This is a repost from an old article I wrote. Think of this as the Taylor’s Version while I reclaim my IP from Medium. So read this and imagine it’s 2022…

Congratulations, you’ve raised some cash to change the world. And now you want to use this story to get everyone excited about your big idea. Here’s how you do it.

I’ve been meaning to write something about this for a while now, and it was only thanks to a post I saw from Graham Paterson, who has a knack for writing incredibly useful stuff on the internet, that jogged my memory. Graham’s post is a really nice overview, so I’ll try and be more specific. If I were you, I’d just go ahead and read both. Cover your bases.

If you haven’t, read my post about launching a fintech startup before you read this. It’ll give you more context around how press fits within a marketing strategy and help you understand if you’re even ready for press coverage, and what kind of coverage you need.

How we secured 50+ pieces of coverage for our seed fundraise

Yonder is a premium rewards credit card for Londoners that launched earlier this year.

We announced our seed fundraise back in March and were blown away by the response. We received a crazy amount of coverage delivering the exact message we wanted to land to our ideal target audience.

Here are some highlights:

• An exclusive interview and article with Sifted

• Coverage in TechCrunch, BusinessInsider, CityAm, AltFi

• ~50 pieces of syndicated coverage

• 1000+ qualified waitlist sign-ups in just a few days

• Heaps (sorry, that’ll have to do) of backlinks

I’m not some press oracle and I didn’t have any pre-existing relationships with any tech media. But with a bit of common sense and a lot of guidance from people much smarter than me we made it work. While it’s important to understand that a huge part of press coverage is luck and timing, there are many things you can do to give yourself the best chance of securing the kind of coverage you want. I’ll try and distill these below so you can repeat them for your startup.

A few things to know before we dive in

This is not your media list

I won’t name any of the journalists we worked with directly because their focus may have changed or their publications may have other priorities. So you’ll need to find the right people to reach out to when the time comes. Everyone we worked with was brilliant and I feel really fortunate to have had our story treated with such respect by the journalists we spoke to. The ones who couldn’t write about us because of timelines or competing priorities were all so pleasant and thoughtful in their responses when I know how busy there were.

This is not your ego-stroking moment

It’s important to understand the role of press coverage within a broader marketing plan. If you treat it like an ego-stroking exercise then you’ll look like an idiot and, more importantly, you’ll miss a golden opportunity to drive home the positive impact you’ll make on potential customers. Done correctly, press coverage can showcase your brand, build trust and integrity, and have countless other positive impacts on things like hiring and employee morale. Don’t make this about you.

You can’t control the media

Press coverage is not a marketing channel you can just turn on or off, and you can’t tell journalists what to say. They will, by default, not care about your business or that you are launching. Having a relationship with a journalist might help get your pitch read, but it won’t get your story published.

Right here we go.