Get your tech in customer roadmaps

By the time your tech is customer-ready, it’s way too late to start selling. But how do you sustain a sales conversation over several years? PR and content marketing.

Each placement gives your sales team a reason to reach out. Each milestone announcement shows you’re a going concern. Each byline shows your authority and expertise.

When your comms program demonstrates that your brand can be trusted, potential customers will be eager to see how your product can make theirs better. This leads to pilots, partnerships, and commitments when you need them.

Become a prestige employer

Deep tech is possible thanks to your talent. Make it easier on yourself to recruit and retain the industry’s best by establishing your brand as the kind that defines a résumé.

The secret? Get the word out about what you’re doing and how it’s transforming your space. A comms program doesn’t change your work – it makes that work visible to the people who can understand its implications and get excited to move it forward.

From workplace awards to employee spotlights to bylined articles by your best and brightest, the right comms touchpoints help establish your brand as a destination for talent.

Win over
investors

Picture this: you’re pitching an investor at the same time as a deep tech startup with similar technology. Your tech is better and your team is stronger. You’ve got better traction with potential clients.

But the other brand has been everywhere in the last year: industry publications, LinkedIn, press releases. They’ve come up in conversation. Which company would you rather be?

That’s the power of PR and content marketing. Your presence in relevant spaces makes you more trusted. It gives you more time to communicate who you are and what you’re about. Your comms efforts act as a warm introduction to the people who can shape your future.

Become
inevitable

A million things can go wrong in the life of a deep tech startup – and just as many can go right. At a certain point, momentum takes over: when you start showing up “everywhere,” you begin to seem inevitable.

The way to create that inevitability is by appearing again and again with relevant, effective messaging in front of the people who matter most to your success.

Show Your Work

Math teachers want you to show your work so you can prove you actually did it. In the world of growth-tech deep tech companies, showing your work – aka communicating about what you’re building before it’s ready to sell – is also valuable, but for different reasons.

One big benefit is that it lets people familiarize themselves with who you are and what you do. If you’re like a lot of deep tech companies, your technology might take a while to explain. The time to do that is before you’re ready to pitch to customers.

Chances are, your future customers have to plan years in advance to adjust their product roadmaps to include what you’re working on. They need to know ASAP what that is (even if it’s not ready for primetime).

When you communicate regularly about what you’re doing and why it matters, you give those customers a chance to consider your technology, develop pilots, and offer feedback that can make what you’re building more commercially viable.

This sets you up for success when your technology is production ready: you have interest from actual users, performance data, and a product that’s already been stress-tested in real-world conditions.

Put Yourself on the Map

In some cases, your proactive communication may even lead to investors reaching out to you.

That’s what happened for a battery tech client of ours. After a profile ran in WIRED, an investor reached out to the client directly to start talks. The placement didn’t change anything about what the customer was doing; it simply made that work visible in an outlet the investor already trusted. Another client was profiled in the WSJ and soon after was acquired by a major player in their space.

The same principle applies to customers. A major manufacturer may not want to launch a pilot after a single pitch, but if that pitch comes after a year of your brand showing up across their newsfeed and in conversations, they’ll be more interested.

It sounds simple, right?

It is, kind of. But it’s not easy.

For most deep tech companies, the hardest part is starting before you feel ready. But that’s also essential for best results.

It takes a while to build trust with key audiences. A burst of activity around a funding announcement won’t do it. One byline in an industry publication won’t do it. A LinkedIn post whenever you remember to write one won’t do it. It’s like how water changes the shape of rocks: a few drops don’t make any difference, but over time, with a steady drip, a whole new reality can emerge.

If you’re still feeling overwhelmed by the prospect of launching a comms program on top of everything else you’re doing, feel free to shoot a message to Josh (@propllr.com) or Brenna (@propllr.com). We love talking shop and we love hearing about what deep tech companies are building.

You can also subscribe to our monthly newsletter, where we offer insight and practical tips on what’s new in the world of communications for B2B tech companies.