Reduce your CAC and improve your exit multiple with Press Releases: eReleases.com’s Mickie Kennedy

Press releases have been around for quite some time, because it’s a great way to get news out about your company. Maybe you had a record quarter, or maybe you closed out a round of funding, or maybe WebsiteClosers.com announced the sale of your Ecommerce business (those are our favorites). But the question is, How are press releases valuable to the businesses? Let’s find out from Mickie Kennedy, founder and CEO of eReleases, which has been in the press release experts since 1998.

Today’s episode of Deal Closers is hosted by Izach Porter, brought to you by WebsiteClosers.com, and is produced by Earfluence.

Transcript

Mickie Kennedy: One press release generated so much buzz and attention and spread so much because of the potential of leverage that you get with PR. You know, if you have the right message, you can literally get hundreds of places to pick you up.

Izach Porter: All right, you’re listening to the Deal Closers Podcast, brought to you by websiteclosers.com. A show about how to build your eCommerce business to be profitable, scalable, and one day even sellable. I’m Isaac Porter and on the show today, we’re talking about press releases with Mickie Kennedy, the founder of eReleases, which has helped over 10,000 companies since 1998.

Press releases have been around for quite some time, because it’s a great way to get news out about your company. Maybe you had a record quarter, or maybe you closed out a round of funding. Maybe there’s even an event you wanna promote. I’ll tell you personally, my favorite press release is when I see Website Closers announce another successful e-commerce business sale, love to read those, those are fun. But I think the question and the topic that I want to dig into a little bit more today is how are these valuable to the businesses? 

Let’s find out from Mickie Kennedy. Hey, Mickie, how’s it going today?

Mickie: Oh, good. Thanks for having me.

Izach: Yeah, man. Glad to have you on the show. Alright so back in 1998, when you started the company, people were getting their first email addresses, maybe like a Hotmail or an AOL account. Google launched, but it really wasn’t a big thing at that point, GeoCities and Lycos were like top, most popular top 10 most popular sites.

Um, these are ancient times in the world of eCommerce. So walk us through the problem that you were seeking to address back then and what you hoped eReleases could do to help.

Mickie: Right. So, before that, just a couple years before that I was sending out press releases for a telecom startup that I worked at and we just faxed it and we started to get a lot of calls from people asking if we could just forward it as a word attachment. And that sort of got me thinking that email seems like a natural evolution of, you know, communicating with journalists. So, I spent about a year contacting journalists and asked if I could just send them press releases related to their beats. And at the time, most of ’em were like, that would be great. That would solve a lot of problems that we have.

So I, I launched with a very simple business model and 10,000 journalists in my database. And I just connected news to the journalist and over time we changed, we, were approached by PR Newswire, why don’t we also send our releases through them as well. And there’s a lot of value with that, but I pointed out to them that to move a 500-word press release over PR Newswire nationally is over a thousand dollars. And I was charging my clients a couple hundred dollars at the time. I made a real big pitch for entrepreneurs and small business owners and people who really couldn’t afford what PR news wire charges. It’s like, you know, fortune 5,000 clients that, you know, make up the bulk of them. 

And they realized that they aren’t going to serve small businesses with their existing salesperson driven model. And so they thought, let’s give it a try and see how it works out. And, you know, we’ve been doing, working with them for over 10 years and helping people get their press releases out through email as well as over the wire, without spending over a thousand dollars to move a press release.

Izach: All right. So this is super interesting for me. So I’ve, you know, operated several e-commerce stores and spoken with hundreds of owners and founders that are getting ready to sell their business or planning on it. I know a ton about PPC. I know enough to be dangerous about SEO., and I feel like I know nothing about press releases.

So how, how does the, how does it actually work? Like what is good enough to qualify for a press release? Like what information is good enough, and then how do you actually get people to print that? How, like, how does that behind-the-scenes part of it work.

Mickie: Great. So what qualifies as the press release the metric is really, really low. The bar is low and I would say 95% of the press releases that we move are not newsworthy and probably won’t result in any articles being written about them. That is the ultimate goal of PR and doing press releases is to get earned media where an article’s written about you.

