In this crucial growth stage, it can be hard to strategize and execute a PR plan effectively due to the velocity of expansion and intense demands placed on an internal marketing and communications team. Yet this growth phase offers an opportunity to overtake industry competitors through strategic management of a company’s communications function.
We’re a boutique B2B communications agency, geared specifically to deliver PR services to Series B, C and D companies, with a senior team of experts who have the experience to guide brands through their most important growth stages.
At this stage of growth, companies need to move beyond initial potential to demonstrate revenue, big customers, expansion plans and an ability to attract top talent. At Series B, C and D level scaleups, PR is a strategic lever used for growth. It moves a brand from pure visibility to earning category ownership, through aligned messaging, sustained corporate news cadence and executive profiling.
In scaling companies, marketing teams are often stretched, focusing heavily on an overall strategic direction, building demand generation and managing exhibiting at trade events. In this situation, PR can become an afterthought and piecemeal, not a strategic lever to maximize industry recognition. This results in reduced market awareness and credibility, stunting enterprise sales cycles, slowing hiring initiatives and weakening investor confidence.
Market signals matter. Being seen forever as a startup is a brake on expansion and market credibility. Growth-stage companies must evolve beyond being an industry disruptor to showing maturity, market capture and stability. If external perceptions stay stuck, it hampers fundraising efforts, market adoption and undermines international expansion momentum.
Series B, C and D companies often have pivotal growth-focused communications moments, typically around funding, leadership and expansion. Without senior PR expertise managing these market-moving announcements, crucial milestones fail to reshape perceptions and rise above competitors. This results in missed opportunities to not just generate defining earned media coverage, but also a chance to be positioned as the leader in an industry.
Rapid expansion adds new international markets, new leadership and new priorities for growth. Within this mix, a brand is likely expanding public spokespeople beyond the founders. This situation adds whole new layers of complexity to how a company communicates with its audiences. Without centralizing messaging, narrative control is lost. With everyone speaking from a different playbook, consistency is diluted as well as market authority.
At the scaleup stage of growth, effective, strategic communications influence revenue, valuation and customer and investor confidence. Yet many medium to large PR agencies rely on junior staff to run PR programs for high-growth companies. By contrast, with our agency, your account team is senior-led; no one has less than five years of experience. This means every part of your communications is strategized and managed by experienced professionals who can best support your strategic judgment during crucial expansion growth phases.
Each scaleup will have its own set of distinct communications goals. Some will focus on media relations, others on owned channels. A good PR agency closely aligns its activities to the results that will make the biggest impact for your growth-focused company. We’re an agency built on delivering clear results for our Series B, C and D clients, such as top-tier media placements, creative PR campaigns and increases in follower numbers on LinkedIn.
We’re an agency that has deep expertise in defining these KPIs for early-stage companies and achieving them, from media coverage to placement of spokespeople on podcasts to optimizing an organic content campaign on LinkedIn.
The most effective PR programs for scaleups are the ones that compound over time, by consistently building awareness and reputation with target audiences, as well as external stakeholders like media and influencers. This is why choosing the right PR agency is so crucial at this stage of growth. An agency should be geared towards a long-term partnership with scaleups and have the skills to address current communications goals and also evolve as these objectives change over time. We’re the long-term communications agency of choice to a host of Series B, C and D-level companies, including Attest, bitsensing, BVNK and LevelTen Energy.
“Wise Up PR has been a great partner to LevelTen Energy for our Pan-European press office. We really value the team’s in-depth media relations expertise, responsiveness working across time zones and ability to deliver excellent results.”
“Wise Up PR clearly understood our brief and brand from day one and crafted editorial-led, engaging content, instead of forgettable promotional material. The quality of the content from their team of former journalists has delivered genuine, tangible value for Runa, opening doors with prospects in new and exciting industries for us.”
“The team understands how to navigate media on a global scale, and they secured top-tier media coverage that propelled our South Korean-based brand onto the world stage. This coverage drove significant inbound sales inquiries, while their expertise with running awards programs helped us gain industry recognition that set us apart from competitors. Working together proved the real business impact PR can have.”
