From Startup Grind Beijing, this is Entrepreneur Spotlight where each month, we invite Startup Founders in Beijing to discuss on different topics that involve entrepreneurship and their story behind their entrepreneurial venture.

Many entrepreneurs do not understand why PR is vital in developing their businesses, or, the importance of PR in maintaining communication with the right audiences and stakeholders. A comprehensive PR foundation helps businesses grow, improves the brand image, and helps with business and lead generation.

Today, we are lucky to have the fortune of interviewing – Simon Vericel. Simon is the founder and Managing director of InfluenceMatters.Asia. Influence Matters is a strategic PR, and Marketing consultancy with a core focus on helping international B2B tech startups, scale-ups, and SMBs succeed in China.

Thank you, Simon, for agreeing to be featured on this month’s Entrepreneur Spotlight and Happy 5th Anniversary to Influence Matters! To start, I’d like to ask – how has the COVID-19 situation impacted the PR industry in China?

A pleasure to be with you today! Like many industries, PR has been very negatively impacted. PR agencies serve clients with communication strategies and activities, that is dependant on the client’s business health and prospects. The virus impacted clients in two ways. 

1) A drop in sales, especially for B2C industries (travel, retail, automobile, etc.) and 
2) Uncertainty about the business prospect of the future, reducing investment in their communication partners. It also created opportunities for specialized services in certain PR agencies, such as crisis communications to advise companies on their response to the crisis, and internal communications. 

As several survey results showed since the beginning of the crisis, employees are the priority stakeholders of companies in an uncontrollable situation like COVID-19. Opportunities didn’t outweigh the negatives though, and agencies in China have cut resources and even closed secondary offices across Greater China in the past three months to cope. Thankfully, due to our focus on B2B technology companies that have long term innovation and sales cycles, Influence Matters is not as impacted as most other agencies in China and we are already back on track with our growth, seeing clients kick-off programs from May or June. That means we are hiring! (Go to https://influencematters.asia/career/ for more details!)

How can today’s businesses stay connected with their audience during this pandemic?

Staying connected to your audience is crucial during times of uncertainty. Your employees, clients, partners, suppliers, etc., are looking for signs that give more certainty. Even if it is negative. It’s always better to let your stakeholder know that things are tough than to leave them in the unknown. 

Right now is actually a good time to invest in communications especially if the regular business is slow, companies should have more time. Everyone has seen the explosion of webinar offers, which extends from companies and non-marketing teams having more time on their hands to connect with stakeholders. Today’s technology allows simple virtual events to be held, we organized virtual press conferences for our clients starting March (although we were already doing part virtual events before), being active on social official and personal accounts with updates on the business, the slow-down and restart of operations, and to discuss trends in your industry.

What are the common PR mistakes you within the startup scene in China?

The main mistakes are usually around trying to do too many things at the same time, or not focusing on the objective of the communication clearly enough. I’ll explain:

1 | Doing too many things at the same time. 
Startups usually have very limited resources and need to focus on developing their core product or service. Sales and marketing fall under the same hat at first, so it needs to be efficient. Too many startups try to start a WeChat account, a Weibo, a Zhihu, a blog, talk to the press, speak or exhibit at events, all at the same time, and all managed by one person. It will show in the form of mostly half-baked attempts, which will have a counterproductive effect on the company’s image. Focus on one or two channels, depending on your business, for example, a well managed WeChat account with very regular informative information about your products and company, and building a relationship with two or three reporters in media that really matter to your target audience depending on the objectives of your PR, bringing me to the second point…

2 | Not focusing on the business objective. 
Your PR and marketing should support your business objective. KPIs should not be having an article on the front page of a media or X thousands of reads of a WeChat post. The objective is to move the needle towards succeeding in your business objective. A startup will have several objectives at different times of its early years: attract talent or partners to help build the product, attract investors or sponsors, attract clients, etc. Each objective will need different stories told to different channels. Spend time figuring out what is important right now in your business that communications can help with, then identify the best communication strategy and channel to help reach that objective.

Have you or your client(s) ever encountered any unexpected media crisis or negative press? If yes, how did you handle that?

Yes, I was actually part of the crisis communication teams of one of my previous employers dealing specifically with clients who face crises. The first rule of crisis communications is to be prepared. By nature, crises are unexpected and can come at any time, in any form. Faulty products, new regulations, disagreements with an employee(s) or a partner(s), pandemic… Preparing for smaller companies is difficult because it takes time and resources. But a good exercise is to sit down with a few trusted people, partners, employees and advisers, and ask each other, “ok, what could go wrong tomorrow, and how would we react?”

The negative press is a result of the crisis it’s rarely the crisis in the first place. Once it happens, it’s important to address the crisis, the reasons behind it, and the next steps (solutions, or road to solutions as often the solution to a crisis needs to be worked on. Much like a vaccine to a virus). Address this to the press, not the negative press. But before talking with the press, prepare your story truthfully, rehearse it, and get ready to answer or sidestep difficult questions without taking offense. Once you are a more solid company, PR agencies will make the process easier in building a bank of scenarios and crisis management systems and recovery plans.

Lastly, For those who wish to grow their career in the PR industry, what are your advice for them?

Take the time to learn the ropes of PR. PR is a fascinating career as it allows you to build expertise (communications) that can be applied to any industry or type of organizations, but more than many other careers, the abilities are based on experience rather than raw skill. So it is really important to spend enough time for the first few years on gaining exposure to experience and gaining from it in the many areas that make a good PR person: research, trends analysis, copywriting, interpersonal skills, media relations, social media management, etc. We have a great trainee program at Influence Matters that takes care of the first few steps for young university graduates that want to get started in PR.