Marketing that Produces Results
Posted: Friday, November 26, 2010
by Drew Gerber
Publicity Results
In February of 2009 Michelle Tennant Nicholson of Wasabi Publicity, Inc., sat down to speak with Michele PW, Your $Ka-Ching!$ Marketing Strategist, to discuss tips on how to market yourself both online and offline.
Here's the transcript:
Interviewer: Hi, it's Friday, February 20th and this is Michelle Tennant with the Wasabi Club and today I have with me, Michele P.W., "Your Ka-Ching! Marketing Strategist." And since she's actually a Michele in marketing and I'm Michelle in PR, what we've got planned today is a conversation about what you should do around your marketing and your publicity. Some really basic tips on what you can do to really make things work on the Internet, both offline and online in relationship to how you market yourself and get to yourself in the news. So welcome Michele.
Interviewer: Yeah I we have a lot of Wasabi Club members who were really interested in insider tips and trade secrets about marketing and publicity and a lot of them are just entering in the actual field, they might be business owners, they might be complete veterans having done this for several decades and they're just wanting to know what's the next best thing. And I think that we've got some insights today to really share with people so that they can kind of take a glimpse into, "Ok, here's what I'm doing with my marketing, here's what I'm doing with my PR and how can I ______ to look to see what's missing?"
Michele P.W.: Cool, yes, I think that's really important.
Interviewer: So you know I want everybody to know how to reach both of us on the outset and for sure make sure you get Michele's free special report, "Five Mistakes Entrepreneurs Make that Kill Their Sales and How To Prevent Them" and if you want to go to her website, it's michelepw.com and that's a Michele with one "L" and it's P as in pet and W as in water dot com. And if you want to look at my website while you're listening to this recording then you can go to publicityresults.com and there's an "s" on the end of results and my blog is storytellertothemedia.com. Michele, you wanna tell people about your blog as well because I know that you do all the Internet stuff as well, so.
Michele P.W.: Yes and actually yes it's michelepw.com/blog and I just, in fact, please go visit because I just changed a lot of stuff to make it more of a social networking blog. So make sure you go and comment because you'll get some good promotion and back links doing that.
Interviewer: Awesome. Ok well I, you know we've talked a few times in the past, I think that we're trying to capture the conversation between us that you know a lot of people can benefit from what a marketing strategist would say and then also what a publicist has to say and each of us have been doing this for quite some time. So before we get into these specific tips and pitfalls that we always see clients and potential clients doing, why don't we first give kind of like a 20 second overview about our background so that people who are meeting us for the first time can actually you know get related to us a little bit. Why don't you go first Michele?
Michele P.W.: Sure, I am I come to this with a great deal of experience in just marketing in general so basically I started my business in 1998 and I live in a small town within Prescott, Arizona which is an hour and a half north of Phoenix, it's a retirement town. And the reason why this is important is because when I started I was very local. I mean in 1998 the Internet was here, but it wasn't, it wasn't the way it is now. And so I was really building my business the old fashion way, which is knocking on local businesses doors. So what happened was because it was such a small community, one of the ways that I used to build my business and make money is to continually up sell to my current clients and how I did that was a client would come up to me and say, "I want you to write a brochure." So I'd write a brochure and then a month later I might seize an opportunity, which maybe it's a PR opportunity, maybe it was a newspaper opportunity and I would go back and present that to them and then they would say, "yes." And then hire me to do the work. So it was a great way for me to get a really good foundation on marketing in general.
And then in 2005 that's when I really started to focus on the Internet and I also really started to focus on direct response and started to specialize in that. And direct response is using words, using copies, using words to make the sale. So the sales piece, the sales letter actually stands on its own. It doesn't require a sales person to make the sale, it makes the sale for you, which is great cause we all know we could certainly use more time, not selling or having to hire a sales person. So the more we can have our promotional pieces do, the better. So since then I really specialize in an Internet marketing and direct response and even though I used to do a lot of PR I really don't do it anymore because I've found that it's much better to specialize and it's much better to partner with people like Michelle because you guys do it all the time and then it just turns into a win-win for both of us.
