How to Capture Media Attention: Insights from eReleases Founder Mickey Kennedy

Host: 00:02:13

Mickey Kennedy founded E releases 25 years ago to help small businesses, authors and startups increase their visibility and credibility through press release distribution.

Host: 00:02:24

He lives in the Baltimore area.

Host: 00:02:26

Hello, Mickey.

Host: 00:02:27

Welcome to the Business Super Fans podcast show.

Host: 00:02:29

We're excited to have you on the show.

Host: 00:02:31

We look forward to learning a little bit more about E Releases.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:02:35

Glad to be here.

Host: 00:02:37

Tell us, Mickey, what's your story, where did you come from and how did you come up with E Releases and what is E Release and how can businesses benefit from your platform?

Host: 00:02:49

Sure.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:02:49

So I guess around 28 years ago, I was working for a telecom research startup.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:02:55

I was employee number three and I had finished a Master's of Fine Arts in creative writing.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:03:01

And all they knew is I could write.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:03:03

So they told me to write releases and send them to the media as part of many jobs you do working for a startup when there's just three of you.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:03:10

And I did that.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:03:12

And I inherited a Rolodex from my boss where I would fax these press releases.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:03:17

And it's a big time suck and very painful to have to fax 150 places with a press release.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:03:24

I did that and not much happened.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:03:26

And the boss was like, oh yeah, I send releases.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:03:29

Nothing ever happens.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:03:30

I was just like, why do we do it then?

Mickey Kennedy: 00:03:32

And they're like, I don't know.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:03:33

I think you just have to.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:03:34

I look at other people and they're doing it, so I do it.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:03:37

What I realized is that it's true.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:03:39

A lot of people send out releases and nothing happens.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:03:42

Probably 97% of press releases that go out today, including those that go over a paid newswire, don't generate earned media.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:03:50

That's what we call it when you get media pickup.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:03:53

Rather than accept that press releases didn't work, I made it my mission to figure out why they weren't working.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:03:59

And what I found is we weren't providing any context for it.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:04:02

We weren't telling a story.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:04:03

And what I saw, looking at what people were writing, the actual journalist, that even in a small newspaper article or trade publication, the stories generally followed a arc, the traditional story arc that moves up and climax and then it goes down.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:04:20

It's something that is innate in storytelling.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:04:23

A good joke follows that pattern.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:04:25

What we were told as children, bedtime stories follow that same arc, and journalists prefer to write that arc.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:04:33

And what we were providing, the raw data, it was not a lot for journalists to turn into a story.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:04:38

And so I took the latest release that we had done at that time was talking about telecom traffic statistics between the US and Caribbean countries.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:04:47

And I looked at it, and I noticed that one country accounted for more traffic than all the others.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:04:53

It was one of the smaller countries.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:04:55

And so I figured out why that was.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:04:57

I had to do more research because we didn't know initially ourselves.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:05:01

And it turns out that at the time, that country was like the 1-900-call center.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:05:06

And most 1,900 numbers in the US were rerouted through that country.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:05:11

So I published a press release about that, talking about the 1-900-number industry.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:05:17

And for people who don't know, you could call 1-900-something and get your horoscope, and it might cost 50 cents a minute.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:05:23

It was charged to your landline phone bill.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:05:25

Or you could call and speak to someone live and get advice about your pet or relationships.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:05:30

And it might be a dollar a minute or $2aminute.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:05:33

It was really big business back in the day, and this is almost 30 years ago.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:05:38

So when I did that press release and faxed it out, something different happened.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:05:42

We got picked up in the Financial Times, the Economist, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, and three telecom trade publications.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:05:49

And I felt, wow, everybody, like, really paid attention.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:05:53

We got a lot of orders, a lot of people saw us, a lot of inquiries about sponsorship and advertising with us.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:06:01

And so it, it was a game changer.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:06:04

And everybody was like, I wonder if you can do this again.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:06:07

I looked at our next typical topic for a press release and tried to, like, flesh out the story behind it and sent it out.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:06:15

And we got picked up again.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:06:16

Not as many that time, but as we did this, we routinely got picked up in two to four places almost every time we sent a release, and sometimes as many as 10 places.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:06:26

I realized journalists like to follow a story arc.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:06:29

And while we had data, which is important and should have given us an edge, it wasn't enough without the story.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:06:36

So that's what got me started.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:06:38

And at the same time, journalists would call and say, hey, in the future, could you email instead of faxing?

