Press Releases 101: The Art of Storytelling for Small Businesses with Mickey Kennedy!

Book.

They called it a brag book.

They had 30 clippings they take into people's homes when they give a quote and they're like, hey, we probably won't come in the cheapest, but you're not going to have to take all your furniture out of the room in three years and have the carpet restretched because we do it right.

The truth is we don't care about corporations, we don't care about Microsoft or Google, but we care about the people behind it.

It usually results in 8 to 14 articles every single time.

But I guarantee you that day was a record day for sales because it drove a lot of people to open a browser and do a search for you and find you and want to do business with you.

We have some people who get an article and it results in a $70,000 a week for them.

Mm, that's good.

And welcome to a new episode of the Digital Coffee Marketing Brew.

And I'm your host, Brett Dyster.

And if you please subscribe to this podcast and all your favorite podcasting apps and leave a review, it really does help.

But this week we're going to be talking about press release marketing.

I'm a PR person or I got a degree in pr, so I know the press release stuff, but I've never heard about this press release marketing.

So I'm actually excited to hear what this is all about.

But with me is Mickey, and he is an expert in helping small business owners, businesses, authors and startups increase their visibility and credibility through the tier one press release distribution.

Mickey founded an e release company 25 years ago after realizing that small businesses desperately needed a press release service they can actually afford, giving them access to the media and to Nation Newswire, all with a personal touch.

But welcome to the show, Mickey.

Oh, thanks for having me.

Yes.

The first question is all my guest is, are you a coffee or tea drinker?

Coffee.

Coffee.

Anything specific or you just want it?

Whatever, just give it to me.

Yeah, I like cream, but no frills, no flavors, or, I don't know, tian blends or anything like that.

I'm fine with just regular coffee.

Just not a coffee snob at all.

Just give it to me with some sugar.

Yeah, exactly.

All right.

And I gave a brief summary of your expertise.

Can you give our listeners a little bit more about what you do?

I started ereleases a little over 25 years ago.

Largely I saw at the place I was working at, I was doing press releases and faxing and all of a sudden journalists started calling and Saying, could you just email in the future?

And so I was just like, whoa, email is something that you could do and scale.

So I reached out to journalists for about a year and compiled a list of about 10,000 journalists and launched in October of 1998.

And I was just a matchmaker sending press releases to these journalists.

And the journalists loved it.

And the market has certainly changed because their inboxes now are just, they're tox.

Fortunately, A little over 10 years ago, PR Newswire reached out to us and said they liked what we were doing and they wanted to find a way in which maybe they could offer a distribution that all of my releases would go over.

And they had suggested a city or state distribution for each.

And I was just like, no, my customers are looking for a national distribution and I wouldn't feel comfortable giving them a city or state newswire distribution.

We played a dance back and forth.

I know that they charged $1,600 to move a 600 word press release.

I was charging my clients, I think $299 at the time, so I didn't think much would come of it.

But I think the big breakthrough was when I was visiting them, they had mentioned they had their editorial team there 24 hours a day.

And they said that overnight they had to be there in case there was breaking news or a recall or they needed to get something to the Asian markets so they needed to coordinate with their Asian counterparts.

And they just said that they just sit there.

And so I was just like, hey, I could schedule all of my releases for next business day by default.

And therefore you could set them up overnight and wouldn't cost you any additional labor.

And I think when they started to think about that, they're just like, yeah, we can somehow make this work.

And so today, and since then, all the releases that go out through ereleases go out nationally over PR Newswire and you don't have to pay $1,600.

It's probably like a third of the price of what you would pay there.

The caveat is that you can't be a publicly traded company or some stinking large corpor.

If someone comes to us like that, we, you know, just hand them off to someone.

At PR Newswire, we're really there to help the small businesses, entrepreneurs, authors, small startups and people like that.

It's been a very beneficial relationship.

And I do realize that sometimes customers grow and graduate and they want more services than we offer.

