PR That Matches Your Business Priorities

PR Is a Business Function — Treat It Like One

Why This Matters

PR is most effective when it aligns with what your business is actually trying to achieve — whether that's fundraising, product growth, market entry, hiring, or otherwise.

Founder's Point of View

With limited time and resources, every effort should support your next business milestone. That means clarifying what success looks like, identifying the audiences that matter most, and shaping your PR strategy around those goals. When PR is directly tied to business outcomes, it becomes easier to prioritize and to prove its value.

Overview

The role of PR shifts depending on your company’s immediate needs. Start by mapping your business priorities to visibility goals:
- Fundraising – highlight traction, customer stories, or market opportunity to build investor trust
- Hiring – showcase culture, leadership vision, or technical innovation to attract top talent
- Customer growth – amplify product launches, case studies, or thought leadership to drive demand
- Market entry – target regional or industry-specific media to establish credibility in a new space

Aligning PR with business priorities ensures you aren’t chasing coverage for its own sake. It also helps your team understand why specific outlets, stories, or metrics matter. For example, if you’re preparing for a seed round, visibility in TechCrunch or startup-focused podcasts may be more valuable than consumer press. Conversely, if you’re scaling hiring, an employer-brand feature in a local business journal might be the bigger win.

This alignment also makes measurement easier. You can track whether PR is driving the right outcomes — such as increased inbound investor interest, stronger candidate pipelines, or more qualified customer leads.

Key Actions to Take

- Clarify your near-term business priorities (e.g., fundraising, product launch, hiring)
- Match each priority to a visibility goal (e.g., investor trust, product awareness)
- Align messaging and media outreach to support those goals
- Reassess quarterly to stay synced with evolving goals

Metrics

Media mentions aligned to business milestones (e.g., investor-focused press before a round)
Share of Voice vs competitors in your target narrative
Inbound signals: investor mentions, candidate applications, or demo requests linked to coverage

Examples

A company preparing for a seed round positions customer success stories and traction data in startup media, creating proof points for investors
A startup hiring engineers builds credibility with a technical feature in developer-focused outlets and podcasts
A consumer app entering a new city partners with regional news outlets and influencers to build local awareness before launch

Tools

Goal alignment & tracking: OKR/KPI trackers, Asana, Trello (paid/free)
Media targeting (by priority audience): Cision, MuckRack (paid) + Google News, LinkedIn searches (free)
Measurement: Meltwater (SOV & media relevance, paid) + Google Analytics, branded search volume (free)

Optional Assets

- “PR Goals by Priority” internal doc
- Executive summary of media strategy aligned to product, talent, and fundraising goals
- Sample OKRs with PR included

Pro Tips

Your PR calendar should mirror your product roadmap, hiring plan, and fundraising milestones.
Prioritize media that your stakeholders (investors, talent, partners) actually read.

Don't Make These Mistakes

Running disconnected PR campaigns with no tie to business outcomes
Prioritizing press hits over strategic reach
Using one-size-fits-all messaging