Mickey Kennedy: 00:06:44

I'm like, yes, save me a day of programming a fax machine.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:06:48

I'll definitely do that.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:06:50

And so I did that.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:06:51

I sent it out, and again and again we got picked up.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:06:55

And I just said, I could be emailing on behalf of lots of people.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:06:59

Email is so much easy, and it just goes out there.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:07:02

So what I did was I decided I'm going to start building my own Rolodex for all journals, and I would spend a lot of time at that juncture.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:07:11

It's probably the late: 1990

Mickey Kennedy: 00:07:26

They're like, as long as you follow my beat, go for it.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:07:29

So I spent over a year talking to these journalists.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:07:33

And so when I launched in: 1998

Mickey Kennedy: 00:07:38

And I was just a matchmaker sending releases as well as pitches directly to these journalists.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:07:44

And my clients were getting picked up and it was very successful.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:07:48

I really felt like this is what I want to do.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:07:51

I want to help small businesses and entrepreneurs.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:07:53

So my price points were really low.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:07:55

I wasn't interested in building a PR firm or dealing with people who were having to spend tens of thousands of dollars because I just saw it work for us, for my job, and I felt like I could do this for others.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:08:08

What evolved over time is PR Newswire reached out to us at E Releases and said they liked what we were doing and would we consider sending our releases through them.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:08:19

And at the time, they charged over fifteen hundred dollars to move a press release nationally, and I was charging my clients about $300.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:08:28

I didn't think we'd ever come to a way to work together, but we did.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:08:32

Every release today goes out nationally through PR Newswire, and you don't have to pay anything close to 1,600 plus dollars, which is the going rate today, to go out nationally with them for a 600 word press release.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:08:45

One of the things that we discovered when talking was that they have an overnight editorial team and they don't do much, but they have to be there in case there's breaking news or you want to get something out to the Asian markets and they just sit idle for hours.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:08:58

I said I could start scheduling my press releases for next day distribution instead of immediate distribution, and your people could set them up overnight.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:09:07

Because setting, taking a press release isn't just copy and pasting and hitting send.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:09:13

It really is setting it up in the wire and making sure that there's the headline, the date line, all of these certain things in the proper format and getting it into that actual infrastructure.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:09:25

I told them it would cost them nothing.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:09:27

There'd be zero labor attached to my releases, and they found that very attractive.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:09:31

So I've been doing that and been helping journalists get these great releases and helping my clients get access to these journalists.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:09:38

And having access to the wire has been a real game changer for my clients.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:09:43

My original business of emailing has been destroyed because of what's happened with the media landscape.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:09:49

There's these media databases that you can buy or license for as little as $8,000, selling up to $20,000.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:09:57

And people are sending off target emails because it doesn't cost anything extra.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:10:02

You just spent $20,000 on a media database and if you look at it, you feel like, oh, we're a golf club company.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:10:08

There's only like 2,000 golf journalists in there.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:10:12

They start talking themselves into sending to bankers and financial analysts and people like that by saying, hey, people in the banking and business world, they buy Glock clubs.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:10:21

But the truth is a financial analyst is never going to write about golf clubs.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:10:25

And yet you have just sent numerous releases to these people.

Host: 00:10:29

So it's a wasted audience.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:10:30

Yes.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:10:30

So the email inbox of journalist is under a lot of stress at the moment.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:10:35

So I'm very fortunate that we pivoted and all of our releases are predominantly through the newswire, through PR Newswire.

Host: 00:10:43

Cool.

Host: 00:10:43

Great backstory, Mickey, for our audience that may not understand the benefits of writing a proper press release, how to go about it, as you said, sending out the story, what qualifies as a good press release and how can people leverage that to get awareness for their business and then how they can utilize your platform to get that message.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:11:08

Sure.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:11:09

So at the end of the day I say try to be newsworthy, but anything you put out, try to tell an interesting story.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:11:16

So we get a lot of product launch press releases and it's usually here's a product, here's a list of features.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:11:23

Sometimes they're just bullets, and then here's a page to learn more and buy.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:11:27

There's no story there.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:11:28

And for a journalist to want follow a story arc, they'll see that and see that there's nothing that they could really develop, be intriguing or a story that they would want to share with their audience.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:11:38

The great way to incorporate a story is take a use case study, someone beta tested or used your product and share their experience.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:11:46

This company was losing 7% a year and this was their fourth year in business.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:11:50

They utilized, let's say it's a logistics software solution.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:11:54

And at the end of a 120 day trial, they are projected to have a 5% net profit this year for the first time.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:12:01

And you could actually talk about how meaningful that is because in your industry, let's say transportation industry, 67% of companies fail in the first five years because they don't achieve profitability.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:12:12

So you've really shown the stakes of why your product or solution is important.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:12:16

And you told that story about this one person, this one client and how they used it and put a quote in there by them saying how easy it was to use or how it kept them on task when they were invoicing clients so that every a transaction was profitable for them.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:12:32

That's a really great way to build a little story in there that would make it more interesting to the audience.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:12:38

And that's really what a journalist is.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:12:40

They're a gatekeeper of their audience and they have to decide is this press release, the story behind this press release going to either intrigue or educate or entertain their audience.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:12:52

And hopefully it does a mixture of all of those things.

