Demystifying Press Releases for Solopreneurs and How to Utilize PR Today

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Marketing and lead generation continues to be obstacles for solopreneurs. So many people are focused on traditional marketing and advertising tactics and neglect a very interesting approach...public relations. More specifically, the use of press releases for your solopreneurship.

It's usually because press releases are such a foreign concept for many people that they tend to avoid them. But it's not as complicated as you may think.

So today, we are joined by Mickie Kennedy, founder of eReleases, a press release distribution service for small businesses, who helps people get more PR value for their dollars. Let’s just say he knows what he’s talking about.

We invited him on to discuss things like:

• What exactly a press release is, the benefits, and how they work

• When to use press releases and when not to

• Best practices for optimizing conversion on releases

• Other types of PR solopreneurs should consider

• Calculating the ROI of PR

Plus so much more! Be sure to tune in.

Like the show? We'd love it if you'd leave a 5-star review!

Connect with Mickie Kennedy

• Visit eReleases.com
• Access the masterclass

Favorite Book Recommendation:

"The way you do everything is the way you do anything, and vice versa."

Being a solopreneur is awesome but it’s not easy. It's hard to get noticed. Most business advice is for bigger companies, and you're all alone...until now. LifeStarr's SoloSuite Starter gives you free education, community, and tools to build a thriving one-person business. 

So, if you are lacking direction, having a hard time generating leads, or are having trouble keeping up with everything you have to do, or even just lonely running a company of one, click here to check out SoloSuite Starter!

About Mickie Kennedy

Mickie Kennedy believes that with some effort and a little money, the possibilities are endless. He is an expert at helping small businesses, authors, and startups increase their visibility and credibility. Mickie founded eReleases 25+ years ago after realizing that small businesses desperately need a press release service they can actually afford, giving them access to the media and to a national newswire – all with a personal touch. He holds an MFA in Creative Writing with an emphasis in Poetry from George Mason University. His press releases have resulted in articles being published in the Wall Street Journal, CNN, Bloomberg, and many more prestigious new outlets.

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Full Episode Transcript

Carly Ries: 00:00

My entire career has been in marketing, yet I am so unfamiliar with the ins and outs of public relations, especially when it comes to creating press releases. I know they can be great for generating buzz around your business, but I just don't know how to approach them. And if that's me, a person whose livelihood is marketing, I can't imagine how confusing press releases are for the average solopreneur. So today, we're joined by Mickie Kennedy, founder of eReleases, a press release distribution service for small businesses who helps to get more PR value for their dollars, which sounds pretty amazing. Let's just say Mickie knows what he's talking about.

Carly Ries: 00:37

We invited him on to discuss things like what exactly a press release is, the benefits, how they work, when to use press releases and when not to, best practices for optimizing conversion rates on releases, other types of PR solopreneurs should consider, calculating the ROI of PR, which can be a challenge, but he discusses how to do so, plus so much more. So don't miss this episode. Be sure to tune in.

Intro: 01:04

You're listening to The Aspiring Solopreneur, the podcast for those just taking the bold step or even just thinking about Joe Rando and I are your guides to navigating this crazy, but awesome journey as a company of 1. We take pride in being part of LifeStarr, a digital hub dedicated to all aspects of solopreneurship that has empowered and educated countless solopreneurs looking to build a business that resonates with their life's ambition. We help people work to live, not live to work. And if you're looking for a get rich quick scheme, this is not the show for you. So if you're eager to gain valuable insights from industry experts on running a business the right way the first time around, or want to learn from the missteps of solopreneurs who've paved the way before you, then stick around. We've got your back because flying solo in business doesn't mean you're alonWee.

Carly Ries: 01:59

So before we jump into this episode, I just have to share this new free offer we have called the SoloSuite Starter. Being a solopreneur is awesome, but it's not easy. It's hard to get noticed, and most business advice is for bigger companies, and you're all alone until now. LifeStarr's SoloSuite gives you free education, community, and tools to build a thriving one person business. So if you're lacking direction, having a hard time generating leads, having trouble keeping up with everything you have to do, or even if you're just lonely running a company of 1, be sure to check out SoloSuite Starter at LifeStarr.com and click on products and pricing at the top menu.

Carly Ries: 02:39

It's the first one in the drop down. Again, it's totally free, so check it out at LifeStarr.com Click on products and pricing, and it's the first one in the menu. Hope to see you there.