And so again, I pass them along to Peer Newswire directly.

It is A rewarding experience.

And it's very fortunate because, like I said, if I was still sitting by email as the bulk of what I did, it would be very hard to get through.

Because what has happened in the 25 years since I launched is media databases.

They're not cheap.

They're usually 10,000 to $25,000 a year.

And if you have a golf club business and you subscribe to the database and you're paying 20 grand a year, you might look at it and say, there's half a million journalists in here, but there's only like 2,500 that are interested in golf news.

And then they start talking themselves into.

We could send it to the banking and business people.

Banking and business people play golf.

But the truth is, a financial analyst is never going to write an article about golf clubs.

And so all of these press releases start to go off target.

And it's like that in every industry.

You have a consumer electronic, and the next thing you know, you're sending the people who cover audio products and stereo, and you just justify it because just like this thing's so expensive and our.

Who we need to send to is so small, and there's no downside.

You know, it's not like you're gonna get punished for sending stuff off target.

At most they'll unsubscribe from you.

And.

And the way that works is they don't unsubscribe from the entire database platform.

It's just your use of the platform.

This audio company hits the unsubscribe button and.

And that's it.

It's a terrible situation where journalists are just.

Their inboxes are no longer useful to them.

It's hard for PR firms to get through because of that.

So most PR firms are again picking up the phone and saying, hey, I sent you a pitch.

I don't know if you had a chance to look at it.

And then they're like, doing a search, probably in their spam, to try and find it.

So it is difficult to reach journalists.

And the great thing about a newswire is it is a place where they log in and they look at their industry feed, which they can customize, depending on the wire, to exclude stuff I might cover.

Let's just pick a fashion industry, but I'm not interested in Ready to Wear or things that are at Target or JCPenney or things like that.

So I can just set exclusions for certain company brands or a certain language so that I'm looking at a feed that's pretty tailored to My beat.

And that's why the newswire is set so good.

Because unlike their inbox, which is filled with so much stuff that doesn't relate to them, this is very clean and pure.

And the newswire does a really good job of ensuring that people aren't sending stuff to off target industries.

It has to be appropriate.

And in the US there's two newswires that pretty much control the market.

I would say like 95% of releases go through there.

It's been a duopoly for a really long time and probably will continue to be.

It's Business Wire and PR Newswire with PR Newswire being the oldest and largest.

And some people are like, do you need to send to both?

Absolutely not.

Because the same journalist is going to go from one to the other so that they know that they've covered all of the news.

95% of the press releases are covered by that.

All right, what is like press release marketing?

Is that what you just said?

Because I know about press releases, I know about the whole thing of sending them off to PR Newswire, sending it off to journalists, if you think you can actually get to the journalist.

But what specifically is press release marketing?

So press release marketing is the whole thing.

So there are people that will send out their release, they'll get some earned media and that's it.

They don't take the link and share it on social media.

They don't put that article on their website, they don't put it in their newsletters and share it with customers.

They don't put it on their landing pages.

And these are just all places.

They don't put it in a brag book.

And so it's taking that earned media and letting it bring new customers and leads in, but also taking that earned media and getting it in front of your leads and getting it in front of your customers, putting on your website, building this asset of a brand.

We work with a lot of startups and the one thing I'll say is a lot of startups go really strong with primary and they just drive a lot of PR over a six month period and then they stop and they, they've usually established 12 to 20 articles at that point and then they start the ad spend and they don't need it anymore.

They've got this asset that they've created and they put the logos on their website, they've got the articles that they put on their, their website, their blogs, their newsroom.

They, they put it right in front of their customers and they know that now they have something that gives them an edge, that improves conversions and really shows that, hey, you don't know this company, but I've just established that they're credible.

You don't have to worry that they're like a fly by night place.

You feel comfortable pulling out your credit card and spending money with them.

They know the value of earned media and also they get articles written about them where a lot of small businesses don't.