There’s a lot of distractions out there where people syndicate and there are services that that’s all they do is syndicate. So you’re the press release itself shows up on various websites. It’s duplicate content, doesn’t help you from a SEO standpoint, but for some people it looks good. And you can add some ‘as seen on’ logos with some Fox affiliates or NBC affiliates and things like that.

That does happen with the wire, but that’s not the goal of it. It’s to have a message that resonates with the journalist, cuz the journalist is a gatekeeper and he’s deciding what information he feels would be worthy of sharing with his audience. And if you can kind of reverse engineer you know, you know, our goal is to sell more product.

But, how can I position this, this new product that we’re launching in a way that be, would be really compelling and make a journalist, want to share it? How do I make it irresistible? And that takes a little bit more work and a little bit more creativity and thought. But you know, doing press releases more strategically will, you know, get you those articles that so many of, of these press releases that move just don’t get anything.

Izach: Okay. All right. So let me just dig a little bit deeper to that. So I’m a small business owner, right? And maybe one of my clients just acquired another small business, maybe it’s an e-commerce business, and I want to do a press release about the acquisition with the goal of promoting both the businesses, the, my existing business and the business I acquired.

Right. So I, I call you up. I tell you about that. Like, how do you take that, I guess maybe somewhat self-serving almost advertising type of concept and turn it into a press release. I imagine that’s gotta be kind of the art of what you do is making that sound interesting in news rather than advertising, cuz there’s a fine line there.

Mickie: Right, there is. I mean, one of the things that I would try to do is I, I would look at this acquisition in the context of your industry. Is there consolidation happening? If so, do you have some numbers? There’s a lot of data that’s out there and if you can put it all together in one place for a journalist and then put your story in the context of that, that makes it very meaningful and more likely that a journalist has more to work with. 

You know, having a really compelling quote about your industry, not just specifically about this acquisition, is another way to really build a story and give journalists more to dig into than just, you know, to, two companies who found each other and, and, and have combined.

Izach: Yeah. Okay. That’s really cool. And so when you, maybe are talking to a new client, are you kind of talking through this kind of strategy and having them, you know, get the information that you need to, to actually turn it into a press worthy release. Is that, is that part of the, the consulting work that you do?

Mickie: It, it is., I also have a, a masterclass of winning press release strategies that I try to get my clients to, you know, watch it’s an hour video it’s completely free. It sort of synthesizes several different types of releases that, you know, generally always get, media attention.

Like the, the big one that always works is doing a survey or study within your industry. I’ve never had that, not work where it didn’t result in earned media. On average, it’s usually eight to 14 articles for every press release that’s about a surveyor study. And a lot of people think that that’s a lot of work and it doesn’t have to be, you know, you set up Survey Monkey, you build out some questions.

Spend some good time thinking about the questions that are very appropriate. Right now things are going on, there’s supply chain issues, there’s labor issues. There’s, you know, people, who are having trouble finding work, people who don’t want to work, you know, people trying to find staff and also trying to make it work because it seems like there’s something that’s different.

And so if you can sort of articulate questions to things that are going on, right now. The type of stuff that you would want to know with your, you know, about your competitors. Like, are you also finding that it’s really difficult to do X, Y, and Z? Those are the types of questions you should do. And the great thing about these questions is you can do a survey today and then six months later, you can do another survey and they both will stand up and get media attention, because the questions you asked today, aren’t gonna be the same questions for the most part that you ask in six months. 

But even if they are the answer’s gonna be different and you’re gonna have the analysis, you’re gonna come in as the expert and say, this is, you know, my reasoning as to why I think. The numbers skewed a certain way, on this question or this topic. And that’s a really great way to stand out within your industry, build a huge credibility across your industry because you know, when, when someone authors a survey or study, they are seen as experts in their industry. It just happens, you know, you just going out there and doing that. And, the media loves numbers, loves lurking with data and they, they like stories and analysis. So if you can put that together it can work really well. 

One of the pushbacks I get from people is we don’t know who to send a survey to. We don’t have a list of our industry to easily do that. And I always point out that almost every industry has dozens. If. In some cases, hundreds of associations. Some of them are independent. Some of ’em are small. Some of ’em are specific about a certain topic or, you know, something that makes them unique. But the small and independent associations don’t get a lot of love. That’s generally reserved for the big associations.

