Growth & Strategy
Personas
SaaS & Startup
Time to ROI
Medium-term (3-6 months)
Last month, a SaaS founder reached out asking why his PR campaign generated zero coverage despite sending 500 emails to journalists. He'd followed every "proven template" from popular marketing blogs, personalized subject lines, and even included company logos in his signature.
The problem? He was treating PR like email marketing.
After working with multiple B2B SaaS clients and watching countless founders burn through media lists, I've learned that most PR advice is fundamentally broken. Everyone's chasing the same journalists with the same templated approaches, creating a red ocean of noise that guarantees your pitch gets ignored.
Here's what you'll learn from my experience:
Why personal branding beats press outreach every time
The relationship-first approach that actually gets coverage
How to turn industry expertise into earned media
The counter-intuitive strategy that builds long-term visibility
Real examples from B2B SaaS growth experiments
Stop chasing journalists. Start building relationships that matter. Here's how I learned distribution beats product quality in the real world of SaaS growth.
Industry Reality
What everyone thinks works in SaaS PR
Walk into any SaaS marketing workshop and you'll hear the same PR playbook repeated like gospel:
The Standard PR Formula:
Build a massive media list from tools like HARO or JustReachOut
Craft the "perfect" subject line with your company name
Send personalized pitches highlighting your latest feature or funding round
Follow up persistently until journalists respond
Track open rates and response rates like email campaigns
This approach exists because it's scalable and measurable. Marketing teams love systems they can optimize, agencies can sell PR packages with clear deliverables, and founders feel productive sending hundreds of pitches.
The problem? Every SaaS founder is following the exact same playbook. Journalists receive dozens of identical pitches daily, all promising "revolutionary solutions" and "game-changing announcements." Your perfectly crafted template is competing in a red ocean where standing out is nearly impossible.
Even worse, this approach treats PR like direct marketing—expecting immediate results from cold outreach. But journalists aren't potential customers; they're gatekeepers protecting their audience from marketing noise. They need to trust you before they'll amplify your message, and trust isn't built through templated emails.
The conventional wisdom fails because it optimizes for quantity over relationships, treating earned media like a numbers game instead of the relationship-building exercise it actually is.
Consider me as your business complice.
7 years of freelance experience working with SaaS and Ecommerce brands.
When I started working with B2B SaaS clients, I fell into the same trap everyone else does. My first client wanted press coverage to support their funding announcement, so I did what seemed logical: researched relevant journalists, crafted personalized pitches, and sent them out systematically.
The results were predictably disappointing. Zero responses from 50+ journalists. Not even rejections—just silence.
That's when I discovered something interesting while analyzing my client's existing traffic sources. Their best leads weren't coming from paid ads or SEO—they were coming from the founder's LinkedIn personal branding activity. People were finding the company because they followed the founder's insights about the industry, not because they searched for the product.
This was my first hint that distribution works differently than most people think. Instead of pushing messages to journalists, what if we focused on building the kind of expertise that journalists would naturally want to reference?
The founder had been sharing industry insights on LinkedIn for months, building an audience of potential customers and industry peers. When I analyzed the traffic data, I found that direct traffic had a much higher conversion rate than paid ads or SEO—but most of it was actually attributed wrong. These weren't truly "direct" visitors; they were people who had been following the founder's content, building trust over time, then typing the URL directly when ready to buy.
This discovery completely changed how I approached PR for SaaS clients. Instead of chasing journalists, we needed to build the kind of authentic expertise that would naturally attract attention from both customers and media.
Here's my playbook
What I ended up doing and the results.
Based on this insight, I developed a completely different approach to SaaS PR that focuses on relationship-building rather than template-blasting. Here's the exact playbook I used:
Step 1: Content-First Expertise Building
Instead of pitching journalists about product features, we focused on creating valuable content that demonstrated deep industry knowledge. For my B2B SaaS client, this meant the founder documenting actual work and sharing specific insights about the problems they were solving.
Rather than generic "thought leadership," we shared real experiences: failed experiments, unexpected discoveries, and lessons learned from actual client work. This content distribution approach positioned the founder as someone worth following for industry insights, not just product updates.
