Public Relations for sustainability startups and Climate Tech brands

Written By Joseph D. Simpson

This is the last post in our Ultimate Guide To Building A Climate Tech Brand.

You'll get the most out of this guide if your desire to scale your brand is exceeded only by your willingness to execute on the concepts within this guide.

This guide is designed to describe all major aspects of branding, from your brand’s foundations to strategic messaging for sustainability startups to positioning yourself as a thought leader in the emerging impact economy to building your relationship with the press.

Overview

This guide will showcase 7 major sections including:

The benefits of PR as an Climate Tech brand

So you want to be in Forbes? What about Fast Company or Fortune? Would you settle for The Next Web or does it have to be Inc? You know your story, you can sell it.

Whether you’re looking to raise capital, boost your public profile or launching a product, getting media coverage is one of the best ways to get your start-up noticed. 96% of B2B buyers want content with more input from industry thought leaders and one of the best ways to connect with them is through the press.

What’s more, according to Hubspot, 93% of B2B buying processes begin with an online search. And safe to say that for brands looking to grow their authority, nothing says “expert” like an article from a reputable publication showing up in that Google search.

For instance, I recently published an article in The Next Web titled “Founders, you’re getting sustainability messaging all wrong”. Now when I search my own name, the fourth thing that appears under my social channels is this:

Screen Shot 2021-04-19 at 23.36.05.png

Furthermore, 70% of consumers prefer getting to know a company via articles rather than ads because customers want to know the people behind the brand.

But it’s not that easy. Unfortunately, press coverage is more of an art than a science. But just like art, a well-informed strategy and ample practice can improve your chances of creating a masterpiece–or in this case, going viral.

But before we get into it, let’s touch on one important notion that you have to shake in order to be successful. 

Journalists are a tough cookie to crack.

Whereas gaining influence on social media and the time you put into building relationships are in your hands, publications have a mind of their own.

They ask themselves, “who wants to know this story?”, “why is this newsworthy?”and “who cares anyway?”. If you can tick all three of these boxes, then there's a chance that you can get in the press. But before you do, you have to ask yourself what you want to gain from doing so. 

I’ve worked with multiple clients over the past few years that told me “we want to get into Fast Company and we’ll do anything to make it happen”.

Journalists can smell this kind of desperation from a mile away. You see, journalists have a bullshit radar. They can see when you’re just making a story out of nothing. So for the purpose of this chapter, we’re going to begin with the basics.

We’re going to go through exactly what journalists find interesting and what types of stories are out there. We’ll then look at the intersection of public relations and guest blogging, how to pitch to journalists and we will lastly look at the press release.

By the end of this post, you will not only be able to understand all the different methods that can get you featured in the press, but you’ll hopefully have an idea on what journalists will find relevant. But first, let’s start at the start.

PR is not a stamp of approval.

If you only want to get into the Wall Street Journal so you can put their logo on your website, then there’s a good chance that your efforts are going to be misguided.

And probably unsuccessful.

As useful as that credibility is, publications don’t exist to give you a leg up. They’re in the entertainment business. They’re concerned about their own audience’s attention.

So instead of thinking about getting press for your own benefit, it’s important that you flip this notion on its head. Your job is to tell a story that engages the reader.

Brings them into a world in which you’re a character, but not necessarily the protagonist. And when you take this out of the picture, you can truly ask yourself, if it’s not for credibility, why do you want to target a certain publication? 

This is where most startups go wrong. If their target audience is a) European, b) B2B and c) SMEs, then it’s unlikely that your audience is going to frequent the New York Times.

And you could spend your entire marketing budget for the whole year trying, but it’s unlikely that you’ll ever succeed to get your press release turned into a story by one of their journalists. Instead of wasting your time — especially at the beginning — consider going for lower hanging fruit.

If you’re launching a product or service, make a media list of where your audience actually consumes media (i.e. ask them!). Chances are they get their news on only a handful of mainstream media sites as well as smaller websites, blogs, influencers on social media as well as podcasts or short videos.

By targeting these publications first, you’re more likely to build influence with your actual target audience and when you finally get big enough news and publications like WST or NYT come knocking, you’ll look legitimate enough to be featured.

Why Get Featured in the Press?

