106 | From Invisible to In-Demand: The PR Strategy Every Entrepreneur Needs with Mickie Kennedy

Patrick: [00:00:00] Have you ever felt like your business is doing great work, but the world just doesn’t seem to notice? You’re posting on social running ads, maybe even working with influencers, you’re still stuck in obscurity. What if there was a proven way to get real media. The kind that builds lasting credibility and puts your name next to trusted national brands.
Welcome back to another episode of the Vital Wealth Strategies Podcast. I’m your host, Patrick Lonergan, and today we’re diving into one of the most overlooked, yet powerful tools for entrepreneurs who want to stand out in the noisy marketplace, public relations. My guest is Mickey Kennedy, founder of Ere Releases a company that’s helped thousands of small businesses.
And authors break into national media without the massive PR budgets of big corporations. Mickey shares how he went from faxing press releases one by one to helping clients land coverage in places like the Wall Street Journal, Forbes, and Good Morning America. In this [00:01:00] episode, you’ll learn why earned media not ads or algorithms might be the fastest way to build authority, trust, and visibility in your industry.
You’ll hear real examples of small companies who turned one great story into millions of sales and how to start crafting your own PR strategy that attracts attention for all the right reasons. If you’ve ever wondered how to get your business noticed, not just seen, but trusted, this conversation will open your eyes to what’s truly possible.
And when you’re ready to start building out your own winning strategy, visit vital strategies.com/tax. That’s vital strategies.com/tax where you’ll find practical tools and guidance to take control of your financial future and position your business for lasting success. Before we dive in, if this episode brings you value, I’d love for you to take a minute to leave a review.
It helps us reach more entrepreneurs like you who are ready to elevate their wealth. Credibility and impact. Alright, let’s get into it. Here’s my conversation with Mickey Kennedy. [00:02:00] Welcome. Thank you for joining us here today. Today on the podcast, we’ve got Mickey Kennedy. We’re going to be really digging into, uh, media and PR and, uh, how to break into that.
It, it feels, uh, like it’s absolutely a challenge. And so, uh, thank you Mickey, so much for, for joining us here today. Oh, you’re very welcome. So I, I see the problem that the entrepreneur has is, uh, they don’t know how to break into to media. Uh, they try social media, they try ads, they do influencer campaigns, but, uh, it doesn’t build lasting credibility.
Uh, traditional PR feels expensive and, and really out of reach for, for a lot of people. Uh, and then there there’s also just this frustration like, Hey, we’re providing a ton of value. We feel overlooked. Uh, their business deserves more attention, but sort of stuck in an obscurity and they wonder if, like, will you ever get heard?
And, uh, then finally I think about the, the entrepreneur with a meaningful business should have access [00:03:00] to PR strategies that, that work. Uh, not just massive core corporations with, with huge PR budgets. So I’m looking forward to resolving all of these issues that, uh, are out there for the entrepreneur and, uh.
Mickey, can you tell us just a little bit of your background, how you got, uh, started with ere releases and, and helping support the entrepreneur and author to crack those issues we were talking about?
Mickie: Yeah. It was a very non-traditional, uh, foray into pr. I, uh, graduated about 30 years ago with a master’s of fine Arts and creative writing with an emphasis in poetry.
I had always waited tables, undergrad and graduate school. Just figured I’d start doing that full time. And so I did that after I graduated and at the end of that summer, I just felt like, I don’t think I wanna do this the rest of my life. I’ll be honest with you, what turns out to be 50, 60 hours on your feet standing, working is, is taxing.
And so I decided I was gonna [00:04:00] pivot to a safe office job. I started looking around. I got hired at a telecom research startup. In DC and I was employee three, but because I had a writing background, I inherited the fax machine that was like brand new state of the art, $5,000 fax machine, and told to send out press releases.
And the owner of the company, a telecom attorney, gave me a stack of press releases They previously, uh, sent out. Um, you know, gave me a list of 150 fax numbers and the fax machine only held a hundred, so it broke my heart to program it with a hundred numbers and then have to hit delete and then send to, uh, another 50 people.
But I was doing that continuously and nothing happened when I sent out the press releases and the owner said, yeah, nothing ever really does. But I, you know, I, I hear people say that data’s really important and we have all this data. So I think, you know, eventually someone might pay attention. I just felt like, ooh, that, that’s the wrong [00:05:00] answer.
I spent a day and a half to send these releases ’cause um, it takes a while to program numbers and hit send and wait, uh, for that awful screech and the errors and all that. And so I made it my mission to figure out what I was doing wrong. And, um, my press release looked like everybody else’s, looked like what the owner was doing.
And what I realized was that, uh. A lot of press releases don’t get picked up. They don’t generate earned media. And in my research I found out, yeah, the media does love data, but they need context for the data. What’s interesting here, why is that interesting? And so we had just published our Caribbean, um, telecom traffic to and from the us and I remember that there was one country that was an outlier.
I can’t recall what it was, but it wasn’t like a country that you’ve really heard of in the Caribbean. And so I asked, um, the research analyst there, uh, there’s just three of us. Uh, why, why is this number so huge? [00:06:00] It’s, it’s bigger than all the other countries there. And they go, oh, that’s where all one 900 numbers are routed through there.
They sort of act like the, you know, the routing for one 900 numbers. And for those who don’t know, 30 years ago, one 900 numbers were this thing that you would call. And, uh, they would usually disclose what the rate was ’cause it was variable. You could call mm-hmm. And get a recorded horoscope for 50 cents a minute and you press seven for Virgo or whatever.
