Honest Marketing

Mickie Kennedy: How to Generate Earned Media Through Press Releases

• Honest Podcasts • Episode 50

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At the heart of any successful media campaign lies the mastery of crafting a compelling press release.

In this episode, I'm excited to welcome Mickie Kennedy, the founder of eReleases, bringing over 25 years of press release distribution expertise to the table.

We dive into the framework for creating a compelling release and discuss common pitfalls to avoid. Mickey generously shares insights on effective distribution strategies, emphasizing the importance of working with a wire service.

Beyond crafting and distributing, we explore the critical aspects of follow-up and relationship-building for optimal results.

This episode provides a comprehensive and strategic approach to leveraging press releases, offering valuable tips on raising brand awareness and driving traffic. So, join us in unraveling the essence of press releases and discovering how businesses can harness this potent tool to amplify their reach.

Specifically, this episode highlights the following themes:

  • Common mistakes to avoid when writing press releases 
  • The importance of follow-up and relationship-building
  • Maximizing results through strategic targeting and storytelling

Links from this episode:

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And if you have a guest in mind who you think would be a great fit for this show, drop me a line at hello@honestpodcasts.com. 

Mickie Kennedy [00:00:00]:

One of the most important things that small businesses ignore is their own story. What it is that they do that's unique and different from everybody else and how they came up with that as a business model. If you look at everybody who appears on Shark Tank, one of the first things they do is they talk about how they founded this company. Sometimes it's an inspirational story. There might be obstacles that they overcame. And I think that one of the reasons that startups in particular start with this, because it's a great way to humanize the business and there's a human interest element there, and that's really irresistible to people.

Travis Albritton [00:00:36]:

Welcome back to the Honest Marketing podcast, where you learn proven strategies to grow your business without selling your soul. I'm your host, Travis Albritton. And today my guest is Mickie Kennedy. Mickie has been in the press release space for 25 years, working with startups and small businesses to get the word out about what they're doing in their business and driving tangible results, whether it's new clients, new customers, thought leadership, and increasing the awareness of what you do. And when I think about marketing and honest marketing specifically, I think press releases are a fantastic opportunity for a lot of businesses and small businesses because it allows you to create the story that you want to get out about what you do, who you are, what you represent, and why you exist in the world. And doing it in a way that earns you the attention of people that are elsewhere on the Internet. So on this conversation that I have with Mickie, we really lay out the strategic value of press releases and how press release campaigns can really help get the word out about what you're doing. We'll talk about the biggest myths and mistakes that he sees a lot of businesses making when it comes to getting into press releases and what to look for and avoid.

Travis Albritton [00:01:45]:

If you are looking to find a partner or an agency to help you with that. And then we also get really practical about what to include in your press releases and how to position them to really appeal to the right kind of journalist or writer that's going to write a story about you and drive a ton of traffic to your website. Now, make sure that you stick around to the very end of the episode where I'll give you my number one takeaway from my conversation with Mickie. But here it is. Let's dive in. Well, Mickie, welcome to the Honest marketing podcast. Super happy to have you here. And for anyone that's listening, you need to go over to the YouTube channel to see.

Travis Albritton [00:02:16]:

Mickie's just absolutely exceptional glasses choice that he know I remember the first time that I saw you, just from a previous podcast that you were on. I was like, that is some strong brand recognition right there. But regardless, welcome to the show.

Mickie Kennedy [00:02:31]:

Thanks for having me.

Travis Albritton [00:02:32]:

So for anyone that's listening, I'd love for you just to give a little bit of context about who you are, your background, and then your work on erelases.com and the kind of things you do over there.

Mickie Kennedy [00:02:43]:

Right. So I run eReleases. It's a press release distribution service we started about a little over 25 years ago this past October. And we started with just being matchmakers of sending out press releases on behalf of clients to my little database of journalists that I had, and I'd send it out via email. And over the years, PR Newswire reached out to us and said, hey, you should consider adding our distribution. And I was like, hey, you charged $1,500 to move a 600 word press release. I don't think my clients can afford that. But surprisingly, they didn't run away.

Mickie Kennedy [00:03:20]:

They liked that. I work with entrepreneurs and startups and small businesses, and we were able to work it out so that all of our distributions go out nationally over the wire, as well as some of the other distributions that we're known for, like email and targeting to trade publications and magazines, as well as tv and radio.