Interviewer: Yeah, exactly. So gosh I guess the 20 seconds on me is I've been doing PR for about 20 years now, I'm 40 this August and I first learned PR when I was in undergraduate school in Chicago I worked for a woman who used to be a radio producer and she decided to actually do PR cause she wanted to control her own company and so forth and so I was for many years her right hand just working myself through undergraduate school. And I learned I learned to do PR when it was prior to the Internet, we did it on a Brother typewriter and faxes and phones. So we did it the good old-fashioned way and that's how I learned it. So when we started to integrate technology later in my career I launched a TV network for the National Head Start Association in conjunction with DISH satellite network so everybody's got satellite TV in their home, we actually launched a TV network that would train early childhood professionals throughout the country so they could get their accredited degrees.
So I quickly integrated PR with my distance learning and technology skills in project management and then later created Wasabi Publicity with my business partner. We've been doing it for close to a decade and Wasabi Publicity has been pretty successful. We are now, like just today I got a call from Good Morning America, regularly working with major media, we've had people on Oprah, The Today Show, Larry King Live, I mean all the biggies. You know New York Times, Wall Street Journal, all of it you can ask me, I'm probably going to know something about that media venue, both local, national as well as International news making and how - you know we're both Michelle's, I'm the Michelle with two "L's", but the way that we're distinct is that Michele is really working on the sales end of it, the marketing end of it, which has to compliment your public relations efforts which is really being part of the news and it's very distinct animals. We often say in PR that you pay for advertising and that you pray for PR because we say that a lot because it's true. You really you know you could work and invest a lot of money with a publicist or often times we do campaigns and then gosh it's just not what we thought it was going to be. Why? It's because of the news environment, it's always fluctuating and so what we look at is how to actually be strategic with breaking news.
So that's what we're going to talk about today. I'd also like to kind of integrate Michele, you know some of the stuff about the Internet strategy like I was messing with my blog and actually making it a little more integrated with my Twitter profile and so I also kind of, I think that people are really interested today in how to marry both the offline and online world. And I think it's very confusing for people, but I think also you our two companies do that quite well and if before we the other thing that we have in common that's really interesting is that we both are dog people, so I don't want to step over that. I'm a Husky owner, I do the dog training and my Husky girl is very, very special and is a rescue and her name's Lulu, how about your dog?
Michele P.W.: Oh well Nick is famous. Actually I've got three dogs, but Nick is the one that he's a Border Collie and you can see his photo, he's got a photo with me, Nick also has a blog and he Twitters, although he doesn't Twitter nearly as much as he should so we have to have a conversation about that, but-
Interviewer: I love it. Ok this is giving me some ideas that I should do cause Lulu's definitely too much fun. Ok well let's jump right in to some of the pitfalls that we see both with marketing and with PR. Let's also talk to the people who are listening as if they're a potential client cause I think that everyday you and I have conversations about "hey here are the pitfalls" or someone will grab us in our personal lives and say, "hey I know you do this and what do you recommend?" And so here's the secrets if you were our best friends, here are the things to really think about with regard to having a special marketing campaign and how it would then integrate with PR.
I think by in large the first step is your marketing plan. Before you even start to really think about PR and a lot of time people will get PR because they think that it's a substitute because they can then generate free placements for themselves because the news is mentioning them. And then they're like, "Oh but it didn't really follow through with sales. How come that is? What happened there?" Cause it's not designed to really sell your product and it's not your direct message, it's a third party message that's more like endorsement so let's first first things first, Michele, let's pretend we're talking to we've gone out to lunch and we're talking to a potential new client and we're talking to them first about marketing. What would you say?