A lot of small businesses can do the same amount of press releases.

Maybe not in the same time period, but maybe over two years.

They do 15 releases, but they don't get the amount of pickup that the startup does.

And why?

It's because startups are very good about telling their journey, their story.

If you watch Shark Tank, the one of the first things they do is they come on and they tell you this story.

Sometimes it's them being vulnerable.

They lost their job and they had this hobby and they were wondering if I could turn it into a career or they lost a spouse or a father or just something could be a health thing.

There's, it's usually them being vulnerable, but sharing something that's just very authentic with them.

And the reason they all do that is it immediately humanizes them.

It gives a human interest element that creates this immediate empathy.

The truth is we don't care about corporations, we don't care about Microsoft or Google, but we care about the people behind it and the culture that's created and projected.

And with small businesses, being able to immediately tell your story and get people to care about you is a secret weapon.

Everybody, even if they don't get funding on Shark Tank, they get an enormous amount of sales and the people will open their browser, go and buy that product.

They don't open another window and say, can I get something similar on Amazon or some other place.

They're not price shopping.

They want to support this person because they are invested and they feel for them.

And that's something that, that startups are really good at doing and something that small businesses aren't.

I've had small businesses I work with who, who have.

It's almost like the reverse of an imposter syndrome where they want to appear as super corporate and that they aren't vulnerable and that there aren't humans at that business.

They want to just appear larger than they are.

They're like, I don't want to be the media contact because I'm also the president of the company, but really the company's just me.

So let's make up someone's name for the media contact.

And I'm just like, you don't have to.

Journalists have nothing against small businesses.

Actually, the smaller you are is an advantage.

Journalists do not get accolades from their audience.

And that's who they're writing for is, you know, they have to decide, is this press release going to result in an article that's going to highly entertain or highly educate my audience?

Because if it doesn't, I don't want to write it.

And by getting through all of that and really understanding what they're looking for and appealing to them, you're going to make it easier for them to choose you.

And one of the things is telling your story as well as your unique selling proposition.

That's another thing that startups know very well.

They can tell you in one sentence who they are and why they're different than every other company that exists in that marketplace because they have carved out something that's distinct.

And again, a lot of small businesses, they don't do that.

I've had a lot of people just say, oh, we're just like a commodity business.

There's like a couple hundred of us scattered across the US And I'm just like, you really should have a unique edge, something you do different than everybody else.

And one of them said, no.

The only thing I can think of is we do really good onboarding.

We have 500 hours of tutorials and things that we don't expect people to watch.

But every time someone gets in a corner, they're like, how do I figure this out?

We've got a video for it.

And I'm just like, that's a unique selling proposition.

Nobody else in the marketplace has it.

And they go, no, we've been doing this for seven years.

It would take them 10 years probably to compete.

The library of resources and tools we have, I'm like, do you share this with people before they buy?

No, we just reveal it to them after the sale.

And I'm like, you're losing a lot of sales because there's people who are looking at you and looking at someone else.

And I don't know, it could be how far you are from them or the color of your website that they ultimately decide with the other person.

But if you let them know that you have this, this incredible onboarding library of videos that they can always turn to when they're stuck, that, that, that's a huge advantage.

And startups do really well because they know what that is and a lot of small businesses don't.

And I also talked about Journalists having a story.

Journalists like to write in a story arc and a lot of startups know that.

And so they come prepared with things.

When they do a product launch press release they're not doing, here's a product, here's a list of features, and here's a page to learn more and buy.

That is what most small businesses send to E Releases.

But a startup will put a use case study in there, hey, here's this company.

They were losing money because they couldn't get their logistics cost under control.

They used our logistics software solution and at the end of it they achieved a profitability of 13%.

And the fact is that 47% of people in our industry fell in the first five years, often because they don't get these things under control.

And we have the solution.

And then here's a quote by that customer talking about how easy it was to use and how it empowered them and made them feel great.

