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  • About Dovetail Public Relations

    Founded in 1993, Dovetail Public Relations is an award-winning technology PR firm based in Silicon Valley. We specialize in launching, building and sustaining venture-backed startups and market leaders. We work with our clients to create proactive, ongoing public relations campaigns that generate positive press coverage. We back our work with honest and accountable billing practices.



  • Why You Should Choose Dovetail as Your PR Partner

    We make good things happen for our clients:
    • Earn positive press and social media coverage
    • Increase visibility and positive perceptions
    • Build positive relationships with the media
    • Generate quality sales leads
    • Attract angel or vc investors
    • Attract acquirers (Dovetail clients have a knack for getting acquired at nice valuations)
    • Attract and retain high quality employees
    • Earn the industry respect and recognition you deserve



  • Dovetail Services

    Whether your company is privately held or publicly traded, Dovetail offers complete media and analyst relations services:

    • Social media strategy and campaigns
    • Analyst relations
    • Business consulting beyond PR
    • Contributed article placement
    • Corporate publicity
    • Customer success story promotion
    • National and local newspaper campaigns
    • Editorial awards tracking and placement
    • Editorial calendaring and trend story generation
    • Financial communications counsel, including Regulation FD compliance
    • Pre- and post-funding publicity
    • Proactive media outreach
    • Human resource PR to attract and retain employees
    • International PR agency management
    • New product and service positioning, publicity and reviews management
    • Press and analyst tour planning, scheduling and execution
    • Press event planning and management
    • Press material creation, including press releases, fact sheets, backgrounders, reviewers guides and white papers
    • Public and government affairs
    • Quarterly earnings announcements
    • Speaker bureau management and placement
    • Startup PR
    • Strategic communications counsel
    • Tradeshow support




  • We Integrate Traditional and Social Media

    We're expert at leveraging new social media tools to not only get your company great coverage across blogs, social networks and citizen media, but also to catalyze your company's press coverage in traditional print, broadcast and online media.

    There are some social media purists out there who argue that traditional PR is dead. Nothing could be further from the truth. The tools and media opportunities have changed, but the best practices and the strategic thinking that go into creating a successful PR program remain the same: You need a PR partner that can help you identify your story, package your story, and take your story to the world. We hope you'll choose Dovetail as your partner.



  • Our People

    Each Dovetail team member is sincerely committed to the long term success of our clients. Team members undergo continual mentoring, training and performance reviews to help them perform at the top of their field. To learn more about the Dovetail team, click here.



  • Who Works on Your Account

    Every Dovetail client receives personalized attention. All Dovetail staffers are employees of Dovetail - the agency doesn't use contractors or freelancers for our media relations outreach (Very important for accountability, confidentiality, and for creating solid relationships with media). We'll assemble a team for you that matches your exact needs. Whether your monthly budget is $5,000 or $50,000, all Dovetail clients receive senior level staff attention.



  • Big Surprises Come in Small Packages

    Dovetail is a small firm that gets big results. We're quick, we're nimble, and we're connected. We work for our clients by working for the media.



  • Our Approach to Media Relations

    We love reporters and it shows. The way we look at it, reporters are ordinary people operating under extraordinary circumstances. We try to make their jobs easier. Their readers want good stories. We give them good stories. We make it easy for them to cover our clients, and as a result, our clients tend to get a lot of coverage. Not just any coverage, or coverage for coverage's sake, but positive coverage that drives revenue growth.

    Public relations is all about communication. Numerous distinct groups of individuals have the power to nourish or destroy your company. Each group makes decisions based on information. Where do most people receive their information? From the media - or from people who received their information from the media. If you want to influence what people know or think about you, and if you want to drive word of mouth, you must work with the media.

    Dovetail does media relations. We help our clients work with the media. We help them build productive relationships with the media so their message is consistently conveyed to customers, channel partners, industry partners, shareholders, employees and other groups critical to their success.

    We don't believe that all press is good press. Press coverage can make or break your company. If you don't get any press coverage, few people will know you exist. If you get less coverage than your competitors, you become less relevant. A little bad press can destroy you. A lot of great press can help you achieve your grandest objectives.

    Dovetail helps our clients work with the media to maximize the quality and quantity of their press coverage. We help our clients become more relevant than their competitors. We help our clients establish, grow and maintain positive mindshare.



  • Our Philosophy on Information Processing

    Information processing isn't just about computer chips, speeds and feeds. It's about human brains, and a vast public consciousness searching for relevant information that can make their lives easier, more enjoyable and more enriching. To influence how the public receives and processes your information, you must work with the media. And to work with the media, we ask you consider working with Dovetail Public Relations.



  • The Secrets to our Success

    The secrets to our success boil down to seven primary principles which guide all our client and media interaction: Honesty, creativity, insight, proactivity, consistency, responsiveness and results.

    Give us any business challenge and we'll suggest how you can use PR as strategic weapon to address that challenge. Do you want to grow revenues, shorten sales cycles, improve your recruiting efforts, or raise your visibility among potential partners, acquirers or investors? We'll build and execute such a program for you.

    Clients and reporters often tell us we're not like other PR agencies. In our book, that's a big compliment.

    Our best clients are those that have worked with other agencies before, because they appreciate the Dovetail difference.



  • Experience

    Our clients have ranged from hot garage startups to large, multi-billion dollar publicly traded corporations. Regardless of size, all Dovetail clients receive senior level attention and consistent value for their public relations investment.