Travis Albritton [00:03:39]:

Yeah, I want to kind of start out in our conversation shaping what a press release actually is. I think there's a lot of misconceptions, especially with business owners, about what's involved. And my business doesn't really need a press release. We don't really have anything to talk about or worth talking about, or how do I even get in front of a journalist? So I'd love to talk there and then maybe get strategic about how a business can leverage things like press releases for their strategic goals. But let's just start with a press release. Right off the bat, how would you define a press release if somebody asks you, what is a press release anyways, as it pertains to a business owner?

Mickie Kennedy [00:04:15]:

Basically, a press release is just an announcement to the media. It's usually written in the third person. Usually you're trying to give the elements for a journalist to turn it into a story or an article. And so you're not looking to write the article that a journalist is going to copy and paste, but have them draft an original article. We call that earned media. When a journalist writes about you, and that's basically at the press releases, the building blocks, we hope for a story, and hopefully it's something that we're conveying, that really speaks to a journalist in a way that they want to share it with their audience because they're largely gatekeepers trying to control the information they share with their audience. And they want to make sure that if it is something that they want to turn into an article, that it will interest their audience. Will they see it as educational or entertaining or a mixture of both? Or is there just an interesting story here and something that my audience would respond favorably to?

Travis Albritton [00:05:19]:

And you mentioned kind of in your lead up that when you write the press release, that's step one, but then there's the actual distribution of it. What does that look like? So when somebody writes something regarding their business, they're putting those building blocks together to create a story. What's the mechanisms or the ways that you would distribute that to get it in front of journalists, whether it's bigger publications or more niche industry newsletters or things like that. What are the different ways that business owners will leverage a press release to get in front of those journalists or the people that would want to tell a story about whatever event or update they're making?

Mickie Kennedy [00:05:55]:

Right. So for a lot of people, the most effective way to distribute a release is through a service. Usually it's over a wire. In the US, there's two major wires of press releases, PR Newswire and Business Wire. There's a minor wire, Globe news wire, that's out there. But the wires that people probably recognize, like Reuters and Dow Jones and AP, are not platforms for distributing press releases. Everything that they run, they write, and as a result, they control the copyright and they get paid by newspapers and others that want to basically use their material rather than have to write it themselves. So a lot of daily newspapers aren't going to have their journalists writing breaking news.

Mickie Kennedy [00:06:44]:

They can just pull it off the wire and pay a fee for, you know, here in the US, there's a lot of companies with wire in their name that are trying to get people to distribute through them. And so it is confusing out there. Most of those aren't actual wires. Most of them don't reach journalists, but they do something that was probably important 15 years ago, and that's syndicate your press release on a bunch of websites. And there used to be an SEO benefit to doing that maybe 15 years ago, but there really isn't now. It's not going to hurt you because the links are usually no follow links, and Google recognizes these as press releases. So they don't penalize you, but they don't really give you a benefit but some people like having a roundup of 100 links to different websites that show their release. But the truth is they're usually on sections of their website that not many people are paying attention to.

Mickie Kennedy [00:07:45]:

And it happens even if you go over a traditional wire like PR Newswire, the release will show up on a section of Yahoo finance and a lot of few other websites. But the real goal is to get that earned media, because if a major publication picks you up and they write about you, you will get seen by a lot of eyeballs and potentially could get customers from that and be able to use it and leverage it yourself for helping your business with your existing customers and leads.

Travis Albritton [00:08:16]:

And where does that terminology come from? Wire is that telegram? Wire is that like. I'm just curious where that term came from.

Mickie Kennedy [00:08:24]:

It did originate in the, I think as a wire service, sort of like a telegram model. And then it was feeds directly to newsrooms with dot matrix printers spilling stuff out and then onto intranets. And now it's evolved where it's just feeds directly onto the Internet. Journalists have logins, like to PR Newswire. And the great thing about having a login is they can customize the feeds that they see. They can even make them specific by keywords for certain things that they're looking for, as well as including keywords to exclude. So they're really looking at a feed that's really specific to what they cover.

Travis Albritton [00:09:06]:

And then there's the mechanism of actually distributing the press release. And you mentioned some things I want to come back to here in a second. But then there's also some best practices of things to stay away from, like biggest mistakes that people can make if they're just getting started writing their first press release, or kind of coming in as a beginner and not knowing what mistakes to avoid. You mentioned the one already of the goal of press release is not to write the story for the person, it's to put the building blocks in there for them to then create the story that they're interested in telling. And you become maybe like a central character in that story. But what are some of the other common mistakes that you see people making when they're getting into press releases as an awareness mechanism to their business?