That's a story arc that a journalist can write an article about.

Journalists.

I can't recall a product article where a journalist says here's a product and here's some features and that's it.

But here's a product, here's a company that used it, the result that they achieved, here's a quote by them and here's some features.

That is a more rounded article and it's what we see.

And I think a lot of people, when they approach press releases, they write it from, we want to sell this product, let's put down some features and that's it.

But what you have to realize is you got to help the journalists do their job of determining is this going to be entertaining enough or educational enough for their audience.

And the great thing is you can always go back into the release, sort of put some of that stuff in there.

And that's really important and probably why a lot of people feel that press releases don't work.

And the truth is probably 98% of press releases probably don't result in any earned media.

But despite that, there are probably several types of releases that do get picked up again and again.

And I do education and that's a big thing at E Releases for me is to try to educate my customers to do these more strategic types of releases that matter and get results.

And I have a free masterclass.

It's less than an hour long video that goes through the types of strategic releases that are meaningful and work.

And if anybody listens to this, wants to check it out, it's@ereleases.com Plan Like I said, I designed it to be something that people could watch and listen to.

I sign up for these courses and I realize it's 30 hours of videos.

I never finish it.

So this is an hour commitment.

And I guarantee if you go and do that, you will brainstorm at least half a dozen good strategic ideas that your business could do.

So you're not doing the.

The product launch release that is just features.

You're not doing a new hire for some associate HR person that no one cares about.

We all love her.

But let's be honest, outside of the on the move section in your local paper and maybe a trade publication, no one's going to write an article about them.

Take your cash and spend it wisely.

And don't pay to go on a wire with a message that's not going to resonate and be newsworthy enough.

And the types of strategic releases that I have are the ones that are like, where you talk about your journey, you talk about your usp, and you inject data into your release.

It doesn't have to be your data, publicly available data, like the failure rate in your industry in the first five years, that can really show the stakes of why your product is important.

But you can also produce your own data.

And that is the one press release I always tell people, if you're looking for a winner, it's going to take a little bit of work, but it will be a winner.

Is to do a survey or study in your industry and you're going to ask a few questions, like 12 or 16.

I like four questions per page in SurveyMonkey.

Ask things that are really trending right now, but also like things that if you were at a conference or a trade show, you'd ask a colleague, have you really noticed lately that Everybody's like taking 90 days to pay despite it being net 30?

Like, yeah, and it seems like the money's just drying up.

That could be an indicator of something.

And if you get a survey of several people that agree with, that's a really strong leading indicator.

So ask meaningful questions.

Take that link.

And you do not need a Rolodex of your industry.

Just reach out to a small or independent trade association in your industry.

Stay away from the big ones.

They get all the media attention, the small and independent ones don't.

And they exist in every industry.

I had PR professional tell me in a podcast, this wouldn't work in our industry because there's only Public Relations Society of America.

And I looked her in the eye and I said, There's 470 other trade associations for PR firms in the United States.

And she didn't know it.

And the truth is it's like that in every industry because these smaller associations get no media attention.

A lot of them aren't going to be relevant because they're very esoteric New England PR firms or Italian American founded PR firms.

But there's a lot of them that are just like Public Relations Society of America where it's like PR firms of a hundred employees or less.

That's most of the industry.

And so you just find one that you feel sense you in the industry and has like at least 500 members in the association and approach them and say, hey, could you take this link, send it to your members, I'll put you in a press release I'll be issuing over a wire.

And they will say, whoa, we can get a little media attention.

We never get that.

So they'll see it as a win, win.

And about two thirds of the time the first person you ask will say yes.

And I think only once have we ever had to go to a third association.

But they will, they often will say yes and they'll send it out.

You get the results.

The press release is only going to focus on one or two of those questions.

So you're going to look at the results and say what's most surprising in the survey, what's the big aha moment?

