Hey ​@Bethany Tripp - great question  I’d love to tag in a few of our resident Experts and mCommunity VIPs to see if they have suggestions! ​@DEClarke, ​@Will Swope, ​@TheresaFaerch - do any of you have any recommendations on reasonable growth targets for a startup developing their media strategy?

Hi ​@Bethany Tripp , at Oh Hello Agency / The Big Smoke we tell new start ups and people looking to develop themselves as a thought leader that it usually will take 1 to 1.5 years, minimum, to develop enough brand awareness in the media to start seeing Tier 1 Media Placements (i.e. NYT, WSJ, Forbes, etc.). So, we work with our clients on understanding that we should aim for around 2 earned media pieces a month in addition to securing a mix of 6 Op-Eds and/or speaking opportunities at relevant conventions, conferences, etc. We find, with those being the focuses, the reasonable KPI metric is an increase by 20% YOY in inbound leads.

​@DEClarke This is such helpful information!! I really appreciate it. 

Hi ​@Bethany Tripp , sorry it’s been a busy week and took me a little time to get back to you. I think ​@DEClarke provided a lot of great info. I was curious what the business is, or at least the industry. The buzz around certain industries right now could play a key role in determining how high (or low) the bar should be set. If the client’s metrics are quite low for year one, you may want to see if it is worth expanding the list of KPIs being tracked to get a better idea of where to set the growth targets. For both startups and infants, milestones aren’t necessarily tracked by birthdays, but more likely by months. Could you consider looking at the potential for monthly or quarterly growth targets. It might be more useful to track the success of early efforts on that time scale and to make adjustments depending on results. After a few months, or a couple of quarters, it might reveal what is realistic on a yearly basis or longer timeframe. 

Hi ​@Bethany Tripp 

I agre​@Will Swope the industry plays a big part in terms of what would be realistic growth goals for earned media. How easy is it to be seen and heard by the media, are you company offering something which you can create a buzz about whether it’s targeted B2B or B2C.

For the B2C market there is definitely some good opportunities on social media to create growth and reaching a large audience. It’s all about increasing your base of followers - in a good way, not buying followers of course . One way of getting relevant Instagram followers is looking at the people following industry brands, competitors, inspirational brands, related brands etc. and basically go in and follow their followers, I believe you can do 100 per day - it’s quick and very efficient way of growing your number of followers, you should see approx.. 35 new followers per day, because approx. 35% of the 100 you request to follow will follow you back - provided you have some good content already on your company Instagram page. This is one way to getting more social media mentions, because have a larger follow base allows your content especially reels to be seen and shared more.

You can get quite a good growth YoY through your SEO work in terms on improved content, product descriptions, FAQs, blogs posts, a 20% growth here is not unrealistic but it requires hours of work, and it takes time before you see the results. Google Reviews is also a great way of creating credibility and earned content, and improved you SEO as well.

Thirdly email marketing is also a great way of building your customer base, created trust and growth. I have in previous retail e-commerce companies seen very good results e.g. a higher basket size for customers who either had read the newsletter or read a blog post, as opposed to those coming straight from a Google search.

I think that PR is probably the most difficult to really master and get good results because unless you have some really breaking news or market changing products, you have to use a lot of time and ressources trying to create content, stories, user interviews that the media are interested in publishing.

Have a great day :)