Marketing and PR Overview
At 645, we offer the expertise of our in-house PR Agency to bolster your marketing and PR endeavors, beginning with your fundraise announcement. We can help you with the following:
- Crafting and Pitching a Fundraise Announcement: Collaborate with you to create a persuasive and impactful announcement for your fundraising news, ensuring it effectively communicates your company's value proposition to your target audience.
- Media Lists and Industry Award Nominations: Tailor-make media lists relevant to your industry. We will flag industry awards for you to submit, helping to increase your visibility and credibility within your sector.
- Enhancing Social Media Presence: Help amplify your news on social media, especially across 645’s platform.
- Speaking Opportunities: Flag speaking opportunities from our event organizer contacts when we know they’re looking for a specific founder profile to speak or be on a panel.
- Media Intros: Facilitate introductions between your company and key media contacts on an as-needed basis, helping foster relationships that can lead to favorable press coverage and increased visibility.
- General PR Brainstorming Sessions: Conduct collaborative brainstorming sessions with your team to generate innovative ideas and strategies for your PR campaigns, ensuring that your messaging and approach remain fresh, relevant, and effective.
The PR Pitching and Publishing Process
Timing: The entire process typically spans 4-6 weeks.
- 645 will facilitate an introduction to Kelsey and Ellie at KCPR.
- Strategy kickoff call with KCPR to discuss publication considerations for the announcement.
- Company to draft the press release and KCPR to review and edit. A template can be found here.
- KCPR pitches journalists on behalf of the company.
- KCPR will arrange calls between journalists and founders as necessary.
- After the announcement goes live, KCPR will pitch the industry VC newsletters (Axios Pro Rata, Fortune Term Sheet, StrictlyVC, WSJ VC Pro Newsletter), as well as any industry and regional outlets relevant to the company.
- If of interest, the company will be in charge of issuing the press release over the wire the day of the launch.
- We recommend always putting the press release “over the wire” for Series A+ rounds. For Seed rounds, it is founder’s choice!
- We recommend PRNewswire or BusinessWire and the cost is by word count and typically around $2k.
Note: Please work with your legal team to not file the Form D prior to the PR push of announcing a fundraising round.
What to Consider Before Publishing an Announcement
- Timing: What is the ideal timing for the announcement?
- Preferred publication outlets: What publications would you like to target?
- Common options include TechCrunch and Forbes: Forbes typically caters to C-level, corporate, and VC audiences, while TechCrunch tends to attract founders, early adopters, and audiences from the VC/tech community.
- Early stage rounds of under $10M are usually covered by TechCrunch, VentureBeat, Axios, Business Insider.
- Rounds that are $25M and up are usually covered by Forbes, The Wall Street Journal, Fortune, and Bloomberg (as examples).
- Target audience and objectives: Think about the announcement's target audience and main objectives. This can include reaching customers, attracting talent, securing investments, or building general brand awareness.
- We typically recommend doing an exclusive for funding announcements to increase chances of securing a top tier media outlet.
- Images: What images would you like the announcement to include?
- We recommend using high resolution and horizontal founder/team photos and/or product screenshots.
- Competitors: Please share 2-3 competitor names (can be legacy company or vertical play), as KCPR will track who is covering these companies and narrow down media targets.
What to Consider After Publishing an Announcement
- Social Media: Share announcement on social media (LinkedIn, X, etc.)
- Blog Post: Draft a blog post that you can publish on your website, LinkedIn, or Medium.
- We recommend for the post to be in first person (from the founder/CEO) to provide more of a personal narrative on company vision, excitement around the raise, and other relevant company momentum.
- Blog Example
Example Press Releases
- AaDya Security Announces Series A Funding, a Cybersecurity Company with Majority Female Board of Directors
- Aryeo Raises $3.5M to Expand Nation's Largest Real Estate Photography Software Platform
- Oort Announces $15M in Seed and Series A Funding Round