Driving Growth and Saving Lives with Press Releases - The Power of PR for All Businesses

Eric Eden : 0:58

Welcome to today's episode. Today we are going to be talking about how to do awesome things with PR and publications, and we have a great guest today, mickey Kennedy. Welcome to the show, Mickey.

Mickie Kennedy: 1:13

Kennedy, Thanks for having me.

Eric Eden : 1:15

So why don't we start out, give people a one or two minutes of context about who you are and what you do, mickey, Kennedy.

Mickie Kennedy: 1:23

Sure, my name is Mickey Kennedy. I started eReleases a little over 25 years ago. We were a matchmaking kind of service for PR where I had a database of journalists that I spent over a year putting together and just sent clients, press releases to journalists and felt like it was a good fit. And over the years, PR News, where I reached out to us and liked what we were doing and was trying to find a way to work together and I made a real big appeal that these people entrepreneurs, startups, authors may not have huge budgets. They deserve attention and the ability to get national distribution and the ability to get national distribution. And they kept encouraging me to partner with them and they give me a local distribution like a city or state, and I really held out for a national distribution and they eventually gave it to me.

Mickie Kennedy: 2:15

All press releases that go out through e-releases go out nationally over PR Newswire but you don't have to pay $1,600, which you would if you went directly through PR Newswire. That's one of our great benefits is we're a huge cost savings of going through us as opposed to going directly to the Newswire. There are some caveats. The whole program's meant to help small businesses, so if a large client comes through, we refer them directly to PR Newswire. Same thing with publicly traded companies. We're basically looking for clients that normally wouldn't be the type of company that their salespeople would be interested in, and we're very happy that we're able to give them the PR Newswire distribution in addition to some of the email distribution that we're known for.

Eric Eden : 2:57

That's great. You clearly believe in helping small to mid-sized businesses win with PR, in helping small to mid-sized businesses win with PR, and that's really fantastic. Why don't you share a story with us about some of the best marketing that you've done? That you're the most proud of.

Mickie Kennedy: 3:14

We've done a lot of press releases with people who've appeared on Shark Tank Squatty Potty, manscaped, basically, a lot of people that go on Shark Tank get referred to us by people on the show saying that people have had good experiences working with us. So that's really cool to watch the show and say, oh yeah, we did release this for them, so that's really great. I think one of the most meaningful PR efforts we did was we did a press release for a client who was just making an appeal. They had come to the United States from Russia. They had basically testified against some organized crime in Russia and they were given, I guess, provincial or temporary immunity and could stay in the country and I don't know, and could stay in the country and I don't know. The politics in DC changed when there was a new leader in place and all of a sudden they were told that they had to leave the country and were given a flight, including their actual seat number, on a plane that would be touching down in Russia. A little over a week from when they sent the release out and they had exhausted every appeal, had spent over $100,000 in legal fees and there was nothing that could be done. And this person said that he'd already received calls from people in Russia saying we can tell you how many minutes it will be after you land that you'll be killed. And we sent the release that day.

Mickie Kennedy: 4:49

The Wall Street Journal published it on their website. The next day it was in print, I think. The following afternoon everything was okay. He was told you're great, you're going to get permanent immunity, there's not a problem.

Mickie Kennedy: 5:04

He received a call from the senator of his district shortly after the release went out and that story was on the Wall Street Journal and he said I don't know what to do, but I'm going to call in every favor I have and I'm going to talk to everybody, from the president down. And yeah, by the next day everything was taken care of. And this person swore that I had saved his life, and it really made me feel good, because you do a lot of cool things, but actually saving someone's life, that's right up there, and so to me that's extremely meaningful as far as being able to help someone and use press releases and PR to make such a meaningful difference when every legal channel had been exhausted, to then rely on open press and communications the one thing we're known for here in the United States and a democracy. So I just thought it was a really great outcome and something I was very proud of.

Eric Eden : 6:01

That's a cool story saving lives with PR and I do think that there's probably more than people would think stories along that lines when there's so many charities and nonprofits cause-driven organizations that rely on PR to get the word out.