Carly Ries: 02:49

Mickie, we talked about this offline, but these glasses, I'm so excited that you and your glasses are both on the show today. If you're not watching this on YouTube and you're listening to this, go to YouTube. They are awesome. We're so excited to have you here.

Mickie Kennedy: 03:04

Oh, thanks for having me.

Carly Ries: 03:06

Well, and so it's really funny. I've been marketing and people assume that if you're in marketing, especially as a solopreneur, they think you could do everything. They think you know all aspects of it. You can do advertising, you can write content, You could do PR. You could do everything.

Carly Ries: 03:22

I have no idea how to do PR. I've been in marketing since I was 17 years old. It was my 1st internship at an ad agency. So having you on today is so so special because I feel like a lot of solopreneurs just don't know this area of marketing. When they learn about it, they learn how to do a lead magnet, how to do basic PPC ads.

Carly Ries: 03:44

And this is just a different area that a lot of people aren't familiar with. So I guess just let's start with the basics for people to do new to this and new to the world of PR. I wanna talk about press releases today first. So what is a press release? How do they work? What are they? What are the benefits? Yada yada yada.

Mickie Kennedy: 04:06

So a press release is just an announcement usually written in the 3rd person. You might have a first person quote, and, they're written very simply, using sort of a top down approach of the most important elements first, like the headline and, opening sentence. And then, you know, as you get down, you can put least, important information. Usually, there's a boilerplate. It usually recognize that as it'll say, you know, about company or about, the person.

Mickie Kennedy: 04:37

And then it's just something that gets recycled and used, sort of like your elevator pitch in every press release. And, then a media contact. And, that's basically it. It's usually sent to members of the media. And the goal isn't to have them take the press release and publish it, but to actually have them turn that into an article, where they write about you.

Mickie Kennedy: 05:00

We call that earned media. And, one of the things that is useful out there, is a wire. And there in the US, there's basically a duopoly of 2 major, newswires of press releases. There's other wires that are out there. You probably heard Reuters, UPI, AP, those places, and they work differently.

Mickie Kennedy: 05:22

They don't run press releases. They couldn't because their whole business is taking content. They've written and licensing it to websites and newspapers rather than their staff writing all these articles that are the same national event. They'll just have one person write it at Reuters and then have several newspapers run it. In the case of press release newswires, they're making these available to members of the media.

Mickie Kennedy: 05:50

They're given logins. They can look at industry feeds. They can also create customized feeds so that, you know, maybe, you know, there's segments of the industry that they don't cover so they can set up keywords, to exclude, keywords to include. And so it becomes a very customized feed for them that follows exactly or pretty close to the beat that they report on. And, you know, one of the good things about having a duopoly, in the US is that, you know, there's only 2 places for most journalists to go, so it makes it easy for them.

Mickie Kennedy: 06:25

They usually have one that they prefer over the other. But, yeah, that that's pretty much how that works. The downside of a duopoly is the the newswires are very expensive. You know, Pierre and his wire charges over $1600 to move a press release nationally. The good news is that with the releases, you don't have to pay anything close to that.

Mickie Kennedy: 06:46

All of our releases do go out nationally through PR Newswire. But, because we represent small businesses and entrepreneurs and start ups and speakers and authors and people who don't have a budget of spending 20 to $30,000 on, Newswire services, the salespeople are never gonna reach out to them. So, they like that we we service those people. They recognize that, the the wallets and pocketbooks of these people are very limited. So, we we were able to negotiate a really good rate, largely because we represent so many people.

Mickie Kennedy: 07:24

We move over 10,000 releases a year on average, for small businesses entrepreneurs.

Joe Rando: 07:31

Question on the the press release. So you send this off with the hope of getting written about. does the journalist typically just read the press release or write an article, or do they more often than not reach out to the press contact and get more information?

Mickie Kennedy: 07:47

About 95% of the time, they prefer to work off the press release and the website, of the client. 5% of the time, they'll call, ask for clarifying, questions or more information. They're busy. They hate playing phone tag back and forth with people, so they like to have all the information there. Generally, they only contact you if they have questions or there's a problem.

Mickie Kennedy: 08:12

Or maybe they've written the article, and then their managing editor ask, are you sure that this is correct? And they're like, well, let me check with them. So it is definitely the standard that most of the time they don't reach out and call.

Joe Rando: 08:26

And given the fact that they're checking your website, should you have a press section if you're putting out press releases? Is that like a like a no brainer, or do they just kind of look around your site?

