Disrupt PR Strategy Meeting: Aligning narrative and earned media goals.
You just signed a $15,000-per-month retainer with a tech PR agency. You’re pumped. They’ve got the deck, the testimonials, the Zoom background with awards. Three weeks in, you get your first “media outreach report.”
It’s a spreadsheet. Forty-seven journalists. All cold-emailed. Zero responses.
When you ask what the strategy is, the account manager says they’re “building relationships” and “warming up the list.” Translation: they’re going to keep forwarding the same email to different reporters and hope someone bites.
Welcome to the tech PR industrial complex, where agencies charge enterprise rates for entry-level execution, and founders are left wondering why they’re not seeing TechCrunch coverage or investor interest.
Here’s the thing most people don’t realize until they’ve burned through six months of retainer fees: a lot of so-called tech PR agencies are just forwarding your boilerplate pitch to reporters who’ve already hit “spam” on similar emails three times that morning.
What Actually Separates Strategic PR from Email Blasting
Real tech PR agencies don’t start with a media list. They start with a question: What story are we telling, and why would anyone care right now?
If your agency’s first move is drafting a press release and blasting it to 200 contacts, you’re not working with strategists, you’re working with a mail merge operation that happens to have “PR” in the domain name.
Strategic earned media starts with narrative development. That means translating your complex tech solution into a story angle that actually interrupts a journalist’s inbox. It means understanding what VentureBeat is covering this quarter versus what Forbes is hungry for. It means knowing that your Series B funding announcement isn’t newsworthy on its own, but the category you’re creating? That might be.
Reviewing media strategy wins and planning the next campaign.
We’ve seen this pattern repeatedly with companies that come to us after hiring (and firing) their first agency.
The previous firm sent 400 pitches. Got zero placements. When we audit the outreach, it’s the same generic “innovative solution” language that every startup uses, sent to reporters who cover entirely different beats.
A veteran journalist-led approach looks different. It starts with research: what are reporters actively writing about? What gaps exist in their recent coverage? Where does your story fit into a larger trend they’re already tracking?
Then comes relationship-building, not the fake kind where you add someone on LinkedIn and immediately pitch them, but the real kind where you provide value, offer expert sources, and position your executives as go-to voices before you ever ask for coverage.
The Anatomy of an Actual Earned Media Strategy
Let’s break down what a real earned media strategy looks like for a tech company, because if your current agency can’t articulate something similar, you’re paying for email forwarding, not strategy.
Phase 1: Positioning and Narrative Architecture
Before a single pitch goes out, we’re mapping your competitive landscape, identifying white space in how your category is being discussed, and crafting a narrative framework that differentiates you from the seventeen other “AI-powered” solutions in your space.
This takes weeks, not hours. We’re interviewing your leadership team, analyzing your competitors’ media coverage, and stress-testing messaging with journalists off the record. The output isn’t a press release, it’s a strategic brief that becomes the foundation for every piece of content, every pitch, every interview.
Phase 2: Targeted Media Mapping
This is where most agencies fail. They pull a list from Cision or Muck Rack, filter by “tech,” and start spraying pitches.
A strategic approach means identifying the 15-20 reporters and publications that actually matter for your business goals. If you’re a B2B SaaS platform targeting enterprise clients, getting coverage in TechCrunch might feed your ego, but a deep feature in CIO.com or an analyst mention in Forrester’s latest report? That drives pipeline.
We map publications to business outcomes. Which outlets do your prospects read? Which coverage will your sales team actually use? Where do your investors look for validation?
Strategic team planning session focusing on thought leadership.
Phase 3: Pitch Development and Relationship Leverage
Here’s where the “journalist-led” part matters. When you’ve spent years in a newsroom, you know what makes a reporter actually hit reply.
It’s not your product launch. It’s not your funding round. It’s the unique data you can share, the contrarian take your CEO can offer, or the emerging trend your company exemplifies.
Real pitch development means crafting custom angles for specific reporters, not writing one email and changing the name at the top. It means knowing that Sarah Perez at TechCrunch is covering AI ethics this month, so your new governance framework is suddenly relevant. Or that Kyle Wiggers just published a piece on enterprise automation, and your CTO’s take on the “human-in-the-loop” debate would make a perfect follow-up.