Mickie Kennedy: 6:24

Yeah, there's so many people that do rely on the efforts of the media. If you go to my website, ereleasescom, and click on case studies at the top left, the first case study is called the Dining Bond Initiative. We're set up solely to help restaurants during the pandemic. It was an effort where you nominated your favorite local restaurant that was closed at the time because we had just been sent home for two weeks to flatten the curve and we didn't know what was going on. But here, if you nominated your favorite local restaurant and their volunteers were able to get in touch with that restaurant, you could give to get in touch with that restaurant. You could give money that went directly to that restaurant, either to keep the electricity running or help people who otherwise weren't getting paid, and it would be secured through what they call a dining bond, like a gift certificate. They had modeled it after the war bond initiative because they just wanted to hit the ground running and just make a huge impact, and we quit counting the number of articles they got picked up in.

Mickie Kennedy: 7:28

There were so many small newspapers across the US that had picked it up. It was well over 100 places picked it up and raised over $10 million in revenue and all by just hitting send and it going out over the wire. It got picked up in the Wall Street Journal, harvard Business Review, fox Business, cnn, forbes, reuters, bloomberg you name it a lot of food publications. It was just such a good effort and it made you feel so good. There was so much uncertainty and negative news at the time, which I think that this was seen as like an antidote to that. You know, that's a really cool thing and represents what happens with. A lot of charities do need an effort through media and through PR, and a lot of times the media is there and they're willing to take that message and run with it, especially if it's something that just fits the time, the mood, the need. But there's also, I guess, a responsibility as well that here's something within the community that is trying to help the community and therefore we should elevate it and put a spotlight on it.

Eric Eden : 8:39

That's great, Really great. So you've been doing this for a long time and I'm curious in recent years, what's your view on how PR and media relations has evolved?

Mickie Kennedy: 8:56

There's more, I think, movement towards inclusive including, like video, like we allow the ability to embed videos. I don't see a lot of people taking all of that and working with it by creating a complete video press release yet, but I think that we're at a point where a press release could be no writing and potentially all video. But I do think that incorporating B-roll and some video footage is now something that I think that a lot more places are open to because we are migrating from that that I think that a lot more places are open to because we are migrating from that. I've often been telling people that including images and photos is a no-brainer, because if a journalist is looking at two potential stories and one has supporting photos, they're going to go with that, because these articles are usually not just print, they're also online and by having some photos and being able to use those they know it's another way to engage their audience more of a multimedia experience. That's an advantage as well.

Mickie Kennedy: 10:00

I also think that where people get media from is changing, and it always has been. It was well over 10 years ago that in a lot of cases, blogs in some industries were outpacing the traffic to them that trade publications were getting in the same space and the newswires were a little reluctant accepting blogs as journalists. But they've done a complete 180, because I was surprised to find out that so many social media influencers have been given Newswire access. For example, there's a lot of Instagram influencers that have journalist access to the wire because they are very influential in the fashion space. There's a TikToker that I follow called Snack-O-Later, who does both fast food roundups each week and grocery store snack roundups each week and he pulls the images. He says all from press releases that he gets off the wire and he's creating content of all these exciting new snacks that are hitting grocery store shelves and he's able to just pull all of those from the wire and get the corresponding images and incorporate them into a video where he's just doing a roundup of new things hitting the shelves that week. I think that shows one of the ways in which the new media and social media can take advantage of these aspects and avenues of content.

Mickie Kennedy: 11:21

Because the great thing about the US Newswire system is it's basically a duopoly, and I say good thing because you always say monopolies and duopolies are bad, but one of the valuable things about that is that in the US, having just two places to go to.

Mickie Kennedy: 11:37

It makes the journalist job pretty easy that they can get access to most all content by just going to BusinessWire and PR Newswire. And that makes it very difficult for this third player out there called Globe Newswire that's trying to get very difficult for this third player out there called Globe Newswire that's trying to get market share. But the thing is journalists they're busy and they don't want to have to then bounce to a third website to try and get information and track it down. It does make it more of a centralized repository just having two major newswires in the US and, like I said, from a financial standpoint I think it's a disadvantage because they do charge a lot being just a couple of major wires in the US. But it does make the journalist's job easier because they could just go to two places and they know that they've probably sifted through the news of maybe 90% of most businesses out there that really matter and want to get their content out.