Mickie Kennedy: 08:36

So it would be ideal if you had a newsroom, but, you know, having represented so many small businesses over the years, I know that's a really big ask for people who already have a website up, but they know that every time they contact the web designer, it's like $1500 here, $1500 there. So one of the things that I do suggest is if you don't have a newsroom, maybe you have a blog, and maybe you create a category in your blog called, newsroom or news or something. And maybe that's where you put your press releases as well as your wins. You know, when you do get an article, you know, have a screenshot there and, you know, information, about that, media pickup. So, I think that can work.

Mickie Kennedy: 09:22

I feel like there's such good content in press releases and talking about your industry that's so specific there that, you know, building out a newsroom or a section on your website can really be a great, value to you as far as potential inbound traffic, long tail keywords, and things like that.

Carly Ries: 09:41

So let me backtrack a little bit because let's say I'm just now starting my business and I'm like, oh my gosh. This sounds great. I totally wanna get discovered by a reporter and written about, talked about all the news maybe. Who knows? Are are press releases right for every business?

Carly Ries: 09:55

You work with a lot of small businesses. We're specifically talking to solopreneurs. When does it make sense and when does it not make sense? And do you see kind of a pattern of the types of businesses it works better for as opposed to others?

Mickie Kennedy: 10:08

I think it works better if you're doing something that's unique, like you have a USP, unique selling proposition. There's something about you that's a little bit different than everybody else in your industry because it it's easier to distinguish you as as being different. That being said, you know, people that aren't unique can't get media pickup. I've, I've, I've had really good success. It takes a little more work and being a little more creative, the, you know, the things, the the things that I find, so interesting about PR and press releases specifically is, you know, so many people will approach us and ask us, is this press release written well enough?

Mickie Kennedy: 10:50

And I always tell people, let's take a step back and determine why did you choose this subject and was it the best subject for you? You know, a a well written press release that's not about a newsworthy subject isn't gonna result in anything. So, that's that's one of the big challenges. The most, popular press release that we get at the releases is a personnel change, and it's usually not an executive, and it's usually not an industry veteran. So the newsworthiness is just not there.

Mickie Kennedy: 11:25

Most people do not care that Zach now works as an associate in HR. But, you know, I would suggest rather than spend money even with us, even though we're cheaper than going to the newswire, I would take that money and save it for a more strategic type of press release. And a better solution would be to, send an email to your local newspaper. If you have a business magazine or business newspaper in the area, send them an email just announcing, the personnel change and a photo, because that's probably all you're gonna get. Maybe you could also reach out to a trade publication, especially if they have an on the move section, where they just put a little photo and a couple of sentences.

Mickie Kennedy: 12:07

But that's not a very big get, and I don't think it's gonna drive much in the way of sales or visibility for a company. So my advice to most people is be more strategic and do more strategic types of press releases. Things like that are, you know, owning your own story. You know, what is your story? There's a reason that most people who appear on Shark Tank lead with their story. What inspired them or allowed for the creation of this business or product. You know, usually, there's something that could be inspirational, could be an obstacle they overcame, or a vulnerability. You know, maybe a spouse died and they had this hobby, and they're like, maybe I could transform this into a real business. Or, you know, I got laid off, and so me and my buddy took this idea, decided we're gonna start a business with it. I think the reason that so many people open with that is because it really humanizes the people.

Mickie Kennedy: 13:15

It's a human interest element. At the end of the day, people, viewers at home as well as people, who read news, they want to read about people. They want to know about the people behind companies. They don't wanna do business with logos and corporations. They wanna do business with people. And the more you can do about humanizing, your story, you have a you know, that's something that translates really well, with the media.

Carly Ries: 13:44

Does it make sense for people to use press releases to announce their business? Like, as a first move, I'm a solopreneur. I just started this new thing. This is awesome. Does it make sense to do it as a here I am, look at me piece, or does it make sense to wait until they have a little bit of experience under their belts to make sure everything's working properly and then make the announcement.

Mickie Kennedy: 14:07

I think it's okay if you have a story there. You know, I look at a lot of, launch press releases, and there isn't a story there. It's, you know, here's a new business. This is what we provide. Nothing distinguishable from anybody else that provides that service.