Mickie Kennedy [00:09:49]:

I think the biggest mistake I see is people look at what their competitors are sending out as a press release and sort of do their version of that. And the truth is that 95% of press releases generate almost no earned media at all. And if you look and a competitor is sending out a release when they have a new hire and it's an associate of HR. And you're like, well, we just hired someone in a different department, maybe we should do a release for that. And all of a sudden you have all these people sending out these personnel change press releases that no journalist is really going to respond to. Best case scenario, your local paper may put a little on the move section and maybe a trade publication, but unless it's a major executive or someone who's an industry veteran or there's a real story there, those type of press releases aren't very meaningful. I think that a lot of people will write releases that are fine press releases, but what they're saying isn't really breaking news or strategic enough to really generate earned media. And I think that unfortunately, by the time we see a lot of these releases, it's too late.

Mickie Kennedy [00:11:05]:

It's been approved in their business and they're wanting to hit the send button, and so they'll come to us and pay us and send it out and not much happens. So my job at that point is to say, hey, you're now a customer. I want to provide you with some education and some real meaningful types of releases you should be focusing on, rather than the types that you're doing. And there's really a large variety of things that interest the media. Sort of do an audit of your business. One of the most important things that small businesses ignore is their own story. What it is that they do that's unique and different from everybody else and how they came up with that as a business model. If you look at everybody who appears on Shark Tank, one of the first things they do is they talk about how they founded this company or created this product or service.

Mickie Kennedy [00:12:03]:

Sometimes it's an inspirational story. There might be obstacles that they overcame, sometimes it's a vulnerability. They were laid off or they had a health issue, and they took some downtime and created this product. And now they believe there's a viable business here. And I think that one of the reasons that startups in particular and people that appear on Shark Tank start with this is because it's a great way to humanize the business, and there's a human interest element there. And that's really irresistible to people and journalists as storytellers like, to be able to have a story arc, and it's so easy to create a story arc about a business if you provide some behind the scenes of what was the story for the genesis of this company or product or service, and having that, as well as introducing the product, can really give a lot of necessary elements for journalists to build out an article. We get a lot of product launch press releases and it's just, here's the product and here's a bunch of features and things that you could add that would give a journalist more elements to build a story arc would be a use case study. Here's a problem that a client had.

Mickie Kennedy [00:13:21]:

They used the product, here was the results that they saw, and now here's a quote from them talking about their experience using the product. You still have features in the press release, you still have the actual launch of the product, but you've given a lot more meaningful structures for a journalist to build that story out. And all of a sudden, by incorporating that, you have a much higher chance of a journalist responding and creating an article.

Travis Albritton [00:13:50]:

I love that. What you kind of like help with the framing of the thought process of approaching a press release is it's really not about you as the person putting it together, which is so easy to fall into that default of how is this going to benefit me? I'm going to put out this press release about this new person I hired, associate ACR manager, or this new feature we rolled out. And it's very like me focused. It's like everyone pay attention to me because I did a thing rather than thinking about the person on the other side of that wire trying to look for inspiration for stories that they can tell for their own selfish purposes. And not selfish in a bad way, but just like they have a job or they have a goal that they're trying to achieve and they're using this as a tool to help them with that. And that's just a lesson for all business owners. Your marketing can't just be about you and your own selfish interests if you want it to resonate with people, that you want to interact with your business in a positive way. And then I know there's, with every industry and with every marketing opportunity, there are different levels of professional support.

Travis Albritton [00:14:55]:

So businesses might look to an agency that specializes in PR or offers that, like, we promise to get you in these kinds of publications. Here's the price. What are some of the things to consider looking at your industry and looking at the people that also do this kind of work? What are the things that you look for to differentiate companies, people or agencies that can actually deliver on the promises they make versus the ones that just have a great marketing campaign promise a lot. But then at the end of the day, they're not really telling you in the back end what the reality is. What are the things that people should look for when looking for a partner to help with PR.

Mickie Kennedy [00:15:35]:

Right. I think that if you can afford a PR firm, that's great. Generally a good PR firm will be industry specific. One that just handles everybody is probably one you want to avoid. Because the biggest and most important aspect of a PR firm is their personal rolodex and connections to the media. So they could do personal pitches, email, phone calls. And generally, if you're a generalist, there's no way that you know everybody in all the different verticals and industries. So that's why there's usually PR firms that are specific to fashion, those that are specific to high tech, and even within high tech, there's ones that specialize in retail, consumer electronics, and those who specialize in more specific types of maybe computer hardware or telecom related high tech.

