Four strategies for creating data-driven PR

Companies are built from the industry data they gather to stay on top of trends and the needs of consumers. Over time, this data can be put to work in your public relations campaigns to generate news coverage for your tech business.

Whether it’s fun facts or surprising industry insights, data is valuable either as its own story or as a highlight integrated into a news announcement. Stories that include engaging data or statistics have a high likelihood of garnering interest from reporters, and it’s important that tech companies have these types of PR opportunities on their radar.

Timely industry reports

Whether a business is tracking the growth of its industry or monitoring its key aspects – such as costs, job creation, consumer demand, and so on – the company can become known for its insightful industry reports. Reports that share interesting insights are highly sought after by journalists who cover specific industries. 

For example, cybersecurity startups can release reports about the top threats for e-commerce websites or the amount of money lost to phishing each year. SaaS platforms can use data to detect interesting trends among clients – such as the popularity of different features and integrations – and publish reports on these trends.

Fun facts for outreach campaigns

The news media is full of stories that are driven by fun facts. For instance, you’ll frequently see stories about how much money is spent by people purchasing candy around Halloween, or the number of flowers delivered on Valentine’s Day. SlicedBrand leveraged the data Viber collected about its AR Lenses to generate stories about the most popular lenses among its app users.

Even a standard press release can be enhanced with interesting facts and figures – or, better yet, an infographic visualizing those kinds of numbers. Anyone announcing a new initiative can use numbers to explain a problem the project will solve.

Best and worst lists

Journalists love a good “best and worst list,” specifically if it is backed up with some valuable data. These kinds of announcements can provide valuable insights for consumers. At the end of the day, journalists want to write stories that will be informative and entertaining for their readers.

When the testing company Applause wanted to gain broader exposure, we asked them to generate reports on the best- and worst-performing apps relevant to health, finance, and lifestyle verticals. The coverage we achieved for these efforts was phenomenal. 

Tech companies that put together a data-driven announcement about the best widgets of the year or the worst-performing platforms for a specific industry vertical will have an easier time sparking interest from journalists at top-tier publications than those who only present internal company-specific data.

Insightful thought leadership pieces

If your company has data relevant to your industry, the insights you gain from it can be used to create credibility-building thought leadership pieces for your founder or CEO to contribute to sites that accept guest posts or op-eds. For example, your CEO can write an opinion piece for the New York Times and back up their position using relevant statistics that your business uncovered. Articles like this can both increase your visibility and draw added attention to the report you published.

Even if you haven’t collected the data yourself, statistics culled from other sources can highlight the relevance or importance of a topic. For example, when Wasteless’s CEO and Co-Founder, Oded Omer, wrote a guest post for Nasdaq with tips for grocers on reducing food waste, he opened with some juicy figures about how much carbon emissions the grocery industry releases into the atmosphere each year.

Engaging stories through data

Startups can only come out of stealth mode once, and launches of new products or features don’t happen every day. The hard truth is that journalists won’t cover the fact that you exist. If you want to keep your startup in the news, your tech PR strategy should include a selection of data-driven stories that reporters will be eager to cover in news articles that readers will find informative and engaging.