Insights
No funding round? What B2B tech companies can actually pitch to media
One of the most common concerns I hear in discovery conversations with B2B tech companies is that they think they don’t have enough stories to tell.
It’s a valid concern when, as a news consumer, your feed is inundated with big, splashy headlines:
- X raised $X million to make X
- X is now valued at $X billion
- X launches X, a world-first
These are naturally newsworthy moments. They have novelty, a numerical value, a clear hook, and a reason for a journalist to pay attention at this very moment. They’re relatively straightforward stories to tell, but they are also one-off moments. So the question is, what keeps the storytelling machine running?
For B2B tech companies, there are plenty of stories sitting within the business, but the challenge is knowing where to look.
Start with your customers
Do you have a client that has been over the moon about your product? Has a customer achieved a strong commercial result? Do you have numbers that demonstrate the impact of what you’ve built?
Customer case studies can be powerful media stories when there is a genuine business outcome behind them.
They can also become the foundation for a much broader storytelling program. A strong customer result can inform media pitches, executive commentary, thought leadership, speaking opportunities, and content across the year.
Look at your data
If your platform is seeing thousands of transactions, customer interactions, or business decisions, there could be a story sitting in that data.
What is changing? Where are businesses spending? What behaviours are emerging? What are customers asking for? What does your data suggest will happen next?
This is where B2B technology companies have a genuine advantage. You have a front-row seat to what is happening in your industry and the ability to turn those observations into a point of view that gives the media a new way to understand what is happening in the market.
Give your leaders something to say
Founders and C-suite leaders can be a powerful source of stories, but they aren’t the only ones. Sometimes the most interesting voice sits in a role that gives them a particular view of what is happening in the market: an AI ethicist, an APAC threat specialist, or a head of design thinking.
What do they believe about the market? What are they seeing through their work? What have they learned that other businesses could benefit from? What do they think the industry gets wrong? What do they see coming that others may not?
A distinct perspective can become a byline, an interview, a podcast appearance, a speaking opportunity or an ongoing source of media commentary. The key is finding the people inside the business who have something genuinely interesting to say, then giving them a platform to say it.
Have a view on what is happening now
Policy and industry issues create another stream of opportunities, since the story is already happening in real time, especially if it’s affecting your customers and your industry.
What do you have to say about it? What needs to change? Where does the current conversation miss something important?
This requires speed and a clear point of view. When the news cycle moves quickly, having a spokesperson who can respond with a considered perspective is valuable.
Invest in research, if you can
Research can be one of the most powerful tools in a B2B media strategy.
One strong piece of proprietary research can feed a story pipeline for a full year: the initial launch, different findings for bylines and opinion pieces, industry-specific angles and data points that can support commentary when relevant news breaks.
The value is in thinking about the research as a platform for storytelling, rather than a single announcement.
How you can start today
Take 30 minutes with the people closest to your customers, product, and market and ask a simple question: what are we seeing that other businesses should know about?
Look at your most interesting customer results. Pull three surprising data points. Ask your leadership team what they think the industry is getting wrong. Check what is happening in policy and the wider market. Look at the questions your sales team is hearing again and again.
You don’t need to have the finished story. You need to surface the raw material.
From there, the job is to work out which insights have a genuine audience, which have enough substance to support a media story, and which could become part of a longer-term thought leadership program.
That is where a good communications strategy earns its keep: turning what your business knows into what your market wants to hear.
And once you start looking at the business this way, the pressure to constantly find the next big announcement starts to disappear.
There is usually more to say than you think. You just need to start looking for it.
Written by
Carla Montemayor
Senior PR Specialist, Hyde & Seek
Carla Montemayor is a Senior PR Specialist at Hyde & Seek Communications, leading earned media and communications programs for technology, fintech and growth-stage businesses across Australia, New Zealand and Southeast Asia. She has more than a decade of agency and in-house experience across venture capital and B2B technology, and uses research, data and market trends to turn complex business and technology topics into credible, newsworthy stories.