Mickie Kennedy: 14:29

A quote about someone who's excited about starting, but just not a lot there to stick with. So if you have a very unusual story, I would say, yes. That probably lends itself to a good launch, press release. You know, if you have a very interesting past, yeah, certainly that can lead to, some media pickup. But, you know, for a lot of people, I would say, it may not be the right time.

Mickie Kennedy: 15:00

Maybe hold off until you have something else to align with it. So you're sharing your story of the launch or that you've recently opened, but with something a little more meaningful.

Carly Ries: 15:11

Yeah. That makes sense. Then my other question is you were talking about the reporters that are reading these things are super busy. So you wanna be clear, concise. What are some tips people can use to increase the conversion rates of these press releases? Because solopreneurs are also super busy. So what is the win win for both sides?

Mickie Kennedy: 15:31

Right. So, it's get to the point, you know, what's the most important aspect first? Journalists are storytellers. They're protecting their most valuable asset, which is our audience. You know, what is it about, what you're announcing that is either going to educate, entertain, or delight, their audience?

Mickie Kennedy: 15:52

And if you can't if you don't have something, there, that's that's meaningful, it's very unlikely that you're gonna pass the test that they're going to wanna write an article about you. You know, it really boils down to having an interesting story or, the data, that they know that the audience would relate to and want to know about. For example, one of the solutions I have for a lot of people who come to me and they just feel like we're not newsworthy. There's nothing we can do that's really newsworthy. In this case, it was an auto repair shop, not too far from Philadelphia, but they were in their own town.

Mickie Kennedy: 16:39

And, they had lost their website because it was attached to the yellow pages somehow, the domain name. And so they had a new domain name, and an SEO guy that I knew said, Mickey can get you ranking again. And so I told them, having talked to him, there's not a lot about you that's newsworthy, and, you know, your goal was to get auto industry links, back to them. And I said, you know, a survey or study within your industry is the only thing that potentially could work. And their eyes glazed over because they're just like, oh, that sounds like so much work.

Mickie Kennedy: 17:15

And who are we to do a survey in our industry? But, you know, I coached him through it. It's something I do, with a lot of clients. You know, literally the hard part is coming up with 16 meaningful questions that are relevant right now today in your industry. And, you know and sometimes you can pick some weird left field questions when you're brainstorming.

Mickie Kennedy: 17:39

I put them towards the back because, we we we load these up in SurveyMonkey 4 questions per page. And sometimes people give up, you know, like, oh, it's like a page. I'm gone. But you still have, you know, 8 responses, and hopefully the more meaningful ones. But I put the strange ones towards the back just just just so you don't alienate them off the bat.

Mickie Kennedy: 18:00

And, then you take the link for SurveyMonkey and you share it. And, you know, the next thing I got from the auto, that auto shop was, we don't have a lot of other people in the industry we know, but I was like, well, tell me about some trade associations you belong to. And one was an independent trade association, which I think had, like, I think under 3,000 members. And I said, that's perfect. You know, they're not a large trade association.

Mickie Kennedy: 18:28

This doesn't work with large trade associations because they're big, they're bureaucratic, and they get lots of the media attention. But the small and independent trade associations and I guarantee there's dozens in every industry. You just have to do a little research. They're out there. Some could be regional.

Mickie Kennedy: 18:45

Some could be specific to a demographic, but there's also lots of other ones that are just out there. And, find 1, you're looking for, I would say, probably 800 or more members. The goal is to get a 100 responses or more, with the survey. You, send them the link and ask them, hey. Could you send this to your members?

Mickie Kennedy: 19:07

And in exchange for that, we'll include you at a press release we'll be issuing over the wire in the coming weeks. And almost all the time, the small and independent trade associations will say yes because it's a win win for them to get a little media attention as well. Some have pushed back and asked if you can cobrand the survey. I don't see a downside to that. It's them being a little more strategic.

Mickie Kennedy: 19:27

I'm like, all good for that. It's just you aligning yourself a little bit more, with with this trade association. You're looking for them to send it out ideally through email. Some will do social media. Some will do both.

Mickie Kennedy: 19:40

But you're really looking to hit that, 100 or more. Look at the results. What were the big moments of the surprises? And you're generally gonna focus on 2 or 3 of those moments for the press release. I recommend building out a website where you put all the questions and responses, because a really clever journalist can go hunt there to see if there's another story they could do.

