The Simplest and Most Affordable Way to Get Media Coverage is Through Press Releases (with Mickie Kennedy)

welcome to the frugal preneur podcast. I am your host, Sarah St. John and my guest today is an expert at helping small businesses, authors and startups increase their visibility and credibility. He started eerily. 22 years ago, after realizing that small businesses desperately need a press release service, they can actually afford giving them access to the media and to a national Newswire all with a personal touch he released has helped small businesses, startups, and authors get website, traffic, and better quality customers through coverage in the media. Welcome to the show Mickey Kennedy.

Thank you glad to be here.

Can you give us a little bit of your background, how you got started in press releases?

Sure. So around 25 years ago, I was doing a graduate degree in creative writing with an emphasis in poetry. And I just assumed that I would be waiting tables my life and writing poetry in the evenings. And after my first year it was a three-year program. I spent the summer waiting tables This isn't going to work. I didn't feel at the end of the day that I had a mind that was clear and I could write poetry. So I felt like I have to find something else to do so. I then transitioned into working for a telecom startup in DC I liked the energy of a startup. It was new. I think employee number four. And it was just exciting. I handled sales and then I also was handling PR and we had like 180, 190 journalists that we would send, press releases to. And we did it through fax and we got a brand new fax machine that could hold a hundred numbers. So everyone talked about. Fortunate I was, but it didn't seem that way. Programming a hundred numbers hitting, send, taking all day to send to the a hundred people. And then the next day deleting all of those numbers and starting over with like 80 or 90 additional people. And the thing that I found is as I was faxing this out. We started to get phone calls and journalists were saying, could you just email us a copy of that press release? There's a lot of numbers and statistics and be easier just to copy and paste those. And so light bulb went off and I just felt like email was the future of, connecting with journalists. And so. I mentioned it to my boss and he said, you should start that business. And so I continued to work, but in my spare time I would reach out to journalists and see if I could get them to sign up for my database and take press releases from us that we were going to send to them. I launched, I guess, about a year after. And I had about 10,000 journalists in my database. And for many years, that's what we did. We just sent press releases to subscribing journalists through email and it worked. And then at some point, PR news wire reached out to us and said, Hey, you should also send your releases out over the Newswire. And I knew a lot about PR Newswire because we would occasionally send some of our better press releases over the wire. When I worked at the telecom startup. But the wire was very expensive. It was like a thousand dollars a press release to get out nationally. and then adding like international and other options, you could easily get to several thousand dollars to move a press release. So I told PR Newswire, I just didn't think that my customer base, which was spending two to $400 would be able to afford. Newswire distribution, which works out to be like a thousand dollars for just the national press release to start. And so we went back and forth. they looked at my customers. They're not people that their salespeople would ever be interested in reaching out to because they're doing two to four releases a year. Their salespeople are looking for people doing two to four releases a week, and don't mind spending a thousand dollars plus on every press release. I noticed that they had a editorial team that worked overnight and didn't do very much, they had to be there because some of their big clients might have breaking news in the middle of the night. There might be a recall, there might be something that happened and, there's also the international market as well. And so I suggested that we schedule all of our releases for next day so that the editorial team overnight could work on our press releases and it wouldn't cost them any additional labor setting, those releases up. And so that's what we did. today all of our customers receive a custom national distribution over PR Newswire. They also received the email distribution that we're known for, and it's still, on average two to $400, their press release for most of our clients. Oh,

wow. For someone who might be wondering, well, when would you use a press release or why would you can you give some input into that? Like, I guess maybe when you write a new book or open new business, or when would you use one?