Host: 00:12:55

or: 2000

Host: 00:13:01

I was in charge of global sales and marketing for a software company and a product was called CamWorks and it's a machining NC programming software.

Host: 00:13:12

And I coined the term machining intelligence.

Host: 00:13:16

MI Today AI is like the big thing, but this is decades ago and what the software did was based upon geometric shapes.

Host: 00:13:25

It would recognize out of the solid model and recommend tool paths.

Host: 00:13:30

So the NC programmer didn't have to do it.

Host: 00:13:32

It did it all automatically based upon size, shape, depth, material type and all that stuff.

Host: 00:13:39

And I put out a press release about this new technology and I did share a story of a customer that was utilizing it, was beta testing it and that got picked up and I got shared that in turn got a couple publications that reached out and said we'd like to write a story on this.

Host: 00:13:57

They started asking me if I put ads in her publication.

Host: 00:14:00

And so I turned around and says yeah, I'll put an ad in your publication, but I want a story.

Host: 00:14:04

So they would put a multi page story.

Host: 00:14:06

And there's nothing more powerful than a third party sharing a story about your business or a service or a product that you've got that gives it legitimacy and helps it take off.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:14:18

Yeah, it is like social proof or even almost an implied endorsement.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:14:22

When this third party, this journalist writes about you, it's a huge credibility boost.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:14:28

And even more importantly, people see it as a signal of trust.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:14:32

When they see an ad, they don't have the signal of trust.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:14:34

But when they read about you in an article they'll be like, wow, this publication that I like and I read has chosen to write about them.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:14:42

Obviously they're legitimate.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:14:44

Obviously they're onto something.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:14:45

They're and I'm going to call them.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:14:47

Yep.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:14:47

And so people want to do business with people they read about.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:14:51

I have read about many Kickstarter and Indiegogo campaigns.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:14:55

And I find myself pulling out my credit card and backing them, often knowing that I really have no desire for the actual product.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:15:03

I just saw that it was affordable.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:15:05

And I enjoyed the story of how this little person went out there and said to the companies, hey, could you just make this one little tweak to your product?

Mickey Kennedy: 00:15:13

It would.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:15:13

It's exactly what I need.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:15:15

And they're all like, no.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:15:16

And he talks to other people and they're like, oh, we would all love to have that.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:15:18

He's, you sure you won't do it?

Mickey Kennedy: 00:15:20

They're like, no.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:15:20

And he goes, I guess I just have to do it myself.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:15:23

You share their journey and the process of what it takes to make a product, and you're rooting for them.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:15:29

As an entrepreneur, I think I see myself just time and time again backing people just because I want to see them succeed.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:15:36

It is that sort of rapport and emotional response that we have when we read about someone in an article.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:15:43

And it's the same reason, I think, that everybody that appears on Shark Tank often opens with their own story.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:15:50

And it's often sharing a vulnerability that they got laid off or they lost a loved one and they.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:15:56

They had this hobby in high school and they were wondering if they could revisit that and maybe make a business around it and just really things that are just very human.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:16:06

It's because we want to relate to other people.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:16:08

We don't want to relate to logos and businesses.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:16:12

We want to relate to individuals.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:16:14

I think that's the real power and why almost everybody that appears on Shark Tank opens that way.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:16:19

About a third of the people that appear on Shark Tank usually use us to send a press release announcing that their episode's going to air and share a little bit about them because the producers recommend that they do a press release.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:16:31

So we see a lot of them, and the ones that are really smart come back and they do a really big PR campaign, often before they start paid advertising.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:16:40

I saw it with Manscaped, I saw it with Squatty Potty, several of their customers who come in and they want to build a base of media pickup.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:16:49

And they know that being on Shark Tank, you have that footage, you have that link, but you have these other articles that they get picked up in, and all of a sudden they're going to convert at a much higher rate and their cost per acquisition is going to go down.

Host: 00:17:04

Creating awareness.

Host: 00:17:05

Really what you're doing is you're creating awareness that you exist and you're out There.

Host: 00:17:09

So then when the rest of it follows the advertising, it's oh, I've heard of that somewhere.

Host: 00:17:14

And then it goes from there.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:17:16

Yeah.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:17:16

There are people who say that people won't buy with you until they've seen you six, seven, eight times.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:17:22

And so it is that awareness, getting it out there.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:17:25

And the media is one of the easiest ways to do that.

Host: 00:17:28

Great insight.

