Unlocking the Secrets of PR: Insights from Heather of Publicity for Good

I definitely see more opportunities to write for publications.

I believe that people will continue to create their own content content on their blog and get backlinks.

And then I do think that the more brands add a human touch heartbeat to the business, build out the founder story, the more successful that brand will be and that people really want to know the why and the story behind the brand.

Foreign.

That's good.

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

And I'm your host, Brett Dysturn.

If you could please subscribe to this podcast and all your favorite podcasting apps.

We have a five star review really does help with the rankings.

Let me know how I'm doing.

But this week we've been talking about public relations, the broad based public relations where, well, most people think it's part of marketing and it really isn't.

But it has a lot of overlaps.

Anyways, I have Heather with me and she has established herself as the most sought after professional in the realm of public relations.

She has over 10 years of experience as a publicist who has studied with the Fund for America Studies at Georgetown University and on conscientious capitalism and free markets, focusing on philanthropy.

And she secured her bachelor's degree from Winterberg University and she just has a wealth of knowledge.

So welcome to the show, Heather.

Thank you.

I'm excited to be here.

Yes.

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

Oh, I'm drinking coffee right now and it's 4:40.

So much coffee.

I do love tea, but I drink way more coffee than tea.

How about you?

I am both, but mostly coffee.

I just finished up my last one.

But it's not four something in the afternoon here where I'm at.

It's one something.

There's a time difference.

Yes.

Anyways, I gave a brief introduction to your expertise.

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

Yeah.

So I'm the founder of Publicity for Good and I started the company eight and a half years ago and we really partner with purpose driven brands and people to grow your community, get your name in the media, drive traffic and sales to your website and really help you be known.

And that's really our focus.

We've partnered with more than 300amazing brands and clients and that's really our life's mission is to build you to be internationally known.

Gotcha.

What's the latest trends in public relations?

Is it still trying to figure out how to justify someone's paycheck as PR is mostly about awareness and Awareness is still a little harder to show because it's just you're making people aware of who you are and not in the sales, actual analytics or data.

Is it that.

Is it something different that I don't know about?

What's up with PR in 2024?

Yeah, benefits.

And what I'm seeing happening from the PR we do, we're driving traffic to websites.

So that would be referral traffic.

Brands that are having the best success are integrating their publicity, their features, their TV segments into their marketing.

So if they're running ads on meta and they take one of their TV segments and they have that raw clip be a part of their retargeting is actually lowering the cost of acquiring a customer and helping with the nurturing process.

When you Google someone, we're actually helping people rank on Google and then we're driving backlinks to your website.

So where I see the ROI of publicity is increasing the perceived value.

And then when brands really take what they're doing on a marketing perspective and they ensure that priority is aligned with the marketing initiatives and they incorporate it into what they're doing.

So the press is featured in their E news, it's integrated into their paid traffic strategy.

And marketing goes hand in hand with public relations.

And in the world of marketing and pr, and people get confused about both of them.

Where do you see PR people actually, like, thrive in this digital marketing space with podcasts and content creation and everything?

Where do you see PR people, like, thrive with this environment of almost an overlap between marketing and pr?

Yeah.

So before I answer that question, so to me, the difference of marketing and PR is if we look at marketing, to me, it's typically a company promoting themselves and a lot of times its own channel.

So that could be paid traffic, that could be your email list, that could be the messaging on your website.

That's marketing.

For me, public relations is other people talking about you, interviewing you, endorsing you, or reviewing the product.

So to me, those are the differences.

And I've seen that other people promoting you, interviewing you, or reviewing your product actually converts way more than typical advertising because it's way more organic.

Now, where I see people thriving in the PR space is looking at the areas of opportunity that could be looking at becoming a contributor for different websites that could be looking at tapping into podcasts.

One podcast interview typically will give you 30 pieces of content.

So if you're doing PR for a founder or company, you could literally take this clip and create all these little mini reels from this one interview.

So those are the biggest areas of opportunity that I see.

And with all the pieces of content, do you see AI becoming a big factor with PR as well?

Because we see it in the marketing realm, like everybody's talking about it.

What about pr?

Because pr, yeah, it's a lot of writing, but.

But do you see AI helping with the press releases or the media stuff that you give to the press as well?

Do you see all that stuff actually helping?

And also with the ideation of maybe awareness building as well for pr.

So I absolutely see AI being utilized for public relations, brainstorming, market research, creating top notes, news releases.

There still is the personal touch, there's still the strategy piece, there's still the editing phase.

Right.

Like I can never take over that.

It speeds things up, it can help you analyse and analyze a lot of articles all at once.

But the other piece that I can never take over is that relationship piece.

And that public relations is very relationship driven.

It's your Rolodex, it's who you know and it's your previous experience a lot of times that will help you be successful for your future clients.

