Tech startups turn to digital PR platform for media publicity

Digital PR platform Newspage helps early-stage tech startups with restricted sources expand their visibility to journalists and details organisations

Sebastian Klovig Skelton

Sebastian Klovig Skelton ,
Senior reporter

Printed: 06 May maybe 2021 17: 45

Early-stage know-how startups in the UK are the reveal of digital public relations (PR) platform Newspage to aid expand media visibility and stable extra funding.

Conceived in the midst of the UK’s first national lockdown, Newspage enables startups to invent and disseminate their very be pleased publicity with out the involvement of costly PR agencies whose charges are prohibitive to many early-stage startups.

While Newspage is designed to be used by any minute businesses working in the UK, the most contemporary vertical its founders are focusing on is know-how startups.

“I’ve worked with a total bunch tech startups that are bootstrapping and non-public normally any cash – they arrive to seek PR agencies, it’s £1,000 a day and even £500 a day, however its beyond their budget. Unless they score an angel funding or VC [venture capital] backing, they’re off the radar,” said co-founder Dominic Hiatt.

“You are going to non-public an extraordinarily attention-grabbing legend with out £10m of VC money in the abet of you. There are endless techniques to develop and that you can non-public an extraordinarily attention-grabbing industry mannequin, or an extraordinarily attention-grabbing unusual app, however in case you non-public gotten no angel funding, nobody’s attracted to you – and that appropriate doesn’t seem lawful.”

He added that the underlying concept of Newspage is to be a “port” for connecting media and details organisations with tales that would otherwise be tough to search out, and that for startups themselves the platform can aid them broaden money thru elevated visibility.

“All of us know how it truly works – investors seek you on the BBC, or in the Times, the Telegraph, and it creates credibility and helps…to score money,” said Hiatt.

While UK tech firms saw file ranges of funding in 2020 after collectively elevating $15bn, a vital a part of this money ($3.5bn, or spherical 20%) went to appropriate 10 scaleup firms – eight of which would maybe presumably be based fully fully in London.

In March 2021, UK industry introduction figures also confirmed that a brand unusual know-how industry changed into created every half of an hour in the midst of 2020, with practically 19,500 registering in full in some unspecified time in the future of the UK.

With so grand funding and funding tied up in precisely a handful of firms, Newspage attributable to this truth enables much less established startups to generate publicity with out sacrificing already restricted sources.

In step with Newspage person Ross Boyd, founder of digital mortgage switching provider Dashly, the platform enables firms to invent a profile web page as they would when the reveal of companies and products equivalent to Fb or LinkedIn.

“Good add your organization recordsdata and experts, files and jpegs the media would maybe presumably get at hand, and off you toddle. It’s all very intuitive,” said Boyd, adding that Dashly has considered “endless pieces of national and alternate media protection thru this year” because the reveal of Newspage.

“Newspage is a breath of contemporary air if you suspect of the costs some PR agencies imprint, and the retainers they tie you into. Having a Newspage doesn’t suggest that now you can now not need other PR strengthen, however it unquestionably’s a pleasant putrid camp and a no-brainer,” he said.

“Shifting into the mainstream media is continually good when it involves securing funding. It provides instantaneous credibility to your startup and can also influence your valuation.”

Tag Williams, founder of London-based fully fully IT specialist Pensar, said that his firm turned to Newspage after searching for techniques to expand its digital footprint in beforehand unexplored techniques equivalent to PR.

“Former PR agencies arrive with substantial imprint tags and unsure return on funding,” he said. “Because being a Newspage person, we’ve had extra protection than we would maybe presumably non-public beforehand imagined and in publications and web sites with audiences that we’d never had been in a field to attain.”

Williams added that Pensar has beforehand tried PR agencies, however “gave up attributable to the imprint and absence of return”.

Once a startup has created a profile, they’ll then add searchable tags for his or her areas of workmanship so that the Newspage system can ship them an email alert when a fable associated to their fields breaks.

“In case you are an AI [artificial intelligence] tech startup, that you can place AI as opinion to be one of your areas of workmanship and that system when a fable concerning to AI comes breaks, we are going to provide the probability to normally ping our database; in case you’re tagged with AI, you can be in a position to procure an email alert pronouncing, ‘A journalist at the Times is searching for AI experts to comment on X, Y and Z’,” said Hiatt.

“For journalists, the foundation over time is as we score quantity, this may maybe turn out to be a reasonably worthy software program because they’ll normally invent highly targeted requests.”

Though journalists in the mean time need to toddle to Newspage on to make requests, the firm is developing an particular person interface to streamline the path of and truly make it “self-lend a hand”.

While Newspage is a free provider, and is anticipated to live that system, startups would maybe presumably pay a top price subscription of £4.99 a month, which offers them entry to Newspage’s copy editors moreover to journalists to provide solutions on the tales they’re searching to broaden.

Boyd said the NewsScore feature, which truly tells firms whether or now not a fable they’ve posted is “a goer with the media or a dud”, would maybe presumably put startups a form of cash. “A frequent PR company will normally voice you a fable is a goer even supposing it’s now not,” he said.

Hiatt added that whereas the head price subscription is the primary system in which Newspage is monetising its companies and products, it is predicting it to toddle a same system to LinkedIn, whereby “90-95% of contributors acquired’t subscribe” and appropriate reveal the free model.

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