How we built our startup’s PR strategy, plus tips on choosing an agency

At the beginning of every year, I’d sit down with the founders of Truecaller to calibrate our goals and objectives and understand our big priorities for the year. These meetings are crucial for aligning our communication strategies and ensuring that we are building the right stories that can help the company grow.

The vision roadmap below was created in 2016 and it has been our north star when it comes to building our corporate story. In every interview, we’d try to explain how we started, where we are today, and where we are heading.

Truecaller’s roadmap in 2016

Using a model like this can be extremely useful for journalists to understand your company’s big picture. Whenever I get the chance to share my learnings with other startups and entrepreneurs on building their company’s brand, I’d go through the PIST model (a cheesy name for a message-mapping model) with them.

PIST model

Positioning

When we thought about our brand in the early days, we knew we needed to build something that attracted the masses. What our product essentially provides is a reverse number lookup and a community-based spam filter, which means it can be helpful to anyone with a smartphone.

So, instead of comparing ourselves with local white pages services or spam blocking apps, we saw our competition to be Google Search and Facebook. The media loves a good David vs Goliath story.

Insights

An effective way to sway the media is giving them insights that they can convert to an interesting story.

For instance, we focus on spam, scams, and harassing calls/messages—problems that victimize a lot of people. Through such an insight, you can make people feel that whatever you’re developing is inevitable.

Simplicity

One of the big mistakes we made in the early days was trying to stand out. We called ourselves “the world’s largest verified mobile phone community.” Does that make any sense? No, not at all. But we went with this description for over a year until we had to throw in the towel and rethink the whole thing.

Trust

One of my advisors from Xoogler once told me that my job as director of communications is to build media capital so the company can take bigger risks. This has stuck with me ever since.

Choosing a PR agency