The online platform PRNEWS.IO, developed by a startup, is already helping clients save tens of thousands of dollars annually, mostly due to zero fees for media planning and agency services.
The business environment is a pretty tough place not only for startups, but also for established companies. In addition to the painful cycle of raising financial capital for a business, there are countless other challenges. These include an insufficiently compelling value proposition, overvalued market demand, and changing market conditions. Not even to mention such things as a failure of timing and place to market.
Or maybe businesses simply underestimate the power of publicity in the media to gain the right competitive advantage?
Today’s reality is that with limited resources, getting quality and affordable PR services is extremely difficult. In Europe, the conditions are no different from those on the east or west coast of the US – to hire a PR agency, you have to agree to 5000 USD + budget, on a 6-month subscription basis.
Even with the necessary funds, entrepreneurs find investing in PR extremely risky, and therefore unattractive. In order to minimize costs, entrepreneurs try to hire remote specialists on contract terms. But often their qualifications and technical equipment only allow them to prepare a press release, which ends up in a spam box, or does not get a proper reaction from the journalist.
As the global startup scene continues to grow, this problem has not gone unnoticed.
So the online platform PRNEWS.IO was born. Its creators realized that entrepreneurs are a segment of customers who need predictable results for reasonable money.
These entrepreneurs understand the power of PR and the problem is finding an agency willing to represent them at a fraction of the cost of advertising media.
“Most entrepreneurs are savvy enough to understand the value of the momentum that PR brings to their business,” says platform founder Alexander Storozhuk.
“Regular media mentions build media weight and social proof. It also attracts traffic and fuels customer interest by moving them through the phases of the marketing funnel.”
Storozhuk has been involved in news technology for 16 years. As a student, he worked as a content manager for the Swiss firm NewsKnowledge, which aggregates news from 15,000 news sources around the world. He noticed a correlation between how news is distributed and handled and the overall success of businesses that know how to handle it. That’s how he discovered the field of PR content distribution.
His new company, PRNEWS.IO, was launched with a mission to use big data about news site audiences to help brands find online publications that better fit their objectives. The platform’s business model creates a win-win situation: brands sponsor press coverage on their own terms, which draws more attention to them; while media publishers are rewarded by publishing quality content that interests users.
For the system to remain sustainable, costs must remain low without abandoning constant innovation.
“Traditional public relations agencies are inefficient at collecting and processing big data. They waste a lot of time and resources that are passed on to the client,” Storozhuk says. – “It’s in the DNA of our project to be environmentally friendly. We conserve time and resources, preferring innovation over manual labor.”
This approach effectively eliminates the middleman. But PRNEWS.IO emphasises that “platform technology simplifies the process. It does not replace it.” PRNEWS.IO still relies on communications specialists who “come up with and prepare creative solutions for clients.
The company now employs 42 people, including developers and big data specialists. The company is still expanding to meet growing demand from startups that lacked help with their communications goals.
On the Estonian ETV+ program, Storozhuk said that “since the beginning of the year, 1.5 million people have visited the online platform.”
“Brands from 72 countries post more than 3,000 pieces each month. The platform has the potential to grow exponentially,” he concluded.