Mickie Kennedy: 20:04

But, the press release should really focus on just 2 or 3 of those questions at most. And you're gonna have a great quote by yourself, why you felt the numbers skewed a particular way, some analysis there. And, generally, when, my clients send that out, they get 8 to 14, earned media articles. 8 to 4 8 to 14 articles that are about that survey, about them, and, you know, that's a that's that's huge. The least we've ever gotten is for and, you can always sort of look back as to what what what you could have done to maybe boost it up a little bit.

Mickie Kennedy: 20:42

But it's always worked. And it does take a little bit more effort. But if you approach it like I did with, you know, procedures, it's not that difficult to do. And it's one way where if you just feel I'm not newsworthy at all, you can, you know, greatly stand out. In their case, they they got picked up by, I think, around 17 publications, including their local newspaper, which we weren't sure that was gonna happen, but it did.

Mickie Kennedy: 21:07

And it was all because of that little survey. Within, I think, 60 to 90 days, they were ranked number 1 in their area with a new domain name, when people did a search for them. So that that was the ultimate goal of trying to use the authority links of automotive trade publications, which have a greater authority linking to them. And in the case, I think only 7 of the publications ended up linking to them. Not all of them, but that was enough to really, you know, get them.

Carly Ries: 21:39

That is so interesting and just such a good reminder because we have a lot of independent consultants, coaches, everything on here, and they're all valuable, but they are kind of a dime a dozen sometimes. Like, they I mean, there are just so many, and this is a great way to differentiate themselves. So that's a a really good point and a good tip to take home. And the one question I have is you were saying it can be a lot of work. Things can be a lot of work.

Carly Ries: 22:01

Press releases themselves can take time. So I have a 2 part question, and that is if people wanted to press releases themselves, where do they start? And then I wanna follow that with if they wanna hire somebody to do them for them, what do they look for in a person? But let's start with the DIY.

Carly Ries: 22:20

If a person starting out as a solopreneur wants to do this themselves, what do they do?

Mickie Kennedy: 22:27

Right. I would recommend that they visit your releases. I have a free master class that, sort of goes through, how to create a winning PR strategy. It's based on the PR campaigns of my most successful clients. The survey study one I gave is one of those, and, it's at eReleases.com/plan.

Mickie Kennedy: 22:50

It's less than an hour long video. It's completely free, But that's a great place to start. Because if you go there and audit yourself and your practice or or small business, with these ideas, you should walk away with at least 6 strategic types of releases you could do. These are the ones that are more likely to get pickup. I think DIY is the way to go.

Mickie Kennedy: 23:14

And my reason for that is I'm sort of dumbfounded at the fact that so many PR firms don't do the survey or study, and they don't do creative stuff that I know works. And, I've worked with so many clients who spent 20 to $40,000 with PR firms previously, and there is no guarantee of earned media with most PR firms. I don't guarantee media pickup. You know, but but I've been entertained with the idea of, like, maybe I should just create a $20,000 PR campaign that guarantees pickup. And one of the cornerstones of it could be the survey and study and, you know, help the client, you know, develop that and get that out.

Mickie Kennedy: 23:59

But that being said, my goal is to get my clients to just do it themselves, and walk them through the process. I I think that that's, you know, really one of the great great things to do. I can't imagine, you know, a peer firm taking 20 to $40,000 and not delivering anything, and yet it happens again and again by so many people. And I'm just like I guarantee if you did a campaign of, 6 to 8 releases, which is usually the minimum for a PR campaign, and you follow my ideas for doing strategic ones, and one of them is the survey, you're gonna have at least 2 or 3 of those releases result in urge media. I just don't see how it could not happen.

Mickie Kennedy: 24:42

And, yet there are PR firms that choose the safe press releases that everybody else is doing, and I'm not seeing PR firms or practitioners that I could recommend that offer any kind of real media pickup. The only notable exception are those that do paid placement. So you can get, like, I think Forbes is one of those places that has contributors, where you can just be on Forbes website. And that's not real art media. You're not gonna get in a magazine of Forbes.

Mickie Kennedy: 25:16

You're just paying a premium to be on Forbes' website, a location on the website that doesn't get a huge amount of traffic. It's really good for using the logo and telling people or giving the link out to people, but it's not real earned media. So I'm just really suspicious of a lot of people when it comes to, solo producers and people with small budgets because I I I don't see PR firms being proactive in a way that is designed to really leverage and get a lot of urge media. I don't know why they're not wearing their thinking caps and and doing strategic types of releases, but so many of them just follow the safe route. And if you you know, at the end of the year, they didn't guarantee anything, and you really didn't have much happen other than syndication where the press release gets replicated on a few websites, which happens with everyone.

