Thinking about PR? Don’t forget your target audience!
Have you been thinking about PR lately? Maybe some cool, viral guerilla campaign? Eager to get on TechCrunch? Or at least your local TechCrunch equivalent?
Well… Think again. And this time - think about your target audience!
It baffles me that nearly everybody in our eco-system seems to be so eager to get the word out - within our eco-system (the web economy that is). But what good does an article on TechCrunch do you, if your business is aimed squarely towards dog owners? Or fitness enthusiasts? Or even travel buffs?
I’m pondering about this phenomen for a while now - it somehow feels like the same mania we fell for when we were in Bubble 1.0: We believed that the Internet in itself is this massive value generating thing. Turned out - we were wrong (a mistake which cost me my company).
So here’s the deal - to make your company successful you need to have your target audience buy your products (hey, that was obvious!). To reach your target audience you need to be where your target audience is - and if you don’t happen to provide products or services for startups, your target audience is most likely not on TechCrunch (sorry TechCrunch folks - this is not against you, you are simply the best known example). If you’ve build a social network for dog lovers - that’s where you need to be: Animal magazines, other animal related websites, etc.
And while we are talking about it - there is an excellent book out there which talks about this complicated transition from early adopters to the wider audience: Crossing the Chasm. Go, get it, read it - it’s a true classic which every entrepreneur should have read.
P.S.: One last word about TechCrunch - if your target audience for the moment is the VC and angel community, it certainly helps to have a nice write-up on there. It just won’t bring you a lot of dog owners to your site…