Getting featured in the press is one of the hardest forms of marketing to master, but if done well, it can expose your message to a much wider sphere of influence. This ultimate guide is all about building your sustainable start-up and making it investment-ready.

When investors look into a start-up, one of the first things that they will do is google you and your company’s name.

You’re asking them for their hard earned cash, so they’re going to be as thorough as possible. They’ll dig deep into your work history, your website and your social feeds.

But they won’t stop there. They’ll look around for any interaction that your company has had with the outside world as well.

And luckily for investors, Google basically acts as one big Yelp review. If your product or solution has been featured in the press then chances are that investors are going to view this favourably. Why?

  1. Because it comes from a third party — media coverage demonstrates public interest in your company and shows legitimacy in your product.

  2. Good press can put a face to your company’s name which builds credibility beyond your product and can give important context to your start-up’s story.

  3. Press can show that you understand how the media game works and your ability to play along and thrive in an ecosystem outside of your own is a positive character trait in itself. 

  4. It can spread your message–your why–to investors outside your ecosystem and potentially expand your network by attracting like-minded professionals. 

Getting featured in the press can turn a lot of heads. But it’s important that you know what your goal is in getting press in the first place.

For instance, if you are trying to attract investors, then your eventual target publications will be those that investors read such as Fast Company, Forbes or TechCrunch.

But if you're trying to attract top talent to your start-up, you’re much more likely to be targeting local area (and language) publications.

If you’re trying to apply for government funds, then public servants are also more likely to read national newspapers than The Verge.

Strategic messaging is always about starting at the end destination and working your way backwards through the medium and the message.

Messaging For Public Relations: Hint, it’s not about you…

When it comes to getting media coverage, sustainable brands often fall into one of two traps: Jargon or sales. Firstly, our target audience may understand terms like “circular” or “systemic”, but the press is another story.

I’ve seen start-ups that, in their pitch to the media, literally have a list of their impact stack. “We’re the world’s most sustainable X because we use X, Y, and Z technology and take a catalytic approach towards creating circular ecosystems. Blah blah blah.”

These types of long-winded explanations rarely captivate anyone’s attention, and if you’re a journalist with over a hundred email pitches coming in every day, a jargon-full pitch is the short route to the recycling bin. 

It’s imperative to distill your message down to the core for journalists. I can’t stress this enough. In the past 20 years since the DotCom boom, the number of journalists has dropped dramatically. The majority of people now read their news online and a good portion of them don’t pay for it.

As a result, journalists today are very often overwhelmed with pitches by PR professionals and companies looking for free publicity.

If you can’t tell by now, this is not an easy form of communication. But it all comes down to making journalist’s lives easier, giving them newsworthy and interesting information in a digestible manner.

The other pitfall which start-ups often encounter is trying to sell something directly through PR. There is nothing less attractive for a journalist than a sales pitch.

They simply turn off and hit delete. If a journalist is going to write about your company, they are going to put their name next to your idea. That’s a fair amount of credibility already. Getting them to do so whilst selling your product is as unlikely as getting you to sell their newspaper. It’s always important to keep in mind that you are after publicity and they’re after a good story.

When you combine these two, sales is nowhere to be seen. If you’re a founder, you must be agile enough to differentiate your publicity pitch from your sales pitch. 

Getting featured in the press requires something to be newsworthy. Whilst the goal for you may be to get the publication’s logo on your website, journalists want news.

They report on new, interesting, critical or entertaining information. So the key to getting press coverage is by giving journalists access to this information.

This means that you have to go beyond the features of your product or service, what you offer or your opinion and give them something that is going to educate, inform or entertain their readers. It means drawing from the bigger picture.

Drawing on the root causes. Talking about the effects of, rather than the process. Below are the seven elements that constitute newsworthiness.

  • Impact on the Audience. The most important element of newsworthiness is whether or not the pitch is going to impact the publication's audience. The more people affected, the greater the news interest. Whenever you’re writing a pitch, ask yourself, “how is this going to impact the journalists audience?” The answer should easily front and centre for the journalist.

  • Proximity. Journalists are interested in presenting stories that impact their communities. Proximity spans physical space as well as concepts such as professions, sectors and industries. Journalists know exactly who their audience is, so when they receive a pitch which is irrelevant, they’ll look past it without batting an eyelid. In a pitch, it’s important to demonstrate that you know who their audience is. A great way to pitch a journalist is to help localise a global issue or provide insights on a local newsworthy matter.