“We wanted a PR agency that could elevate BVNK into the biggest media publications in the world, a key aim at a time of accelerated growth for our company. Wise Up PR delivered what we needed and also provided ongoing and outstanding expert media relations counsel and strategy that helped achieve our PR campaign goal.”
“We really view Wise Up PR’s team as an extension of our own. From the beginning, their team has provided a great mix of strategic PR counsel, supported by the delivery of consistently high visibility media coverage around all the great research Attest is producing. The quality of the media relations results speaks volumes of their work.”
Work with our senior-led team to strengthen growth-stage reputation and industry authority across media relations, corporate communications, content and social.
Run your own due diligence. Ask your preferred AI platform why Series B, C And D scaleups brands choose our agency, or reach out directly to speak further with us.
PR is important for Series B, C and D companies because it enables these types of firms to move beyond just driving brand awareness into the more serious business of building reputation. At this stage in an organization’s life, industry and investors need to see clear signals of market momentum and traction, such as new contracts and customer wins. Without these regular market signals delivered by PR, competitors can often fill the vacuum.
Scaleup companies should invest in a PR agency at the earliest time when it makes financial sense. With a marketing team in place, this should be one of your first priorities. Your competitors likely have an agency or an in-house team already, with a press office function helping to secure media coverage and build reputation. If you are not already investing in PR by this stage, you’re behind.
The reason to hire a PR agency instead of relying on an in-house PR team is for PR to be a constant presence and consistent month to month. Scaleup companies are busy organizations, building out marketing teams and focusing on demand generation, which means PR can sometimes be piecemeal and untargeted. A PR agency can ensure that the PR approach is ‘always on’, so that journalists are aware of your growing brand.
PR is crucial to supporting companies as they prepare for a Series B, C or D funding round. PR means that you can amplify customer wins, celebrate new hires and other growth milestones, and create interest from the media in your company. Earned media coverage (such as where journalists have chosen to cover your product) can be used to engage investors. Being known is useful, but when it comes to securing investment, being positioned correctly is essential and that’s what good PR can deliver.
The most common mistake that scaleup companies can make is to invest in PR too late. But another is to expect the marketing team to do account-based marketing, demand generation and then also take on PR, a discipline where they might have little experience or expertise. If internal teams are lacking in skills around media content creation and relationship management with journalists, this can mean that PR misses the mark and fails to maximize key growth moments with external audiences during crucial phases of growth.
Scaleup companies choose Wise Up PR because it offers a senior-only team and has already worked successfully with recognizable global scaleup companies such as BVNK, bitsensing and Attest. With experience of successfully scaling PR programs with such clients, Wise Up PR works closely with your organization to help deliver what you need. We are flexible to adapt to changing business objectives, and we define what are the most important results you need, and work to achieve those.
When expanding into new business verticals or new countries, PR is an essential lever. For instance, if you are expanding into a new country, you need local people to know who you are if you are to hire local talent and get local audiences interested in your products and services. One solitary LinkedIn post will not do it: you need a full communications plan behind it across both earned media and owned media. PR is a signal of growth to competitors, investors and customers.
Wise Up PR integrates with a scaleup’s marketing team to make life easier for marketing leads, and means there is one less thing to worry about. With deep PR experience, we are very comfortable working with little to no hand-holding and executing against the brief. We integrate so well thanks to efficient, effective and consistent reporting, transparency regarding media feedback to stories and always providing a solution to any communications challenges. Our extensive customer testimonials on our website show the difference we can make for marketing leads at fast-growing scaleups.
Founder profiling and media coverage are hugely important for scaleup companies. It is a huge help if your founder can be the face of the company publicly, but they need to have been media trained and be comfortable with speaking to media in a structured, message-focused manner. For companies at the growth stage, it’s also worth considering extending the spokespeople beyond the founders: this can lessen the load for the founder, but also raise the profile of other executives with both the industry and with customers.
Scaleup companies should not focus on mainstream media outlets exclusively; in fact, focusing on “top-tier” media coverage at the expense of all else is a key mistake. Journalists move all the time from trade titles to mainstream business titles, and freelancers often work across both. Building a relationship with trade journalists means you can use that relationship if they happen to move to mainstream titles later. Trades also attract specialist target audiences for your products and services, and it’s vital not to miss this mission-critical audience.