Mickie Kennedy [00:16:29]:

So you really want to make sure that you're choosing one like that. But that being said, for most of my customers, small businesses and startups, they just really can't afford a PR firm. They usually start at 12,000, $14,000 and go up from there. And often there's no guarantee of getting media coverage, even working with a PR firm. If you are working with someone who guarantees pickup, often what they're doing is the equivalent of paid sponsorship in which they have an arrangement with certain publications. And some of them have great names. And there's locations of Forbes that you can post stuff as an author and you have these authors on retainer who write an article or you're giving them an article and they put it on Forbes. It sounds great, but it's not necessarily a Forbes article.

Mickie Kennedy [00:17:22]:

It's not really going to appear in the magazine. It's not going to be on their main website. So those are also services that I try to avoid because generally you're going to spend $10,000 plus with them. Usually it's a couple of thousand per media pickup. And I would encourage people to try to do it themselves. Try a service like erelases where you don't have to pay $1,500 to get a release on the wire nationally. Really try to be strategic with the types of releases that you're doing. If you build a PR campaign of six to eight releases and you do meaningful types of releases, you should see pickup from at least three of those press releases.

Mickie Kennedy [00:18:08]:

And the types of strategic releases that you can do are, you know, I already mentioned, you know, your story, but there's also, you know, using data anytime that you're using, you know, the medians getting stuff out there. So having supporting data can really help you. It can be public data that's just already out there, but you've put it together in context with your release, maybe even going back to the product launch press release. If you highlight that, say, 67% of new companies fail in their first five years in your industry because of a particular issue. And here's a product that solves it, that makes it a much more intriguing story. And that data is probably just out there for you to sort of look and hunt. But also something that you can do is you can create the data. A lot of clients that come to me who have just tried again and again and never been able to get pr to work on their own.

Mickie Kennedy [00:19:04]:

One of the things I tell them is, are you willing to do a survey or study within your industry? I've never had that fail on average. The least I've seen is four original articles, but often it's between eight and 14 articles from one press release. It does take a little bit more work. You want to ask meaningful questions that are very timely and specific to right now. You can ask all different types of things that are going on with the world in general or be really specific to your industry. Sometimes mixing those in there can do well, but you can ask like, are you having trouble maintaining a work culture because people are still wanting to work from home? Are you looking to lay off or are you having hiring problems? Is your marketing budget going to be the same less or more over the next two quarters? And all of those could send signals that, hey, capital is expanding in your industry, or capital is becoming hard to get and therefore there could be a recession or some kind of economic hardship that is either specific to your industry or could be nationwide. And you really can also have fun and ask sort of weird questions. If you're at a conference or a trade show, what are some of the things you'd ask other people in this space about what's going on? Maybe things that you've noticed and you're just wondering if they've noticed the same thing.

Mickie Kennedy [00:20:39]:

And I usually coach people to do a 16 question survey, four questions per page. You can really create it in less than 15 minutes in a product like Surveymonkey, and then you just have a link that you share. And the next pushback I get from clients is I don't know enough people to send this survey to. But the great thing is there are independent and small trade associations in every industry. Often there's hundreds of them. Do a little research, find one. Generally, if they have 1000 or 1500 members or more. They're really great.

Mickie Kennedy [00:21:13]:

Approach them and ask if they would send that survey to their members in exchange for you mentioning them in a press release you'll be issuing over the wire. A lot of the small and independent trade associations don't get a lot of attention in the industry. As a matter of fact, you probably aren't aware of many of them that exist. So they'll see this as a win win and often send it out to their members through email or maybe even social media. And sometimes you can get them to do both. And I've had a few of them really come back and say, could we co brand the survey, get a little more recognition? I don't see a downside to that. You're aligning yourself with someone recognized in the industry. And generally if you get 100 responses or more, that satisfies most journalists, and you then take the responses from that 16 question survey, figure out what there are two to four questions that were like, surprising.

Mickie Kennedy [00:22:12]:

What were the big aha moments from the survey? And you want to focus your press release on telling that story and focusing on that. I do recommend building a page on your website where you put all of the responses and all of the data because you will be surprised that some journalists will go back there and fish out a different story and look at the data and see if there's other meaningful things that they can sort of bring to light. I've had it actually encourage clients to go back and do a second press release because a couple of journalists thought something else was a lot more compelling with the data and continued to get a lot of articles from one survey. So that's something that almost anyone can do. It sounds like a lot of work, but it doesn't have to be. You can just make it very straightforward and these are the types of things that you can replicate. I have one client that does over 30 of these surveys a year. They represent a lot of different verticals and they do them manually and they continue to get between eight and 14 articles for every press release they do.

