Guest Post by By Amanda Plank, Founder of Merch Minion
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With the recent temporary shutdown of many small businesses and startups during the COVID-19 pandemic, many financial relief programs are now available. The difficulty is knowing what’s out there, and how to navigate a system that, frankly, was never meant to deal with this kind of pressure. Fear not. It is possible, with a lot of patience and persistence to get help. Here’s what you need to know.

No product sells itself without help–not even in the best of times. So how is your business supposed to market itself when, as they say in Hamilton, “the world turned upside down?”

On the marketing and PR front, a lot has changed. Ads from “the before time” featuring large crowds or one-on-one interactions can be downright triggering. Regular marketing and PR cycles have been disrupted, major events have been canceled, and seasonal trends that worked last year just don’t make sense now. 

On the homefront, Americans face problems that keep people up at night. More people are working from home, if they’re lucky enough to still have a job. Kids are “learning from home,” putting extra strain on parents and caregivers. Unemployment in the United States is at a historic high. Many have lost loved ones. Many are wondering how they’re going to get through this time.

So what’s a marketer to do? It doesn’t seem right to try to get people jazzed about your product when the world is so very different than it was mere months ago.

Fortunately, there are some simple guidelines to help you keep your company’s brand as stable as possible, despite this most unusual and difficult time.

CES represents a great opportunity for brands, but for startups, it can also be overwhelming. Here’s how to make the most of your CES attendance.

​To say that PR and the media has changed in the last decade is an understatement. We’ve gone from a 24-hr news cycle to a multi-platform, 24/7, saturated media culture with up-to-the minute headlines that change with the slightest of input.

So what’s a startup to do? Can you still make headlines? What’s changed and what’s still the same? The answers are in the new book; Snow Tires for Startups: How to Get PR Traction. Here are three of the tried and true takeaways from the book that your startup needs to know about PR today.

As a new entrepreneur, you’ve been building your startup for months, and now you’re ready to start pitching to the venture capital community. You may be ready, but is your pitch deck? Are you sure you have the right elements to attract a VC?

​Knowing when to start PR isn’t always easy, especially for startups. In my years of public relations and marketing experience, very few startups begin their PR efforts too early. Some startups wait to begin public relations until they’ve been selling products for over a year, and some wait until they feel like they have a story worth sharing. With so many outside voices insisting that a startup “must start now” on advertising, social media, SEO, rebranding, choosing an office space, hiring a team, winning awards, and giving cars as signing bonuses, it’s a lot. I get it. 

From the Santa Cruz surf, to the top of Mt. Umunhum, to Seattle, and beyond, 2019 has been an adventure. Here's some of our behind the scenes!