Mickie Kennedy: 26:08

It really nothing meaningful happens. And that and that's a real shame because I think that controlling the PR yourself, you know, doing stuff strategically, certainly, you could hire someone to write the release, but you really should be coaching them on what the release should be about it. And it should be strategic, you know, you know, doing the survey or doing your story or, you know, some of the other ideas I have are being a sane contrarian on a subject matter works really well, especially if you have a hot topic in your industry and everybody is, like, on the same side. Is there a way that you could position yourself to be on the opposite side? And the reason for that is journalists like to be fair and balanced.

Mickie Kennedy: 26:50

And every time they report on this topic, they're not reporting on the other side because no one's raised their hand and said, I represent this other side, and I'd love to talk about and discuss it. So, you know, electric cars, it seems like everybody writes about how positive that is for the environment. But maybe you're the one person raising their hand and saying, hey. Maybe not so fast. 30,000 gallons of water to put out a fire, you know, of electric car.

Mickie Kennedy: 27:17

You know, how do we solve getting rid of these batteries, in an environmental way? And are we, you know, finding the best solutions to get these minerals out of the ground to make these batteries? I'm hearing about a lot of, environmental, catastrophes around mining, not to mention labor issues. And so that's a way to be sane and level headed and rational, but you're also putting out the contrarian viewpoint. Why this is so great is if you are just joining the conversation like everybody else, you might get one article. But if you're the person who's being the contrarian, every article that's out there has the potential for them to pop you in because you're the only person being the contrarian on that viewpoint. And so you have a potential to have many, many articles where you come in with a contrarian quote or a contrarian viewpoint. And, it's a great way to stand out as long as the views that you take do not, alienate you from your customer base.

Carly Ries: 28:16

That's a good point. Well, so this is just me having a marketing background, but not in the PR space. So the other question I was gonna ask was if you are gonna hire a PR firm, which I know you said that's probably not the best route to go, but let's say somebody is, like, oh, well, but I I wanna just say that I have a PR firm and they do wanna go that route. You were saying that a lot of PR firms put guarantees on things.

Mickie Kennedy: 28:41

Oh, almost none of them put guarantees.

Carly Ries: 28:43

Oh, then I misheard you. Okay.

Carly Ries: 28:45

Because that was my so

Mickie Kennedy: 28:47

So there are a few that that go under guaranteed placement as part of their name. They're not big. They're not well known. But for what they do is paid placement. And so you're gonna get that paid article on Forbes, and you're gonna get paid placements on other places.

Mickie Kennedy: 29:06

Technically, it should say paid or sponsored or something on the page, where you're listed, to be in compliance with the government. But, I'm just telling you that I feel like that's just a fool's errand, you know, I've had clients who have done a press release and been asked to be on The Tonight Show, Good Morning America. I've had them be on New York Times, Wall Street Journal, all of these great places that can never happen with paid placement. It's just not. And that potentially could happen, you know, if you follow the pursuit of real earned media.

Mickie Kennedy: 29:46

And that for me is the ultimate goal, to get real meaningful media pickup. And, you know, if you're pursuing paid placement, it's expensive, and it's not gonna be meaningful. I don't think you'll get any traffic from any of the pickup. These aren't pages that get a lot of traffic to them. They're not organic pages.

Mickie Kennedy: 30:07

You know, like, they're not appearing with all the other Forbes articles that are the same in print. They're just a ways of which these poor publishers are trying to monetize themselves a little bit, and, it's not the solution that people are looking for. A wild example, it is probably the most extreme example, but it's on my website as a case study. Early in the pandemic, we did a free press release for, it was a PR firm that was working on an effort called the Dining Bond Initiative, and it was set up very shortly to help restaurants that were closed during the pandemic. Sent out one press release, hit send.

Mickie Kennedy: 30:47

We quit counting at a 100 after a 150 articles, were picked up. All the big places picked it up, Wall Street, Washington Post, New York Times, all the big ones. A lot of your food trades picked it up. And then just so many local papers across the US.

Mickie Kennedy: 31:07

That's where we stopped counting because it it you just could have counted and counted. Probably over 300 places picked it up. Over $11,000,000 in revenue generated from one press release, you know, that's that's a huge return. You could never get that for paid placement. I guarantee that anything you put in paid placement, you will see no ROI unless you can somehow take that logo and it increases the conversions on your website.