Host: 00:17:29

So Mickey, let's talk about how, let's say a solopreneur or a small to mid sized business can leverage E releases by putting a press release that will in turn help them transform some of their stakeholders into super fans.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:17:47

Sure.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:17:48

So I think that I talked about this emotional response we have to the advertising.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:17:55

The great thing about it is it brings in new customers that are often very loyal to you and they usually don't price shop.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:18:02

They usually want to do business with you and often they're looking for you to give them a reason not to.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:18:07

They really are in switched on.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:18:10

They want to do business with you.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:18:12

There's also, you take that media, mention that URL to the news article and you share it with your leads and put it in front of them.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:18:20

You share it on social media, you share it with your own customers.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:18:23

If you have a customer newsletter you incorporate in there, get that in front of them.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:18:27

Because what you'll find is the people that are your leads.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:18:30

If you have say a 15% conversion rate and you put earned media in front of them, you'll often find that convert like maybe 20, 25% of your leads now convert and you put it in front of your customers.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:18:42

Maybe you find that each year you lose 20% of your customers.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:18:46

That's the churn rate.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:18:47

All of a sudden your churn rate will reduce because people are like, hey, weren't we supposed to shop vendors every four years?

Mickey Kennedy: 00:18:54

And they're like, hey, this year we don't have to look at this article.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:18:58

Oh man, we were the right company.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:18:59

They see that they can reinforce that.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:19:02

Yes.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:19:02

They decide they don't need to shop around this year and so they're going to stick with you.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:19:07

And so the same thing happens when just get this stuff picked up and out there and.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:19:12

But you also have to do the job of sharing it with your own leads and your own customers because that's really valuable.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:19:17

I have a offline carpet company in New Jersey who did a PR campaign with me and I told them that I really thought that they should save their money, but they were very insistent and so I told them that the easiest media they could get after Talking with them because they're basically a commodity business is probably industry pickup.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:19:37

Trade publications, which as I pointed out, their clients do not read trade publications, their customers do not read these.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:19:45

But I said they are huge credibility indicators.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:19:49

We did that.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:19:50

We got picked up at the end of a year they had about 30 clips.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:19:53

They did get picked up in their local newspaper in New Jersey Magazine, which is a very high end consumer magazine that was really a perfect fit for them.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:20:02

But the rest of those clips were all industry publications.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:20:05

But what they did is they put them all together in a brag book and every time they'd go give a consultation to someone in their home, they would open that and say, hey, we may not come in the cheapest, but we recognize nationally here we are in floor covering today, here we are in floor trade weekly.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:20:20

All these different places gives you that.

Host: 00:20:22

You'Re a somebody company.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:20:23

They started converting 17% more of those consultations and that's almost one of every five consultation they were previously losing, they were now winning.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:20:34

And from a perspective of someone who does six or seven measuring a day and consultations, that's a really big win for them all.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:20:43

Just this adding two minutes to the conversation of opening the book and just showing them.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:20:48

They said no one ever read the articles.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:20:49

They just looked at the headline lines, they looked at them.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:20:52

That signal of trust was enough to get them to convert almost 20% better.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:20:57

So that's really powerful.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:20:58

And that continues to work time and time again over time.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:21:02

It is a asset that you build when you get this sort of recognition and credibility and it's something that you can really grow with.

Host: 00:21:10

Let's look at an employee or team member goes above and beyond for the company and lands a big opportunity, for example, or solves a huge problem.

Host: 00:21:21

I think putting out a press release edifying that individual, it shows one that you care as an owner of the company, you care about your team.

Host: 00:21:32

That person that got edified is going to feel like a rock star.

Host: 00:21:35

So he's going to become a super fan of the company.

Host: 00:21:38

They're going to tell everybody about the fact that they got put out into a press release.

Host: 00:21:44

It's going to energize the rest of the team because they're going to want to be the ones get put out.

Host: 00:21:49

That pr and that's creates what I call a total experience where you're really hitting all the people in the company.

Host: 00:21:58

For example, you got a supplier that came through for a particular schedule and they went above and beyond to deliver this thing for you.

Host: 00:22:08

You should take the time to recognize them.

Host: 00:22:10

I think your platform is a great platform to be able to do that because now you're giving them national visibility and that's just going to attract more business for them and they're going to become your super fans.