Basically when you have something that's newsworthy is the easiest answer. I can go into a little bit about what makes something newsworthy. if it's a new product or offering that generally can be pretty newsworthy. If you're doing something that's unique or novel that's Predominantly newsworthy. that could do well. We did a press release last year for a dining bond initiative. It was something that was started to help local restaurants during the pandemic that were mostly closed. And so here was a way to give them revenue and basically it was customers buying a, gift certificate at 50% of the value it was modeled on the war bonds initiative from the past. And it did really well. We stopped counting at about 150 media pickups wall street journal, Washington post. all the major publications picked it up CNN a lot of the food trades and restaurant trade publications picked it up as well. And it was just one press release. So, the newsworthiness of that was very high. There was a lot of negative stuff going on. So journalists are looking for positive stories and that happened to be one that really resonated with a lot of people. They were able to sign up a lot of restaurants during the year that operating and helping out. And so that's an extreme example. I mean, most successful press releases are getting four to eight media pickups. And when I say pickup, it's a little complicated out there because there's a lot of people that sign up for press release services that are under a hundred dollars. They don't reach journalists. And those are mostly going to syndicated websites and it's where the press release is replicated and appears on a few websites. Most of the locations of where those press releases appear, don't receive a lot of traffic and it's not extremely important that you've got your press release on these websites. There's some people who will create as seen on. Logos and stuff like that and include some of these websites with, cause they are usually affiliates of ABC and NBC and stuff like that. So, that's one way to spin it. But it's not actually getting you in front of the media. What we're looking for and with the Newswire there is that syndication still takes place, but for me and most PR professionals, we see it as distraction. What we're looking for is what happened with the dining bonds initiative. Every time they appeared, it was a different article. It was a mention, it was written by a journalist. So that kind of original content helps you for SEO links to you improves your, search engine optimization. people see that kind of. Because it's not syndicated duplicate content. an article in the New York times can drive, many hundreds or if not, thousands of people to your website. And what my clients find is the traffic they get from articles is high converting traffic. A lot of people read about a company. They get this warm feeling. There's an implied endorsement because the news organization wrote about them and pick them out from all the other companies out there in the world. And they want to do business with them. Very rarely do they open a new window and price shop and see if I can get this cheaper on Amazon. They just click and buy and they turn out to be very loyal customers over time. So it's a great way to not only improve your search right. Optimization, you're also getting great customers from it and they continue to come because these articles live on and on. a lot of them continue to drive traffic over months if not years. it really is a very cost effective way for people to get leverage for just a few hundred dollars. You can get. Tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars of value if you're very newsworthy. And that is the big thing that trips up a lot of people I would say 80% of the press releases that I receive at E releases are not newsworthy. And as. They don't get media pickup at all. And so I've been spending the last couple of years building out education and created a masterclass on press release strategy where I'm trying to educate my customers to, rather than do that, press release on a new hire, like a VP of marketing or something like that. maybe do something a bit more strategic, for example, a survey or study in your industry does extremely well. And that's something you can do with your customers or your leads. Generally, if you have a hundred or more respondents it's considered fine to publish your, data and numbers. If you don't. Thank you can get that many people to respond. You can align yourself with a small trade association. I have clients that do that all the time and it creates a win-win. It gives you a little more credibility with the survey because you've aligned yourself with a small trade association. They have a member base that they can send a survey out to. So you're gonna get lots of responses. That's really great. And also that small trade associations don't get a lot of love. It's usually the big trade associations in the industry. I do. And so the smaller ones are always looking for attention. And