Mickie Kennedy [00:23:14]:

And they are sending links and traffic to all these little sections on their website and it's just building up over time and they are just recognized as survey experts out there. But it all got started with just an idea of let's give this a try and see if we can make it work.

Travis Albritton [00:23:29]:

I love how you broke all that down to not just the kind of things to think about with doing a survey, but then also the execution of how you can easily pull these things off. Is there a character limit to press releases or a best practice for when you're thinking about the scope of what you're trying to put together.

Mickie Kennedy [00:23:49]:

I think that the wire does charge for extra words, and there's no actual cost for them any longer for that. But it does encourage people to be concise because journalists are busy. They like to look at a lot of stuff, and if you're extremely wordy, you're doing them a disservice. So I think that most press releases can be accomplished in 500 words or less. I've seen longer press releases that needed to be longer just because of the data that they were getting out there. Sometimes publicly traded companies have to release financial data that just is going to be more than your average press release. But I think most people could really strive to be in there. I think if you come across a release that you've written that's like 300, 350 words, I would challenge you to go back and look at it with the principles of who, what, when, where, how, and why, and make sure they're all answered in there and see if there's some opportunities for you to sort of build it out a little bit.

Mickie Kennedy [00:24:52]:

I would encourage people to be at a minimum of like 400 words and probably no more than 600 words.

Travis Albritton [00:25:00]:

And then when you're thinking about planting the seeds of a story and kind of giving the bones that a journalist can then go and run with, you mentioned the who, what, when, where, how, why is that the exercise, the mental exercise to make sure that you cover everything you need to cover to make it actionable. What's the framework that you think through when you're analyzing a press release to see are all the necessary ingredients there for a good story? How do you think about kind of like analyzing press releases and then generating your own right?

Mickie Kennedy [00:25:35]:

I think that you want to lead with the hook, your most important element. It's sort of like the inverted pyramid, where the most important stuff is there in the beginning. The opening headline should really speak specifically to your journalist because I had some clients to write these punny little New York Post headlines that are funny. And then the release does terribly. And I tell them, well, you remember I said you had a horrible headline. Well, I thought it was great. And I said, it is for the end user, but for the journalist who's busy and under deadline, and he's got a couple of hundred headlines that he's streaming through, he's looking at that and saying, I don't know anything specific there. It was just a clever pun, and it doesn't say that this is relevant to my beat.

Mickie Kennedy [00:26:24]:

It doesn't say what they're even talking about, and it's not relevant. So you really want to make sure that you're writing for the journalist and getting the necessary elements for them to recognize, hey, this is in my industry, this is specific to something that interests me. And here is why it's important right there in the headline, and make sure that you open your opening paragraph, sort of fine tuning that, breaking it down, making sure you're supporting it with a quote. Having an amazing quote in your press release is a great way to ensure that your press release gets turned into an article. Journalists love to build great stories, and if you have an amazing quote, they can do the heavy work and build out a mediocre press release into an amazing article. Just if that quote is great. And I know, I'm like, well, what's a great quote? It's really hard to put your finger on what makes an amazing quote. Sometimes it can be the creative flourish that you said something with.

Mickie Kennedy [00:27:35]:

Sometimes it can be the power, the conciseness, how you just succinctly said something that is so specific in a way that if the journalist was to paraphrase it, there would be a loss. If they took that quote out and had the article run without it, there would be a loss, a spirit of something tangible that was there. It could also be something that's very contrarian, and that's a great way to stand out in your industry. Journalists like to be fair and balanced, but so many times they're running the same sort of version of a story that's been out there again and again. If it's really everybody's going green in your industry, and let's say you're in the automotive industry and everybody's talking about how great electric cars are, be the one person who says they're not. Talk about the downsides. Talk about getting batteries out of the earth is not environmentally sound. Not to mention the labor practices.

Mickie Kennedy [00:28:33]:

Mention that. Are we creating more problems with all these batteries at the end of their life? What are we going to do with them? How are we going to dispose of them properly? Also, when electric cars get in fires, they're taking 25 to 35,000 gallons of water to get them out. Doesn't sound very environmentally friendly to me. And that's a way to be rational and yet contrarian and saying, hey, I think the goals of going environmental is great, but here are some roadblocks that we need to address and solve before we fully embrace this. And as a result, of that. Every time someone in the industry writes about EV or electric cars, then you stand the chance that they'll plug you in as that rational person, cautioning people and presenting the con side of an issue that so many people are willing to go out there and put their pro position on. We call that newsjacking. It started, I think, 1015 years ago, and that was a great thing to do at the time when something is hot in your industry, join the conversation.

