ConnectDenmark – a network organization helping entrepreneurs finding investors – has publised a guide in marketing and sales for entrepreneurs.

It can be downloaded from ConnectDenmarks webpage.

Optimizing your PR-effort is about choosing the right media, and choosing the right media is about deciding:

• Who should read your story?
• Who will print your story?

Choosing readers

If you want your potential customers to read your story, you should obviously find the media, that your audience read or watch. They will read probably read national as well as local media, and they will probably read general as well as more specialized media. Once you have a list of relevant media, you should look at the stories you can tell and consider, which media will be suited for which stories. I will come back to that in a minute…

However you also might want other people to read your story. Entrepreneurs I know have told me, how articles in the danish business newspaper Børsen have attracted investors or potential mentors or board members. Other entrepreneurs have had more applications for vacant jobs after local press coverage.

And I even know an team of entrepreneur, who broke the news about their invention in an early stage to tell potential competitors, that they were in the lead.

So you shouldn’t just se PR as a way of speaking to customers, but also as a way of speaking to potential partners or employees etc.

Choosing media

Choosing media is about looking at the story as well as the target group. In the printed media you can basically get PR in four different types of media:

Local media – the local or regional newspaper.

Industry media (or specialized magazines) – newspapers or magazines focusing on a specific industry or a very specific topic. There has been an explosion in magazines in recent years.

Business media – more general media focusing on business in general.

National media - nationwide media with a more general audience and with many different topics.

The media in general are in constant need of new stories, so if your story is relevant to the readers, you have a good chance of getting publicity. But remember, that the news in the national media will have to be relevant to a lot of people all over the country, whereas the local media can choose anything, that has just local interest. Again general business media will have to pick stories of very general interest to business people, where the more specialized industry media can pick stories, that are mainly relevant for their industry.

It is the most difficult to get access to national media, but don’t give up. Sometimes a way to get access to national media is via local media og industry media.  Media read media. Journalists are just as lazy as the rest of us, so if they can spot a story by reading fx a local paper or an industry magazine in stead of finding it the hard way, they will do it.

Free marketing is essential for entrepreneurs and new businesses. Buying ads and commercials can drain your startup budget before the first product or service is ever sold.

PR is the magic alternative. Getting journalists to write about you in their newspapers or magazines is not only free, but also more trustworthy than ads. And by getting publicity in articles, you avoid the ad-blindness, that many readers have developed.

The problem of course is, that you don’t control the media or the journalists – and you shouldn’t ever try to! Trying to push or persuade – or even bribe – journalists will cause repercussions.

In stead you should look for the interesting story, that a journalist might want to write or record and the newspaper, magazine or TV-channel might want to print or broadcast. The interesting story will be different in different media, but in general it has to be “news”. The journalist will look for stories that meet one or more of the following criteria:

• Importance
• Identification
• Sensation
• Current interest
• Conflict

Importance is when a story gives you insight and knowledge about big or smaller issues in society – and especially if the story influences society in general – and the reader in particular. How important the story should be, depends on the media. Local media will often print articles with only local interest.

Identification is about creating a story, where the reader recognizes his own life in the story. Avoid too abstract stories.

Sensation is about finding the extraordinary story. The classic example, that every journalist all over the world knows, is the difference between the headlines “Dog bites man” and “Man bites dog”. The first happens every day, but “Man bites dog” is unusual and extraordinary.

Current interest is about understanding what is interesting for readers right now. If your story relates to something happening right now or to fx a very hot political topic, you have a much better chance of getting through.  I expect that any story with relations to global warming will be printed right now…

Some topics have a long life cycle, and will have current interest for a long time, wheres other topics will only be interesting for a few days.

Conflict related stories are classical stories about heroes and villains – or The Little Man versus The System. Wars or neighbours fighting. Stories about who wins or who loses fx. sportmatches or elections. “The Lord of The Rings” is the ultimate conflict story – although a bit too long for a newspaper article – about the fight between good and evil.

If you can find an interesting conflict, you will make your article so much more powerful!

So what’s your story?

For startup companies in Denmark there are several websites dedicated to give information to startups – but only a few in english. Probably the best practical guide in english is 100svar.dk ( “100 ansvwers”).

Check it out to see if it contains relevant information for your business plan.