Press Releases Are a Powerful Sales Tool: Expert Mickie Kennedy

Speakers: Andy Olen & Mickie Kennedy

| 00:02 | There’s a Sales Warrior Within each of us. My name is Andy Olen, and I’m here to help you discover and empower the sales warrior within. Hello, this is Andy Olen. Welcome to the sales warrior within podcast. I am really excited for our guest to be with us today. It is Mickie Kennedy.
| 00:30 | And Mickie is the founder and president of a great company called eReleases. And this small business is focused on press release distribution. Now for over 22 years, which is an amazing track record. And Mickie is an expert at helping small business increase its visibility and credibility and I’m really excited that he’s on the sales warrior today to talk to us about press releases.
| 00:57 | What press releases are, how small businesses and entrepreneurs can benefit from press releases, why journalists are out there looking for stories and in terms of having a great sales tool on your sales tool belt, I think you’ll really be convinced that you’ll want to think about having a press release strategy. For sales warriors out there listening to this that may not be running their own business, listen to some of the structured communication processes and sales tips that Mickie brings.
| 01:29 | He talks about the inverted pyramid approach of communicating. I think that’s a really good sort of headline sub headline detail approach to putting out your benefits and attributes of a product. The importance of storytelling in terms of crafting press releases. Again, that reinforcement for salespeople of being able to craft and tell a great story that other people want to piggyback on and jump into storytelling with you as well.
| 01:56 | So we talk a lot about the basics of press releases, and I think it’s a really important marketing tool to consider. And I’m looking forward to you hearing about the world of press releases and learning more about Mickie and his company E releases, which you can find at https://www.ereleases.com/. Let’s get to the show. Mickie Kennedy, welcome to The Sales Warrior Within podcast, great to have you. Oh, nice to be here. Fantastic. Well, I just gave the audience a little bit of a brief introduction about you, but why don’t you go into a little bit more detail?
| 02:27 | Tell us a little bit about you and what your organization does. Right. So basically, you release initially started by being an email database of journalists who agreed 25 years ago to start receiving press releases from me. And we’ve added people over the years, but it’s getting harder and harder to get that email address. And we also partnered with PR newswire to include a national distribution over them, as well as the email distribution that we traditionally did.
| 03:00 | And so what we’ve really created is sort of the best bang for the buck as far as entrepreneurs and small business owners being able to get access to a wire that normally retails for $1200 for a national release of 500 words for substantially less. And we sort of act as a co op on behalf of a lot of small businesses, entrepreneurs, and it’s a partnership with the wire in which they want to support small businesses and entrepreneurs as well.
| 03:31 | So it’s sort of a win win. Yeah, that’s great. I shared with the listeners my experience with writing and issuing press releases and the fingers crossed and hoping that they would be picked up in a former life. But every time I see a big earnings release from a company or big corporate news, it always starts with that. Was it PR newswire? Sort of heading. So that’s the same service that you’re distributing your clients press releases to, correct? Correct. Yes. That’s great.
| 04:00 | That obviously is a huge reach. So let’s back up a little bit. I wanted to just make sure for all of the listeners that are sort of new to the new to this type of advertising promotion, just start with the basics. What is a press release? So basically, a press release is a announcement written usually in the third person. It might include some first person quotes from someone at the company, a president, or an executive, or certain person.
| 04:30 | They can also include experts in the industry. So you know there’s no hard fast rules as to how to do it. But there are stylistic and formatting things that happened, including a date line that usually has the city and state, which is traditionally where you’re located. The date that it’s going to go out. And of course, at the bottom, it has media contact.
| 04:55 | That being said, if you do a search for a press release or go to https://www.ereleases.com/ and look at our press release samples, you’ll see they’re pretty straightforward and it’s not rocket science. They’re usually written in a very simple way and you’re just explaining information. You do write it with sort of like the inverted pyramid of what’s the most important element first and you get that in the headline. And then you open with the paragraph talking more and going into more detail.
