The Rolling Thunder PR Strategy That Got a Company the Feature Story They Wanted

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Welcome to today's episode.

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Our guest today is Lauren.

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She is the president and founder of a PR and marketing agency in Texas and she's been helping companies with PR and marketing for many years.

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Welcome to the show.

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Thank you, eric, it's great to be here.

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So, before we jump into your remarkable story, why don't you share a little bit with us about who you are and what you do in your own words?

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My firm is called Kwedar Co.

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It's spelled K-W-E-D-A-R.

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It'sa different name but it rhymes.

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It's like queen, if you're thinking about it, and I've had that company since 2017, but I've been in this space for over 20 years now.

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I'm also a StoryBrand certified guide for all my fellow marketers out there.

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I'm actually celebrating my sixth year today as we record, and then I also have a podcast called the Impatient Entrepreneur where I interview fellow entrepreneurs and we share stories and help us not feel quite so alone in this wild journey of us, of those of us out here trying to employ people and grow businesses and help other people.

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And are entrepreneurs impatient, generally speaking.

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Yes, survey says yes.

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Everything always takes a little bit longer than what you want, right, that's always the way it goes All right.

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Why don't you share with us a story about some of the best marketing that you've done, the PR marketing you've done, that you're most proud of?

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For sure.

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Ironically it is a bit of a case study in patients.

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So one of the things that we do unique at our agency is we do have that PR specialty and our PR and marketing efforts work together, so it's very much a cross-channel approach.

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But one of our clients great client they're a multi-generational company in the B2B space and for all their many decades of experience and great work they'd really never done any formal outbound PR or marketing.

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And once we were on board and it was time to really start being strategic about communications and they were wanting to add our recommendation, start to make announcements and do PR releases for the business.

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And we knew at the end of the summer they were going to announce an acquisition.

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But I didn't want to for their first formal announcement to be about the acquisition.

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I wanted to go ahead and warm up the PR airwaves for them, as it were, and so we actually did a series of announcements leading up to that.

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We started doing something we call executive announcements, where someone joins the company at a director level or above and we do a formal announcement about their arrival or promotion.

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So we did about two or three of those just to establish relationships with the media on our client's behalf.

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We might have relationships on our own behalf because of our experience, but the client didn't have any for their name yet.

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So we started by priming the pump with some of those announcements and then so by the end of the summer, when it was time to announce this acquisition, people were aware of their name more and ready to receive their news.

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So by the time we announced the acquisition, it was received very well, got a ton of coverage for them, which was great.

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Their internal team was excited.

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Their business partners and clients were very excited.

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But then, through all that relationship nurturing, the biggest magazine in their niche called and said we want to come to Texas and tour your plant and interview your CEO and do a story.

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And we all did.

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Is that what they mean?

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Do they really want to come down here?

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They want to fly down here and talk to us.

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And then, ultimately, this client ended up being on the cover of this magazine, which they called the Vogue or the Sports Illustrated of their industry.

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And so just that whole strategic approach and not just saying, okay, we have something really big to announce, we're going to announce it today, we're ready to go right now, taking the time to step back and really get the audience ready.

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For us was really important and we've done that over the years for a number of clients now and it's worked really well.

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So when someone comes to us and they really haven't done any formal PR before, that's something we do like to recommend.

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Unless it's required, unless it's time bound and we have to announce the time bound news right away, we do if we can, if we have the time and space to do so, to warm up their media list before we go with the big news.

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Yeah, so doing that series of PR announcements, when I've done that in the past, I came up with a very official term of art for it called rolling thunder for it called Rolling Thunder.

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But in all seriousness, Rolling Thunder PR has been very effective, because I think what you're saying is that you're building up a relationship.

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When you're doing media relations, you're building up a relationship with media outlets and having a once and done sort of approach to it is not really a relationship, it's a transaction, having that sort of series of announcements where people get to know you and they warm up to you, even if they don't cover every single thing you put out.

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They're monitoring it and it seems to lead to those great sorts of things.

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Like you mentioned, when I work with CEOs, their ultimate goal is to get featured in the Sports Illustrated or the Vogue of their industry, whatever it is, and getting on the cover and getting a feature story like that.

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If a client comes to you and says we want you to specifically architect that, that's a hard thing to promise them, but it's a great result, results not guaranteed.

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It's funny because I'm actually working on a content piece for a business right now, and a red flag with a PR firm is that they can guarantee results because they can guarantee it.

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Well, that's an now, and a red flag with a PR firm is that they can guarantee results because they can guarantee it.

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Well, that's an ad, and if you're guaranteeing something that is earned, what's there?

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Is there some sort of relationship I should be aware of?