  • Timeliness. News consumers expect timely information and an event is more newsworthy the sooner it happens. News is precisely that; new information. Journalists don’t want to report on your product or service. For something to capture their interest it has to be timely, and journalists prefer to get news which is time sensitive–that is, news before it happens that they have to act on. It triggers scarcity and the feeling of FOMO. 

  • Prominence. Events and announcements that involve high-profile or public figures are more likely to generate media coverage. In the start-up world, you can leverage this angle by collaborating or partnering with a bigger company or influential figure. 

  • Conflict. Interesting stories often involve some kind of conflict. By definition, these stories are almost always controversial to some degree. As they say, “if you’re not offending someone, you’re not saying anything”.

  • Human Interest. Often seen as “a story within a story” a human interest story tells the behind-the-scenes of people of interest and gives the audience a deeper level to which it can engage. Whilst many of the above news angles may feature human interest, a human interest story is a stand alone feature. And the person of interest is usually the founder or investor. They aim to tap into the emotional connection to an event or story, an insight into what you were feeling at the time and how it moved you.

  • Novelty/Shock Value. The novelty of a situation can help influence whether or not a news outlet is likely to cover a story. To a certain extent, this is what you’d expect to see after the weather on prime time TV, and it’s also why we like cat stories so much on the internet. When you push novelty to the edge, you get shock value. Shock value stories are mostly negative and invoke feelings of distrust and fear. We usually associate shock value stories with the right-wing and tabloid newspapers, but environmental charities and NGOs are guilty of pushing shocking angels in the media as well. Think of images of starving children in East Africa during the famine in the early 2000s or skinny polar bears looking through bins for food. Whilst these may be causes closer to our heart, they still attempt to shock viewers into a response.

The 3 Different Types of PR Content

Once you have a firm idea of your message and you know what you want to achieve through getting press, you need to start creating a media list of publications. Figure out who’s covering your industry, but don’t stop with that. Find the journalists who work there that have covered stories like yours. Whether it’s the circular economy, impact investing or sustainability in general, you can’t just walk into the ring and play with the big boys. My suggestion to my clients is to make a list in Google Sheets with three columns: Tier 1, Tier 2 and Tier 3. Tier 1 is your ideal media list. It’s the Guardian Environment section or Fast Company. Tier 2 is for more industry specific publications which may include something like GreenBiz, Dezeen or Impakter as well as monthly magazines. Here you can hone in on your niche and see who's leading the conversation in your industry. A quick route to this is to go to Google News and type in specific keywords about your sector. This gives you a bit of an understanding how often these topics are covered and may give you a range of publications outside of what you initially knew. Tier 3 will include blogs, local newspapers and super niche publications. 

    What we tend to do is go straight to Tier 1 publications with our stories, pitch them and never hear back. As a result, many founders and entrepreneurs believe PR is a waste of resources and they move on with other parts of their business. To put it in perspective, if you’re a football team playing in the local league, imagine if you wrote to the Champions League asking to be involved in next year’s cup. When you’re small, you have to play with the small guys and grow together. Sure finding journalists that are willing to cover your topic may be difficult when it comes to the big publications but if you’re offering a short-of-time, bootstrapping blogger an interesting scoop or newsworthy content, they’re far more likely to take you up on it. 

    Targeting smaller publications in Tier 2 and Tier 3 is important because it also builds credibility around your brand. Journalists are weary of writing about a company who has never had any press before. This is especially true when that company claims to “revolutionise the industry” or “change the way that we do business”. By building relationships with local publications or industry specific publications, it’s possible to grow your own sphere of credibility and build up to Tier 1. This process will also help you perfect your pitches, understand how journalists and media outlets work and build your little black book of journalists.

Different Types of PR Content for Thought Leadership

Before it comes to pitching your ideas to a journalist, you need to understand the different types of articles that you can pitch.

Firstly, there are guest blogs, secondly there are feature story ideas and last of all there are press releases.

Whilst there is no right or wrong answer for which form you should take, I usually suggest that pitching guest blogs should be a recurring thing, whilst pitching feature story ideas should be part of a greater campaign.

Press releases are in their nature a more formal document, so they lend themselves to larger events or a product launch.

