The communications playbook for company milestones

Fast Company

a day ago

Congratulations! You've just closed a funding round or hit a major milestone in your company's journey. Now, it's time to share this exciting moment with the world.
As a founder or company leader, you know how important it is to communicate major news to investors, partners, customers, and other stakeholders. But the steps you take when developing your communications strategy can make or break its true impact.
Here is your communications playbook for developing a well-planned strategy that ensures your next milestone attracts the attention of media, employees, partners, and those who matter most.
1. Establish your North Star.
As a first order of business, you need to align internally on your goals for this announcement as they relate to your broader business priorities. Determining what success looks like from the beginning is the baseline for developing a strategy that will actually get you there.
There's often an inherent, unintentional disconnect in communications priorities and planning across teams no matter how big or small the company. It's important to ensure there is internal alignment, so everyone is working toward the same goal—or often, goals (plural).
2. Tap your agency (or agencies) for help.
Planning and timing are everything. The sooner you tap your communications agency to support you on this journey, the better. Remember: Most agencies have NDAs, so any confidential information pre-announcement should be secure—and if you have doubts, it's probably time to revisit that partnership.
Best practice would be to update your agency as soon as possible to ensure proper planning, prep and media outreach. Realistically speaking, though, the right partner is there to support you, even—and especially!—in a crunch.
This is one of the many reasons why having the right agency partner is so important. You want to feel confident and secure in the choice you've made in an agency partner when you're heading into big moments. Remember, they do this often across multiple clients, and have the war stories to inform their suggested approach.
3. Nail down your narrative.
Milestones are perfect opportunities to evaluate your current messaging and ensure it aligns with your evolving business and priorities. Take a moment to update any outdated messaging as part of your broader corporate narrative, and be sure to develop key talking points around this specific announcement.
Leverage this moment to share how you've progressed as a company and tip your proverbial hat to the future. Also be mindful of the varied audiences you're trying to reach and tailor your talking points to those specific personas.
'Funding announcements, in particular, validate everything you've told external audiences—affirming the strength of your business model, the potential for future growth, and the unique value you bring to your industry,' explains Dinh Lai, chief marketing officer at bolt [DA1], a leading distribution platform for property and casualty insurance. 'They're proof from a third party that has done the due diligence and, most importantly, backed you with their capital.'
4. Develop your media strategy.
A strong media strategy is the backbone of your announcement. It's important to work with your agency to determine which outlets and journalists are going to be most interested in this story and to develop a proper execution plan.
Media relations, like much in life, is about balancing urgency with strategy. The more time you allow for proper outreach, the better—particularly as newsrooms evolve and breaking news happens seemingly every second.
If you have a compelling story to tell, aim for an exclusive. Exclusives give journalists a reason to prioritize your story by providing early access before the news is shared more broadly. However, you need to ensure you're giving reporters ample time to do their job.
As part of your media strategy, don't forget to consider ways to get more mileage out of this moment. Leverage the announcement as an opportunity to nurture media relationships for the future and tie back to this milestone in future announcements.
5. Equip your spokespeople.
Determine your spokespeople for the announcement and ensure they are aligned on key messaging, so everyone is telling a cohesive story. While consistency is important, it can also be powerful to include a variety of voices and incorporate unique experiences whenever possible.
For example, funding announcements and major milestones are an opportunity for the founder or cofounders to share the journey that brought the company to where it is today, while the broader leadership team can speak to how they're helping to shape its future.
Similarly, enlisting partners, investors, or outside experts for third-party validation also can be a powerful addition to your narrative and help attract the attention of the media—particularly if you're aiming for an exclusive.
6. Leverage your team's network.
Ensure you have a strategy for rolling out this news internally. While building excitement with your team can deepen the impact of your external communications, it's important to take a balanced approach and avoid oversharing to safeguard against any confidential information being shared before your announcement.
After the announcement is live, encourage your team and your broader network to help amplify the news and any resulting media coverage on social media. LinkedIn, for example, is a good connector and a cost-effective way to increase reach and engagement around big moments.
'Milestones are not only powerful externally, but they are also a source of pride and confidence internally. Maximize reach by bringing to bear your entire network, including investors and agency partners,' Lai says.
7. Don't forget to celebrate.
And finally, take the time to appreciate this milestone. It's easy to immediately shift your focus to what's next or how this announcement could have gone in a different direction. Save that for later—hindsight is 20/20. Acknowledge your wins and celebrate your progress as a team. After all, you've come so far!