if you approach them and say, I want to do a survey and send it out over the wire, they're like, Hey, that's a media opportunity to get our name out there as well. So they're, usually very happy to work with you and to sort of give you access to their members, both on social media and through an email sent with that survey link. And I always say to include a couple of quirky questions when you do a survey. Those are generally the ones that get picked up and turned into articles. We did one for a small auto repair shop in Pennsylvania and they, sent it out to a, an independent trade association for independent auto repair shops. And one of the questions they had was just open-ended that just said, what's the strangest thing you've found in a customer's. And then just the field. And so they got responses like boa, constrictor grandma in an earn, things like that. And when the articles started to appear, a lot of them centered around those top 10 strangest things found in a customer's car at the auto repair shop and things along those lines. the auto repair shop got a lot of media pickup, the local media pickup. Their customers came in and said, Hey, I saw that survey. You did. That's crazy. it created a lot of search engine links for them. They saw their traffic increased as a result they got a lot of credibility. it was definitely something that, did impact them from our great standpoint and, engage their customers. We had a local carpet company in New Jersey that approached us a few years ago and said, we want to do a PR campaign and do a press release every month. And I just told them, I don't know, It's going to do very well because we had already gone through and had an audit with them about what they do. And there wasn't much that was unique or standing out with them. I think on month five we sat down and did another brainstorm session. And I found out at that point that their biggest enemy was the big box home improvement stores and they just share. All the ways that they have to market against them and how, they're the biggest storm in their side. And so we did a press release around that and they got picked up in almost every floor trade publication. I didn't realize there were that many out there. It was over 10 pick them up and Several of them came back to us and said, we'll take any release you've got, or article on marketing because our customers are really begging for it after we wrote this article about you and it turns out that in their industry, we had stumbled upon a blind spot where nobody in the industry was talking about marketing, but their customer base is all independent carpet, local carpet companies across the. they are all in the same boat having to compete against the big box home improvement stores. So it really resonated with them and they got a lot of media pickup. The downside of that is their customers in New Jersey. Didn't really see it now, eventually after a few months of doing more releases, we did get a newspaper pickup in their area. And we also got picked up in a state magazine. That was pretty good. And the thing that they did was they put together all of their clips. I printed them out and put them in a binder. And then when they go to give a quote to a carpet, customer and they're. Telling them about the company. They just go through and say, look, we've been picked up in four trade weekly. We've been picked up this publication, this publication, and you just go through it. 20 to 40 clips in there. here we are in the local newspaper here we are in the state magazine. And we're going to be a little bit higher than some of the quotes you get, but just to let you know. we're going to put a superior pad down. You're not going to get that with the big box home improvement store and the people who install your flooring are salaried workers with us who receive benefits. The people that home Depot and Lowe's hires are not even the same people week to week. And they're just going through a list of pickup contractors and you don't know who's going to come into your house. they said that previously, But it seemed that once they showed them that book and went through it, they believed it more because they started converting 20% more. Customers. at that slightly higher price. they stopped basically competing on price and they could stand out and get more customers at a slightly higher price. And it was all because of that credibility. And they call that their big brag book of PR and it worked really well for them. And that's the kind of things that you can do, once you've received the media attention Their customers didn't see it. So they, it wasn't driving customers to their website, but they were able to take and download all of these clippings that they had and turn it into something that they could put in front of people and show them. And obviously it was very impressive to them. And to know, I feel very comfortable about these people. two to $400 more to come in and make sure we got the right people coming in and putting the best product down.