Host: 00:22:23

So this whole thing, your platform can be utilized, as you were mentioning earlier, but you can really, I think, take it to a whole nother level to really bring more than credibility, but make yourself as an organization that gives gratitude to contributors to make you successful.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:22:44

Going back to that, it's story based.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:22:47

And here you've, you've talked about a story.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:22:51

Memorialize the story that's coming out of your company.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:22:54

Anytime you do that, those are moments that the media loves.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:22:59

And I see a lot of charities who do releases about so much was raised, or a company that gave money to a charity, I hate to say it, but no one really cares about those and they generally don't get picked up.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:23:12

And so I always tell people, make sure you get people's permission to do this, but share the experiences, the transformations you've made.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:23:21

We help like 40,000 people a year.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:23:23

I was like, people only care about the individual.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:23:26

Share one person's story.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:23:28

Take someone and share that story.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:23:30

And the ones that do very well.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:23:33

I get it that from the standpoint of the charity you're wanting to share that you're helping a lot.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:23:39

But the best way to show that is to showcase and put the spotlight on an individual that you've transformed their life and what you've done to them.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:23:48

Because again, it breaks it down to human interest.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:23:52

And we care about individuals and we're not discounting any of the good that you do in aggregate.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:23:58

But we need to see it individually and personalize.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:24:01

Be mindful of the stories that you have within your company, the things that you do, the employees, how a product is discovered or created, even a service might be because someone was like really tired of telling no to everybody who answers, saying, do you do this?

Mickey Kennedy: 00:24:18

Or like, no, we don't do that.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:24:20

No one does that.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:24:21

Maybe we should be doing that because then we could be getting, answering yes to these calls.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:24:27

But all the other people out there who have always wondered, is there anyone that could do this?

Mickey Kennedy: 00:24:31

We now do that.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:24:33

And so sometimes, because it can be really just interesting stories about individuals and how they have contributed and how a company listened and incorporated that and built a product or service as a result, like you said, it really is going to make that person a super fan, that employee.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:24:52

But it's also going to show the market that you are a business that listens and pays attention and is responsive.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:25:00

Because one of the things that happens as businesses get bigger is they listen less and care less about other people's experiences.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:25:07

They're the companies that when someone goes to and says, could you make this little tweak to your product because it'd be perfect for a whole subsegment of people and they say no, because they're just big and callous.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:25:17

Then you have people that go out and create Kickstarters and Indiegogos and now a few years later they're going to be competing and you're going to wish that you had listened.

Host: 00:25:26

One of the things I got Mickey on that story is you saying to write something about an actual situation and how you help somebody or a business or whatever.

Host: 00:25:37

I've got a saying is that to be terrific you need to be specific.

Host: 00:25:41

And if you're specific, you'll be terrific.

Host: 00:25:44

So the meaning of that is, just like you said, we helped 40,000 people.

Host: 00:25:50

That's wonderful.

Host: 00:25:51

But let's share that specific story about that one individual or that one account, that one business that you helped transform their profitability, their growth, or a partnership where you worked with one another, two different companies teamed up together to land an account and you both did it.

Host: 00:26:12

And here's the story of what you guys went through to make that happen.

Host: 00:26:16

Those are things that need to be shared.

Host: 00:26:18

You can't buy that kind of marketing because like you just said earlier, you put that out, that gets picked up and now you've got all these other platforms marketing this for you at no cost.

Host: 00:26:30

You paid for it one time through your platform and now all these people are pushing it out onto their platforms and their media.

Host: 00:26:37

It's not costing you anything.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:26:38

It's, it's completely free.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:26:40

And you would be shocked at the number of outlets that love to spotlight these things.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:26:45

The media does not love to cover Google's and Microsoft and Apples of the world.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:26:51

They have to, it's part of what they do.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:26:53

But any media that I've talked to says that what drives the number of shares and views of an article, and that's one of the two big metrics that they use for online is the number of people who click on the share button and the number of people who actually view it.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:27:08

They get the most views and shares when they spotlight a new product or service or company, a new discovery.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:27:16

Often those are going to be the smaller companies, the solopreneurs, the side hustle, the person who's still got a full time job but they're trying to create something on the side, a product or service.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:27:27

A lot of people feel like I'm just not big enough yet to get media attention.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:27:30

You being small is a huge advantage because journalists get a kick out of being seen as curators.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:27:36

And when they profile someone that no one knows about, that's when they get the accolades with a lot of shares and a lot of views from people who don't know about you.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:27:47

So being small and unknown is not a detract when it comes to media attention.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:27:52

It's actually a superpower and it's something that you can utilize because they know that the larger companies can afford to pay for advertising, but the small ones, they need to be seen and viewed and have people appreciate them.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:28:05

And journalists are very willing to do that.

Host: 00:28:08

Yeah, E Releases is a great platform to help people play at the level of the big dogs without having to spend big dog money.

Host: 00:28:20

That's really the advantage that you provide with your platform is that somebody just starting out with their business and has got a clever idea, a clever way of doing something, it's a service or a product, they can leverage your platform to get the word out.

Host: 00:28:34

And then that's just a multiplier factor.