You could call and speak to a live, uh, you know, psychic or get pet advice. Mm-hmm. Uh, if you’re having, uh, pet behavior problems for, you know, that might be a bit more, two, three, $4 a minute. And, uh, there was, so there’s this whole world of one 900 numbers. So I wrote a press release about that mentioning the telecom traffic data and how it took this little, um, island country out of obscurity.
And, uh, now they were like a, a, you know, a power there for [00:07:00] telecom traffic. And I faxed that out. That got picked up by the Financial Times, the Economist, the Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, red Herring. Uh, several, uh, telecom trade publications. And so, uh, the phones rang, orders poured in. Uh, it was a really fun time and so I continued to try to look at, uh, the story behind the data that we had.
Um, I realized that journalists liked to follow a story arc. Mm-hmm. Even if it’s a small article. So what I realized before is just giving data. There’s no story arc there. There’s nothing to, to get, uh, an audience excited or to, uh, educate them or entertain them because that’s the journalist job is like.
I want to bring stuff to them that’s going to delight them or educate them or, or just give them information that they feel is very important. And what we were doing before with just, you know, dumping the data, wasn’t really giving any [00:08:00] clues as to what the story was. Mm-hmm. And so I continued to do these more story based releases and we continue to get good pickup.
Probably none as good as that initial one because that was hot during the time. Uh, one 900 numbers. Um, I just, uh, started to get more calls after I fax saying, Hey, could you start emailing these releases to us? And I’m like, oh, yes, please. And, uh, I remember being really excited when I, I really, I got under a hundred numbers and so the fax machine saved several hours of programming numbers because we were now under a hundred numbers.
I also had the idea of like, I need to start building a Rolodex of journalists and their contact information and being able to email them. And so I would reach out to journalists, uh, on my time, uh, mostly bulletin boards, which I don’t think really exists anymore now. Mm-hmm. But, uh, you know, the internet was just, you know.
Uh, kicking off and things were exciting. And, [00:09:00] um, you know, journalists were very willing to give you their email address. And I, I would say, I can send you releases on your beat and the topics you, you cover. Mm-hmm. And they’re like, yeah, you’re not gonna charge us. And I was like, no, I’m just gonna send them on behalf of clients.
And so, yeah, I spent about a year collecting, um, email addresses and when I launched in 1998, I had almost, uh. I think around 10,000 people signed up. I originally was gonna be high tech and mm-hmm. I would talk to journalists and all of a sudden they’d be like, oh, today I’m now in fashion. Or they were always moving beats as I just said, you know, I’m just gonna collect everybody and not be specific to mm-hmm.
Uh, just high tech and I was a matchmaker. I would, uh, write releases or take releases on behalf of clients and send them to journalists. There wasn’t advertising then. This was pre Overture, go to.com. Yeah, and so I, I just was mostly on, I think Microsoft had a big [00:10:00] community, I think it was Link exchange and, um, there was a lot of people there looking for advice and how to promote themselves.
And so I was always giving advice and telling people, um, you know, what they could be doing. And the services that I offered. And that was it. I, uh, ended up leaving the telecom business about a, a year or so after I’d started. Um, I was doing that in the evenings and the mornings and, uh, doing my day job for a while.
Mm-hmm. And, uh, I, it just sort of grew from there. I just, uh, continued to provide a lot of education to people. Um, and uh, what happened over the years is email started to become very ineffective for reaching journalist. Uh, media databases became commonplace and people could license a media database for, you know, anywhere from 5,000 to $20,000 a year.
And so, uh, what would happen is you’d get a golf club company would, uh. You know, pay [00:11:00] $10,000, they would hit send with their mediocre press release. That wasn’t really, you know, yeah. There was no story there and nothing would happen. And then they would go back and brainstorm and say, well, you know, who likes to play golf?
Bankers and finance people, wall Street Bros. And so, yeah, all of a sudden they would be, uh, emailing this press release about golf clubs to like financial analysts and banking people who have no. Uh, you know, they will never cover golf clubs mm-hmm. In their, in their beats. And so right off targeted press releases have just overwhelmed the inboxes of national media.
Um, less so with local media, but it’s still a thorn in their sides. Yeah. And so, uh, PR Newswire reached out to me around that time and said, we like what you’re doing. We would, uh, would you consider adding wire distribution to your offering to your clients? And I said yes, I, I would. And uh, I, you know, today, for example, they charge over $1,700 to go out nationally.
And, uh, they [00:12:00] wanted to give me like a local distribution. And I really champion that. You know, my clients are looking for national attention. They deserve it. These aren’t your customers or people that you would ever look for. So what we decided was to make it worthwhile is all of my customers will get a national distribution of our PR Newswire.
So all of a sudden I represent a, a larger chunk of money to them. Mm-hmm. And so they were able to give me a really good discount. Today, all releases that go out through e releases go out nationally over pr Newswire. You don’t have to pay $1,700, probably closer to a quarter or a third of that. Yeah. And you also get sent to the appropriate industries and trades and all of that Good stuff.
Um, but it still isn’t the magic sauce. It’s telling a story that people care about. Yeah. And that journalists want to turn into a story to a quarter or a third of that. Yeah. And you also get sent to the appropriate industries and trades and all of that good stuff. Um, but it’s still isn’t the magic sauce.
It’s telling a story that people care [00:13:00] about. Yeah. And that journalists want to turn into a story.