And then make that the, the focus of the press release and tell a story, provide some analysis, a quote by you of why you felt the, the results turned out this way.

And then when you put together that press release and send it to the media, it usually results in 8 to 14 articles every single time.

The least we've ever had is four.

And it was for the biometrics industry, which is very small.

And so there probably was just less people interested in writing about it because there's less trade publications in that space.

Again, it, it's a, you've just created a lot of authority in the marketplace.

You've gotten all of these articles, you can then take those links and share them with people and create this huge asset that really, you know, improves conversions, brings you new customers, brings you people who are looking for exactly what you sell and you are elevated as an industry leader, a thought leader in the space and all by just doing a little bit of work.

And so my follow up question with that is, how do you convince maybe the PR person trying to convince the marketer or the marketer trying to convince the boss how to do this and how Many press releases should they write?

Because I know some bosses are like, we want to wrap price press release every week.

And even I was like, that's not possible.

And you should really not do that.

So I've had some clients do monthly and it's because they're, they've got three or four products out and they've got lots of little milestones that they're doing and that's completely fine.

But for most small businesses, it's like, you're going to have to buckle down to be able to do every other month.

And maybe it works out to be once a quarter.

I think that it has to be a natural fit.

Don't do a press release for the sake of doing a press release.

Don't do it because you're on a schedule.

Do it because you have done the research, you've got a milestone or you've got something actionable and newsworthy that you're getting out.

And then try it.

I always tell people, six to eight releases is a PR campaign.

And in the same way that I wouldn't judge Google on 30 clicks, and whether those 30 clicks convert or not, I'll stop advertising on Google.

I wouldn't judge a single press release.

I would do a proper PR campaign of six to eight different strategic releases.

I've had people who try to just do the same release over and over with a different headline and it never worked.

And I'm just like.

And they're like, I did six releases.

They're like, no, you did the same release six times with a different headline.

You really have to try different strategic approaches.

And I think that Masterclass is a great place to start because every one of those ideas are ones that when my customers do those, they have better wins than losses.

And with a failure rate as high as it is in the PR press release world, you really should be sticking to what people respond to and what's working.

And so I think that's a great place for someone to start.

And so someone's listening to this and they're wondering, where else can they find you online besides what you just shared with us?

My social media is on the lower right of my website, ereleases.com Facebook and Instagram and all that good stuff.

It's my personal LinkedIn.

That's a great place to reach out to me personally.

If you have any questions or you just want to talk to someone or you've written something and you'd like us to take a look at it, feel free to just email or chat or or call the number on the website.

We have no salespeople, there's no commissions.

And everybody is empowered to say, I don't think you're a good candidate.

Because the last thing we want to do is take a small business's money when we don't feel like it's going to work for you.

And we really are about telling people what is working in the hopes that they're doing better and trying to give them a leg up and an advantage.

When you send that release over to us to look at, we'll try to give you actionable improvements, tell you where it's not working, and try to give you some ideas of how to make it even better.

All right, any final thoughts for listeners?

I think the biggest thing is that a lot of people feel like they're too small to matter when it comes to pr.

And what you have to realize is journalists don't get accolades for covering Google and Microsoft, but when they pull out a tool or a company that's doing something new in a new, fresh space, they do get people saying, I really appreciate that.

I'd never heard of them before.

And often it's because they're small, they're new, they're a mom and pop business.

They could even be a side business that someone has.

And people feel like, oh, I have to wait until I'm bigger to do pr.

And really being small and unknown is an advantage because journalists love to put the spotlight on new companies that haven't been covered and that makes you really a target for getting media coverage.

All right, thank you, Mickey, for joining Digital Coffee Marketing Brew and sharing your knowledge on press release marketing and PR in general.

You're welcome and thank you for listening.

As always, please subscribe to this podcast on all your favorite podcasting.

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All right, guys, stay safe, get to understanding your PR and try out that press release marketing and do better PR as well because it really does help.

And see you next week later.