As a startup with limited resources, you possess two strong assets to seek potential investors and secure funding: social media and public relations. And here’s the exciting part – you can wield this power without breaking the bank.
Let’s delve into the five marketing steps that will maximize the potential of these tools to help you secure funding:
Locate Your Buying Personas on Social Media
Begin by immersing yourself in the digital footprints of your potential investor personas: partners, associates, directors – where do they engage? Who do they follow? What hashtags do they use and follow? What resonates with them? This insightful reconnaissance will pave the way for a targeted engagement strategy that aligns with your startup’s narrative.
Forge a Distinct Brand Presence from the Get-Go
Paint a vivid picture showcasing your startup’s essence – as investors want to see it. Tell the story you want investors to hear: your innovation, products, well-laid-out roadmaps, new advancements, successful pilots, and satisfied customers (see here for the ABC of branding for startups).
Highlight collaborations, even if they seem routine (such as AWS and Nvidia Inception). For investors they validate your product’s credentials. Show your leadership’s expertise through speaking engagements such as webinars, panels, and events. Write posts that build on each other and reflect a coherent story.
Ensure you are seen where your investors are looking: are they following a certain opinion leader? Interact with this leader. Are they in specific LinkedIn groups? Join these groups.
Elevate Your Company’s Social Media Ranking – Organically
You can do a lot of organic activity to increase your followers and ensure investors see you. Start by leveraging key Company profiles, mainly the CEO, CTO, and VP of Business Development: use their profiles to amplify your posts, sharing them in their network and in the groups frequented by your investors.
Connect these profiles with your investor personas and others like them, and then invite them to follow your company page. Once they do, the social media algorithms will amplify your exposure to others like them, creating a positive loop and expanding your presence within the investment community.
Harness the Power of Press Releases
Write press releases for noteworthy or even moderately significant developments. As mentioned above, collaborative press releases with partners can enhance your reputation and underscore your unique selling proposition. You may not think much about joining an Nvidia Inception Program, but trust us. This kind of news registers with an investor partner reviewing a company.
Remember, embarking on a WIRED-worthy PR blitz isn’t the goal at this stage so hiring an expensive PR agency isn’t essential.
Instead, you want to utilize social media to amplify your press release, reaching investors who have been on your radar thanks to the groundwork you’ve meticulously laid out (through steps 1 and 2).
Promote Your Press Release on Social Media
Create well-crafted posts about your press release and amplify it with (modest) paid boosts targeting the investment community. Remember, use paid media only once you have laid the groundwork with steps 1 and 2,
Building relationships with reporters and editors can yield good results if you have the bandwidth. From our experience, online publishers seek good content, so if you offer them a compelling story and some great images, you’ll publish your press release. You can then share those stories on social media so your potential investors can see you’re making the news.
The advice we just dolled out is based on our experience helping customers achieve Round A. The actions we took first helped attract attraction on the part of investors, and second – and importantly – helped nudge hesitant investors towards a positive outcome for the startup.
The steps we outlined above don’t require expensive PR companies and spending a fortune on paid advertising. They do however require work. If you lack internal marketing resources or need to beef up your bootstrapped marketing force, contact us to see how we can help you achieve your investment goals.
Good luck, and let us know how it goes!