Patrick: I’ve, I’ve got so many questions. Uh, I’m, I’m gonna ask a, a question here ’cause I’m uninformed. Can you explain what the wire service is and how that works and how it’s different than I’ll say, shooting out an email to?
Sure. So
Mickie: email was, is very commonplace. Uh, people that use the wire before that were largely publicly traded clients meeting SEC disclosure. Where it would go to certain outlets and you knew that you were safe. If you’re publicly traded, you’d send over the wire. Um, in the US it’s largely a duopoly. It’s PR Newswire, and Business Wire.
Um, you know, they’re, they’re both quite large. They basically reach all the media. Um, uh, there’s, you know, no need to go to both of them because it would just be duplicating. Yeah. You know, the send, but it’s broadened now because of what’s happened with email. That journalists are also over the last 20 [00:14:00] years have seen, you know, uh, the economies of the newspapers fall.
Uh, largely the classified ad industry, which was their bread and butter, has been destroyed by Craigslist and mm-hmm. Facebook marketplace and everything. And unfortunately, um, you know, a lot of newspapers have gone online only or. They’ve really changed their, their, their offerings and journalists who used to be able to write two or three stories a week or.
Now many of them are expected to write two or three stories a day in order to keep the machine going. And, and, you know, the investigative journalism still takes place at the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal and, uh, Washington Post, but not at your local, uh, yeah, uh, newspapers as much, uh, anymore.
And so, um, that’s, that’s been a big change. But because of that and how ineffective email is becoming. Um, the wires become more important for people who are not publicly traded. Mm-hmm. Um, the great thing about the [00:15:00] wire is it’s very clean, it’s monitored. Um, you’re not gonna find golf clubs under banking or under finance or, or anything like that.
Uh, there. Um, and when a journalist logs in, they could actually customize the feed. So, yeah, I cover. You know, banking, but maybe I don’t cover these certain aspects, like maybe I don’t do international banking or I’m not interested in other things. So you can actually create keywords to exclude or even to highlight, uh, releases that have keywords that you’re really passionate about to weight those more towards the top and.
When they log in and look, it’s a very, uh, relevant feed for them. Mm-hmm. And that’s been really great for people who go out over the wire, um, because it, uh, makes it much more likely that you’ll be considered as opposed to just blindly emailing an inbox that’s just, you know, so overwhelmed. A lot of PR firms, uh, used to do, uh, phone pitches as well as email pitches.
And what I find is that a lot of the PR [00:16:00] firms do the email pitches, but then they call and kinda walk the journalist through how to find. Huh, that actual email in their inbox if it’s, uh, not been deleted or if it’s already been thrown in the spam.
Yeah, this is, this is so good.
Patrick: So, I, I wanna talk a little bit, I’m gonna give you my, uh, impression of the value of press release and getting picked up in a story on a, on a national scale.
So I, I think about the credibility that it lends, um. And I’m gonna just give you an example. We, we get requests for people to be on our podcast all the time. And, uh, and we, we do some diligence there, like, is this fit? And how does this work? And, uh, it’s so interesting when I see somebody that’s got, uh, been published in national publications, like I almost don’t really care, right?
Uh, beyond that, I’m like, there’s some credibility here that. Uh, when I’m filtering through the, the list of people that we’re, we’re looking at it, it moves them, [00:17:00] uh, up in the ranking significantly because like, oh, people are interested in what this person has to say, uh, because they’ve made it into these publications.
So, um, so I wanna start off and just like stop on that point and see if you have anything to add to that, or, uh, if there’s anything I’m mistaken on because I think it, the, the credibility trust factor goes up dramatically when you’re. Uh, published in a, in a publication that people are familiar with.
Mickie: Yeah, because, you know, when a journalist writes about a person or a company, there’s a bit of due diligence they do as well. You know, they look how long’s this website been around, you know, how long, uh, uh, you know, what do we know about this person? They check, uh, their LinkedIn, you know, before they write an article about a business.
They’ve done a bit of due diligence. And so people are very trusting of what they read in an article, uh, by a journalist. Where if it’s an ad. And it’s ad copy, our eyes sort of glaze over. We distrust every word of it. But when a journalist writes [00:18:00] about something, um, it’s almost like social proof or an implied endorsement, you know?
Yeah. I can recall many times feeling very passionate about an article or a blog post about, you know, somebody who saw a need for something and they tried to get the company that made sense to, to just. Make this product and they didn’t. And then all of a sudden they’ve got this Indiegogo or Kickstarter where they’re trying to get it done and they’re sharing their painful path and all of a sudden you’re like, ah, I don’t need this, but here’s $35 to help this person.
You know, get this little thing produced and you feel really passionate about it. And that’s what happens with, um. You know, uh, earned media, it, it, it’s completely different. I mean, if that was an ad, I don’t think most people would, would, would, you know, back it. Um, there is this emotional response we have because it is dealing with people.
It’s this human interest element. Um, it’s a signal of trust. Mm-hmm. And I think that that’s the real magic of it, and it still works really well in that [00:19:00] capacity. I find that a lot of people. Um, you know, who are looking to, you know, uh, raise themself as a thought leader, build some authority, often turn to pr.
And, um, you know, I work with a lot of startups that appear on Shark Tank. Um, the producers recommend that they do a press release before their episode airs, and, um mm-hmm. Uh, we get mentioned as having favorable responses with a lot of them. And so we’ve also done longer campaigns with like Squatty Potty and Manscaped mm-hmm.