Wow. That's awesome. I have an idea of like some articles that I'd like to submit to, you know, various, Forbes, entrepreneurial and stuff. Could you use a press release service for that or is it really just news stuff? Not an article.

some people do issue, features, style articles over a press release network. The downside of it is you're probably not going to have those key publications. You mentioned use it because you've made it available to everyone. And the problem with it is. If everybody picks it up verbatim, it's duplicate content. So if three or four places pick it up, it really doesn't help you very much. And so you'd probably be better served if you could find something that is just with a press release, you're just giving them the information and the language. The announcement, probably isn't going to be used very much. It's mostly going to be retooled, rewritten, and turned into articles by them. But like, if you did a survey and put that in there, they're going to use the, data and they're going to pull out what. Find most interesting in the survey and it's going to be original content and stuff like that. I think that for the places that you're talking about, you're better served writing an individual article for each of those and approaching them directly

that makes sense. That's what I was wondering. So how your service differs from other PR agencies is that. Also tap into individual journalists and they will, it won't just be like a copy and paste. They'll actually formulate kind of a, it wouldn't be an article, but it will be worded differently. So it wouldn't be the same thing everywhere, I guess.

Right. So the thing about most news outlets is most of them don't ever publish a press release verbatim. They want to have, they're in business to write and to have original content. So to copy and paste a press release, isn't accomplishing that. So most of them will turn it into a unique article. Sort of the ultimate goal with PR and things like that. You don't necessarily control what the article is going to look like sometimes publicly traded companies will issue a press release and try to put a positive spin on something they're doing. Like maybe they're shutting something down. And the actual article appears about like, oh, this is so sad. This thing is closing. And the sentiment of it is more of. And how unfortunate this is where the press release was all positive, saying, we're closing this down. People don't seem to be wanting it anymore and we're focusing on better things and stuff like that. So you don't always control the sentiment of it, but for a lot of small businesses, you're not really usually issuing something like that, that can sort of be taken very negatively or anything along those. But the larger companies do. I remember Microsoft, for example issued a press release about when they were closing down bulletin boards on their network. they said we doing this to protect children. These are places where anybody could hang out and create bad stuff. And the articles that were written about it were hilarious. They were just like, Microsoft is trying to position this as something safe for kids. And so. Reached out to them and said, are you also closing down chat and Skype? Are you shutting that down? Because that's another place that children can just be accosted and of course they, they didn't respond, they basically said that, some of the reasoning behind Microsoft's press release was a little absurd and they, what they pointed out was that Microsoft hasn't been able to monetize bulletin boards and that with their advertising network, it doesn't really fit in there in serving that. And they said that's the real reason behind it sometimes it's, it's kind of funny how different a press release and an article can be. Most of it is geared towards publicly traded companies because they're the ones that are trying to spend the negative news in a way that's, most positive. And a lot of journalists see the artificiality of that and pick it out and, Bring it to light. Also publicly traded companies tend to issue negative news after hours on Friday. And despite that Monday morning, the articles are there. So it didn't accomplish what they wanted. The news still gets out and goes out there and lives. That being said, small businesses have a really great opportunity with press releases, because I think that so many journalists. Tired of covering the publicly traded companies and the large companies. And they liked the fresh stories. They like to cover startups, people that are doing something a little different, a little unique. They like to profile, companies that people don't know about because it's like a discovery. And, it's sort of like when you go into a independent bookstore and you see staff picks, people feel like, oh, this is a little treasure that's been discovered. No one really knows about it. And you know, that's kind of nice and there's, that quality. You know, almost like curating that happens with the news that goes out there. And so, people love to discover small little quirky companies that appear in, in the news entrepreneur magazine, Inc magazine, all of those places tend to pick on little stories that people can relate to.

What would you say is the average amount of. publications that when someone submits a press release through E releases that they actually are able to get. And then what if they don't get any, like you had mentioned earlier