| 05:22 | And you generally put the less and less information further down the page and there might be a closing section called a boilerplate where you’ve often seen about company. And it’s basically two to four sentences that you recycle and use again and again, and you put in every press release. You may update it over time, but it predominantly stays the same. And it’s a way in which the journalist who is skimming releases can easily go down real quick and get the elevator pitch about what your company is and what they do to see if this is their industry that they’re interested in or something that sort of they respond to.
| 06:00 | Good. I remember writing press releases and you end the press release, I think, is it the three pound signs or yeah? You don’t have to worry about that much anymore with the wire. They sort of handle that. And I don’t think it’s the three pound signs any longer, but I still see it out there being translated and used into that format. But yeah, it was basically a holdover from the old teletype systems where you didn’t know if the message was complete.
| 06:28 | And so it was a way to sign off and say, yes, this is the finished release. Excellent. And so when a small business or an entrepreneur is thinking about putting a press release together, what type of events would that individual have coming up or be in the middle of where it says, you know what? I think, you know, broad distribution of X is, this is really timely and a press release would be a good idea. So there really all over the place.
| 06:56 | Anything that’s really important to you and your company is an opportunity potentially for doing a press release. You know, a product launch. It could be an important new hire. You know, that being said, some of the most non newsworthy press releases we get are new hires. And it’s often because that person isn’t usually a senior position. It might be an associate at the HR level. So you know they’re not even the director of HR or VP of HR.
| 07:28 | And secondly, they’re not someone who the industry knows very well. And so I think that a lot of people do it because they just feel like it makes the hiring all complete and official and we can put it on our website as well as sending out to the wire. But I do challenge my customers to maybe not post those to the wire. Maybe send it to your local paper and maybe also send it to one key trade publication or industry publication, make a contact there and network them with them a little bit and just keep them apprised of things like this.
| 08:02 | It really is a lost opportunity when you send those types of press releases out. Other events that generally can be included are a new book appearing at a conference you know. Anything that sort of puts you in the spotlight or being seen as an expert. You know, there are so many different things that are newsworthy, acquisition, a partnership, you know, working with the charity.
| 08:30 | You know, all kinds of things that potentially, if written in the proper way, and with your most important news up front, you do stand a chance of getting media success. And that being a product launch, we get a lot of product launch press releases. A lot of them don’t have enough material for journalists to build a story. Journalists are storytellers. And just having a product has been released and a list of features is in a story.
| 09:01 | If you can include a use case study where you had someone who tested this new product, achieved some beneficial results, you can include that in there and try to get a quote from them. Put the quote in the press release from them. Or include your quote and their quote. And that is the element of a story, a journalist can say, here’s a new product. Here’s how someone used it. This is the results they saw. Here’s a quote by them. That’s a story. And you really have to be aware of that.
| 09:32 | And knowing, do I have enough material in the press release for journalists to build a story? They don’t like to hunt and ask questions and say, hey, do you have a lot of people who used it? What were their results? Most journalists are shy English majors or journalism majors. And they really hate picking up the phone or calling because it’s one of those things that they now have to stay on top of, and they generally like to stay on top of something where they know there’s definitely a story here. And so they’ll just move on to something else.
| 10:03 | Yeah, that’s interesting. So let’s stay in the world of the receiver of the press release and it’s that journalist that’s looking to tell a story. And you know, give me a little bit of a sense on who your press releases are reaching. And I know that’s a very ambiguous and broad question. But if I’m a journalist, am I a business journalist looking to write a story on a business? Am I a special interest journalist looking to write on my topic of study?
| 10:32 | And is it about getting that press release out to a broad audience that you’re likely going to find someone in some capacity that can connect and link into your story? Right. It may include all of those people. So there’s usually journalists who cover certain industries. So if you are in an area which is a large metro, you might find that there’s four or 5 people that report on businesses, but you see maybe one or two navigate to more technology oriented businesses or the other 1s may 1 navigate to healthcare.
| 11:03 | And so if you pay attention to that, you sort of get an understanding. But with the wire, everything’s available to everybody. They do get coded for industries. So, and they also get can get coded for local as well. There are people who are only interested in local news. And you know if they get tagged as such, then it can be saturated to the local journalist as well.
