Rich Tehrani, blogger, editor and publisher of TMCnet.com wrote a great post on his Communications and Technology Blog about what companies need to do to succeed in the current economic environment. Rich has been dealing with a challenging economic environment for years. He has managed to build a thriving business by using the Internet to innovate a new business model for his publications.

Here is an excerpt from Rich’s blog:

“In fact, more than once this past week, people have told me customers today would rather buy inferior technology from a well-known company than superior technology from a company they aren’t familiar with. This marks a big change in thinking and you need to be prepared for this change by focusing on getting your name out in front of potential customers more often.

I saw this very thing happen in 2001. I believe history has a good chance of repeating itself in the next 18 months. There is one way to combat this cycle.

Come out strong. Daily press releases help and so do customer win announcements. You need deployment stories, case studies and smart but effective marketing to show strength in the market. Now, more than ever, you need to show your company is strong and will be around for the long-haul. If the news section on your website hasn’t been updated in weeks or months, potential customers could think you are about to close the doors.”

I believe that Rich is being metaphorical about the daily press releases. The main point that he is making is correct: your customers, partners, ecosystem, etc. need to see your successes. This needs to be done consistently. Even the presentation from the famous Sequoia meeting said: “In a downturn, aggressive PR and communications strategy is key.”

Apologies to anyone looking for stock market advice based on the title. But to paraphrase Bones McCoy, we’re a tech PR blog, not the Wall Street Journal. However, we are talking about money today.

In the new financial climate, sales, business development, public relations and venture capital are now intertwined. Yesterday, a VC told me that he could no longer provide venture capital funding for start ups that do not have any sales revenue. His advice is that companies need to ramp up their business development and PR efforts now, even if they are not in the process of raising money. This will ensure that when they are raising funding, they have the requisite sales track record.

We also are seeing a related trend. Start up clients now are looking at the publications that are followed by VCs and the financial community as part of the top tier publications. One more piece of evidence for the connection between your PR efforts and venture capital.

A recent article by Phil Carson of RCR Wireless News examines a new demographic for handset manufactures. While we have seen this coming over the past several years, he states that “Between 5% and 10% of five-year-olds have a mobile phone. By age 10, fully one-third of American kids have a phone. By the first teenage years, nearly 100% of America’s kids have a phone.”

Not too long ago, handsets were bulky and had minimal capabilities. Now, your mobile phone has become the ultimate communication device with texting, email capabilities, instant messaging and immediate connections to social networks. Don’t worry kids – You can easily stalk your best friend Shannon on Facebook while on the way to your next class!!

As tweens become a more prominent target market for this industry, what does this mean for handset manufacturers, carriers and mobile application developers? What exactly appeals to this demographic? Who are the decision makers? The parents? The tweens?

These are all factors to take into account when developing a successful PR campaign. First, we start with determining who makes the buying decision, and what drives their buying decision. Then we look at who the buyers look to for information when they are making their decisions. Finally, we determine the best possible outreach plan based on your target influencers. This is where some of the most powerful results come from. So, who’s your decider?

This week, over 120 companies will be launching products at one of two trade shows focused on start ups: Demo 08 and TechCrunch 50. Having worked with companies launching at previous Demo shows, I know that preparation for these shows takes an incredible investment of time, resources and money on the part of the start up. Unfortunately, when two similar shows occur at the same time, the one predictable result is that spotlight is removed from the start ups, and the volume of news makes it much harder for any particular start up to attract attention.

As previously noted, more people read about a trade show, then attend. This means that garnering press coverage is one of the most important aspects of trade show exhibiting. This is especially true when the trade show is sponsored by a major media organization – in this case TechCrunch and IDG News.

With the first two days of each conference completed, what can we say about the press coverage. Much of the mainstream media coverage has been about the organizers, the competition, and comments about commenting about the competition. The two shows also have generated a firehose of information.

Quite frankly, with 120 companies in 2 days, the overall impression becomes a blur of start ups with mobile, social networking, video, microblogging, advertising platforms. To make matters worse, there also is a CTIA Wireless show in San Francisco this week with hundreds of companies vying for press attention.

For companies that are not exhibiting at these shows, avoiding issuing news during high traffic trade show weeks becomes an imperative. The collateral damage from these simultaneous shows is not limited to exhbitors.

Like the “Bat signal,” sometimes blog topics present themselves like a bright shining light. Last week I attended a conference that featured a panel of journalists talking on the subject of PR for start ups. While most of them knew what not to do, none of them could speak about how start ups should be thinking about “whether and when they consider” starting a PR effort and how to go about doing so. Upon returning home, I was greeted by a Facebook request from Christian Gammill, who works with a number of start ups in Southern California looking for input on the value of PR for start ups. There was also a recent post on TechCrunch on the topic.

But I have not seen anyone tackle the topic of describing how a tech start up should approach PR and the things to consider in the decision-making process. So Vantage is here to help. Over the next few weeks, we will be taking you through how to make the right PR decisions for your tech start up. Stay tuned.