Host: 00:28:36

If it's written in a good, as we talked into a story where people will pick that up and share it, then that's significantly more effective than spending marketing on ads on various platforms.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:28:50

It is.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:28:51

And as I've told people, they always ask, how does the ROI work with pr?

Mickey Kennedy: 00:28:56

And I'm like, it works very frustratingly.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:28:59

You can have a press release do well, get earned media and the phones don't ring much.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:29:06

But you could also have the inverse where I had one person do their first release with us.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:29:12

I think they were just an assistant to the president.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:29:16

And he called and said, yeah, I'm supposed to do a press release.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:29:19

Walk me through this.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:29:20

So we worked together.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:29:21

I actually helped him write it because I really feel like individuals can write their own press releases.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:29:26

Sometimes they need a little help.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:29:28

So I gave him a little bit of assistance and reviewed it and made some suggestions.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:29:32

It was for a company that makes waste management facilities.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:29:35

They do the whole thing.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:29:36

They build an entire waste management facility, often for cities.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:29:40

And they got picked up in, I think, Waste Management news trade publication.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:29:45

And I heard from that guy a few months later and he says, I, I got a big bonus because of you.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:29:50

And I was like, oh, tell me about it.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:29:52

So they got contacted by someone in Australia and they said, hey, you build these facilities over here?

Mickey Kennedy: 00:29:59

And they go, yeah, we often will move stuff by barges and boat even to get around different parts of the US and so we have done stuff to Europe and Africa and we could certainly do to Australia.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:30:11

We are now building three municipal municipalities, waste management systems in Australia.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:30:17

And this is like many tens of millions of dollars.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:30:21

And they're just like all from this one press release.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:30:24

Game changer.

Host: 00:30:25

It's a total game changer.

Host: 00:30:26

I grew that product from zero in a three year window.

Host: 00:30:31

or: 2000

Host: 00:30:36

And I grew that product.

Host: 00:30:37

I left the company after three years.

Host: 00:30:39

So I set up 60 resellers around the world and I grew that product from 0 to 3 million in a three year window.

Host: 00:30:46

The highest end package of that product was 10 grand.

Host: 00:30:49

We were giving 50% margin to our resellers all over the world.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:30:53

So the telecom company that I started as employee number three, they're still in business today.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:30:57

When I started, they published their yearly data for $600.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:31:03

Today it's over $20,000 a year.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:31:07

So what happened is with the amount of publicity they've had and the recognition that they have in the industry, people know that if you want telecom data, this is the only place you can go to.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:31:21

And they do have a monopoly on the data that they have because they started originally with a partnership with the itu and so there was a lot of trust there.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:31:30

And so these telecom companies don't like giving their data to a lot of people because their competitors could use it in other markets, other countries.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:31:39

And so they publish it in aggregate and they have a trust factor.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:31:43

But because of that they can charge such a huge premium.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:31:47

And the publicity and PR that they got allowed them to be recognized and to have a reputation and to be seen so highly within the industry.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:31:58

Every time they do a release later, there are people waiting to pounce on their latest press release because they go, oh yes, they always have great data and great stories.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:32:08

So that's really amazing.

Host: 00:32:10

So Mickey, how can people utilize E releases?

Host: 00:32:14

Because it's ereleases.com right?

Host: 00:32:17

Correct.

Host: 00:32:18

So how can people utilize?

Host: 00:32:19

What's the best way to utilize and get the maximum benefit out of your platform?

Mickey Kennedy: 00:32:24

So we distribute press releases, they go out nationally through PR Newswire and we're a la carte, you can buy packages, but you can just come in and do one release.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:32:34

So we make it very affordable.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:32:35

There's no reason that you can't do a PR campaign of six to eight releases and not even spend over three or four thousand dollars.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:32:44

And if anybody who has worked with a PR firm knows, if you do six to eight releases over a year campaign with the PR firm, you're probably looking at many tens of thousands of dollars.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:32:55

And so this is something that you can do yourself.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:32:57

We do offer writing, but again, I feel very empowered in saying that you can really come up with a release.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:33:03

You can actually even use AI to help you.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:33:06

Now, never use AI to come up with the idea of what you're going to do.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:33:10

But if you use ChatGPT, you can get it to write a good release.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:33:14

But again, never tell it to write a release on a subject because it'll just spit out four or 500, 600 words of safe material and it's a pretty good release.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:33:24

It reads well.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:33:25

What I do is I say, hey, I have this subject picked out.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:33:29

Write me a outline of how you would structure a 600 word press release on it.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:33:34

Then I break it down element by element and say, okay, give me five versions of the headline that you would write for this press release.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:33:43

And then I might pick the one I like and say, hey, I liked this third one.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:33:47

Can you give me three variations?

