3 higher-ROI channels for startups than PR

In our last post, we talked about how to tell if hiring a PR agency is right for your startup.

Here’s 3 places you can invest that money instead for higher ROI…

1. Building a smart newsjacking machine 

Original research is powerful, and easier than ever to generate. Hire a remote digital marketer to run surveys on your behalf via Mechanical Turk related to a topic, and use ChatGPT to summarize the insights and generate 1-sentence journalist pitches. In the wake of a major event, journalists are hungry for data and stats on public opinion, and less-than-picky about the source, as long as they can confirm accuracy. Speed is key here. Make sure you get a link back.

2. Reverse-engineering your user’s journey

Technical SEO improvements will get you to the first page of Google, but not the first result. To get there, you need to be listed in what’s already appearing as the first result(s). Set aside modest budget for paid placement in these existing articles. Have a remote worker responsible to own the outreach and follow-up campaigns to these authors, with goals around appearing in X number of publications. For producing your own content to rank, Liner is an AI-powered tool that can handle more text than ChatGPT’s interface, and is great for producing summary and comparison blog posts.

3. Reddit

The buyer’s journey is increasingly moving from paid-review platforms like G2 to Reddit. People are hungry for authentic user feedback. Subreddits for niche fields are small but growing, and it’s still easy to become the top post in a small subreddit. Your buyers are there too. Have a remote worker search keywords relevant to your product or service when someone posted in the last 90 days, and assemble a list of usernames to DM. DM permissions are very open on Reddit - have at it!