sometimes about 80% of my customers don't get anything. they do appear on syndicated website. a press release that appears on Yahoo, finance and stuff like that. But, you gotta look at the press release that they sent. our websites now, mobile responsive. We just named promoted Becky to executive agent. And her responsibilities remain exactly the same. so many press releases seem to percolate and come out of the safe place as if they were written by committee and the type of press release that people are. Isn't newsworthy. You have to do a test of like, is this relevant to my industry? Is there something important here that a journalist who acts as a gatekeeper would say, I need to share this with my readers. Most press releases fail that test. The average successful. Press releases gets anywhere from four to eight articles written about them. And that probably is in that 20% range of, press releases that we do that being said the people who make up my 20% of successful press releases. 80% of them are the same people. We have one clutch.co that does rankings and lead gen for different verticals, different industries out there, web design companies companies that sell yeah, I dunno, calendar. Things and stuff like that. So they're each very individual and they are across lots of different industries. And so they do multiple surveys and studies. They joined like 20 to 40 a year on different industries and That's where also I got the idea for the quirky questions because they include that. And they're smart because they always get picked up. I've looked at their releases over the past year and on average, they're getting anywhere from 12 to 30 media pickups for each of theirs. And they're just very good at it. They get that coverage again and again, and. They don't have to do other types of releases. They very rarely go outside of a survey and study because they're doing so many of them and the media loves that. other things that work really well is sometimes being contrarian. If everybody in your industry is going in one direction, always. It's cool. If you can stand out and say not so fast, here's the downside to that you want to appear. Level-headed not crazy. So you don't want to be the guy who's screaming. The sky is falling, but, take, for example, electric cars, it seems like everybody's pro electric car is protecting the environment. It's very reasonable to say, well, not so fast the mining and minerals are used to make the batteries are not environmentally sound. The labor practices among miners is really poor in these third world countries. And also we haven't yet solved what we do with these batteries at the end of their life. Are we creating a new environmental problem that needs to be solved and that's very headed, but because everybody is pro. Electric car journalists. Aren't really including the other opinion and they're not doing it because they don't want to journalists by nature, want to be fair and balanced. So they want to have all perspectives. But if there's no one out there saying the cons and the negative. there just don't have the opportunity for anybody in there to be included. So if you can go against the grain on some positions, you can stand out and get some media attention for yourself. By being that person who's willing to be quoted and to, to say stuff that is unpopular. And these are all strategies that can, get you coverage. And avoid the types of press releases that we're seeing. I've watched my masterclass and made it completely free to my customers. And very few are going through the training. It's an hour. I think that people. Like to do the expected. I would just say if you're a small business, here's an opportunity for you to do the unexpected, have a much higher chance of, media success and try things that, that work it is amazing how many people just sort of just don't want to upset anyone don't want to do the extra effort of putting together a survey or study. some of the resistance we get from people is that sounds like it's really difficult. And I'm like, oh no, you just go to survey monkey, you can create it. And then when it's all done, you just hit a button and it analyzes it for you and shows you the overall results. You don't even have to do what statistics is used to have to do. So it is very easy for you to be able to, do that. I just think that some people don't like to be pushed out of their comfort zone. And so that's my job to get out there and sorta try to educate them. I'm going to try to continue to do that because I, don't like it that 80% of my customers don't get media pickup. it makes me feel sad, but it's the same people. That are doing four to six releases a year and they don't seem to be upset about it. they're just like, oh, I show my boss the link on Yahoo finance of our press release and they seem happy. And I'm just like, yeah, but that could have been an article in the New York post or Philadelphia Inquirer that could have happened. But with what you're giving us, you're not giving, us anything that really is compelling or interesting. And at the end of the day, you want to be compelling and interesting. my whole thing about my masterclasses, you. Company can do it. You don't have to be a startup on shark tank and you don't have to be doing something that's really wacky or strange, there are things that you can do as just a local carpet company in New Jersey as a auto repair shop in Pennsylvania. You can do something that's unique and stands out within your industry. If you just, put your creative cap on and follow some guidelines that I have and you know, that really exciting. So I think that for the people who are willing to invest the time and energy into learning, press release strategy and trying some of these tried and true methods it's a great opportunity to get leverage. And for a few hundred dollars potentially get a big outcome as a result of that. that's what excites me about PR. And I will admit it does hurt me a little, that my customers aren't really, consuming the masterclass, despite it being available to them and things like that. someone said you made the mistake of making it free. They really don't value it. So maybe I have to put a moat around it at some point with a price tag and maybe open it up occasionally. Free access to it and maybe it'll give them the perception that there's value there. But it is amazing that you can give away probably, the most valuable resources and tools and not everyone's, able to really recognize the value that is

there. Yeah. I think that's great that you offer that and it's weird that people aren't, you would think that they would want to, especially if it's only an hour that they would want. To get educated before they submit their press release. You had mentioned shark tank earlier kind of in passing. And I had read on your website that several of the shark tank companies have used your service. I'm kind of curious to hear about that.

Right? So it was funny. I love shark tank and I was watching it. And a few years ago I noticed that like a third of the people that were appearing. He releases customers and they had done a press release about appearing on shark tank. And so I reached out to a few of them. They said, oh yeah, the producers say you really should do a press release. Announcing when your episode's going to air right before that. And they recommended. My name and I was like, oh, that's really cool. And we've worked with a few extensively, Squatty potty does quite a few manscaped goes back and forth where they'll do a few, take a little time off, then come back and do a few. it's kind of exciting to see them we reached out and said, could we get a quote from our producer or a mention of shark tank? And they're like, not without licensing. And just to let you know, that starts at like a million dollars. And I was like, no, thank you. Just continue to do what you're doing. It's all great. But. I like startups because generally they're doing something that's a little unique to get funding, to be on a show they're obviously doing something different than every other company like that. There's something that makes them special. And for that reason, I think it makes it a little bit easier for them to get media attention. Because they, are a little bit more newsworthy because they are doing something. A little bit different than everyone else. I also think that they approach things very systematically. Startups tend to grow and follow paths and things like that. So they can really look at PR and say, what is something that we could do strategically over time and build out a campaign that's trying different things. most people who explore PR really should do a series of releases to see if it'll work with them. I always recommend a PR campaign of at least six releases. And to try different approaches. And so the strategy course that I have has got like seven or eight approaches that are in it. And even within it, you can break it out to even more different approaches and things like that. And so by doing that and following the best practices you can put together a really good campaign. And I think that most. Clients will see success. If they, do strategic press releases startups, I think have it a little bit easier just because they tend to have already refined their messaging and they have a unique selling proposition, a USP that's a little bit different and sort of makes them unique