Mickey Kennedy: 00:33:49

But in between the variations, please pause and consider, what can I do to make the next headline stronger and more unique?

Mickey Kennedy: 00:33:59

And whenever I tell ChatGPT to pause and to consider, it does something magical.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:34:06

It gives me a much better product because I can sit there and say, give me 50 headlines and it'll spit it out in about 45 seconds.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:34:13

I tell it to pause between each and to think, what could I do to make the next headline more strategic?

Mickey Kennedy: 00:34:20

And it might take a little bit longer, but not much longer.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:34:23

But the end product is so much better.

Host: 00:34:25

Yeah, I have fun with it because I'm talking to an individual.

Host: 00:34:28

What do you think about this?

Host: 00:34:30

What's your approach?

Host: 00:34:31

What if we twisted that and tweaked that?

Host: 00:34:33

What's your take?

Host: 00:34:34

And they go, no, that's not a good idea.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:34:36

Then I'll go, give me the opening paragraph to this press release.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:34:39

And if there's something that I feel really needed to be in that first paragraph it didn't mention, I'll tell it and say, rewrite it.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:34:45

And then I might say, hey, give me just three versions of this first paragraph and try to make them as strong as possible and pause between each and say, what could I do to make sure that the next paragraph retains that information?

Mickey Kennedy: 00:34:59

But I'm saying it more succinctly or powerfully.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:35:02

Again, I get better stuff.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:35:03

I may not Go with the third one, but I might go with the middle one and I do that all the way through.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:35:08

And you can talk this way.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:35:10

And you're not going to spend more than 20 minutes on a press release.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:35:12

Yeah, you will get a much better product if you just say, here's what I want the press release to be about.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:35:17

Write a 600 word press release.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:35:19

You will get a the one that you get through.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:35:22

My method is probably going to be three to five times better.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:35:25

Three to five times better doesn't sound like a lot, but it's the difference between maybe getting four or five articles about you rather than none.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:35:32

And like 97% of press releases don't get earned media.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:35:36

You need to use every tool that you have.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:35:40

And again, AI has been trained on the 97% of press releases that don't succeed.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:35:45

So never ask it to come up with the idea for a press release.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:35:49

You always have that idea and it's a strategic one.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:35:52

And to get a meaningful six to eight releases and to do a PR campaign with E release, I recommend that people go through my masterclass that's completely free and it's about an hour long.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:36:04

And it goes through the strategic types of releases that I see a lot of patterns in the 3% of releases that do get picked up.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:36:13

And if you follow this, you may not have every release get picked up.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:36:16

But if you do six to eight releases and you follow the strategic pattern of these releases, you will see at least two to three, maybe even four of those releases get real earned media that will make a difference to your business.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:36:30

Not every one of them may result in money, but over time they'll increase your conversions, but you will get some that do.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:36:38

And we never can predict it, but sometimes we get one and the money just comes in from all these leads and customers who've discovered you.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:36:47

And you just have to be open to it and persistent.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:36:49

And when you find one that works, replicate it.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:36:52

When I did that carpet company, I mentioned that we got about 30 media pickups.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:36:57

We found one version in the fifth month that worked and we continued to follow that.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:37:03

And it was like I asked them who their biggest enemy in the carpet industry was.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:37:08

And expecting it to be like a local competitor, they came back and said it was the big box home improvement stores.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:37:13

And we did a Davis versus Goliath approach with how they have to compete against the Home Depots and Lows of the world.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:37:21

And that resonated with the floor trade publications.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:37:24

They couldn't get enough of that angles, but it was all very similar, all with that same theme.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:37:29

And we got picked up again and again at the end of as like 28 trade publications picked it up, or 28 articles in the trade publications as well as the New Jersey magazine.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:37:39

And the newspaper is definitely a super.

Host: 00:37:42

Fan of your system.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:37:44

Yes, absolutely.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:37:45

And that free masterclass that I mentioned is@ereleases.com Plan P L A N.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:37:50

And I share one type of press release in there that has always generated earned media and often it's between eight and 14 articles.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:37:59

And I can share briefly what it is.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:38:01

And it's to do an industry survey.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:38:03

Survey your industry right now, take their temperature on various topics.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:38:08

Some that might be trending, some that might just be in your marketplace.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:38:12

Are there concerns about AI replacing your job?

Mickey Kennedy: 00:38:15

Do people have fears like that?

Mickey Kennedy: 00:38:17

Or are people having workplace issues, like culture issues, because people don't want to work the same way they did pre pandemic.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:38:24

People want to work hybrid or work from home.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:38:27

And so you can ask really specific questions about things.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:38:30

If you were going to a conference or trade show, what are things you would ask other people?

Mickey Kennedy: 00:38:34

Have you noticed this?