Mickie Kennedy [00:29:39]:

But now there's so many people competing, saying the same thing, you really don't stand a chance. But being a contrarian is a great way to go out there and do that. You just want to make sure that any positions you take are not going to alienate you with your customers and you're not going to take a position that will potentially hurt you for sure.

Travis Albritton [00:29:57]:

No, that's really great advice. So let's say that we've put together a great press release. It's been distributed now. Journalists are starting to pick it up. Will they typically reach out and say, hey, I saw your press release, I want to write an article about it. It'll just happen. And then you just find a backlink somewhere on the Internet. Like, how do you discover that it's actually been featured somewhere?

Mickie Kennedy [00:30:18]:

Right. So one of the things that I recommend with people is pay attention to where leads are coming from. Make sure that you're always asking on your website, how did you hear about us? Look at your logs and where is traffic coming from. Also, do Google news searches. But even more importantly, do Google web searches. There are a lot of trade publications that have asked to be removed from Google News because they don't want Google News. Stealing their content is the way they see it, but they're still spidered in Google Web. So you have to go to Google Web as well as Google News and do your searches.

Mickie Kennedy [00:30:57]:

I also tell people there is an advanced tool in both Google Web searches and in Google do searches that are date specific. So start with the date that you issued the press release to now, and do a search for you, your brand, whatever you are announcing that may be specific that you can pick out, and that's a great place to look. There are services that will find your articles and your clippings, but these clipping services often start at $1500 to $2,500 a month. And if you're looking to get picked up in a monthly publication, it might not appear for three or four months. So you could go broke just doing clipping services. So I think that using Google News, Google Web, asking people how they found out about you, paying attention to your logs will probably pick up 95% or better of the stuff that does happen out there, and you generally will get a feel for all of a sudden something's happened, the phone's ringing, people are calling. Ask them, hey, just by chance, where did you happen to hear about us? And you will hopefully be pleasantly surprised that it's in a publication or a trade magazine or someplace. That is just really a great alignment with you and you'll get an influx of customers from that.

Travis Albritton [00:32:24]:

Now, one thing that I wanted to circle back from, and I forgot about, so I just want to circle back now, is you mentioned that when journalists are looking through these wires, they're looking for certain keywords and even negative keywords of like, I want to not see anything that includes these things. What is that SEO strategy? Because SEO can be like this rabbit hole that you go down, especially for the web, where it's like there's never an end to it, but there is a diminishing amount of returns with the amount of effort you put into it. So what is a reasonable amount of effort to put into a press release? Taking into consideration the kinds of keywords journalists may be including in their searches in order to maybe surface in front of the right people at the right time, are there tools for that? Are there best practices for that approach? And then the second part of that question would be, how do you not sacrifice the impact of the press release if it's done well, by just keyword stuffing to get through the filters? Because that's obviously a problem with blogs and things like that as well, right?

Mickie Kennedy [00:33:29]:

So most journalists just look at their industry feed, but there are some that do get granular and will try to pick up releases that are keyword specific or exclude certain keywords. For example, in the fashion arena, people who cover high fashion are interested in retail ready to wear, so they don't care that JCPenney has a new sweater line coming out. They're looking for high fashion, so they might put exclusions in there for ready to wear or certain retail places like Target and places that do not interest them. As far as keywords to include, I would just naturally include the keywords that are specific to your industry and make sure you include them. One of the things that I'm guilty of when I often write blog articles about press releases is I rarely mention press release. I just call it a release. And so just make sure you're not using a shorthand and that at least a couple of those times that you have the word press release in there and just make it sort of, sort of natural. It's not really something where stuffing keywords matters.

Mickie Kennedy [00:34:41]:

The keyword just has to appear once in there to capture it. It doesn't look for keyword density. It's not a search engine per se. It's a pretty simplistic search. So just making sure that natural keywords are in there will get you covered. And if you are specific to an industry, probably not a good idea to write about the industry you don't cover. So if you are high fashion, probably don't mention target and ready to wear, saying we are not ready to wear, we are not found at target, because then you'll probably be excluded by mentioning that. So I think just naturally, making it as specific as possible is your best way of doing that.