So the small and independent ones are usually if you approach them and say, I’m doing a survey, I’ll mention you, if you, share it with your audience. They see it as a win-win because they’re gonna be in the press release that you’ll be issuing, and in some cases they may want to co-brand the survey or study sometimes that may work you know, for you or you feel like there’s, you know, that does give you a lot more credibility as well.

But you know, it’s just, it’s as easy as that. And then they’ll share it through email or social media, sometimes both. And, then you get your numbers and then you do your analysis. And I always do advise people to throw in a couple of oddball questions towards the end., sort of like, you know, just.

You know, sometimes it can be sensational. Sometimes they can just be what you would generally say around the water cooler, but not necessarily something that you see in print, within your industry, but, you know, put those towards the end. I, I like survey monkey cuz you can do multi pages. And so if they don’t complete the whole survey, you still got the data up to that point.

Izach: Yeah. Okay. Some awesome ideas here., I definitely wanna put a link to your masterclass out with the, with the podcast. So, let’s go back a little bit to the beginning of eReleases. So what were, you know, some of the, the craziest, or maybe most memorable press releases that you saw or wrote, you know, when you, when you were getting started?

Mickie: Right. So we did a press release for Allerca A L L E R C A. They were started by someone who was in the veterinary laboratory business and they did like a lot of testing, like a lot of stuff, lab work that you would send out, for your dogs or cats. And they moved into, under Allerca, selling hypo, allergenic pets. They were genetically engineered to not have dander or allergens and things like that. The company has since folded, there was allegations that they were not doing what they were said they were doing, but when they launched, they we’re everywhere. They were on the front page of a couple of newspapers. 

They were in the Washington post, the Wall Street Journal, New York times, the cover of Discover magazine, the cover of Newsweek. They were on the cover of about 14 magazines at the same time, because I took a picture in a Chicago airport on a newsstand, cuz I just couldn’t believe it.

Most of the, articles and headlines were not good. They were like, are we playing God? Should we be doing this? You know, tinkering with animal DNA and stuff like that. But you know, they did very well. They got many millions of dollars in deposits, and they delivered animals, but you know, they’re. 

What happened after that? I, I, I’ve only read a little bit here and there, but it, it, it did come crashing down. But I, I knew when I got that press release, it was going to do well because this was completely novel and unique.

Izach: Yeah. 

Mickie: And, you know, it was, and it felt very sci-fi, to, to be selling an animal, and, and so that, that was really interesting.

In the pandemic, we did a free press release for the dining bond initiative. Which was set up from a, a person who had a small PR firm and she wanted to help restaurants that were closed during the pandemic. And so started this initiative so that you could nominate your favorite local restaurant.

And if they were able to get in contact with them, basically you would give money. It would go directly to the restaurant and it’d be secured, kind of like through a gift certificate. It got picked up over 150, newspapers and places like Washington post, New York times wall street journal, all the big ones.

A lot of the food, trade magazines picked it up as well. And millions of dollars was generated in sales to help restaurants. It did so well because there was a lot of negative news at the time. And uncertainty. With the beginning of the pandemic and here was something that was positive and it was something actionable.

It was something that you could do locally. And you know, that people were looking to help. They were scared. And so I think that’s why it did so well, even though it’s a very short lived, you know, initiative, it, it, it did a lot of good, very fast. And I think that PR, one press release, generated so much buzz and attention and spread so much because of the potential of leverage that you get with PR.

You know, if you have the right message, you can literally get hundreds of places to pick you up.

Izach: Wow, that’s cool. So if you get picked up, I want to ask another SEO related question. Let’s say, you, you do a press release from me, right? I’m your client, and it does get picked up by other media sources. Right. And they mention my name. Doesn’t that also help SEO by name recognition?

Mickie: It does.

Izach: Cause it’s gonna help to build kind of that expertise and authority on the search engine?

Mickie: It does like Google has published a patent where they give, SEO benefit to people in which there’s no URL in the article., they specifically cited articles and newspapers in their patent by saying like, we can contextually tell that an article in the New York Times that mentions eReleases is about ereleases.com.

Even though there’s no URL, just the context of the story and what’s being written. And so they give an SEO benefit. So we love it when places include links, but many, many times the larger publications like Wall Street Journal and New York Times are less likely to include it. 