I'm wondering if, when someone submits. A press release, three releases and a media company picks it up. Will the person who submitted it be notified, or how do you find out that it was picked

up? usually they're not notified. Sometimes they will approach you. They have a question, but in the case of the dining bond initiative, I think that they received a few inquiries where people wanted some more information or a specific quote or response to something. they got over 150 media pickups. And I would say in their case, 140 of them, they just appeared and. a journalist will just write a story and assume that you get it. What I've found is if you do a search in Google news for the company name or product name or something, that's pretty specific you can actually pick the window of when that search appears the calendar date. So if you issued the release on January 1st, you would only want to search from January 1st to now. And so everything that appears within that space that mentions the client and Google news could be the result of the press release. You have to look at the article and see. And then another thing that I do is search and Google web as well. Same time period. You pick the date when you first did the release and you go to now. That's a little more difficult because Google web picks up a lot more. But what I found is not every news site participates in Google news. And so by searching Google web and Google news, I pick up probably 80 to 90% of what's out there. Some of the trade publications, just aren't going to show up there, some of the stuff behind paywalls isn't going to show up there. But I always tell my customers when you get sales or inquiries just add a field. How did you hear about. And leave it open-ended so they could fill it in a lot of times, they'll tell you where they discovered you. People check their weblogs as well, their Google analytics and see where some of the traffic comes. That's another place to sort of discover it. But I think that 80, 90% of it gets picked up. If you do both the Google news and the Google web, using that calendar function where you're only searching within a defined

period. And then if you discover it was picked up. Is that all it takes for you to be able to use their logo on your website, like as featured in Forbes or entrepreneur, whatever it is

Right. So I don't know, I'm not an attorney, but I've been told that you don't want to use as featured on you want to use as seen on the idea of a feature means something different. That's what someone told me when it came to the logos. Most of the time, if they've run a story about you, you could put as seen on and you're fine. It's also the same thing with clipping. I think that technically what my carpet company, New Jersey. Is against the copyright of the trade publications, where they just printed out all the stuff. But a good lawyer would say that falls within fair use. They got picked up in the media. It's an article. They printed it out, nothing bad was happening here in the U S we don't seem to be crazy about that in the UK. They go after people and every time. Someone has put a screenshot or a PDF of a posting of their company appeared in a magazine or newspaper in the UK. They send them a $1,500 bill or something like that. And say that you now have to be part of a. program. And so in the U S thank goodness. We're not that bad, but that being said a really aggressive company could just tell you to take it down. They're not going to prove monetary losses for the most part and things like that. But I think that just being level-headed about. And trying not to be deceptive. I see so many people use it and I don't hear about problems here. The way I hear about PR professionals in the UK that have a horrible time their client gets media pickup. They want to add it to their website and they literally can't take. To the article, but a lot of times as articles go away after 24 months or 18 months, or it goes behind a paywall after, a few weeks or something like that. And so it makes it very difficult for them to share. So they they're all about licensing the content and using these companies that are very aggressive in the UK. But here in the U S. I've never heard of that happening in the U S and people being really crazy about it. I see as featured on ICS seen on, I have heard people in the PR industry saying it's always better to use as seen on, because some people have had a problem with featured and said, well, we had an article about you, but we don't consider that a feature. to us, a feature is something that's different. And so rather than play semantics or anything like that, and getting into a debate, just use as seen on you would be fine for something like that. I also believe that whenever you get a media pickup, the first thing you do with it is archive it. I create a PDF as well as a ping screenshot. Of it when I'm pulling stuff for my clients and trying to build case studies, it's like, cause they've vanished and disappear. usually some will last a couple of years, some will last three or four years. Sometimes the website we'll just go through a refresh and everything's changed. And a lot of their old content just isn't available anymore. So you want to make sure that. A record that you internalize it

that's definitely some useful tips. I appreciate that. I feel like I've learned a lot, I've thought about doing an E release before, and, but I just gotta kind of think. Well, what angle or what newsworthy