And stuff like that. I see the startups really, uh, the ones that, uh, usually have backing and money pour a lot into a PR effort, and they build a base of all this credibility and these articles. And then they turn on the paid advertising. And I, I thought that was really, uh, interesting that we would have these great customers for a year or so and then they would move on.
And when I circled back with the marketing team, they’re like, oh, we’re just building a base of pr. We might come back later with some occasional stuff when we’ve [00:20:00] got big announcements and things like that. But, uh, you know. With this base, we’re probably saving 30 to 40% in ad revenue because our conversion rate’s gonna be much higher with all the little logos and links to articles.
Yeah. And when people sign up for our email that they haven’t yet committed to buying, we put these articles in front of them and all of these great, uh, you know, positive third party, uh, boosts that we get. It really works extremely well. Um, I also know from people who say that they’re, uh, when they start getting media attention that their, uh, churn rate goes down.
And that makes sense because there’s always people who either take over a role and they feel they have to like vet who we’re working with, or they feel like it’s been three or four years. We should consider other players out there and make sure we’re with the right company. Uh, a lot of times when they see these articles, they feel like, oh no, I feel confident that we’re worth a good company.
Mm-hmm. We don’t need to look around. And so, um, all of these things really [00:21:00] help a business and really establish you. Um, you know, there’s always the huge success stories that I’ve worked with where one article, you know, I, I did one for a guy who had never written a press release before and, uh, he was an office admin at a, um.
A waste management company that builds facilities for a city. They like build both the waste management and the recycling thing and they’re just like a one stop shop. They handle everything. They coordinate with all the different contractors needed and uh uh, I walked them through building a press release.
They sent it out. They got picked up in Waste News magazine, which was a big deal for them. And they were immediately contacted by a city in Australia and said, Hey, do you do international? And they said, oh yeah, we, we do India and a few other places. Mm-hmm. We put ’em on barges and we send them over and we work with local contractors and we find them and we get them going.
And so they ended up building three facilities in Australia. I think it was over 30 or $40 million just from Wow. One [00:22:00] $300 press release. Yeah. That an office admin did who knew nothing about press releases.
Patrick: That’s, that’s fantastic. So I’m thinking of the media that this can get us in. We’ve talked a fair amount about articles and whatnot, but I assume these press releases could be picked up by.
Uh, TV, radio. Yeah. Some, some, uh, larger players in those, those arenas too. Is that, is that a fair assessment? Yes. Uh,
Mickie: we, I think that, uh, a lot of the consumer products that are sometimes a little wacky have done really well. Um, we worked with somebody called Celebra Ducks that builds. Little rubber ducks in the, uh, using licensed celebrities or figures in history, like Shakespeare and stuff like that.
And they’ve been on the, the Tonight Show, they’ve done Good Morning America, all, all of these fun things. But yeah, TV, radio. Um, uh, there’s blogs, there’s also social media. Um, there’s a guy that I follow on TikTok, uh, called Snack Later, who each week does a roundup of new fast food, uh, offerings that, uh, [00:23:00] that are coming as well as stuff hitting grocery store shelves.
And, um, he said several times in his tiktoks that, uh, he gets the images and finds out about these through press releases. And it, it, you know, he, as soon as they hit, he, he’s covering them using the photos that they supply and, uh, you know, putting them as the background as he talks through the various ones hitting.
Uh, grocery store shelves and things like that. And, uh, in fashion there are a lot of Instagram influencers that, um, I’ve, uh, seen, uh, you know, cover things and use images that came from the press releases. And there are people who believe that they have an in with that fashion house and many times it’s, no, the fashion House announced it Monday and later Monday they’re, uh, talking about this new, you know, bridal thing from Vera Wang that has, has just been released.
Yeah. It makes it seem like she’s an insider. Uh, but she’s just talking to her audience and pulling stuff from press releases. So it is evolving where we get it. [00:24:00] And one of the more exciting things is. Um, AI is search. Um, I’m hearing from a lot of, uh, customers and returns of older customers who are saying that, uh, they’re seeing, uh, ai, uh, recommend companies based off of press releases.
And, uh, I’ve looked into that a little bit and it, it comes to AI weighs different content that’s out there. Mm-hmm. But one of the things is recency. And so if, uh, you’ve got a competitor who had an article written three years ago. You’ve just done a press release where you’re talking about how great you are in this industry, it’s going to give more weight to you because you just did the release.
Because not even sure if this company from three years ago how, how, uh, active they are because they haven’t been recognized recently with any media or news. And so it’s giving a lot of people in edge that they’re coming up in AI searches. Uh, because of press releases, the great thing about press release is you wrote it, so you get to control what’s, what’s, uh, what’s written.
I [00:25:00] suspect AI is going to pivot at certain point.
Mm-hmm.
Mickie: And discount the press release in favor of an article. But currently it’s favoring a press release as if it is an article and it’s giving a lot of people an edge with, uh, AI search.
Patrick: Wow. Yeah. This is, this is so fascinating and I, I love how you’re, you’re mixing in PR into a, a larger marketing strategy.
Right. Um, you know, we, we start to see these things. Uh, come into play with AI ads, social media. You know, I, I think this is, uh, this is really good.
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So when I think about putting out a press release, I assume it makes sense for me to. Be creating content in general, right? Like to have posts on my website, to have a podcast, to have,
you know,
Patrick: different things out there. So I’m thinking of the credibility of the, you said the, the authors or the, excuse me.