Mickie Kennedy [00:35:21]:

And I think that when you do choose to send out over the wire, you get to pick the industries that you want to go on. And those are the industry feeds, and those are the most important. I know that some people in the past have used us and chose industry feeds because they know that some of these industry groups have more journalists than others. I had one who had a goth product, and he did not send it to the goth category because he says there's under 30 journalists in that category. So he sent it to business, and then he was surprised he didn't get any pickup. And he just said he created in his mind this thing like, well, the Wall Street Journal. This guy is an economist, but sometimes his readers are interested in what's a great father's Day present or Christmas present. And I'm like, oh, it doesn't work that way.

Mickie Kennedy [00:36:19]:

An economist is interested in the economy. He's not going to be interested in your golf products. And so in that case, they sent out the release a second time, and guess what? It got picked up by only two golf publications, but they sold over $180,000 worth of products as a result of it. And I was just like, see, quantity over quality doesn't necessarily work. It's true. The business category had over 1500 media journalists in it, and Goff had under just a few dozen. But it's really, if you align yourself with the most specific industry, it's not about the size, it's about being really targeted. Two publications drove huge amount of sales to them, and it probably will continue to trickle in and people will continue to find out about you.

Mickie Kennedy [00:37:13]:

So it's one of those things where I think just being logical, rather than trying to game the system, was going to work best for most people.

Travis Albritton [00:37:22]:

Yeah. And anyone who was listening, their ears totally perked up when it was like, oh, press release. Two articles, 180 grand. Who doesn't want that? So I kind of want to wrap up before we talk about next steps for anyone that wants to continue learning, because we just kind of scratched the surface here on what you can do. What's the best way to leverage this strategy for a business owner that's thinking about this, not just because they want to be famous or because they have a box to check, they have a million other things on their plate. What's the best way to think about leveraging press releases and earned media to improve their business in whatever tangible way matters to them, whether it's thought leadership, or increasing sales or partnerships, or being able to, say, featured in with logos of famous magazines and newsletters and publications. What are the most effective ways that business owners and entrepreneurs can think about leveraging press releases for their businesses?

Mickie Kennedy [00:38:19]:

Right. So I think that it all starts with building out a PR campaign. You should never approach it as one press release because one press release can fail. But building out a PR campaign of six to eight releases, defining a time you were going to do it every other month. Quarterly, just really build out sort of this calendar that you can work with. And I think that quarterly is attainable by most people. Most busy entrepreneurs and small businesses can still sort of comfortably fit one press release and a quarter. And I think that take stock of what works and what doesn't.

Mickie Kennedy [00:39:01]:

Try to make sure you're giving all the elements of a story and trying to get that across, but also utilize your successes. I have a lot of clients that get media pickup, and then when I talk to them later, I'm like, well, what did you do after you got the media pickup? And they go, what do you mean? I said, well, did you share it with your social media? They're like, no. I said, did you take screenshots and put it on your website? No. Did you share it with your customers? No. Did you share it with your leads? No. But they were happy with the results because they got quite a few new customers. And what people find is the customers they get from earned media are often some of the best because they read an article. There's this third party corroboration or social proof that happens when someone writes about you and it comes across almost like implied endorsement, huge credibility boost.

Mickie Kennedy [00:39:54]:

And all I know is I read an article about a kickstarter. Next thing I know, I'm on that page pulling out my credit card and I'm supporting this effort. I'm not opening a window and saying, can I get this cheaper on Amazon? Is there something out there that already exists that I could make work? I want to support this effort. And the same thing happens when people read articles and come in and do business with you. And that same sort of energy and warm feeling can be conveyed to your existing customers. And why that's important is there's always people who are considering, maybe we should shop around this year just to make sure we're using the best company. And if they read that, they'll be like, no need to do that. This year we are with the right company.

Mickie Kennedy [00:40:37]:

This is great. I like what they're doing. Same thing with leads. There's always a number of leads, and sometimes it can be significant. Like 80% of your leads never convert. But some of them get pretty close to that 50% mark that would tip them over to do business with you. And all of a sudden you get this article in a link in front of them and hey, they're reading the article, they're getting that warm feeling. All of a sudden they're over that 50% hump and they're now a customer.

