How can PRs and marketing professionals best work with startups?

Working with startups can be terrible, brilliant and sometimes a little bit of both, which can often go one of two ways.

It could be an incredible opportunity to be at the beginning of something special; a chance to help build and develop something with real market impact; often with clients who are genuinely hungry for fresh ideas; open to trying new approaches to market, whether that’s through creative concepts, social or PR strategy.

Alternatively, it could be really messy and chaotic. With a company running headlong into marketing before they’ve got the business and brand walking; before there’s solid foundations to build on and a vision beyond the short term; and where brand success is on a wing and a prayer, instead of insight and strategy.

Most agencies will have experienced both at one point or another and also been swept up in the chaos, allowing that potent cocktail of excitement and pressure to nudge strategy and consideration to one side. Ultimately, It comes from a place of trying to offer a great service but it doesn’t necessarily help. 

Often experience breeds wisdom, so here are a few insights into working with start-ups...

1. Know when slower is actually quicker (and be the one to say it)

Start-ups often have a natural energy. An impatience to get going. A need for things to be done immediately! Which is a really positive thing - it’s the same energy that’s turned an idea for a business into an actual business.

If you’re an agency trying to bring a brand to market, it’s really important not to rush, and to make sure the brand has the strategic foundations in place before it launches. It’s a tough thing to stand firm on (and risk being the client buzzkill) but they’ll be thanking you in the long run. 

Echoing the words of wise grannies everywhere, you only get one shot at a first impression. If the brand doesn’t make a good one, then that haste can actually slow brand growth. 

2. Be stakeholder savvy

In my experience, start-ups tend to be quite lean operations (at least at the beginning).

That means that key decisions (things like approvals and sign-offs) tend to be made by a small and select number of people - or sometimes just one, often a founder.

Firstly for them to fully explain their vision for the business and brand, and secondly for them to get some visibility and understanding of you - the agency upon which certain hopes and expectations can be pinned.

Apart from anything else, establishing a relationship with key stakeholders (as well as your day to day contacts) is not only good for the genesis of the work, it’s also good for the management of the account - preventing crossed-wires or miscommunications. This also means that if you do face challenges, you’ll be in a better spot to work it out.

3. Be frank, but be generous too

As the first two points attest, being honest with your expertise is a big part of the service an agency will offer to a start-up. However, there’s more to it than just honesty. It’s important to temper that frankness with generosity. 

Mistakes do happen and start-ups, by their very nature, are giving an idea a go - and so there’s always a learning curve. In just the same way that you’d want a client to understand an honest mistake on an agency’s side, you need to be generous and realistic with your expectations.

Maybe a brief change at the last minute, an oversight in the requirement you're asked to deliver, or contradictory feedback, there needs to be a commercial understanding in place if any of this impacts time/work. It’s also important to remember that errors and corrections and problems and solutions are very much part of the job - and likely coming from a good place.

4. Let yourself be excited

 If you’re not, then maybe you aren’t the right person or agency for the job.

For all that an agency sometimes needs to be the handbrake or the sense check, you all need to be able to see the business vision and share in the excitement that the client has. 

You don’t want to be giddy about it and of course you always need to bring a critical eye to the party, but there’s nothing wrong with getting into it. 

In fact, that’s what’s needed to really bring your best work forward. The strategy, the creative concepts, the social campaigns, web development - all of these need the sort of understanding and creativity that comes from really wanting to be part of the project. 

5. Be more Dr Malcolm (from Jurassic Park)

Things getting chaotic is an occasional pitfall of working with start-up clients, but at the very same time, it’s also fundamental to the opportunity, fun and potential of a client.

Chaos Theory is all about the intersection between unpredictability and order; that idea that small decisions (good or bad) can have big consequences down the line; that you won’t always know what’s around the corner. And while some of the things mentioned earlier can help add some extra order to the unpredictability, there’s a limit to that.

Richard Hanney is director of strategy and creative copy at the Leeds-based Ilk Agency, which specialises in strategy, branding, video, digital, design, PR and social. Read the original post.