Phase 4: Content Integration and Thought Leadership
Here’s what separates overpriced email forwarders from strategic partners: they think PR stops when the article publishes.
An earned media strategy includes byline placement in industry publications, podcast bookings that reach your target audience, speaking opportunities at conferences your prospects attend, and thought leadership content that you own on your own channels.
When Inc. 5000 or Forbes publishes your piece, that’s not the end, that’s the beginning of a content amplification strategy that includes social promotion, sales enablement assets, and website integration that improves your SEO and builds long-term brand equity.
The Startup PR Agency Reality Check
If you’re a startup evaluating tech PR agencies, here’s your gut check: ask them about their strategy before they talk about their media list.
A startup pr agency worth their retainer will push back on your assumptions. They’ll tell you if you’re not ready for PR yet (because your product isn’t differentiated enough or your messaging is a mess). They’ll recommend building your owned content before chasing press coverage. They’ll challenge your goal of “getting into TechCrunch” by asking what business outcome that actually serves.
The email forwarders? They’ll take your money, send the pitches, and blame the “tough media landscape” when nothing lands.
Collaboration is at the heart of our strategic approach.
We’ve turned away clients who weren’t ready. We’ve recommended they invest in content and positioning first, then come back in six months. That’s not typical for agencies who measure success by retainer revenue instead of client outcomes.
How to Spot the Difference (Before You Waste Six Months)
They lead with a media list instead of questions about your business goals. Red flag. Strategy-first agencies want to understand what you’re trying to achieve before they talk about where they have “relationships.”
Their case studies focus on “placements” instead of business impact. Another red flag. Coverage is a means to an end. If they can’t articulate how their PR work drove pipeline, investor interest, or market category creation, they’re focused on the wrong metrics.
They promise specific outlets in the pitch. No legitimate agency can guarantee TechCrunch or WSJ coverage. Anyone who promises it is either lying or using paid placements (which aren’t earned media).
Their onboarding doesn’t include deep strategy sessions. If you’re not spending hours together in the first two weeks, mapping your market, stress-testing messaging, identifying differentiation, they’re not building strategy. They’re filling out templates.
You never talk to the people actually doing the work. If the senior team sells you but junior account coordinators execute, you’re getting the email forwarding experience. The best agencies put their veteran journalists and strategists directly on client work.
What Strategic PR Actually Delivers
When you work with a tech PR agency that leads with strategy, not spreadsheets, the outcomes look different.
You see qualified inbound leads mentioning the article they read. Your sales team uses media coverage in their outreach, and prospects respond. Your funding round gets easier because VCs have already seen your name in the outlets they read. Your SEO improves because strategic backlinks from authoritative publications signal credibility to Google.
Most importantly, you’re not dependent on paid ads to tell your story. You’ve built earned credibility that compounds over time. That Forbes byline from six months ago? Still driving traffic and building trust.
Presenting tangible business outcomes and top-tier media results.
Email forwarding delivers… well, emails. Forwarded. And a growing sense that you’re lighting money on fire.
The Journalist-Led Difference
At Disrupt PR, we’re former journalists who moved into strategic communications because we saw this gap. We watched founders waste budgets on agencies that treated PR like a numbers game: more pitches, more emails, more “touches”, while never landing the coverage that actually moved their business forward.
A journalist-led approach means we know what reporters need because we’ve been reporters. We know how to craft an angle that survives the morning pitch meeting. We know which publications move the needle for different business goals. And we know when to tell clients they’re not ready: because we’d rather build a long-term partnership than cash a few months of retainer checks before you fire us.
If you’re tired of paying enterprise rates for entry-level execution, or if you’re evaluating tech PR agencies and trying to figure out who to trust, start by asking about strategy. Ask about business outcomes. Ask to talk to the people who’ll actually be doing the work.
And if they start with a media list instead of questions? Keep looking.
Ready to talk about what strategic PR actually looks like for your company? Let’s start the conversation.