That being said, the survey or study idea that I gave you, they often will include a link to the survey on your website. If you have a page that you built out where you have all of the questions, all of the data, all of the stuff, because you only focus on a little bit of that and the press release. So it makes sense to send people there to get the full story and to get all of the information and stuff like that. So I, I do find that that’s, that’s a hack that works really well to get that link back to you.

Izach: Yeah. Yeah. Obviously getting back links are, the gold standard. But the name mentions, I, I, I believe could be really valuable, especially with that leverage concept where this can grow organically and get, get your name out there in a lot of different ways. 

So we talked about the past and a little bit of the background. So take us to present day. How are your clients or how should our listeners be utilizing press releases now? What’s, what’s the low hanging fruit out there.

Mickie: Right. So I think that anything where you can stand out and have a unique story, like some of the clients that we have that do really well are startups, you know, it might be someone in a Kickstarter or Indiegogo, about a third of the people that appear on shark tank use us to promote their episode before it airs, the producers recommend us.

And so they generally do get media pickup. Now it’s easy to explain the shark tank ones, because these are going on a national show, but I think that, one of the common things I see with startups is they really know what their story is. They have the elevator pitch down, pat. They know what they are doing that defines them and makes them unique and different than everyone else out there.

They have that unique selling proposition and they’re telling an authentic story. And so that makes it really easy to want journalists to, to share. Journalists are curators by nature. They don’t like promoting the large companies, the Microsoft and the Oracles of the world. They like to promote the, the startups, the lean companies, the companies and, and services and products that you probably haven’t heard of.

And so, you know, they get a pat on the back when they people find something that’s really cool that they wrote about or shared. That’s a really great way to, to do that. You know, other things that you can do, sometimes being the contrarian on a topic is a really great way to get injected into a conversation when something’s trend.

The people have often called it newsjacking, where you try to ride the coattails by joining the conversation. But what happens is there’s thousands of people joining the conversation with the same message. If you’re the one person who’s saying something contrarian, you stand the likelihood of getting picked up in every article because journalists want to be objective and cover both sides.

But if no one’s covering the other side and you raise your hand and say that’s me, and here’s a rational, logical reason of, of the cons on this issue, you stand the chance of being in every article that mentions that topic. That being said, you have to do it rationally.

You have to do it in a way and take a position that’s not gonna alienate you with your customer base. I’ve had some, some clients just, okay, contrarian and just go off the deep end and then wonder why they’ve alienated some of their existing customers.

Izach: no, I, I get that, what, what’s the biggest misconception out there around press releases?

Mickie: I think the, the biggest misconception is that just because you could write about. That you should. I mean, for example, we get press releases very often about a new hire at a company. Other than maybe a local newspaper and maybe a trade publication, very few people care about that. I mean, unless you’ve really, you know, got someone who is like a big, recognized name in your industry and you’ve stolen them away.

And this is like, wow, I can’t believe it, but I would say 99% of the press releases that we get on that topic, nothing’s gonna come of it. And so I, I think that so many people see these press releases out there, they try to copy what they see, and then that leads to more and more of these boring press releases that look like they’ve been written by committee that really don’t say anything meaningful and they’re not being strategic.

And so I, I would just, you know, tell people to dig in, try to be creative, try to tell a story at the end of the day, journalists love stories. I had a client tell me a really embarrassing story when they first started up. And I told them we needed to include that in the press release. And we did, and Inc Magazine picked it up.

You know, Inc Magazine likes to have these startup stories where people overcome obstacles. And so it also makes you very human. And so don’t ignore the human-interest side of things because that’s a very powerful thing in storytelling and, and writing articles and journalists love that.

Izach: Yeah. And I, it just makes it, I, I, everybody loves the underdog story and a comeback and, probably better if there’s a good outcome at the end.

Mickie: Right.

Izach: So share a success story or two, you had a couple of, you know, the, the interesting kind of early press releases that you’ve launched. But, what about just maybe on a, just a more day to day level, you know what what’s worked really well for the clients that you’re working with right now.