Mickie Kennedy [00:41:08]:

So these are all things that you can make work. I had one company, they were a local carpet company in New Jersey, the most non newsworthy company you could think of, who was doing a press release a month. They had a year budget, and they wanted to try pr. And I couldn't talk them out of it because I just didn't see a way in which a local carpet company was going to make themselves newsworthy. But on month five, we had a brainstorm because it wasn't working and figured out that their biggest enemy was the big box home improvement stores. And I really liked the David versus Goliath messaging that they were giving me and how bad they were with carpet installations, and how so many consumers have nightmares with their carpet having to pay other companies to come back and re stretch or fix seams or even just take the carpet out. And not to mention that the padding they use is supposedly not very good. So we put this David versus Goliath approach into a press release, sent it out, and they got picked up by over a dozen floor trade publications with that next release.

Mickie Kennedy [00:42:12]:

And we continue to work these different angles of the same thing over the rest of the year. And in all, they had 30 articles. Most of them were floor trade publications. They did get picked up in their local newspaper as well as New Jersey magazine. And what they did was it they put it together in a brag book is what they called it. And each time they went into someone's home and gave them a quote for a carpet installation, they said, we may not come in as the cheapest, but we're nationally recognized. Here we are in floor trade weekly. Here we are.

Mickie Kennedy [00:42:42]:

Here we are in New Jersey bags. And just by adding that to their sales process, they started converting 17% more of these appointments into actual sales. And that was like adding multiple six figures to their business as just a small little carpet company in New Jersey. That's the effectiveness of getting pr. The people who looked at these articles didn't even read them. They just saw the brand recognition. And then later, when they're talking to their spouse, they're like, I don't know. This company came in the cheapest, but this one, wow, they're really recognized by so many different places.

Mickie Kennedy [00:43:17]:

I feel like I can believe them that we're getting a better product and a better service by just paying a few hundred dollars more. And that speaks volumes as to the power of pr because it is almost like a referral. It builds authority, establishes that rapport and excitement, and that credibility just can't be bought through advertising or any other way.

Travis Albritton [00:43:39]:

That's awesome. I love that story because, yeah, it's like, who would have thought a local carpet cleaning company has something to say? But that's really smart how they incorporated all that. Okay, so we've kind of reached the end of our time here, but again, we've just scratched the surface. Where can people go to learn more about press release best practices? What kind of resources do you have at your website? Where should people go next to take the next step if they want to explore incorporating a press release strategy into their marketing plan for 2024?

Mickie Kennedy [00:44:09]:

Right. So erelases.com is my website. I have a free masterclass. That's at erelases.com.plan. And it's completely about how to build strategic types of releases. So I recommend that people start there. It's less than an hour long video, but it'll help you go through an audit of your business. And if you build a pr campaign going through that of ten ideas for press releases, you'll be building a pr campaign that's night and day, more strategic and more likely to get media pickup than anybody else who's just doing press releases based on what they see other people doing.

Travis Albritton [00:44:48]:

Fantastic. And we'll link those in the show notes below so you can just click right over. Mickie, thank you so much for coming on the show today and sharing all your expertise, really enjoyed having you on.

Mickie Kennedy [00:44:57]:

You're very welcome. Thanks.

Travis Albritton [00:44:58]:

So I would say that my number one takeaway from my conversation with Mickie is make sure that you are prepared for the press release. Now, what do I mean by that? It's not prepared in the sense of, you know, what story you want to tell. You've written the press release, you started distributing it. But once it's out there, are you ready to capture the influx of people that will come if you get featured somewhere? Like, I did not know going into this episode that if you write a press release and somebody writes an article about you, that it'll just totally be in the background and they won't even reach out necessarily and say, hey, I'm writing an article about you. Here's the link. They're too busy for that. They're just trying to write a story and they happen to find some quotes or some things that are valuable for them to write that story. And so make sure that you are paying attention to your website traffic and where your leads are coming in from and put places on your lead capture forms to capture.

Travis Albritton [00:45:48]:

Where did you hear about us? Or how did you find out about us? So that way you can pick up anecdotally where people are discovering you and maybe find out, oh, we're featured over here, somebody wrote an article that quoted us over here. And then on top of that, leveraging that Google search strategy that he talked about, where you can filter based on the dates and really look to see are any of the things that we talked about in our press release showing up in blog articles or websites around the Internet where we can maybe discover that we've been featured somewhere. So that way you can start to attribute the results that you're hoping to see from the press release, from the press release itself. Now, Mickie's website, erelases.com, and all the resources that we mentioned are linked below. So definitely go and check those out, those free resources to help you get started and moving in this direction. And definitely consider working with Mickie if you feel like you really want a seasoned professional helping you shape the initial press releases and your strategy moving forward. Well, I hope you found this episode really helpful and insightful. And until next week.