| 11:28 | It generally goes to newspapers, TV radio, it can go to trade publications, magazines, as well as blogs, and also I’m excited to say that a lot of social media influencers are signing up for the wire and getting journalist access. Which allows them to create a custom feed for the industries they’re interested in, and they can also set up inclusions and exclusions.
| 11:56 | So if you cover fashion, but you don’t cover ready to wear or other keywords, you can put them in as exclusions. And so you’re only seeing content that should be relevant to you. So it really is a valuable resource to have that access to the wire for journalists. And it’s really nice to see the newswire accepting of all different types of media because they were so resistant 15 years ago or so with bloggers. There were people who were blogging that had more Internet traffic than the trade publications.
| 12:28 | And yet, they wouldn’t give that blog access. And so begrudgingly, they eventually did. And I think that they’re now waking up to the fact that people are getting their news and their media from so many different sources. And as a result, they have to be they have to adapt and accept people who are writers or influencers or connectors in all different types of markets. And if this is something, you know, staying on top of recent news events is something that they’re interested in, they should be very welcoming, which they are.
| 13:01 | That’s great. Let’s remind the audience that they can find Mickie and all of his great work on press releases, https://www.ereleases.com/   If I were so Andy Olen here in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and sales and leadership training, let’s do a use case with you, Mickie here. And here’s sort of the mental barrier I have is that if I have a new online course coming out on negotiations, and I want to do a press release, who’s going to be interested in small little Andy from Milwaukee?
| 13:34 | Is that person in Tulsa going to be interested in just in the suburbs of Baltimore interested? Is it going to be the Milwaukee audience? Or is it really in how you tell the story or create the potential for a story within the press release? Where is the art that connects the idea, the product launch from and in Milwaukee to what could be a worldwide audience? Right. So a lot of people that we do business with are located in one small area geographically.
| 14:01 | And they’re issuing a national press release and they’re looking for media pick up everywhere because most of these people are selling everywhere. It’s selling online. So it really doesn’t matter that someone is in Milwaukee or Chicago or even Miami. It’s are they accessible and available for anyone to use? And then it’s the story they’re compelling and interesting. Is it something that people will read and say, yes.
| 14:31 | As a gatekeeper, do I want to share this story with my audience? And that’s what journalists are. They’re basically gatekeepers and they’re trying to determine, is this interesting enough to share with my audience? So if you can sort of reverse engineer to make it interesting to them, then you have a much higher chance of getting media pick up. Things to keep in mind with the news is they love data. And it doesn’t always have to be your data.
| 15:03 | I’ve had people who put together data that’s just publicly available, but they put it together so nice and tell such a wonderful story that they often get articles written about them. I also have a lot of clients that do industry surveys. And you don’t have to have your own audience to send it to. There are a lot of independent and small trade associations in every industry. And you can just ask them if they would be willing to send it to their members.
| 15:30 | And you will include them in the press release that you’ll be issuing over the wire. The small and independent trade associations don’t get much love, and they don’t get a lot of marketing dollars. So they see this as a real big win win in which they could potentially get some media pick up themselves. And I’ve had some pushback a little bit insist on having it co branded. That still doesn’t hurt you you know. It gives you a little more credibility being associated with the trade association.
| 15:59 | So you know it is something that my most inventive clients and the ones that are most open to suggestions do. And often it’s between 8 and 14 articles that get generated from one press release about an industry survey. You just have to make sure you’re asking really relevant questions. I like 16. I like survey monkey for questions per page. If someone quits after two pages, you still got 8 responses.
| 16:30 | So you’re going to put your most important questions first. You’re going to put your sillier questions at the end. And I do recommend that you throw a couple left field questions towards the end. Because sometimes they can be really revealing and often those are the ones that end up being in the story. So brainstorm spend a lot of time, ask colleagues, ask friends and family. What are some things right now you’d like to know what’s going on in our industry among other companies like ours?
| 16:58 | Is it how much are you spending less or more in marketing? Are you preparing for a recession? How is your hiring going? Are people wanting to work from home? Are you having that as a challenge? Or are you preparing to lay off? All of these types of questions are really relevant right now. And when you do this pretty quickly and get it out there, the media jumps on it because they’re like, wow, this is really, these are great questions that people want to know the answer to.
