Tag Archives: Press

How Do You Follow-up Great Media Coverage? Five Points

Situation: The CEO of a company just issued a press release that generated great media coverage. The result has been increased call traffic and “hits” to their web site. How can the company leverage this response into increased sales? How do you follow-up great media coverage?

Advice from the CEOs:

  • Everything starts with a Marketing Plan. Without a plan, there is little to guide next steps. The most important benefit is that the company has established a presence in the market that will make it easier to gain coverage from future press releases.
  • What can be done short-term? Use reverse Domain Name Search to look up the email addresses of those who recently viewed your site. These will enable you to follow-up email materials to capitalize on interest once the marketing department has a plan.
  • Develop a holistic marketing plan, including incentives for prospective customers to respond to your product or service offering. Once the marketing plan is in place, send out a series of timed press releases to develop and maintain interest in the company’s technology.
  • Feature the company’s offering and incentives both on the company web site and in non-web collateral for prospects and leads. When interested customers respond by visiting the web site or calling, use the incentives to convert this interest into sales
  • Put different response codes on web, snail mail and other collateral so that he marketing department can track the source of leads. This will indicate which channels generate the most and highest quality leads. This knowledge will improve future planning, budgeting and allocation of resources.

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How Do You Negotiate New Shares for the Founders? Five Suggestions

Situation: A company’s founders will be fully vested in their options by the end of the year. Also, the option pool for founders and employees has been exhausted. The CEO has spoken with the Board Chair and Compensation Committee about this in terms of fairness and incentives for future work to both founders and employees, while making it clear that the Founders are not unhappy. The Chair listened sympathetically and promised to get back to the CEO. Is there anything more that the CEO should do to negotiate new shares for founders and employees?

Advice from the CEOs:

  • Seek a letter of understanding from the Board that the founders and employees will have access to future stock incentives, and a timeline as to when this might occur – either in the near future or at the next financing round.
  • Wait a few weeks and have an informal follow-up conversation with the Chair about his current thinking. Ask whether he would like any further supporting information on the issue.
  • So far, your approach has been non-threatening. Keep it this way.
  • Maintain focus on fairness and your tone supportive of the best interests of the company.
  • Don’t press the issue if you sense resistance.

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