The, uh, the writers for the articles are, um, the journalists are, are doing their, their research. And so if somebody looks me up, if I put out a press release. The likelihood of them connecting with me probably goes up dramatically if they’re like, oh, there’s a body of work here that, that really supports, uh, this thing, the story that they’re telling, uh, through their press release.
Is it, do you see [00:27:00] that as a, is it is a true statement or does that not really matter? Uh, when it, when it comes to getting picked up? I, I
Mickie: think it does. I think that, uh, when someone is researching or looking into an entity and they see that this person has done a series of releases, there’s been a little bit of pickup over time.
It is, it, it boosts the credibility. I remember my daughter sent me once, uh, for Christmas that she wanted this product and I couldn’t find it anywhere except the website. And the website looked terrible. It looked like I am going to, uh, be the subject of credit card fraud. Mm-hmm. Yeah. And uh, it was like 20 years outta date.
I think I had still had the flashing graphics and stuff and I just cringed what I looked at. But I noticed they had a newsroom and I went and looked at it and they had been doing press releases for 14 years. I was like, this is not a fly by night company. It’s gonna steal my credit card. Uh, and so it relaxed to me quite a bit, and I know something similar must happen with journalists.
I mean, they’re human. Mm-hmm. They go to the website, they look around, [00:28:00] you know. Flags will go off initially when they look at how out of date and unprofessional it is. But then when they explore, there’s a newsroom and they see that this company’s been issuing releases for over a decade. You know, there’s a comfort level that this, this is an entity, it’s been around and will continue to be around.
Um, there was a phenomenon early. With the.com crash. Um, you know, red Herring, uh, had a couple of black eyes, uh, where they had done company’s profile on the cover that never officially launched. And, uh, they ended up being what they called vaporware at the time. Mm-hmm. And, uh, you know, there, there, there are journalists who still, uh, pay attention to that, that, you know, uh, companies that announce amazing, wonderful things, and they’re not backed by giant companies.
They’re like, let’s see if they launch first before we write about them. And then then, you know, we’ll feel a little bit comfortable. And so I think that having a presence out there and feeding that presence gives you a credibility. I know it just [00:29:00] seems like something that, uh. You don’t think about, but you know, when we’re on a website, we look around, journalists do the same thing, and there’s a comfort level knowing that you’ve written about yourself.
And, uh, a journalist sometimes hunting a story will find other little nuggets and older press releases that they piece together and develop a story that may not be exactly what you launched in your most recent press release, but it better fits what they cover and, uh, and their industry.
Yeah, this is,
Patrick: this is good.
Now I, I’m gonna, I’m gonna make a marketing parallel and ask a question about this. So, when I, when I run an ad on Google, uh, I have really good data around how that ad performed, the clicks, you know, all of that other stuff when I sent out a, a, a PR release, right? Um, how do I know the data around that? How do I know if that article, if there’s an article written, like, is there, is there a way to track that, that information?
I wish there was. Mm-hmm. [00:30:00]
Mickie: I, I, I hear from a lot of marketers that this is why they hate pr. It, it’s hard to measure. I, every time someone puts a tracking URL in a, in a, uh, press release and they do get an article, the, it’s never respected. It always just says the domain or what you end up with on that, on that site.
Um, and there’s also the fact that a lot of places never provide a link, you know? Mm-hmm. Uh, I am, I, I know of one exception with the New York Times, and I’m glad that I got it. It’s where a client had built like a huge resource page and, uh, I guess it was so good that they did actually, uh, indicate the URL, um, um, on, in print and on the website.
Mm-hmm. It wasn’t clickable, um, but it was there and so that’s very rare. Um, you know, Google has a patent on these types of, uh, situations. They call it an implied link where they can tell contextually from this article, [00:31:00] you know, this is about ere releases, so therefore mm-hmm we’re gonna give credit of this article in the New York Times to ere releases this website.
And that happens all the time. I, I see people who are like. I don’t understand. We got these great articles, nobody linked to us, but our SEO’s never been better. And you know, I, I go back to that patent and show them that that’s exactly what, what’s happening in those instances. And you will have, I tell people the best indicator is, um, you get some media pickup and then, you know, was there a change in the lead flow?
Was there a change in sales? Were there more calls coming in? You know, I always tell people this is good practice with any business, with anything you do, but have on your contact form how did you hear about us. Mm-hmm. And, you know, don’t just have the dropdown that a lot of people do. Leave room for people to indicate, yeah, I saw you on this site, or I saw you on the specific page.
Uh, do the same thing with, you know, people who call in. Oh, by the way, how did you hear about us? [00:32:00] And, uh, that’s a really good indicator where people are coming from. And, you know, that being said. You know, take these pickups as you get them and make sure you share them with your existing lead flow, because that credibility and social proof I’ve talked about, if you normally convert at, say, 12% of people that you capture their email address.
You put these earned media articles in front of them and allow them to read them. Ideally by clicking on the link and going to their, those third party sites, they’re going to have that same sort of signal of trust and that 12% rate might go to 1820 2%. That is not unusual. Same thing with your existing customers.
You know, share these positive wins that you get in your newsletters. Put them on your website. Share them on all your social media. You know, really try to try to get that out there because it really does make it so much easier for you to convert and to keep and retain existing customers as well as bring in, bring in [00:33:00] new ones.
Yeah. Um, you know, one of the tricks I tell people of like, you know, how do you know when you’ve got picked up? The sad thing is nobody really contacts you and says, Hey, we just wrote an article about you.