Eric Eden : 12:31

That's fascinating. I had never really realized that social media influencers are really the next generation of journalists, and that's actually a good way to think about it. When I watch reels on Instagram and TikTok, I often wonder how did they find out about this? At the very beginning I didn't realize they were tapping into the two major news wires. But it makes sense because a lot of the younger generations Gen Z I think they go to TikTok for their news. They don't necessarily go to the Wall Street Journal or blogs or even things the millennials went to. So I think that's really fascinating that that's a reason why people should still be sending out releases on the wires to get to this whole new sort of next gen of influencers who are relying on this as a content source.

Mickie Kennedy: 13:23

Absolutely, and there's still more other things taking place. I think that there's it's a little fragmented. I think that while some influencers are acting like the media, there's also those that are acting more like advertisement, where you pay an influencer and it's a sponsored deal where they talk about your product and things like that. But that exists even in the print world as well. We've all seen the featured articles and things like that exist.

Mickie Kennedy: 13:48

Everybody who thinks that social media and influencers are reinventing everything. They're not. They're just using new platforms and the same things that happened in print are happening in different mediums. But I do think that that content more centralized and out there, and I think that's why news wires have done so well, because I remember the people 15, 20 years ago saying with blogs, we don't even need news wires anymore. Everybody can just publish their own news. More. Everybody can just publish their own news and while it's true that you can communicate the news, journalists aren't going to go bouncing around 2.8 million websites in a month. There has to be a central repository for all this content and I think that's why the news wires continue to exist and continue to be so valuable to journalists.

Eric Eden : 14:46

I do agree that influencers aren't necessarily reinventing things. They're just using new platforms. But some of the new platforms are pretty cool because of information and the way people visually do it and bring in visual clips while they're talking about it. It's cool, it's very cool and it's on demand. It's not just you have to watch it at six o'clock at night when the news is on, or six or 11. It's a different platform with different ways of people engaging and I think we just go through life and don't fully realize how things have evolved. And I think we just go through life and don't fully realize how things have evolved. But I think the evolution here is actually pretty cool, so I really like that. Is there anything else trend-wise that you've noticed in media relations and PR? That's noteworthy.

Mickie Kennedy: 15:47

Yeah, I think that the big thing is that there's still people who believe that PR is a tool for the very well-funded and larger companies, and what you have to remember is the journalists usually don't get appreciated putting a spotlight on Apple or Microsoft covering the latest Office Suite, but they often get a lot of accolades and a lot of positive feedback when they put the spotlight on an unknown company or tool, and often that spotlight is put on companies that are small. They're startups, they might be solo companies, they could be side businesses that companies have and for that reason, a lot of small businesses believe that they would never matter to the media. And what they don't realize is their small size is actually an advantage and one of the reasons that I think a journalist would be willing to consider them because they are unknown and therefore they need to have the spotlight put on them and to be recognized. And don't sell yourself short when it comes to PR. Don't feel that you have to be well-funded to do it. You just have to be pretty creative and come up with a newsworthy angle and what it is that you want to launch.

Mickie Kennedy: 17:04

I always tell people that the most common press release I get at eReleases, or one of them is the product launch press release, and you'd be surprised how many of them are just here's the product and here's a list of features and here's a page to learn more and buy it. And what they fail to take into account is that journalists are storytellers and there's not a lot of story to be told there. And yet people push back and say this product is important to us, and I'm like that's true, but make it important not to the journalist but to the journalist audience. And how could you do that? And one of them is just putting a story in there, putting the elements for the journalist to tell a story. Journalists like a story arc and they know that readers and their audience viewers like a story arc. How do you take a product launch and make it more of a story arc? Put a use case in there.

Mickie Kennedy: 18:01

You didn't just create this product and release it to the world. You had people test it and try it out. Go back to them, survey them. What were their experiences? And take someone who had a great experience If you have a logistics software solution, share someone who had a great outcome and they're like oh, we used to spend $2,500 per metric tons of stuff that we ship and by using this software and getting us more efficient, we've reduced that 42%, which equals X amount of savings per load, and get a quote by them. That really channels that excitement and that outcome. And all of a sudden, that gives the journalist the ability to craft a story saying here's a new product, here's the company that had this obstacle, this was their experience using the product and this was their outcome.