Mickie: Right. Well I share a story, about a carpet company in New Jersey that approached me and said, we’ve got a budget this year for doing press releases. We’d like to do one a month. And I’m like, so you’re just a local carpet company. And they’re like, yeah. I said, do you do anything unique? And I says, we install very good carpet.

And I was like, but you don’t make the carpet, it’s just carpet you buy. And he goes, yeah. And I told him, I said, I don’t think this is gonna work. And then they circled back to me and said, we appreciate what you said, but we’ve already allocated the money. So we’ve got it to spend either with you or someone else.

And I was like, okay. So I took their money, and five months we did five press releases and nothing happened. And finally I said, I, I need to have an intervention. We need to find something that is different. And I, I asked them a whole bunch of questions, but one of them was who’s your hero? Who’s your enemy?

And their enemy. They said, what’s the big box home improvement stores. And talking to them, realized that all the floor trade publications, which they were targeting are other local carpet companies, maybe some regional ones, but it’s not home, Home Depot and Lowes. You know, the readers of these trade publications.

And so we put together this David versus Goliath press release of how challenging it is as a local company, dealing with, you know, competing against the big box home improvement stores. And also going through the reasons of why, you know, a local carpet company is so superior to going through a big box home improvement store.

And you know, it, it it’s shocking, but you know, when Home Depot and Lowes, puts you on a list to call, to see if you can install carpet, they never ask, have you ever installed carpet? They just ask, do you have a home improvement license in the state? And that’s the only consideration that they have. So it’s not unusual for these carpet companies to come in and have to re-stretch carpets that were never installed properly or dealing with people who just had nightmare experiences.

And so we put all that in a press release and we sent it out and we had like over 10 floor trade publications pick it up. We didn’t realize there was that many of them out there. And, we continued to do messaging on marketing and marketing as a local carpet company. And they got picked up, about 25 to 30 times in trade publications.

They got a couple, newspaper mentions, including a local newspaper and,, a New Jersey magazine. Now, the reason that they wanted all of the floor trade publications, which their customers aren’t reading was for credibility. They put together a big brag book, and every time they go out and give a quote to someone, they would show ’em the book and say, here we are profiled in Floor Trade weekly, here we are in this place. 

And they knew that that was something that no one else coming and giving them a quote would ever be able to, to show that we have, we have this recognition, we have this credibility indicator and they started converting, I think at a 15 to 20% higher conversion rate once they started using that brag book. And that’s just a, an offline company that was able to make that work. And it worked very well for them.

And I also had an auto repair shop in Pennsylvania that lost their domain name. Somehow it was tied to the Yellow Pages. When the Yellow Pages went away, the website went away. So they had a new domain name and an SEO guy that they consulted with, knew me and reached out to me and said, what could we do to get auto industry links because we want industry related links to get them to rank, as quickly as possible. 

And I told ’em, I said, you’re an auto repair shop in Pennsylvania. I think the only way you’re gonna be able to do is through a survey or study, and we did. The questions that were, the oddball questions that were at the end of the survey, one of them was what’s the strangest thing a customer left in their car while being repaired.

And we just left the open field where they wrote stories. Statistically, it did not mean anything cuz every answer was unique, but we did a Roundup of around 50 little esoteric stories and things that people left, and that was what resonated with the media. I think over 10 auto trade publications picked it up.

Over 20 newspapers picked it up, including their local newspaper, which, you know, we didn’t think was going to happen originally because their goal was the auto links. And within, I’d say 90 to 120 days, they started ranking number one, when you typed in their city and auto repair. And that was, that was their goal.

And, you know, those links were extremely valuable and because it was a survey and study, every one of ’em included a link to the page where cuz I told ’em we have to make that page a resource where we, we, we just really answer a lot of stuff and have a lot of quotes available and just make it really interesting so that they would wanna share it and, and they all did.

And so that, that worked really well. And, you know, those are, those are just a couple of stories, but I can’t think of a more non-newsworthy company than a local carpet company or a local auto repair shop. And yet they were able to make it work because they were acting strategically. 

Izach: So, so those are, those are great stories. And you, you touched on a few points there that I wanna, I actually had some questions on. So how do you measure return? You know, we talk a lot about ROAS and kind of attribution rates for different campaigns. So when, when you think about those metrics, In press releases. You know, how, how are you thinking about that? As far as views impressions, you know, what are the metrics you look at and how do you think about the return on investment?

