For companies who have closed a funding round, they have practiced telling their story for months, if not over a year. Now you have secured funding. It should be viewed as a signal from investors that they believe in your product/solution and that the company is ready to enter the next stage of growth. For early-stage companies this might be their first round of funding, and for more established businesses, this could be their series b, c, d or e. No matter what funding round this is, the steps to announcing the news are similar.
Executing an effective funding announcement campaign can drive visibility among potential partners, customers, support recruiting, and reinforce validation with investors. The media opportunities presented with a funding announcement don’t come every day. Funding news has a shelf life, and when it passes, it is gone. A successful funding announcement requires precision, thoughtfulness, and creativity.
Understanding The Funding Announcement Audience
To create a clear roadmap for your funding announcement, understanding the breadth of your funding, who it affects, who would be interested, and where you want to go next are important. It’s routine for organizations to think that a press release is all they need, but it takes much more effort to get the maximum exposure for your news. Feature stories don’t just land on the laps of organizations that are not the industry’s biggest players. For startups that have solo-preneured their way onto this stage or hustled their way to investment, it’s going to take some work. This is not where you want to fumble.
Take into account your customers, employees, investors, partners, advocates, and any potential audiences that you want to mint new deals with to create a strategy that can reach them through this announcement. You will need to create unique messaging for each unique persona with a unifying through line. After you have identified your audience and know your delivery vehicle you can come up with your tailored messaging.
Understanding a Funding Announcement’s Potential Reach
While a funding announcement does not come around every day, it’s important to have realistic expectations based on the market. If you’re lucky, you’ll get to make a funding announcement once every few years.
Every day, a new funding announcement is pushed out with the hopes that it will be covered by national, trade, and local publications. Whenever you see a founder on Bloomberg, or being featured in Forbes – that doesn’t happen by accident. A PR person has secured those opportunities on behalf of the organization. Let’s be clear, however, not all funding rounds are made equal.
Exclusive vs. Broad Outreach
For a round under $10M, a company should be seeking an exclusive from a national publication. This means you will give the story to one media outlet, and you do follow-on outreach after the exclusive has been published. Above $10M (but under $20M), you have a slightly better opportunity to increase national coverage, but an exclusive is still a good way to go.
A funding announcement above $20M qualifies for broad, embargoed outreach. Embargoed media outreach means that you’re giving reporters the news with an agreement to hold it for a specific date and time. Once that date/time hits, everyone can publish their stories around the same time, so it is a level playing field.
A funding story gives a company and its founder a platform that doesn’t come around every day. For most founding rounds, performance markers are part of the agreement, and this announcement helps you convert paying customers, mint multi-million-dollar deals, and open doors that otherwise would be closed. Funding announcements are critical to the growth of a company; do it right and shoot off like a rocket. Do it wrong, and your company risks detonating on the launch pad.