Mickie Kennedy: 31:33

I don't know that it will. I don't think that it will, not in a way that justifies the expenses. But with earned media, you do have the potential to drive sales, you know, also, can improve conversions as well because you can take the same article and share it with your leads, share it with your customers. You know, there's always customers who who churn. They think about trying someone else because they wanna make sure they're using the best company.

Mickie Kennedy: 31:59

But maybe they read that article and they say, yep, I'm with the best company this year. And that is one of the things that happens with earned media and why it converts so well is because it's seen as, like, social proof or, this big credibility boost. It almost acts like an implied endorsement. Our blinders that come up with ads do not come up with articles. I personally can recall many times I've read an article or a blog post about a great kick starter campaign.

Mickie Kennedy: 32:27

I see if what they were trying to accomplish, and then I click through and see that the, you know, price to back them isn't crazy. And then I just do it. And that happens with earned media all the time. Rarely ever happens with ads.

Carly Ries: 32:40

So to circle back to to the thing I was gonna ask was, because in the rest of the marketing world, a guaranteed something is a red flag. Like, I guarantee 10,000 leads for your company if you hire me. That's a red flag. You don't wanna go with them. So is a guarantee Considered a red flag for PR firms as well? Because it would just basically be sponsored content like you were saying?

Mickie Kennedy: 33:03

Yes.

Carly Ries: 33:04

Okay. Well yeah. So look out for that if you do go the PR agency route. But as Mickie was saying, maybe it's best to DIY at first. But I'm glad you were talking about you were saying $11,000,000 for, what was brought in, which is crazy. But I do also know that PR can be really difficult to measure the ROI of. So for a solopreneur who really is counting every penny they spend, what are some recommendations for tracking ROI, not just with press press releases, but just with PR? And for those of you listening, we haven't said, PR is public relations. So sorry if we haven't clarified that yet. what are what are your tips for that?

Mickie Kennedy: 33:48

Sure. So our ROI is one of the things that makes us so difficult for a marketer to wrap their head around PR, because it's like, you know, if you, you know, can we include a tracking link in the press release? Yes. But I guarantee you, a 100% of the people that do publish URL aren't gonna post that.

Mickie Kennedy: 34:08

They're gonna go to your website and take the link there. They're not gonna include any tracking information. Can we ask them to? No. You can't.

Mickie Kennedy: 34:14

They're not going to. They have, you know, a policy there. New York Times policy is we never link to you. Despite that, I've had them linked to one article once, and it was a survey, where we had built out a resource page that was so thick with, information in addition to the survey, that they thought it was useful to send people there. And so they made an exception that one time. They generally don't.

Carly Ries: 34:41

Why? what is the policy? Why is that?

Mickie Kennedy: 34:44

Because websites go down, and all of a sudden they're linking to a porn site, or something else. That's one of the big reasons. And with everything else that they have going on, having someone looking at links all the time, because links often, they don't go down for very long because someone snaps them up, and they're just back up under a new life and a new entity. And so, they generally don't link to you.

Mickie Kennedy: 35:11

That being said, you still get SEO credit, for an article where there is no link to you. You know, Google long ago patented, and a lot of people talk about it, that it you know, it's a real thing that, they can tell, through the context of an article, whether it's about a particular website. And if they read about ereleases and press release distribution in an article in New York Times, they know it's about me, and I get the credit as if that's an a real link to my website even though there is no link there. It's called an implied link. And so it does give you benefit, and, you know, and people still pay attention, open a new window or a tab, and, you know, find the company they read about and do business with them all the time.

Mickie Kennedy: 35:55

So, how do you measure that? You know, one of the things is, most people know what trajectory they're on. You know, we're growing 5% month to month, or we're down, and it's been trending. We're down 5% every month. You do a PR campaign.

Mickie Kennedy: 36:13

You get, some earned media that month, and all of a sudden that month you're up 12%. Pretty good assumption that the the the media pickup, was a contributing factor in that. But, you know, it's also really inexplicably hard to prove exactly that. I do have some people who've been able to see, incoming traffic from a particular, article and measure that. In the case of one that I talked to a couple weeks ago, they had gotten, I think over 300 visitors from one article, and they said it looked like 200 of them converted.

Mickie Kennedy: 36:49

And they were just like, this is obviously wrong. Right? And I was like, not necessarily. You know? Probably a lot more people than 300 read the article.