It
Mickie: happens rarely, uh, but, uh, um, uh, generally what happens is, um, you know, used to be people would use clipping services, they cost more than the PR campaign by far.
So I tell people, go to Google News and do a search, and you can customize the search, uh, to the date of, of your distribution of the mm-hmm. Press release to today. And so anything that’s in Google News that mentions you, you know, whatever you’re searching the company name, or it could be a product or maybe you did something around a person with a very unique name or something, you could do those types of searches within that date parameter.
Yeah. And anything that shows up likely was influenced by that press release. Mm-hmm. But also do the same thing in Google Web also with the dates. And people are like, why Google Web? This is news. [00:34:00] Well, there is, uh, about a third of the news outlets have opted out of Google News. Uh, for whatever reason, they feel that Google News is stealing their data and giving enough of a abstract that people are clicking through the articles, but they’re still in Google Web.
Mm-hmm. And so, uh, if you go there, you can find additional articles in Google Web of people who’ve opted out. Yeah. There’s also people behind, uh, paywalls that you probably just aren’t going to be able to get. Through that. But I find that if you do the, the trick with the date parameters, uh, in Google Web and Google News, it probably picks up 80% of what, what, uh, is out there without paying, you know, 2000, $3,000 a month for a clipping service.
Patrick: Sure. Yeah, no, that, that makes a lot of sense. And I was also thinking about like I’ve, I’ve got new Google notification set up for, you know, my name, business names, you know, that type of thing that, that flow into my inbox and. I imagine that could be a, an interesting way to keep track of [00:35:00] some of those things too.
Like, uh, if I started getting mentioned in articles that’s, I’m not, uh, you know. Proactively involved and it’s, it’s gonna tie back. So, um, I also like
Mickie: to use the Google News alerts for competitors. Mm-hmm. And so maybe you have keywords that your industry could put in there. Also, if you go to a conference and you notice, like, let’s say you’re a, a regional company and you’re only interested in Northeast, go collect, uh, people who are killing it and growing like crazy in the southwest and Southeast, and get their cards and put their names in his keywords.
And every time you see articles around them. You’re like, could I somehow. Make an article for my company and my market that’s using this because obviously this, uh, um, you know, delighted a journalist enough that they’ve wrote about this subject matter, and that could be a subject matter that you could apply to you.
It’s not always going to work, but I find that that works really well, especially if you’re more of a local or regional thing. Because if it’s a national company and you’re a national company. It’s a little bit [00:36:00] harder to replicate the exact, uh, angle that they did and, and have it work. But, uh, you know, if you’re a local business, uh, or a regional business, I find that works really well.
Collect a lot of business cards of companies like you when you go to trade shows and conferences and just plug them into a Google alert and, and see which ones, you know, get pickup coverage and could you build something like that locally?
Patrick: Yeah, that’s, that’s. Great. It. So I’m, I wanna circle back to one of the things you talked about was story.
And, and I think that’s so important and I’m, I’m curious your thoughts on the, um, how timely, you know, I, I think about world events, uh, that happened. Some of those could be as, you know, as simple as the Powerball jackpot gets to a new figure and it’s, you know, it’s creating a lot of buzz to Bitcoin to, you know, some.
Excitement or tragedy in the news, you know? And, and so is there, is there something to telling a story and [00:37:00] having it be very timely in relationship to those, those things and getting picked up? Uh, yeah. I’m curious your perspective on that. And then maybe if you wanna touch on how much does it take from me?
Like if I’m engaged with you and I’m like, Mickey, I, I’m excited about this process. How much does it take from me as the, uh, the business owner or our, our team to. Interface with, with you and your team to get things out on a, on a timeframe that, uh, you know, works in those scenarios?
Mickie: Yeah. So, um, with us, uh, you can take a release that you’ve written and upload it to the website and schedule it for as quickly as next business day, same day.
There’s an additional charge, but I don’t recommend it ’cause it, it, uh, uh. Our, our Newswire partners don’t love those, you to dropping everything for that, so. Mm-hmm. Um, but yeah, if you’re in a pinch, you could certainly do that. Um, so it’s as quick as that. And, uh, we offer writing services, but I tell people, you know, [00:38:00] you can use AI to help you write a press release.
The great thing is it’s not the end product, you know, it’s, it’s what you’re writing for the journalist. And so if writings at your forte, you can lean on AI to write a press release. Never ever let AI choose what to write about, though. Uh, AI has been trained on the 97% of press releases that don’t get picked up and don’t generate earned media.
Um, and so, um, you want to always go to ai, say, Hey, here’s some background information about me, my company, this new service. And I want the press release to be about this, you know, like a product launch for this new service. And, uh, then you can have it, uh, write the release. Best results. Don’t let it write the whole release, but say, hey, um, it’s great you just spit out a whole release in two seconds, but let’s, let’s break this down.
What would you say is the best outline for a press release like this? And then it’ll give it to you and then say, okay, let’s start with the headline. Give me 10 headline [00:39:00] options, and then, okay, give me three opening. Paragraph options, and you make sure you know is the most important elements in that headline that you chose and that paragraph, if not, go back and say, Hey, I like this paragraph best, but we really need to get up here in this opening paragraph, this element, or this thing that’s really important.
Then if you just take it paragraph by paragraph, you’re gonna get a much better press release instead of 30 seconds. It’s gonna take you 10 minutes. But again, you’re not having to write it. You’re leading on the AI to do that. The two areas to spend the most time on is the headline and the quote that you have in a, a press release.