Step 2: The Reverse Outreach Strategy
Instead of reaching out to journalists, we made it easy for journalists to find us. We optimized the founder's LinkedIn profile and content for discoverability by reporters researching industry trends. When journalists needed expert quotes or industry perspectives, our content would appear in their research.
This meant creating content around the topics journalists typically cover: industry challenges, market trends, regulatory changes, and emerging technologies. We weren't selling our product; we were providing valuable context that journalists could use in their stories.
Step 3: Relationship Building Through Value
When we did reach out to journalists, it wasn't with product pitches. Instead, we shared relevant industry insights, data from our work, or introductions to other experts in our network. The goal was to become a valuable resource, not to get immediate coverage.
This approach takes longer than template outreach, but it builds genuine relationships. Journalists started reaching out to us for expert commentary, industry perspective, and data for their stories. We became sources rather than subjects.
Step 4: Systematic Documentation
We documented everything: which content formats got the most engagement, which topics journalists responded to, and which relationship-building activities led to coverage. This data informed our content strategy and helped us double down on what actually worked.
Expert Positioning
Position yourself as an industry expert through valuable content rather than product pitches. Journalists need sources, not sales targets.
Reverse Outreach
Make it easy for journalists to discover you through optimized content and thought leadership rather than cold pitching them.
Value-First Relationships
Lead with industry insights, data, and helpful connections rather than asking for coverage in your first interaction.
Long-term Strategy
Build systematic relationships over months, not weeks. Real PR success comes from becoming a trusted industry source.
The results spoke for themselves, though they took time to materialize. Within six months, my client went from zero media coverage to being regularly quoted in industry publications.
More importantly, the quality of coverage improved dramatically. Instead of brief product mentions, the founder was being interviewed as an industry expert. Journalists started reaching out proactively for commentary on market trends and industry developments.
The business impact was significant: qualified leads increased as prospects discovered the company through expert articles and industry coverage. The founder's personal brand became a major acquisition channel, driving more high-quality traffic than their paid advertising efforts.
Perhaps most surprisingly, this approach created a compounding effect. Each piece of coverage made it easier to get the next one, as journalists began recognizing the founder as a credible industry voice. We'd accidentally built what marketing experts call "earned authority"—the kind of credibility that can't be purchased through advertising.
The relationship-first approach also opened doors beyond traditional media. The founder started receiving speaking invitations, podcast interview requests, and partnership opportunities—all because they'd established themselves as a knowledgeable industry participant rather than just another SaaS vendor.
What I've learned and the mistakes I've made.
Sharing so you don't make them.
Here are the key lessons learned from implementing this relationship-first PR approach:
Templates Don't Scale Trust: The biggest insight is that PR isn't a numbers game. One genuine relationship with a journalist who covers your industry is worth more than 100 templated pitches. Focus on building real connections rather than optimizing open rates.
Personal Branding Beats Company PR: Journalists prefer quoting individuals over companies. The founder's personal expertise and unique perspective became our strongest PR asset. Companies are faceless; experts have credibility.
Value-First Always Wins: Every interaction should provide value to the journalist first. Share industry data, offer expert commentary, or make helpful introductions. Never lead with what you want; lead with what you can give.
Content Creates Discoverability: The best PR strategy is being found, not doing the finding. Create content that journalists discover during their research process. Be the expert they find, not the vendor who finds them.
Timing Matters More Than Perfection: Journalists work on tight deadlines. Being available and responsive matters more than having the perfect pitch. Build relationships before you need coverage.
Industry Expertise Is Your Moat: Generic PR advice doesn't work because it ignores industry specifics. Your deep knowledge of your market is what makes you valuable to journalists covering that space.
Long-term Thinking Required: This approach takes months to show results, but creates sustainable competitive advantages. Short-term tactics get short-term results; relationship building creates lasting benefits.
How you can adapt this to your Business
My playbook, condensed for your use case.
For your SaaS / Startup
For SaaS companies looking to implement this relationship-first PR approach:
Focus on founder personal branding through industry expertise content
Create content around industry trends journalists typically cover
Build relationships by providing value before asking for coverage
Optimize for discoverability rather than outreach volume
For your Ecommerce store
For ecommerce brands adapting this PR strategy:
Position founders as industry experts on retail trends and consumer behavior
Share market data and consumer insights rather than product features
Build relationships with journalists covering retail and ecommerce
Focus on industry commentary over product announcements