Mickie: Everybody measures it differently because a lot of people have different goals. We work with, some companies like I think we did over a dozen press releases for Squatty Potty. They’re just trying to get messaging out as quickly as possible. So, you know, their, their goal was being met, it was seeding people who had these ideas and, and, and they got articles as a result of it. 

It’s hard to measure because you often don’t get like a trackable URL or, you know, something that makes it very easy to you know, see what the conversion rate was and things like that. But that being said, a lot of people have found that even though an article, they only show like three or 400 visitors from a specific article.

They do know that there was a huge uptick in sales during that time. And what happens is when people see a story or an article, they’ll go to the website and more times than not they’ll buy. What they often will not do is open a, a new browser and say, can I get this cheaper on Amazon? So it’s a different type of shopping that they do when they read about somebody that, you know, they have a feeling with there’s I don’t know if it’s the implied endorsement, but there’s a connection that’s made where they go and buy. They rarely go then price shop. 

I always say, to people try it, see what kind of media coverage you can get. Can you uncover a way that works for you and then can you replicate it? And if not, you know, pivot to other newsworthy strategic ideas, and just measure your business as you’re doing this. If you’re, you know, not doing a major push with your paper click is the same spend it’s always been, but you noticed a 17% uptick the same month that you got five or six articles. There’s a correlation there., and so you kind of have to. Work with that. It does make it very difficult because I think that marketers, by and large, love numbers and they like to see numbers line up and with PR it doesn’t always easily line up like that.

 Do know that the PR world likes to have, this is, we got New York times. This is their circulation. Therefore we estimate that 7.8 million people read your article. I don’t believe that stuff. I think that that’s an overinflated number. The actual people that click through and probably read that article in the New York Times is not as high as the circulation rate of, of the publication, but that being said, a lot of people did see it. and you will get type in traffic where there are no links where people will go to a browser and type in your company name and find you and, and then want to do business with you.

So you’ll probably see an uptick in your conversion rate on just your regular or organic pages, that happens after a story lands. And you can kind of look at those and might be able to suss out, you know, what could be attributed. Doing a PR campaign with a company like eReleases, you can spend as little as, you know, $300 per press release. So the, the actual cost of sending out a release isn’t so high that it, it has to be, you know that you have to have a number that, that is very specific.

If you know that you’re putting in $300 and on average generating four or $5,000 or more, you might feel comfortable, devoting more time and money going forward on that.

Izach: All really interesting points., another concept that I had, and I wanted to ask you if anybody’s ever kind of used your services in this way. When I work with companies we’re usually getting ready to sell them, you know, and we can start working a year in advance sometimes with the sellers to start planning for that.

One of the first things that a buyer will do is to Google the company. Google the name, Google press, you know, the name with press release, Google the name with lawsuit, you know, various search terms combined just to see what comes up. And so it seems to me that it could be a really interesting idea to start a strategic press release campaign, not only to build traffic, but to create a bunch of search results by a company’s name that you have some control over the content that’s going out there.

Have you, have you, are you aware of anyone kind of using that strategy to prepare for sale? And what, how does that kind of resonate with you off the cuff?

Mickie: Right. I, I see that with a lot of startups. The people that we work with shark tank, a lot of them continue to use us and send out releases. And I think one of the things that they recognize is every article that they get. Is an asset that’s going to live on and it mentions them. You know, a startup may not be thinking of a sell of the company, but they may be thinking of trying to drive the value of the company higher and, you know, get to a point where there is a, an event where stakeholders will you know, see some gains as a result of that. 

And, you know, their approach at it is very methodical in testing and seeing what works and doesn’t work, but they also seem to really have a strong insight into authenticity and their story. And there’s something powerful about having a really great story. 

It doesn’t have to be real. The guy who created eBay was not selling PEZ dispensers for his girlfriend and thought he would just create a little bit of code to make it easier for people to buy it. But that’s the lore that was created. There was a story, that story grew and did very well even.

Articles that weren’t about that specifically still cited that in the articles, because it’s a compelling story. And so, you know, try to work on what your story is or what your story could be. I’m not advocating that you necessarily lie, but there’s probably something that’s interesting about the Genesis of your company that is worth sharing and memorializing and maybe putting out.

