What is your process for collaborating with public relations / analyst relations teams to ensure messages are relatable and understood by various audiences?

PR and AR are really important GTM channels, and having strong leaders/ICs in both of those functions is crucial to reaching customers and prospects with the right messages and GTM strategies. Unfortunately, too many times I’ve seen PR and AR treated as an afterthought. Instead, you need to work closely with both functions well in advance of a launch to have sufficient time to develop the right approaches and to adapt to the input you receive.

PR

• Expertise: Understands the idiosyncrasies of various media outlets, reporters, and what they’re interested in (and, thus, will promote). Can recruit reporters to publish exclusive articles for major launches.

• How you can partner: A strong PR person will actively help you craft messaging to fit a given audience (eg, investors vs. news media), which is especially important for press releases.

• When to engage: Multiple weeks before a launch, so you can collaboratively build a PR and media strategy, including securing exclusive press coverage.

AR

• Expertise: Building relationships with analysts to collect feedback on your products, your roadmap, your GTM strategy, and your competitors (among other things).

• How you can partner: Work with your AR leader to set up feedback sessions with analysts, and if you don’t personally have a “seat,” try to get feedback asynchronously through your AR lead. Beyond messaging, analysts can provide feedback about larger strategies, your roadmap, how your customers perceive you, how you compare against competitors, and more.

• When to engage: As early as possible. Sometimes, analysts can be tricky to pin down, so even if your messaging isn’t completely baked, it’s better to get early feedback on something that’s close vs. missing an opportunity entirely. And early feedback may alert you to considerations you hadn’t thought of, and might not have anticipated, on your own.