Mickie Kennedy: 18:59

And now here's some additional features about that product. It fills out more of a story art and that's something that a journalist audience would be more likely to be engaged with and that's their job as their gatekeepers trying to figure out what's either going to entertain or educate and hopefully sometimes even delight their audience. And anything that you can add to your press release or draft your press release in a way that fulfills more of that, you have a much higher likely threshold of them turning it into an article, which is the goal of a press release. We never want to see the press release just replicated on a bunch of websites and that's it. That's called syndication. It happens with everyone. What we're looking for is that journalist who then rewrites it into an article and shares it with their audience and just work on that and just try to reverse engineer anything you can, not in a way that's best presenting for you, but puts yourself forward the best that you can, while building elements in there that would make a journalist want to share it with their audience.

Eric Eden : 20:06

I like it. Yeah, make it newsworthy. That's great advice. I'm curious would you say that PR is a good way for small businesses to grow, if they do it the right way? It?

Mickie Kennedy: 20:16

can increase your conversions. It can actually drive sales and leads to you. But it's also a river that you can't necessarily control, so sometimes you get a couple of articles and it doesn't move the needle in. Sales might really help your credibility in your industry. And sometimes you get those articles that do drive sales and so you can't always cut the levers back and forth so that every article that you get is going to be a sales driver. But in aggregate they all do help in boosting your credibility Because generally when people see articles about you, it acts as social proof or an implied endorsement when a journalist writes an article about you and it is a huge authority builder.

Mickie Kennedy: 21:15

I had a client who is the least newsworthy business you could think of. There's a local carpet company in Jersey but using some of my tips and tricks we were able to get about 20 articles that they were featured in. Most of them were trade publications like carpet and floor trade publications which their customers don't read. Those are other local carpet companies throughout the United States and maybe internationally who read those. But we had a goal and what they did was they put that together in what they call a brag book, and so they have these 20 plus clippings. It did include their local newspaper and it included New Jersey Magazine, which were really important to their market. And every time they'd go and give someone a quote in their home they would open the Bragg book and say here we are, featured in floor trade weekly.

Mickie Kennedy: 22:03

Here we are at this place and this place, new Jersey magazine, their local paper. And they said we may not come in as the cheapest, but I guarantee you're not going to find any other carpet company. Come into your home. They can tell you we've been doing this for 20 some years. We don't have to ever come back to restretch carpets or fix a seam. We do it right from the beginning. We are industry recognized and if you want to save four or $500, you're welcome to and we'll gladly come back and fix their work later if you want us to. And so they started converting sales at almost 20% more just by adding that brag book. It was a little over 17% and just by adding that credibility booster. There the people didn't read the articles. It didn't add more than two minutes to the entire sales conversation that they opened it and just thumbed through it. But that exposure to this credibility was such a strong signal of trust that almost one out of every five sales that they were previously losing they were now converting, just by using that.

Eric Eden : 23:06

That's fantastic, love it. How many releases go out on eReleases every month, every year? I'm just curious.

Mickie Kennedy: 23:15

So it varies, like during the pandemic, we got a lot because there was a lot of people pivoting and needing to communicate to their audience, so it was a very busy time for us. We did over 12,000 a year Then right now we're back at our usual level, a little over 10,000 releases a year. So we're moving a lot. Speaking to that, I see a lot of patterns and releases that work and a lot of patterns and releases that don't work, and I have put together a free masterclass of the types of releases that do work and it's a great way to go through that and basically brainstorm strategic types of releases that you could be doing, patterned off of the ones that do work, and it's less than an hour-long commitment. It's a very short video masterclass and, again, completely free, and that's at ereleasescom slash plan P-L-A-N and it's a great place for someone who's never done PR to just start there, because all of a sudden you'll be brainstorming the types of releases that are actually getting pickup and actually working.

Eric Eden : 24:19

Amazing. I will link to that in the show notes. Thank you very much for being on the show today sharing your stories and your insights. This has been fantastic. We appreciate it.