Mickie Kennedy: 37:00

But 300 read it enough that they clicked the link, and then they went to your website and over 200 bought. You're you're it's a consumer product. I think it was $29. I was like, that's an impulse buy. I think it is probably.

Mickie Kennedy: 37:13

They read the article, you know, rapport and excitement that happens with reading an article about someone. The fact it's an article is a huge signal of trust. They just click through and bought. I think it's very likely that it was. So in some cases, looking at your logs, and if you do have that ability, can be useful to determining some things, but also asking questions.

Mickie Kennedy: 37:36

A lot of my customers are in the b to b space, so they're not really having something that you can just click and buy for $29. But, you know, they do have, people who come on board, ask for white papers or, sign up as a lead or, you know, potentially do business. And one of the great things is how did you first, hear about us? And that's a great way to record, for people how how did they hear about you. It might, be able to attribute some of that to a specific article or publication.

Carly Ries: 38:06

Yeah. That's really smart.

Joe Rando: 38:07

Put that on the form. Just put that on the form and just have a drop down or something that says article or ... That's great. What a good idea.

Carly Ries: 38:16

Also in terms of tracking, does it ever make sense to do a specific offer that people would only know about if they saw, out in the wild for release? Or if people are just starting, do they start with just a press release and then they hold off on any email marketing or or ads or whatever so they can kinda silo it out at the beginning, or it's just like

Mickie Kennedy: 38:39

So I have people who do that. It's sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. And the downside is because it's an offer you've never put in front of paid customers, you don't know what the conversion rate is. And so, you know, you bring in 17 people. You know, these 17 people definitely came from the earned media.

Mickie Kennedy: 39:01

But, you know, maybe you were selling a bundle, and maybe if you had sent them to a more traditional page, they would have, converted more. It it's it's really an unknown as far as the conversion rates and throwing in a lot of different variables, things like that. The truth of the matter is the more you silo someone with a special offer specific to that article, the more likely the article won't include the link. You know, the last thing that the news likes to be seen as is, like, promoting, direct sales. And, you know, so they'll certainly, link to a website, maybe to a product page.

Mickie Kennedy: 39:44

But if it's a specific page to convert a special offer, I think you run the risk that they will honor that. And that's one of the things that I think would happen.

Carly Ries: 39:55

Yeah. Such a good point. Well, Mickie, this has been so informative and so educational for me. Like I said, I am in the marketing world, and I don't know any of this stuff. So I think it's so helpful for our audience who is who are just starting their businesses.

Carly Ries: 40:11

So we ask all of our guests this and you help people find success every day in the earned media world. So what is your favorite quote about success?

Mickie Kennedy: 40:20

I'm not coming up with 1 from the spot. It might be my ADHD mind. One of the people I think about is, Perry Marshall who wrote a book on 80/20, the 80/20 of marketing, I think is what it's called. And one of the things that he points out is that, there's so many aspects of your business that if you apply this 80 20 Pareto principle to, that can really make a meaningful difference in your your business. And for example, like, maybe 80% of your headaches, day to day are caused by 20% of your customers, and maybe you should let them go.

Mickie Kennedy: 41:00

And that's just one of the easy ones, but there's so many other little aspects like that that make me think about it. And I'm sure there's a quote around that, but that's not coming to mind.

Carly Ries: 41:09

Those are great parting words of wisdom. We'll take it. Mickie, we've talked about your business, but if people want to learn more about you, where can they find you?

Mickie Kennedy: 41:19

So, the website's eReleases.com. Feel free to email or call. You'll only speak to an editor, no salespeople, no commissions, or anything like that. I do have that free master class. It's a hour long video.

Mickie Kennedy: 41:33

Again, it's at ereleases.com/plan, and it's completely free. My goal is to get people to do more meaningful types of releases, and I know that if people do meaningful releases and see meaningful returns, they'll come back again and again.

Carly Ries: 41:49

Awesome. Well, this has been so great. Thank you so much for coming on their show. And listeners, we have been talking about earned media and building credibility. And, Joe, do you know what else builds credibility?

Carly Ries: 42:02

Five star reviews. Five star reviews.

Joe Rando: 42:05

Yes it does.

Carly Ries: 42:06

We love what we do. We want to continue doing it. please leave us a 5 star review, a comment, refer a friend, subscribe to YouTube, all of the above. We love having you here, and we will see you next week on The Aspiring Solopreneur.

Closing: 42:22

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