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Is there something amiss or awry or unethical happenings?

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It is something that you do earn, and we help our clients earn that A by being great stewards of their brands, by being responsive to deadlines, to creating really beautifully written content that tells a crisp story that the reporter they can just lift it and run it as if they wrote it, that's fine with me.

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Or if it just inspires them to ask more questions and to create their own beautifully written content, that's a win too.

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That relationship nurturing is extremely important.

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That's a huge thing that we do, and we want clients to want to work with us and we want the media to want to work with us, and so being able to bridge that gap and do the handshaking emoji of bringing everybody together to tell great stories is what we're doing.

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And so here we are in 2024.

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I think media has gone through quite a transformation in recent years.

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What does it take to get coverage and to get earned media in 2024?

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Would you say it's different than the past, it's evolved.

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Some things that have certainly changed this podcast, for instance.

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Podcasts are an incredible opportunity for clients as they build their subject matter expertise, but there's a lot of them out there, so it is very labor intensive as we look at all the different audiences we can communicate with.

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But I'm certainly for that democratization of news and information.

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It just takes more time, and now we've got online resources and podcasts and all these different things, and so the shelf life of a contact is not quite what it used to be either, but fortunately there's an app for that Multiple apps.

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What other integrated channels or programs, like podcasts, have you found to mix with earned media that work well?

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Have you found anything else that has been interesting?

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That's a good question.

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We've seen some folks who use their influencer game in a very professional manner.

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That has been helpful for some of our clients.

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I'm thinking of a woman here who she has a podcast, she has a blog, she has her social channel.

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I'd consider her probably a micro influencer, but she's very professional about how she approaches her business and, if you're particularly in a B2C realm, creating a relationship with someone like that and, for a small investment, being able to get some really nice quote unquote coverage helpful, particularly as we're trying to increase brand awareness in an audience or market that we can't necessarily tap into through traditional media.

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Or we really need that trusted voice to help broker that introduction, that introduction.

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We might buy an ad that is on Instagram but someone would just blow past it.

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But all of a sudden someone they look to a big sister or something is saying here's a brand you need to pay attention to.

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Now we're removing so many roadblocks that were up against them beforehand, so that's been really interesting that we certainly didn't have that 20 years ago.

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Yeah.

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So I was joking earlier about offering guaranteed Erdmenia, but it does bring up a question that I have in my mind when I've worked with CEOs at startups and entrepreneurs before, and one of the biggest things around PR is managing expectations.

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Hire a PR agency is the marketer being responsible for that relationship with the agency and then working with the executives at the company, helping people have the right expectation of what's realistic has been the hardest part of it.

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Like we were talking about what's news and what's not news versus what's just promotion or advertising is usually a big topic.

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But, my question is how have you helped marketers working with them set expectations within their company about what's possible with earned media and PR?

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You answered part of it there, which is what's news and what's not.

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I have the conversation all the time where I might be working with an in-house marketing person for an agency and or excuse me for a client and we're talking about okay, now it's really time for earned media.

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At this stage of the game.

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What kind of stories can we talk about?

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And invariably a marketer will throw out we can create a promotion.

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If you want to talk about promotion and we have to say that's not news, we can write a blog about that, we can run ads toward that.

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But really it has to.

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It has to make sense for someone to write about and it has to help that reporter or journalist do their job better and for them to get more clicks and likes and shares and all that.

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So we really have to leave our echo chamber in what helps them tell a great story and get some interest.

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So that's certainly a big part about it is understanding what is news and what is marketing.

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And then, as far as setting expectations we talk about we love to know who's on a client's wishlist and then, but then we also say look, especially for just starting, we really like to prioritize your headquarters region because your at least your business media in your local area has a vested interest in your success.

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They want you as a future advertiser.

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They want you to do well.

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They want to be able to cover who's in their patch.

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So we always like to prioritize your backyard and then your niche, whether it's the Vogue of your industry or the just the local beat for your industry.

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We really like to look at at what reporters are covering there and and what makes sense and tailoring the news to them.

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But yeah, we never guarantee.

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All we can do is our best in creating, like I said, that really compelling, crisp content for our clients and then finding, curating a media list that's just for them and then pitching and doing a great job there.

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So far we have a good track record.

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Sometimes you just don't know what's going to work.

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I had a great client who never did formal PR.

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People knew about them and they would get calls and they'd be interviewed from time to time and it was so funny when I started sending news releases out about them, a couple of people were like, oh, thank God, thank God, someone's representing them now We've been trying to cover this business for so long and that they had someone that they could call and know that they were going to get taken care of and get the story covered.

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Thank you very much for sharing your story today and these words of advice about PR.

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