    The agency and its staff possess high profile experience in a wide range of product and services categories. We know how to identify, create and package compelling stories. And once we package your story, we're expert at placing it across virtually any media, including blogs, national business dailies, top tier business media, industry trades, television, radio, and more. Click here for a complete summary of past and present clients.

    Some Dovetail clients have been using us for more than 14 years. Why do clients stick with Dovetail? The simple answer is that we get results. We strive to provide all our clients extreme value on a consistent basis. We aim to prove our value to you every day, every month and every year. We aim to become an essential extension to your marketing department. We want to be so strategically important to the long term success of your business that you'd be nuts to leave us. Did we mention we like long term relationships?



  • Say No to Fixed Retainers: The PR Industry's Dirty Little Secret

    We don't believe in minimum retainers. Retainers are the biggest rip-off ever forced upon clients. Retainer relationships require you to pay a fixed fee each month, regardless of the amount of work performed on your behalf. Retainer relationships lack accountability and transparency, and motivate the offending agency to perform the minimum level of work necessary to keep you moderately satisfied each month.

    At Dovetail, we bill differently. Our clients tell us that our billing practices are honest, accountable, transparent and fair. We work with clients to establish a monthly ongoing budget target that directly correlates to the required activity level, and we bill against that budget based on the hourly bill rates of the account team.

    At Dovetail, if a client has a $10,000 monthly budget, and they have a slower month and only require $8,000 in activity, then we'll bill $8,000. If it's a busy month and the client requests more activity, no problem, we can scale it higher. We track our activity levels closely and aim to either hit budget or come under. You don't like budget surprises, and neither do we.

    We back our invoices with detailed activity reports so clients know where we're investing their budget. We're constantly analyzing our productivity across different projects, looking for ways to further increase the client's ROI.



  • PR is an Investment in Your Future

    Can your company be successful without PR? Sure, maybe. But why risk the success of your company when PR is probably the single most effective investment you can make? Your company can develop the greatest product or service ever, but if you operate in obscurity, your prospective customers, partners and investors will learn about your competitors before they learn about you. PR is an essential catalyst for success, and at Dovetail it's more affordable than many people realize.

    Tell us your objective. Is it to grow revenues, attract venture funding, or get acquired? At Dovetail, we're expert at building aggressive, ongoing programs that help you achieve your business objectives.



  • How Much Should I Budget on PR?

    A good rule of thumb for angel-backed startups is to budget the equivalent of a single mid-level salary headcount on their PR program, so between $60,000 and $120,000 a year, or $5,000 to $10,000 a month. If you've got VC backing and you're pursuing a large market, a bit more could make sense. In these uncertain economic times, Dovetail can help you execute a solid PR effort without compromises, and without breaking the bank. We create aggressive and effective PR programs starting as low as $5,000 a month for small startups. Most Dovetail clients choose programs ranging from $8,000 to $12,000 per month. Because we don't bill by retainer, you never pay for services you don't receive. Give us a ring and we'll help you craft a smart, results-oriented program that meets your budget requirements.



  • How to Establish a Relationship with Dovetail

    If you're considering establishing a relationship with Dovetail, read on. Here's how we work with clients:

    1. All our client relationships are established as long term, ongoing relationships. We generally don't do one-time projects, because we've found that the most successful campaigns are those that maintain consistent focus across all the most essential PR program elements (proactive news generation, proactive editorial calendaring, speaking, awards programs, analyst relations, etc.) over the long term.

    2. We back each monthly invoice with a comprehensive written activity report. The report will highlight every reporter or analyst with whom we've spoken to, and the outcomes of those conversations.

    3. Our ideal target budget is between $8,000 and $15,000 per month, although we can build good programs for as little as $5,000 a month. For larger companies, we've build great programs ranging from $30,000 to $55,000 a month. Most of our clients once used larger, more expensive agencies where they paid more but received less. It's common for us to replace a large bloated agency and get twice the results for half the cost. Don't waste your budget. At Dovetail, we'll work to provide you an efficient, effective program that scales as your business grows. Our very best clients previously used another agency. We find that such clients better appreciate the Dovetail difference.

    4. If you're privately held, Dovetail will sometimes accept equity in exchange for reduced billings or expanded programs. We want to share in the success we create.

    5. Dovetail does not mark up most out-of-pocket expenses.

    6. During the course of our long-term relationship with you, Dovetail will develop and manage a press & analyst mailing list, speaking opportunity calendar, and editorial calendar. At the end of our relationship, should that sad day ever come, we will give you a complete copy of all lists and calendars developed on your behalf. We challenge every other agency to do the same. The way we look at it, it's only fair you own what you paid us to develop and manage over the years.

    7. If you're only looking for an agency to hype your penny stock, then look elsewhere. Although we provide financial communications services to our publicly traded clients, we're not an IR agency and we don't do stock promotion. We're here to build companies of lasting value and reputation, because if you build value and reputation, all else will follow.

    8. Finally, before you call us or inquire via our guestbook, please take a moment to review our current client list. If you're a direct competitor of any of our clients, we will not be able to work with you. If you're not sure, just ask. Whenever there is a shred of doubt, we ask our current client to make the call.

    Thanks for taking the time to learn about Dovetail. We look forward to working with you!



  • How to Contact Dovetail

    Dovetail Public Relations
    15951 Los Gatos Blvd., Ste 16
    Los Gatos, CA 95032
    Voice: 408.395.3600
    Fax: 408.395.8232
    Email: click here