 

Join a Customer Acquisition Team to trade tips with other founders who are actively interviewing their customers.

The New Startup Weekend NEXT

Up Global (formerly Startup Weekend) recently asked for a hand retooling content for their Startup Weekend NEXT program. Honored to help an org doing such great work, I jumped at the chance and together we shot a series videos we fondly call, “Customer Discovery Hacks.”

How to Get out of the Building

Many entrepreneurs know it’s important to get out of the building – what we have trouble with, is figuring out how:

  • Which segment should you start with?
  • How do you ask for an interview?
  • What should you ask during an interview?
  • What do you do with their answers?

Our hope is the Customer Discovery Hacks series will inspire entrepreneurs with concrete examples, so they can get out of the building no matter what part of the world they’re attending Startup Weekend NEXT.

Customer Discovery Hack #1

Without further ado, here’s our first hack: Which customer segment should you start with?

The text version of this topic is available here: Giving your Customers the SPA Treatment.

If you’d like to do this hack in-person, with feedback from mentors and a cohort of other passionate entrepreneurs…definitely check out Startup Weekend NEXT.

What’s New about NEXT?

Started last year as a 5-week program dedicated to hands-on Customer Discovery training, Startup Weekend NEXT has listened to their customeres and shifted towards and an “accelerator prep” program.

The NEXT team has done a great job talking to impactful accelerators (Tech Stars, et al), understanding the skills that founders are missing when they apply to their programs (and subsequently get rejected). With that in mind, NEXT is designed to give founders:

  • An understanding of big vs small market opportunities
  • A primer on bootstraping vs angel vs VC funding
  • Pitch coaching
  • And marketing strategies

…in addition to the hands-on Customer Discovery mentoring they’re known for.

Of course NEXT is eating their own dog food, so there may be (should be!) changes as they continue to give the course, but I think it’s a solid program and wholeheartedly recommend it to anyone who wants to learn Customer Discovery by doing it.

You don’t learn customer development by reading about it…you learn by doing it @SWNext Startup weekend customer development

Join the experiment – subscribe via Email or RSS. Our next post will be Customer Discovery Hack #2: Asking Customers for an Interview.

First time to Customer Development Labs?

Check out our most popular experiments:

  1. Interviewing 100 customers in 4 hours with MTurk
  2. The Hacker’s Guide to Getting Press
  3. You’ve interviewed customers. Now what?