  1. Guest Blogs. Guest blogs are by far the easiest type of content that you can get placed in publications so that is where I would recommend to start. This is mainly true because they don’t require a lot of work from the journalist or editor of that specific publication. Guest blogs are exactly what they sound like. They’re an article that you’ve written, to the specifics of the publication–typical article length, first or third person, that they will publish under your own name. In the media, they’re technically called opinion editorials or OpEds and they’re great if you want to comment on a recent event or share your experiences.

    Guest blogs should be considered as similar articles to your thought leadership articles on LinkedIn. They should, rather than advertise your product, add value to the audience. One of the simplest ways to do this is by commenting on a recent development in your industry or the way that a recent event will impact your business.

    It’s integral to understand who the publication’s audience is and what struggles they may have – they’re likely to have a struggle that’s similar to your own – and offer them information about how you are going about solving that problem. Guest blogs are also a great way of building the domain authority of your website. In return for getting your content featured in your target’s publication, you will also get a backlink which helps you rank better in Google. 

  2. Feature Story Ideas. A feature story has a long shelf life because it is not technically considered a news story. They generally range from between 2,000 and 4,000 words and are usually more creative, more descriptive and more subjective than news stories. For instance, a feature story may have the founder or CEO’s name in the title of the article, it may have a large photo of the company or the subject embedded in the story.

    The front cover of a magazine is the most desirable and elusive feature story there is. Features are ideal for magazine publications, who tend to have their editorial calendar filled in months in advance, as well as industry publications and weekend newspapers. They are a chance to get in depth and personal with an individual and see their take on life, written in third person by the journalist.

    The basic structure of a feature is 20% context and 80% about you and your company. When pitching a feature, you will give a journalist or editor a package with all the information they need to decide whether they’ll cover your story or not. The package will basically start the journalist’s homework for them. In the pitch you should include the unique angle, statistics or research which supports that angle and experts or customers who have agreed to be interviewed for the story. By giving them the information that they need to research the story effectively, you’re making their job easier and improving your chance on a feature. Remember, features contain a human interest angle, which means they should also show your personal side, your experiences and your beliefs to the journalist.

  3. Press Releases. The press release is the most traditional format of public relations that we are going to cover. Press releases are emailed out to media contacts to announce something newsworthy. Press releases are also the most common form of PR that journalists receive, so it's important to remember that if you want your story to get picked up, you have to make sure that the format and style conform to the standard.

    Press releases always begin with the most newsworthy information: who, what, when, where how and why. What follows next is supporting information that gives context to the story. This can be anything from an explanation of a global event, localization of a current affair to a history lesson. This context is then backed up by one or two sources who give a quote, adding additional context or backing up why the event happened. Quotes are the part of a press release that can add colour or flair to the article, so make sure you choose your words carefully. I always suggest that you read them aloud to make sure they sound authentic. I often ask myself“Is this something you would really say?”.

    A second outside source is a great way to build trust and credibility. For instance, if you’re a tech company, then it can be a customer or a partner who’s agreed to be quoted and can endorse what you’re saying as truth. Lastly, a press release always ends with a synopsis of you or your company, which will be used by the journalist when they’re writing an article about you. Always make sure you only include relevant information in this section, to avoid you having to follow up with the journalist later.

How To Pitch Your Thought Leadership Story

To start generating media coverage, you have to do the reaching out to the journalist. I say this specifically as when I started out, I thought it was enough to just send a pitch to a general email address like info@fastcompany.com.

Safe to say, this is not the case. The first step in the pitch process is to figure out exactly who you want to send your pitch to. As I’ve previously recommended, it’s best to pull out your media list and select relevant journalists who you think would cover the story based on the articles they’re interested in.

Make sure that you’re knowledgeable about what the journalist has written before and always keep an indexed list of articles that you would love to have been quoted in. When you see an article that you think would have benefited from having your opinion or angle in it, add it to your media list.

Whether you’re pitching a guest blog, a press release or a feature article, the subject line is the most important factor in getting your story picked up.

In a full email box, ask yourself “will this stand out? Will this line convey to the journalist that it’s of interest to their readers?”

Great subject lines often use words that convey urgency or are actionable, include numbers or statistics, ask a question or make the reader curious.