And where do you see a lot of companies having or not understanding public relations?

Because I still feel like PR has somewhat of a messaging issue.

Because like I said, we talk about marketing PR as the same thing and it's somewhat yes, but mostly no.

So when someone does paid traffic, they look at like roas or I put X in and I get this out.

Pr, you really can't do that.

You can look at increased traffic, increased sales and all those things.

But public relations is not as black and white as it is for paid traffic.

So people get themselves confused.

They set themselves up measuring the wrong metrics or they think of PR really a splash in the pan.

They're launching a new product, they're going to do PR for 30 days and they don't keep going.

And PR is most successful when it's cumulative month over month.

Got you.

And you see podcasts becoming part of public relations as well, because podcasts bring awareness.

It does have long tail.

Do you see more companies relying on PR pros to find the people to do podcasts, find the people to be guests on podcasts, or start podcasts themselves because it is long form content and for the right, if you can do it correctly, podcasts become a really great awareness driven campaign by itself.

Right?

Yes.

Podcasts are part of our outreach strategy as well as micro influencers and youtubers as well.

Got you.

And what do you see with the key components with press Releases.

Do you see it still written?

But do you see it also with video, videos with, with pictures?

Do you see it like become an extra content helps with getting picked up because like I said, reporters are.

They're getting fewer and fewer because a lot of the online companies are either getting bought off or completely closing now.

I think just today I just read that a bunch of gaming journalists have just been wiped out or bought off.

So are we seeing that the PR people are becoming more journalists in some way just to help with the few journalists that we have left in the written space?

There's a lot of consolidation happening, for sure.

I'm seeing it across the board and I saw it start happening during COVID and the pandemic.

A lot of consolidation and a lot of writers do work from home now.

They don't even necessarily go into the New York City office.

So lots of changes got you.

And with those changes, how do you reach those journalists?

Because when I was working more in the gaming space, journals changed all the time.

So I had to figure out what their emails were or if it was the right person, or if whatever I was reading was correct and they were still there, or if there was somebody somewhere else.

So how do you figure all that stuff out?

Because that's part of it is like understanding the reporter, but also making sure that you're reading their current stuff, not their old stuff, or that they're just not there anymore.

So it's reading articles, it's utilizing Google alerts.

It's an everyday task of keeping your media contact list updated and reading the news honestly.

And do you see PR people actually using like content creation, cool tools, tools to create videos, short form videos and all that stuff as well?

Do you see them more going into that or do you still see the traditional.

Just write the press releases, have someone else make the videos, because short form videos you could take on your phone and it's an easier process than say a YouTube or just a full frame video.

Yeah.

So I still would say most PR professionals, it's just a news release, a static image.

That's really what's being done.

But I think huge opportunity for infographics and videos.

Do you ever see like the video being eventually brought into maybe in the future with AI creating their own videos now?

Because it's getting a little crazy with AI?

That would be so great.

No, for sure, for sure.

All right.

And what do you see in the future going on with pr?

Do you see, like I said, do you see more content going forward?

Do you see more reliance on AI, do you see PR almost taking over marketing in a way because it's a little cheaper sometimes you're not having to pay or hopefully you're not having to pay too much for your awareness.

I definitely see more opportunities to write for publications.

I believe that people will continue to create their own content, content on their blog and get backlinks.

And then I do think that the more brands add a human touch, heartbeat to the business, build out the founder story, the more successful that brand will be and that people really want to know the why and the story behind the brand.

And so what would you say were some of the best practices for public relations in our PR pros in 2024?

Do you see, like you said, we're talking about the press releases and everything.

What other type of best practices should, should maybe up and coming PR pros or even the ones starting out there, or to be honest, anybody.

What would be the best practices?

So it's everything from staying on top of industry trends daily, looking at opportunities for newsjacking, right, that's connected to your client.

It's having a forward facing, proactive plan, knowing what you're going to be pitching.

Being proactive instead of reactive is ensuring that what you're doing is aligned with your clients business goals and having clarity of where they want to go.

A company that wants to have an exit or raise funds versus raise brand awareness, those are different tactics, goals and KPIs that need to be in place.

And then the last one I would say is just continuing to work on your craft to learn and to become better so that you're able to better serve your clients.

Got you.

And we've seen through the years a lot of bad crisis, crisis stuff happen.

So do you see PR pros or the companies relying on PR pros to manage the crises that are happening?

Because we've seen plenty of them.

The most recent one was Boeing and the door being blown off of the airplane and nobody now or a lot of people don't want to fly Boeing anymore.

So Boeing has a huge crisis on its hands because of the quality issue.

Do you see more of PR pros like taking up the reins, being like, let's control this narrative, let's do what we can to mitigate any damages if we can.