And what people don’t realize is if you have a, a press release. That is like a mid newsworthiness and there’s some another one out there that’s equal. A journalist looks at both. If one has an amazing quote, they know, Hey, I can write a good article for either of these. They’re about the same Newsworthiness.
But when it’s done, this amazing quote is [00:40:00] gonna really make, you know, land a punch in my article. So I’m gonna gravitate to this one. And when I say an amazing quote, I mean, you’ve said something powerfully or, you know, contrarian or con controversial, or you’ve said something with active verbs and you’ve condensed it and paraphrased it.
So it’s just a powerful sentence. And if they were to, you know, uh, you know, reword it, it wouldn’t sound as good as yours. So. Make sure that the, the quote lands so many, uh, quotes I see in press releases are safe, weak verbs. They look like they’ve been written by committee, and they, and no journalist is ever gonna say, wow, I wanna make sure that quote is in the middle of my article.
Yeah. And so spend some time there and go from there. As far as working for us, um, you know, I, I said, you know, you can lean on AI to write. Um, I tell people, you know, to spend time on really, uh, curating a creative. Idea for a press release being strategic. You know, I feel like [00:41:00] 90% of the magic of, uh, press releases get picked up is choosing the right angle to focus on.
Yeah. And, uh, the, the writing is the easiest part, and then it’s a matter of just, uh, uploading it to our website and scheduling it. You know, we have a new customer special. We also offer bundles here and there. You can do a proper PR campaign, and I always tell people, just like you wouldn’t judge a Google with 10 clicks, you don’t want to judge a PR campaign with one press release.
You want to commit to a, a campaign of six to eight releases. Try as many strategic hooks as you can. I always tell people, if you follow my model of strategic releases and you do a campaign of six to eight, you will have releases that generate nothing that is the norm, but you should also have probably two or three of them that do generate earned media and you know, hopefully one of those is a home run, just like the.
The article in, uh, waste News that that person got and got millions of dollars. But, you know, a lot of [00:42:00] people get a lot of leads from these article pickups. They get a lot of attention from it. It helps your SEO, um, it helps, uh, you know, boost your conversion rate with existing leads as well as, you know, retains and keeps, uh,
Patrick: existing customers as well.
Mickey, this is all really fascinating. I, I’m curious, this, this arena of press releases is. It seems like it, it should be a piece to really build trust, uh, like we’ve talked about and, and credibility in the marketplace. We’ve talked about a lot of things. How do I engage with ere releases to help me do this?
Because I, I think there’s, uh, getting a press release put out into the world is, is great, but, uh, it’s like I, I, I still need somebody to, to walk me through the process to, to do this at, at a high level. Sure. So.
Mickie: I tell people one of the easiest things to do is to start looking at the types of releases that are strategic and important.
And to that, I have a free masterclass that I’ve set up where I walk you through [00:43:00] an, it’s a video less than an hour long, and some accompanying material where I, I swear at the end of that, you’ll know more than a lot of people who work in pr. Uh, it, it’s available@earleases.com slash plan, PLAN. Um, also kedo, you get your feel free to just go to our website, e releases.com.
Um, we have chat, we have phone, we have email you. We, you’ll only talk to editors. We have no salespeople. There’s no commissions or quotas, and we’re pretty much straight shooters. And, uh, we also realize that a lot of people have never done a press release before or had never done a press release. That, uh, has been thoughtful.
Mm-hmm. And strategic. And so feel free to lean on us and you know, if you want us to look at something, we’re willing to do that. Whether you’ve. Signed up to use those yet or not?
Yeah.
Mickie: And uh, you know, there are also people who sometimes say, Hey, Mickey, will you handle everything? And, uh, I, we do offer that as well.
Just, uh, uh, when you check in with one of the editors, let them know that you’re looking for [00:44:00] working directly with Mickey and, um, you know, it’s a higher level of service. Um, but I’m not as expensive as the big giant PR firms. And I, I believe that my track record is way better than
Patrick: most PR firms. Sure this is, this is great.
And, and one of the things that I was also thinking about, there’s a statement that we, we try to consider in our, uh, our marketing and sort of growth and development plan. And, and it relates to this, here’s the statement. If our visibility outpaces our capability, it hurts our credibility. And, and I think about that in, in relationship to, like, if I ran a Super Bowl ad, you know, and I had more phone calls than I knew what to do with.
Um, that would be bad. It would be bad for our business. And so is there, is there any, uh, this would be a great problem to, to put out a PR release, uh, and have it just, uh, blow up in a, in a fantastic way. [00:45:00] But is there any concern about like, Hey, I need to have a certain level of infrastructure in place before I start, uh, doing some of these pieces?
Or is it really, uh, more of a process that we need to, like you said. Commit to over time and eventually the, the work will come.
Mickie: Yeah. I think it’s one of the things that you, uh, just need to commit to. And, uh, you know, if you, if you do get busy as a result of it, you just, you just dig in and lean in. Mm-hmm.
But, um, it, it’s, it’s, you know, those are so rare that I would say just, just give it a try. Don’t be scared of it. I’ve had someone who was the front page of USA today’s promoting a, uh, a book. A novel that they had written and novels are so hard to get pickup through a press release. I often advise people who have creatively written something.
To don’t, don’t rely on a press release. Nonfiction works really well because you’re talking about the topic and why your topic that you chose to write about is different [00:46:00] than everybody else to, but novels and poetry is more about the writing and the style, and that’s harder to get across in a press release.