Whilst editors are undecided on exactly what they want to see here, subject lines that include industry-specific jargon are unlikely to be opened.

Remember, 85% of journalists and editors open an email based on the subject line, so the more time you spend here getting this right, the more chance you have of success. For the most part, try and keep your subject line between 40-50 characters.

I like to include the type of PR content that the journalist is receiving in the subject line–e.g., “[GUEST POST PITCH]”, “[PRESS RELEASE]” or “[FEATURE ARTICLE PITCH]”–after the subject line itself. The vast majority of email pitches are opened on a desktop computer, so the journalist is likely to see the content type if they are attracted to the subject.

Remember: Over 80% of journalists receive above ten pitches each day and only 20% finish reading an entire pitch. Don’t give them any excuse to throw it in the trash can. Regardless of what type of content you are pitching, there are a few blanket rules to follow.

The two main issues that will make editors click delete are that the email is obviously mass produced or that it includes grammar mistakes. To avoid the latter, the mantra; write once, edit twice is important. Consider the format the publication writes in.

Is it US or British English? Do they have guidelines on submitting pitches and are you following them? Is the article the right length? Following these guidelines – written or unwritten – will make it easier for the journalist to digest your story without getting distracted by black flags. Secondly, the beginning of the email should specifically address the journalist or editor.

Make it personal.

Relationship building is key when it comes to pitching articles because value should never be a one way street. And besides, there is a real person on the other side of the computer. Address them and personalize each and every email.

Journalists hate thinking that you’ve gotten 100 email addresses together and given the same story to each of them. There is a word for this: spam and if you received it, you would have the same reaction.

When the time comes to pitch your article and you have a list of journalists and a good subject line, what follows next is the core of your pitch. This differs for all three types of PR content so I will explain them separately.

For a guest blog, following your subject line and personalized letter to the editor, you should include a short and sweet summary including a) an introduction of yourself, b) an explanation of why your writing would be relevant to their audience, c) the outcome that the reader will take away, and d) if you’ve already written the article, a link to the Google Document like this: “You can read the full article here” and if you haven’t already written the article yet, include a short list of topic ideas and a link to your previous articles. 

The feature article pitch follows roughly the same structure as that for a guest post. Personalize it, introduce yourself and your story idea and tell the editor why the story is relevant for their audience. The biggest difference is that you will embed the pitch in the email as well. Don’t bother with attachments, journalists prefer web links or Google Drive folders.

A press release email will also follow the same structure as the feature article, bar one important factor.

With a press release you should include whether your piece is time sensitive or not. As such, before your press release begins, you should always begin with a full caps statement saying either: UNDER EMBARGO UNTIL [date & time] or FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE.

I also like to bullet point the three or four most important bits of newsworthy information in the release followed by a link to a google drive folder containing all relevant information: photos, videos and a Google Document containing the full press release.

An example of an email pitch would be the following text with the entire press release copied and pasted below:

Dutch start-up turns co2 into electricity [PRESS RELEASE]

UNDER EMBARGO UNTIL 00:01 21/01/2020



“Hey X

I’ve been following your series on carbon capture and storage and I thought that this would interest your readers for three reasons:

  • Our cleantech startup [insert name] has recently finished a pilot project with the Dutch Government to turn carbon dioxide into electricity. 

  • In your recent article [insert article name], you wrote “carbon capture will evolve in the future to be more than just storage, but will grow to become an economically viable solution.” Our technology is proof that this is correct. 

  • The Dutch Ministry of Innovation believes that the technology will put The Netherlands at the forefront of sustainable innovation in the future (quote included). 

Please find the press release attached here or alternatively view it below. If this story is of interest to you, feel free to reach out to me for any additional information. 

Best,
Joseph D. Simpson”

The Follow Up

Once you have clicked send, you may hope the process is over. If you’re starting to get the gist of this public relations, it’s not. Public relations is a long-term game and requires patience as well as relationship building.

And the follow up is an important part of getting your pitch picked up. Journalists usually take up to one week to decide if they are interested in a story and it’s OK to give them a nudge or two. Be firm, but don’t be annoying.

There’s a chance that they’re also busy but that they appreciate being in the know. After this initial week, if you don’t hear back, it’s likely that the journalist has passed on your story and that you should move onto the next option. 


Joseph D. Simpson
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