I would recommend that you check out my masterclass is completely free. It's at dot com slash plan P L a N. And I guarantee you, you know, anybody that goes through that hour is going to know more than most PR firms. A lot of PR firms are still doing a lot of the lazy way of sending out releases. They're the ones that are pushing a lot of these releases to us that are just saying. And, they're not upsetting the apple cart. And as a result, they're not really standing out or, the stock content that a gatekeeper, the journalist is going to say, yeah, this is worth sharing to my customer. So I would definitely recommend that you go through that and learn because if you take some of those. Strategies and use them. I think your likelihood of getting immediate pickup is going to be very strong and it's definitely a way that almost anyone can stand out and some of them take a little more work than others, like the survey and study approach. But if you do commit to it, you will get some media pickup as a result

I guess I was under the impression that that class was just available to current clients, but that's awesome that it's.

It was but I started sharing it with others just because I find that people who haven't been exposed to PR are a lot more willing to do the research, to build a better press release. I think a lot of people, small businesses that are new to PR and just learning about it when they're told, Hey, I've got this masterclass. Makes you do press releases that have a 10 times more likelihood of media pickup, they set up and pay attention they're willing to put in the, education into it. And so I I've made it available to everybody. It's even on the website currently. And, and the footer PR strategy Mike. Creating it is just to get more people to try strategic press releases I would love to move the needle. So that only 60, 70% of the releases I get are the safe, regular types of releases

I'm definitely gonna take that. So that's at dot com forward slash plan. correct. And then I'm also going to have show notes with links to everything that we've talked about at the Sarah St. john.com forward slash era leases. And I really appreciate your time. Were there any last words that you wanted to say before we end?

No, I would just caution that PR is one of those things that a lot of people feel is a little old fashioned. But it still works and it works very, very well. There are journalists who are constantly checking for stories. Not everybody can build out an elaborate story and send it to some of the services that, that we know like. Order out where, everyone is a curated story where someone's putting a lot of time and energy to it. A lot of journalists are working on anywhere from two to four stories every single day, and they just couldn't handle the funnel and bandwidth of constantly putting that story out there for people to to contact. And so they're perusing press releases. They're looking on the wire. They're streamed by headlines. So you want to have a really compelling headline. That's not using a pun and contextually. They tell what the press release is about. that's the real value of it. Because if you have a message that really resonates with a journalist, your, likelihood of getting media pickup is very strong and you can't really replicate that through paid advertising. In the case of the dining bond initiative. To have gotten over 150 news sites to link to you and share your story and sent drive you tens of thousands of customers that would have taken, hundreds of thousands of dollars of paid advertising. Got anything close to it. And the thing about it is the people who clicked through were excited. They wanted to help out. They were much more likely to buy than anybody who stumbled across in ad.

Yeah. Those are good points. if you want to learn more about how to. Create a perfect E release go to E releases.com/plan. And I'm going to do that probably later today. and

if you do want to reach out to me or my office, you can just visit your releases.com on the lower, right. Is all my social media. Do generally respond to LinkedIn request. And if you have questions and things like that not immediately, but I do check a couple of times a week and try to stay in touch with people who are looking to reach me there. if you have any questions, you can chat on our website with an editor or give us a call. They're willing to look at your release. If you have questions or you want their opinion on it. we're just available and to walk people through the process and try to help you succeed. And because we don't have any sales people or quotas or commissions or anything like that if we feel that you're not a good fit, just like I told that carpet company, we found an avenue in there by basically taking advantage of a industry blind spot. And hopefully with these strategies that I put together Eve there'd be a lot less people that we feel that PR isn't very helpful with. There's still some that are for example, some people in the health. Foods supplement business. The Newswire, isn't very accepting of releases that make medical claims and things like that. So that's an area that we probably wouldn't be able to help you very much, but you know, outside of a few anomalies like that, you know, most small businesses can use the strategies that we talk about. Awesome. Well, I

appreciate your time today.

Thank you. It's been great. As you can tell, I'm excited about press releases and I love to talk about it. So. Great opportunity.