| 17:26 | And so you being the author of it, that makes you newsworthy. That makes you the important person. And I have to sometimes boost my customers because there is a little bit of impostor syndrome that I just this little guy here in this city and I’m not important. But you know doing a survey and getting out there and being the author, you are important. And you are front and center. So it’s really a great way to get media pick up.
| 17:57 | That’s interesting. I spent a lot of time actually working with clients on critical thinking skills and one of the judgment barriers you have to get over in order to make solid and consistent decisions is get over the cognitive bias. So we talk a lot about impostor syndrome and maybe my Andy and Milwaukee fear observation was my impostor syndrome playing through a little bit.
| 18:16 | So are you saying Mickie that you don’t even necessarily need the solution in the press release or the product to address the situation that the survey itself and the insights from the survey and then sort of positioning you as the finder and the sharer of this information can almost make you enhance your credit and your expertise in that area? Exactly.
| 18:41 | Often the press releases focus on maybe three of the questions, but you know I do recommend providing a link to a page on your website where you list all of the responses. Sometimes a journalist will go there and hunt for a different story or find something a little more intriguing. It’s also because that page has a lot of data on it and it might have multiple quotes from multiple people. It can be a resource in which journalists will provide a link to you.
| 19:09 | A lot of journalists don’t generally like linking to companies. Like if you ever read a story in The New York Times or Washington Post, it’s rare that they’re ever include a link to you. But I have had large newspapers include a link where there was a resource page that had so much information and they knew their audience would be very receptive to it. So having that page built out really does allow you that opportunity if it does work for you.
| 19:37 | And you know one of the things to keep in mind is you may feel like you’re not important or newsworthy, but realize that journalists don’t like writing stories about the big giant companies that have big bucks and can afford to advertise. They prefer being seen as a curator and bringing to light or putting a spotlight on a small business that maybe you don’t know about and what they’re doing. Yeah, so that’s a really interesting point.
| 20:03 | It reminds me of, and I think these terms are still relevant today, sort of paid and earned media, where paid media would be that you go out to digital media, television, print, and you buy, you buy with dollars, the advertisement, it’s placed, it runs, it expires off you go. That’s paid. And that’s a marketing call for a business to make. Earned media, press release out, journalists picks it up, writes a story about you, publishes it, maybe you’re on the local news as well, maybe around The Today Show.
| 20:34 | Who knows? That you didn’t pay you paid for it in terms of the energy you put in and obviously the distribution through an organization like yours. But that was that’s called earned media where it’s out there and you didn’t have to buy the placement of that story. Talk a little bit about the power of earned media. Right. So I’ve had so many interesting stories with clients about getting earned media and what happened and how they were just shocked by it.
| 21:04 | I remember one that said, we only got 240 visitors from this article. But a 160 people bought. And they’re just like, that conversion rate is insane. They’re just like, how is that possible? And I’m like, well, you know, they read a story. It has, you know, a story comes across as third party corroboration. It’s social proof. There’s an implied endorsement that happens when a journalist chooses you to write about you.
| 21:35 | And if they tell a story and it’s a really great story, often you get this up swell of like, wow, this is really cool, or what they’re doing is awesome, or I like this company, and then they’ll either click through or do a search and find you, and hit buy. And they don’t then open another window and say, can I get this cheaper on Amazon? Is there someone else is selling this that maybe I should go to instead? They have created this warm feeling.
| 22:04 | And that’s one of the powers of earned media as opposed to an ad. When we see an ad, our blinders go up. And but you know in the case of this person, they’re like you know, it was more than two thirds of the visitors bought and he says, our best landing page converts at like four or 5%. And he’s like, could I send paid traffic to that article and see if people click through? I said, it certainly worth running a test from a marketing standpoint.
| 22:35 | But I think that a lot of people who are doing searches, it depends. Is the search resonating with what the article is talking about, potentially it could. And other people, I’ve had who have used this earned media in interesting ways as I had a local carpet company, New Jersey, one that I advised not to do press releases because I didn’t think it was going to work for them. But you know we did some inventive stuff.