If not, let's just say we're sorry and this is how we're going to fix it so we can at least placate the public ire.

So that's part of the reason why that like brands need to be in the media before A crisis happens as well, is that having your name out there will help in the future if a crisis arises.

If you have negative press, it's going to take a long time to get it to not be on the first page of Google.

So PR is definitely the long game and you need to be doing it, especially if a crisis happens.

Got you.

And what do you see the emerging trends happening in the public relations industry that businesses should be aware of, or at least the PR pros should be aware of?

Yeah, I see a lot of consolidation.

I see a lot of focus on digital PR and integrating it with paid traffic as well as affiliate marketing.

And is PR actually transitioning to more digital pr?

Cause we saw marketing now it's called digital marketing because everything is mostly digital now.

Do you see that transformation happening or do you see a split?

Do you see just PR and then there's this little thing of just digital pr or do you see it eventually just becoming digital PR to kind of like marketing just became digital marketing?

Yeah, there's still legacy media, there'll still be TV stations, there'll still be radio stations.

So I don't think that's going to go away forever.

But there's definitely new like independent publications and stations and there's like rumble and there's all these different places to go and get your content.

So I just think it's evolving.

Right.

There's YouTubers that you could be on their show and reach millions of people.

So the type of media is definitely evolving.

And do you see a difference between communicating between the generations, like Gen Z, maybe more just holistic approach with boomers, a different one, different messaging.

Do you see that type of split between the generations because each one of them have their own little unique things.

Gen zers for the most part, like TikTok and all that other stuff as the boomers, they grew up with radio, they grew up with newspapers.

Millennials were in the middle and grew up with both things coming at them at once.

Do you see that PR pros have to like specifically message to each one of them, or do you see just a one encompassing messages that most of them do reside with or resonate with?

So it's interesting.

We worked with a beverage brand and they were targeting people who are 55 and above and we were trying to find influencers.

Then we went on Instagram and we found that people who are 55 and above, if they're on Instagram, your account is private.

If they're on Facebook.

Right.

They're not as active.

So it was way harder to target those people.

So we really did local radio station.

We partnered with local organizations and businesses.

So our strategy and what we did was different because we wanted to target people who are 55 and above.

So you're saying the older generation might be a little.

Seems a little harder, but they're actually just the old school way of doing things.

So never forget the old school way of marketing or PR it seems.

Yeah, got you.

And with.

With all that are we have, like I said before, old school ways.

We saw researches in record sales.

Do you think old school ways are going to come become back to the popular ways?

Because we saw vinyl like overtake CD sales in the past few months.

Do you see that event eventually happening with me with messaging as people go, I'm just gonna go back to radio, I'm just gonna watch more tv.

Forget all this other new fangled things.

Maybe that would be cool.

Yeah, it's interesting to talk about because we always look to the future for the new stuff.

But then I see vinyls coming back or they have been coming back but being even more popular.

I'm like, wait, is the old new again?

Yeah, it's interesting.

Got you.

And people maybe wondering, I like what you say.

I may want to actually partner with you or whatever.

So where can they find you online?

Yeah, so you can go to publicity for Good Dot Com.

You can find me all across social media.

I'm assuming you can share those links in the notes too.

And then we also PR is like when you work with a PR company, it definitely is a premium price.

You hire a publicist for their relationships and execution, honestly.

But not every person or brand has thousands of dollars to invest in pr.

They just don't or it doesn't make sense.

We really wanted to make PR more accessible to brands and people.

So we created a PR service and a software called Signal Raptor.

So that's a program that's 80% of what you typically would invest in PR services.

People can go to signal raptor.com too.

But I've seen it scale my business.

I've seen how it helped Regina Bonds, who was an online coach, increase her business by 40%.

And then I've seen it really help people build their community, increase their credibility and drive traffic to their website.

So as long as someone has a good offer, proven offer, and some good testimonials, I have seen PR work wonders even on a local level.

There was a mom that had a cookie company and she just had her website.

No sales went on local tv.

People want to support local people doing cool things and she brought on $12,000 from one TV segment, so it's possible.

Got you.

And any final thoughts for listeners?

No, but honestly, I believe that PR is the fastest way to grow your reach, your impact in business.

I've been doing this for almost 13 years.

So if you have questions, we always do free discovery calls.

So you can always book a free discovery call if you have questions too.

All right, thank you Heather for joining Digital Coffee Marketing Brew and sharing your knowledge on public relations.

Yes, of course.

And thank you for joining.

As always, please subscribe to this podcast on all your favorite podcasting apps with five star review.

What does help help with the rankings?

Let me know how I'm doing and join me next week to talk to another great thought leader in the PR and marketing industry.

All right guys, stay safe.

Get to understanding your public relations or helping out your public relations team as well and see you next week later.