Did you know that only about 5% of startups become scaleups? 

Last week, INBOUND17 took place and it was by far the best INBOUND I've attended, probably the best conference of all the ones that I've been to in my life so far. 

It hosted about 21,500 marketing, sales and other professionals from around the world. 

I'm proud of the event and I'm proud of our co-founders - Brian Halligan and Dharmesh Shah - who are not only leading our team at HubSpot but also leading where the industry is going, paving the way for marketing, sales and service companies to grow and scale. 

During their keynote at INBOUND17, they shared their learnings from starting HubSpot 11 years ago to scaling up to a 1,800-people company and 34,000 customers in 90 countries.

This week, I want to share with you the key insights from Brian's part of the keynote. (Next week, we'll run through Dharmesh's). 

How to Get From Startup to Scaleup

There are 3 phases that new companies go through from starting up to scaling (if they get there):

“PR should reinvent itself; we are still rooted in conventional ways of thinking. If we don’t do it, we will die out like dinosaurs.”

This is one of the quotes that come to my mind when I think about the PR industry. The quote was by Iwona Sarachman, PR director at AmRest sp. z o.o., and was noted during an executive debate hosted by PRWeek last year which discussed the evolving relationship between marketing and PR.

Traditionally, PR has always been associated with media relations or publicity—writing press releases and pitching them to journalists to get coverage in newspapers, magazines, TV, or radio programs.

The more modern version of this in the digital world is influencer relations or simply pitching bloggers, YouTubers, Instagrammers, or anyone who’s influential online.

However, PR is so much more than just media or influencer relations. If done right, PR can encompass all media types within the PESO model—Paid, Earned, Shared, and Owned.

But the PR industry is not fully there yet. We are still rooted in conventional ways of thinking and doing; still stuck with old habits; still using phone and email and avoiding technology.

Would you say that B2B buyers talk more to sales reps than B2C buyers do?

Many believe that B2B purchases are too complex which is why B2B customers avoid digital channels to make decisions. 

According to new research by McKinsey, that's not really the case. 

B2B buyers require both the help of sales reps and the power of digital to purchase, however, what determines the channel of choice is whether or not the buyer is making a first-time purchase. 

What's also interesting is that industry sector is not a factor in customers’ decisions to turn to a digital channel rather than a traditional one when deciding what to buy.

Let's look at the first learning. 

In my new role as Global Partner Program Manager at HubSpot, I'm involved in a ton of projects. I run quite a few of them as well. 

I knew this was going to be the case before I officially got into the job so as with anything else that I'm not a full expert on (yet), I read a ton of literature and did a few courses on project management, including getting Scrum certified. 

By doing so I managed to develop a framework for project management that I now use and I have shared with colleagues at HubSpot who have also used it. 

I thought it only makes sense for me to share this knowledge with you because I believe that almost every professional runs some sort of a project and so putting a formalised structure around it can only make you more effective and efficient. 

Bear in mind that the way I've gone developing this has been from the standpoint of a process or operational improvement rather than product development but it can be applied there as well or any other area/department with some tweaks (even marketing/PR agencies).

Here we go.

Project Management Framework Steps

We know that PR is so much more than just media relations. 

But the media hasn't gone away and remains a valuable source to spread the word about our business, especially in B2B or more complicated industries. 

Media relations, though, is done pretty badly. Journalists don't really like PR professionals because they spam them with non-stop emails and phone calls. The worst part is that the content of those pitches is irrelevant or not of interest for the journalist. 

So how do you do it right? I've written a whole blog post on doing media relations the inbound way, however, what I want to show you today are some stats from Muck Rack's latest research on how journalists use social media that support the points I make in the mentioned blog post.

5 Tips on How to Pitch the Media