| 23:04 | We researched their industry and figured out a blind spot that the trade publications, which all are made up of the readers or local carpet companies, their biggest threat in enemy are the big box home improvement stores. And they talked about how their nightmares you know. They often come in and carpets need to be stretched or they’re just not installed correctly, or the seam is just terrible.
| 23:31 | And they point out that a lot of the big box home improvement stores do not care if you’ve ever installed carpet before. They call, and they say, hey, we see you have a home improvement license. Do you want this carpet job? This is what it pays. And so we put together press releases, sent it out, talking about them you know, how they fight the big guys. And it was a David versus Goliath, had a great story.
| 23:59 | And almost every floor and trade publication picked it up and wrote an article about it. And you know I pointed out, this is great, but your customers are not reading these trade publications. They put together a book in which they printed out all of these articles that they got. And when they go and get someone a quote, they say, look, we may not come in the cheapest. But our padding is excellent. We pay all of our installers as salaried.
| 24:28 | We consider them members of the family. They’ve worked for us often for decades. And you know who’s coming into your home? And you know we do very fair work and the product that we do is just great. And here is how people have recognized us in the industry, floor trade weekly, this publication, and by doing that, they started converting closer to 15% more of these leads, which is phenomenal.
| 24:55 | You know, to close 15% more than normal, just by using this tool and putting it in your arsenal. Because it is true that if I had someone come in my house and I’m like, I don’t know. Do I just go based on price? And then I’m like, well, this guy is only 5% more or 7% more, or even the same price, but they’ve been recognized in the industry. People talk about them. And eventually, we did get local media for them as well, including New Jersey magazine, which is a really great coup.
| 25:23 | But it just shows that if you’re adding this messaging to your marketing, it can convey some of that positivity that social proof that people need. And that’s why I often tell people when they’re press release goes out and they get earned media to send it to their leads. Share it on social media, share it with their customers. Because there’s going to be leads who are on the fence and this might push them over, getting that implied endorsement.
| 25:52 | There are customers who are always looking. Should I be considering someone else and all of a sudden they’re like, oh no, they just got picked up by so and so. This is the right company I should be with. Yeah, that’s interesting. And I’m thinking about that visual of the carpet company having the book of all their earned media clippings and being able to show that to a potential client customer and say, you know, this is don’t take our word for it, you know, look at what journalists and others are saying about us.
| 26:21 | And you could read literally all these different long form testimonials and stories written by independent journalists. And so to your point, when you see sponsored by promoted by or that ad that’s clearly an ad with the tagline in the marketing message, you may consume it, but you also filter a lot of that stuff very quickly as a consumer. In this situation, it’s really hard to ignore the power of that proof. That’s very powerful.
| 26:49 | I’m really now thinking about my business and saying, how do I take advantage of press releases, going back to my roots and political campaigns, now starting to write them for my own business instead of writing them for politicians. But it really sounds like it’s a wide open space. Talk to me a little bit Mickie about how your organization works with people like me with entrepreneurs, small businesses, business owners that are looking to do this. Are you helping in the writing process? Are you helping in just the placement? Where does your organization fit into this? Right.
| 27:19 | So we are predominantly a distribution business. We do offer writing services. I would challenge anyone to look at a press release and see how it’s written. I think most people can write a press release. And I provide a lot of education on the website that you release. The most important thing is not the format and writing of the press release. It’s what you are announcing. You want to make sure that you’re putting your most strategic and newsworthy angle first.
| 27:48 | And I do have some education that I provide for my customers on strategies that work. We talked about the survey and study, always works. And this is a video masterclass that’s less than an hour. It’s completely free because I want to educate people so that hopefully they’ll come use us afterwards. But if any of your listeners are interested, it would be a great place to start and learn a little bit more about press releases. And it’s an https://www.ereleases.com/PLAN
| 28:18 | And again, it’s less than an hour. But it gives you a good audit of these are actionable things that we could do that are newsworthy. And then if you look at a press release and figure out how to write it, it should come natural. And I do think that often you are the best person to present your story. But if you want to get us to take a look at your press release, all of our editors are available, we usually get back within 24 to 48 hours if you send us a press release.