Izach: Okay. Yeah. So that that’s, maybe kind of a good lead end to my, my next question, which is, if you’re a small business, let’s say one of our listeners and maybe, maybe you don’t have the budget yet for a press release campaign. What kinds of things can you start to do on your own for free that move you in this direction of getting some PR.

Mickie: Right. So I always tell people to try to get local media. It’s the easiest media to get yourself. They like to work with local business owners over PR professionals. If you think about it in your market, there’s probably less than 10 people who would ever write about you. Find out who those 10 people are and send them an email message and try to do it, you know, on a regular basis, like at least quarterly, and as you have interesting ideas.

You go to conferences and, things like that. You meet other companies in other cities, maybe you’re more regional or, or more geographically inclined, track them through Google alerts and see how they appear in the media, if that could be a story idea that you could then give to your local media and pitch it to them in context with you. Don’t say, hey, this is a story I saw in another market.

And, you know, you know, but what you’d say is I see in my industry, a lot of trends of people talking about X, Y, and Z, and my company is, you know, poised, to do this, and I would love to talk to you and, be interviewed by you and give you some great quotes. You don’t need to write a press release for that.

You just need to have a pitch., you just need a couple of sentences as to why it would be an interesting story and. Get it out to them. You know, and these places are generally like at your, newspaper, you would research who generally writes about your industry, and call or try to get their email.

If you call and ask, they will generally give it to you. They do not try to hide. They’re journalists. They’re, you know, they’re trying to report on community news. So being part of the community is part of that and, just touch base with them and share good ideas. I’ve even had it work where people share ideas when they don’t have anything to talk about themselves, but maybe they’ve seen something trending in their industry and they just thought it’d be worth sharing because they know that this person covers your industry.

You create Goodwill that way. And the next time that you have something that’s more specific about you, they’re more likely to include you. And this is also why you see in a lot of local papers and business magazines the same companies mentioned again and again, they’ve established relationships with the writers and when the writers working on story, it’s easier for them just to say, oh yeah, I remember this guy, I’ll just plug him into this or give him a call.

Izach: Okay, cool. So, what, what’s something that I didn’t ask you that maybe I should have.

Mickie: You know, one of the things that so many people who are thinking about selling a business, often think that it’s the business that you have to promote, but sometimes it’s okay to promote you. I think that, you know, someone buying you is gonna recognize that they’re not getting you in the transaction, but they’re getting you and your history with the company.

And so positioning yourself as an expert also helps the business and also can leverage you going forward., some ideas that work seasonally are like yearly predictions. So as you know, November comes around, December, you might want to put together some really interesting predictions in your industry that are not the same types of things that you would see in print, but are really specific and shows a lot of analysis and insight from you as the expert.

Those could work really well. So, you know, don’t, don’t always think that you have to focus on the business., you are a part of the business, you have a compelling story to tell. And because journalists love printing stories, they love telling the story usually through the perspective of a hero. And so it’s okay to be that hero and to put yourself out there.

Izach: Awesome, super interesting stuff. So, Mickie, how can our listeners connect with you?

Mickie: So the website’s ereleases.com. All my social media is on the lower right. LinkedIn’s a great way to reach out to me personally. We only have editors, no sales people, so feel free to call or chat or even email with the staff. And, we help people who’ve never done press releases all the time on their, getting them started on a PR campaign.

And that masterclass that I’d mentioned earlier is at ereleases.com/plan. P L A N. And its completely free a less than an hour commitment, but it’ll really give you a good audit of your business and how, what are some strategic things that you could develop to build a PR campaign for.

Izach: All right, everyone that was Mickie Kennedy, founder and CEO of eReleases, which you can [email protected]. Thanks everyone for listening to this episode of the Deal Closers Podcast brought to you by websiteclosers.com.

If you like the show, be sure to rate us, write a review, press the follow button and share it with your network. And of course, if you’re looking for help selling your e-commerce business, be sure to visit websiteclosers.com. This episode was edited and produced by ear flu. I’m Isaac Porter, follow me on LinkedIn, and we’ll see you next time on the Deal Closers Podcast.