Mickey Kennedy: 00:38:36

And often these are the issues that nobody in your trade industry has written about yet.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:38:42

So that's why you'd ask them like, hey, have you noticed this going on in the industry?

Mickey Kennedy: 00:38:46

Ask those questions because it might be ripe for you to put that in front of your industry.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:38:51

And when you we do a press.

Host: 00:38:53

Release and then you position yourself as a thought leader, right?

Host: 00:38:56

And all of a sudden your peers are going, wow, man, this guy's got.

Host: 00:39:00

Or this gal's on, got their game on.

Host: 00:39:03

And your peers are becoming your super fans in a sense because you're looked at as a thought leader.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:39:09

And I break down in that masterclass, how to structure it with SurveyMonkey.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:39:15

I like four questions per page.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:39:16

But even more importantly, you do not have to have your own Rolodex of in your industry to do a survey.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:39:22

There are so many independent and small trade associations in every industry and they are begging for someone to come and say, hey, would you be willing to send a survey out in exchange for that?

Mickey Kennedy: 00:39:33

I will mention you in the press release I'll be issuing in a couple weeks over PR Newswire.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:39:38

No one knows about them.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:39:39

They are very loyal.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:39:40

They have loyal members, but they're usually pretty small.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:39:44

600 members to maybe a couple thousand members at most.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:39:47

But they're in every industry.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:39:49

I had someone point out in the podcast of mine saying, mickey and the PR industry, that's the one exception.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:39:56

Because there's only Public Relations Society of America.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:39:59

And I'm like, just to let you know, there's over 470 other trade associations in the United States alone dedicated to public relations.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:40:06

And she was shocked.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:40:08

And I'm like, it's because they get all the media attention.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:40:11

These others don't.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:40:11

So when you approach them like this, they're willing to send that to their members because they want to get some media attention themselves.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:40:18

And if you say you'll mention them in a press release, they see it as a win.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:40:21

And that's all you have to do.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:40:23

And then you're going to provide the analysis from the survey.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:40:26

You're going to provide an amazing quote of why you felt the numbers skewed in a particular way on the biggest issue.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:40:32

And you really want to focus the press release on that one big aha moment.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:40:36

What's going to be the most shocking or surprising thing from this survey or poll?

Mickey Kennedy: 00:40:40

And it really is as simple as that.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:40:42

And everybody that's followed my method has generally gotten between 8, 14 articles and the least I've ever had anyone get is four.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:40:50

And they were in a very specialized biometrics field and they were ecstatic.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:40:54

They said everybody that I think could write about us has.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:40:57

It's amazing.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:40:58

They were very pleased.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:40:59

This really does build your credibility and it elevates you.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:41:03

When you author a survey, you are seen as someone who really highly knows your industry.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:41:08

Whether you do or not.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:41:10

It's just a matter of claiming that authority, getting that out there.

Host: 00:41:13

Cool.

Host: 00:41:14

Mickey's we're closing out here.

Host: 00:41:16

We're approaching the up to the hour here.

Host: 00:41:19

Tell a little bit of how people can find you.

Host: 00:41:22

And you've already mentioned your free offer here, the E Releases plan, which sounds like a great course to think I'm going to take it myself to refresh myself.

Host: 00:41:32

It's been a while since I've used the platform, but I with my stuff I can definitely leverage that.

Host: 00:41:38

But how can people find you?

Mickey Kennedy: 00:41:39

Sure.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:41:40

So the website's ereleases.com all of our social medias on the lower right of the page, including my personal LinkedIn, which is the only social media I really do.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:41:50

We have a managing editor and five additional editors that can assist you during the hours of 7am and 7pm if you write a release and you want us to take a look at it or you have questions, feel free to just email us.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:42:03

Give us a couple business days to get back to you with ideas for improvement and some thoughtful interactions.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:42:10

But feel free to lean on us.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:42:11

We help people every day with their first PR campaign and if it seems daunting, it doesn't have to be and we're there to hold your hand the entire way.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:42:20

And again, that Masterclass is@ereleases.com plan and it's completely free and it's not a giant course that's 14 hours long.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:42:30

It's less than an hour long video because I remembered that the last class I paid for I logged in and saw it was over 40 hours of videos and I just don't have that kind of availability and bandwidth.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:42:42

So Mike, this class was about seven hours.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:42:45

I reduced it and got it less than an hour and it's very action oriented and very practical.

Host: 00:42:51

Excellent.

Host: 00:42:52

Mickey Kennedy, it's been a pleasure having you on the Business Superfans podcast.

Host: 00:42:57

Great conversation, great insights on how to leverage press releases to build brand awareness and create super fans within all your stakeholders within your organization.

Mickey Kennedy: 00:43:10

You're very welcome.