| 28:48 | Whether you use us or not, we will look at your press release and give you our thumbs up or here are some areas that I would work on. And I am completely a 100% all about education, and I believe that the more education you have, the more you’re going to see the value in a service like E releases and hopefully do more strategic releases that do get that earned media. Yep.
| 29:12 | And I think more and more people are very purposeful and also selling through education that if I can teach you something and I’m not putting the hard spin and sell on you or the hard close, but I’m just going to be here to teach. It creates a tractor beam almost. People gravitate in towards the teacher, the educator, someone who’s making them better, and then very quickly, it’s like, you know what? I think I’m ready to write one. I’m ready to get it out there, but I don’t have the ability to distribute. So that’s where we got a call in Mickie and E releases to be able to help with that.
| 29:43 | Last and final question for you, and this has been fascinating. I’m certainly excited about incorporating this as part of my marketing strategy. And so Mickie, we’ll be talking, again, very shortly here. Talk to me a little bit about your self proclaimed press release ninja. What do you mean by that? Basically, I can look at businesses and I’m really good at brainstorming ideas that they just would have never thought of that are newsworthy.
| 30:11 | The fact that I was able to work with this carpet company, it took us 5 months before we put any kind of leverage or started getting earned media. But you know they wanted to do a press release a month. They had a budget. And so I feel like I’m really good at testing and trying things and seeing what the media responds to. And then I take that and I put it in the education and let other people be aware of here are opportunities that have worked for clients. And they may work for you. That’s great.
| 30:42 | And so it’s that testing. It’s that commitment to the craft. And then having those unique insights that only a ninja can. So Mickie Kennedy at https://www.ereleases.com/ . And I was just also thinking before we let you go, now that I go out and I see all these executive coaches or sales train or some of the people that I’m in the same business with and on their website, it says, as seen in Forbes as seen in Bloomberg, that’s probably coming from a press release, or at least a genesis of that story of that opportunity may be coming directly from a press release.
| 31:12 | And I always find that I’m like, wow, that’s high credibility gain there. Right. I do know that Forbes does have a paid placement for columnists and things like that. But Bloomberg and a lot of the others that you mentioned, I don’t think do. So a lot of times, there is syndication that happens when a release goes out so it does appear on certain websites, the press release. It’s not an article. And people do leverage that because these are well-known brands like Yahoo and things like that.
| 31:42 | But you know getting the urge media is really the goal at the end of the day. And adding those logos after you’ve gotten an article is just really great and being able to link and show people, hey, here’s how here’s a story about us. Yeah, for the salespeople out there that love the moment that you get the yes from a client and it’s sort of that like all your hard work is paid off, when you get your story published and you’ve earned that media, that is just as satisfying.
| 32:12 | So using E releases, going to https://www.ereleases.com/ to get educated about this, checking out more of Mickie Kennedy’s good work out there. I think this could be a really important marketing tool for all the small businesses entrepreneurs out there. I’m going to stay on after the episode and talk to Mickie about my own business here in a minute, but Mickie, thank you so much for joining the sales warrior within today. Oh, it was a great pleasure. Thank you again to Mickie Kennedy for joining the sales warrior within podcasts.
| 32:41 | You can find out more about Mickie and his great press release education and offering at https://www.ereleases.com/ . I spent some time talking to Mickie after the podcast about what I have to do for my own business. And so let me include a testimonial here that I realized I have many stories to tell that I think could be compelling out there. And I’m really thinking about putting up press release strategy together. So to try to get the message out, try to share more stories with a broader audience and build even more credibility for my sales and leadership training offering as well.
| 33:15 | So from immediate podcasts who immediate value add super helpful podcast and episode with Mickie Kennedy. Make sure you go check out https://www.ereleases.com/ . And I look forward to talking with you soon on the new Sales Warrior Within podcasts coming up shortly. And in the meantime, and as always, my name is Andy Olen. Good selling. Good leading and good living.