But this person got, and you know, they, uh, they only got a few hundred cells of the book and so, you know that it’s amazing exposure that they got. Uh mm-hmm. And, uh, that person was. Uh, a little discouraged by it, but, uh, he had also mentioned to me that his local bookstore wouldn’t let him do a book reading, and I said.
You take that page and you go back to that bookstore and you call me and let me know what they said about doing a book. Reading goes, you, you were right. Yeah. They, they, they were impressed. It doesn’t always necessarily result in, you know, life changing sales, but it usually is consistent. It gets the phone ringing, it gets things moving along.
Even when, uh, we did the telecom and got all of that pickup initially. I bet we didn’t sell more than a few hundred copies of that mm-hmm. Um, uh, book that we [00:47:00] had of data. You know, that being said, uh, today the, the access to that data is over $20,000 a year, so it’s expensive, but back then it was only $600 and for that book, and today it’s all online.
But I just say, you know, put yourself out there. Um, if, if something crazy happens and you have good staff and you have family and friends. You can dig in and deal with that situation. I’ve, right. Uh, I had one person who talked about where, uh, they had an explosion of sales and they basically moved, uh, Thanksgiving to their garage so they could fulfill orders with the whole extended family.
And yeah, I told them, you need to include that in your next press release. And they did. That was the opening, uh, anecdote they used in a three page Ink Magazine article about them and the growth of that company. And they were like, I don’t know why they were interested in that. And I said, it’s something that entrepreneurs go through.
It’s like you can’t always dictate how things go [00:48:00] and when you get overwhelmed, you dig in. And often entrepreneurs, it’s something that everybody in the family and friends that everybody gets involved with, because that’s part of entrepreneurship.
Patrick: Yeah. Yeah. And that’s, that’s fantastic. I, I see the value of PR fitting into a, we’ll call it a global marketing strategy, you know, that is taking into consideration everything from like, Hey, we’re creating our own, own content content.
And we could be putting that out there on our website, on our social, on YouTube to, uh, you know, like you outlined earlier with, uh, ads, you know, like prs. Press releases are gonna create a fantastic foundation for, uh, for that and the credibility factors just, um, uh, through the roof with, uh, getting picked up.
I think that’s, that’s incredible. Even if it doesn’t generate any business, like you said with the, the author and going back to the bookstore, it, it’s one of those things that says, Hey, this is a real player in the [00:49:00] game. And so I, I think that, uh, all of those pieces just start to, to fit together, uh, really nicely.
I, I just want to point people to, uh, ere releases.com/plan. We’ll have a link to that in the show notes, but, uh, that’s really, uh, Mickey’s masterclass and PR strategy, and I think that’s, uh, uh, really good. And, you know, if you, you go there, you’ll have access to all of the ways to get in touch with, with Mickey and his team and, uh, uh, they’re happy to help walk you through these, these things.
And when I think about the entrepreneur, when we start to ignore. Pr you, you remain invisible. You are stuck relying on short-term marketing tactics to try to, uh, generate, you know, some of that, that credibility and it, it just falls flat. And there you’re just gonna continue to be overlooked by media.
With the right PR strategy, you know, the, the credibility, uh, you can stand out in your industry. You can attract clients and opportunities that, uh, uh, [00:50:00] you never, never thought possible. Um, MI appreciate all of your, your wisdom and guidance. Is there anything we should be talking about that we haven’t covered in our conversation?
Mickie: I think the big thing, uh, a takeaway that people should have is a lot of people feel like, well, I’m not at the stage yet to matter to the media. Mm-hmm. And what you have to realize is that journalists get the most accolades and the most shares of articles, which is a metric that they use for how successful a, a, an article is.
When they are often spotlighting new companies or services or businesses no one knows about, and often these are the mom and pops, the new ventures, the ones that are so small that they’re not on people’s radar, you know, nobody. You know, Pat’s a journalist on the back when they’ve covered a, a new Microsoft Office update.
But they have to because Microsoft is what Microsoft is. Mm-hmm. But, uh, when they put, Hey, there’s a really cool tool that applies to the industry that I cover and, you know, uh, uh, you know, [00:51:00] things like that. People get excited about that because it makes the journalist seem like a curator and they’re like, whoa, this person is so keyed into the industry.
Mm-hmm. And it also, you know, people welcome, uh, new and refreshing takes on things and, and little changes and exploits that are going on mm-hmm. Within industries.
Patrick: Yeah. Yeah. That’s, that’s so good. And when I think about marketing in general, right. The goal is to get my message out in front of people. And, and I can do that through social media.
I can through, do it through direct mail. I can do it with a billboard. Right. And, and I think PR also falls into that category of like, I need, this is a way to get my message out there. And it seems to just tie so nicely into, uh, a comprehensive strategy because it, it, it’s so foundational in that, that credibility and trust piece.
So, uh, this has, this has been great, Vicki. I, I appreciate you. I, uh, I’m actually looking forward to, uh. Going through the, the [00:52:00] masterclass that you’ve, uh, provided to us at e releases.com/plan and, uh, uh, really just digging in and understanding PR to, uh, another level, um, and, and looking at what we can do to, to incorporate into our, our strategy.
So thank you so much for all the wisdom and guidance today. Very welcome. Thanks so much for tuning in to this episode of the Vital Wealth Strategies Podcast. I hope you found a ton of value in today’s conversation with Mickey Kennedy and that it sparked some ideas about how you can start using PR to elevate your credibility, expand your reach, and grow your business with confidence.
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