So the young startup wants a feature in TechCrunch.
They hire a PR girl (or guy, but let’s be serious) and a few $10,000 retainers later, they land VentureBeat and Gawker.
No TechCrunch, but oh well. That’s a scam pub anyway, right?
As traffic hits the servers, a team member sacrifices her Apple monitor for dedicated Google Analytics watching.
Some signups happen.
A month later the press is buried, traffic is normalized (zero), and the team ponders what to try next.
“How about marketing?” someone suggests.
Oops.
Marketing should be the first investment, not the second.
PR’s function is limited — it amplifies success. But growth marketing helps understand users, fix products, segment audiences, and optimize messaging. (Great ingredients for a strong PR campaign, no?)
Yet young startups would rather expense a PR team to amplify a shitty product than invest in marketing to help make it better.
You can budget accordingly or die with your name in headlines.