Michele P.W.: Well, in terms of yes the whole publicity why it didn't work there's a couple things why it could be happening. One of them is, is that there are two big pitfalls that I always see that they don't which is part of the whole marketing plan, foundation. The first one is they don't they don't go after, ok they don't look at their PR as an extension of their marketing plan, exactly what you say because the reality is just going out there and getting PR, anywhere you go is kind of like the scatter shot method. But it's like the Donald Trump, I don't know like The Apprentice, I don't really watch it, but there is that show, you know they stand out there on the street corner and hand out fliers. It's like-
Interviewer: Here's your latest product, now go sell it and so they're on the fly about it, which unfortunately is a way a lot of entrepreneurs look at things.
Michele P.W.: Yeah they do and it's kind of like oh well I suppose in the grand scheme of things that there's some truth in that, the reality is is that not everyone is your customer on any stretch of the imagination. And let's even look at things like this is one of the things I like to play with, you know people I get this a lot with people who sell health food or anything that's kind of like nutritional based or to have better health. And they say, "Well it's good for everybody." And it's true, everyone I'm not going to argue with you that everyone doesn't need what you're selling, that everyone doesn't need good nutrition and to be healthy and happy and all that other stuff, but there is only a small a portion of your audience who can first off afford what you're selling, I mean the reality is that they're barely making enough money to rent their car or rent an apartment and live in a car, they're not going to have any extra money to buy it.
And if they don't value just because they need it doesn't mean they want it. And if they don't want it they're not gonna buy it. Because people only buy what they want, there is no need, it is only want. Cause I mean really when it gets right down to it we only need very, very few things to actually survive and exist. You know what we're purchasing is what we want. And what happens is that if you don't we have to have a very clear idea of who your target market is and then you have to have a very clear idea what they are reading, what news media are they reading or listening to? What radio shows are they turning into, what news channels are they turning into? And that's where the key is. There's a story that I saw, I was listening to a PR professional and I totally disagreed with this person-
Interviewer: Oh really? I want to hear it.
Michele P.W.: Yes.
Interviewer: I want to see if I agree or disagree, let's see.
Michele P.W.: I was sitting in the audience and I was just like, "oh my god," well this person, I suspect that her, she was a PR professional so her target market was PR businesses, entrepreneurs, if not entrepreneurs at least corporate, I mean it was some sort of business. And so here she's up there and she gets a call from a Catholic radio station and their target market is Catholic families with kids and they want her to talk about like, something completely unrelated to PR and everything. It was kind of like a side note of something else. So it wasn't her target market, it wasn't even anything that she could really sell, it was just kind of like it was just this radio show and she said and she made a point of saying that. She said, "Should I do it?" And she said, "Heck yes." I think she actually said the other H word, she wasn't even Catholic and she says, "Because all PR is good PR."
And I was thinking to myself, I don't think that's true because unless you're a celebrity and at that point you don't mind getting your name out there wherever you go, that's not I don't think it's true, I think it can be a massive waste of time. And that's what I see and I've seen this with book authors too, where they feel like, "Ok, I'm going to get on all these radio shows" and then they come back to me and it's like, "Well I was on all these radio shows and I didn't sell a book?" It's like, "Well were you talking to people who would buy your book?" It doesn't if you write romances, going and being on a sports talk show is not going to sell a lot of books, it just isn't.
Interviewer: Well I mean I think it begs the question, what is your ultimate goal because-
Michele P.W.: Exactly.
Interviewer: Whether all PR is good PR I would then have to ask the question, well what's your objective? And if the objective is something like you know I've had clients in the past, there was one International Children's Organization, they were non-profit and they were housing orphans. So for them, where it might look like, well is this actually on target for a radio show? It might look like a waste of time, but see their goal was to become a household name. So if your goal is to become a household name, then any type of touch with the public would be beneficial, but if your goal is to sell books and you're not then all of the sudden like for example today when we were called for Good Morning America, they were actually looking for a family and the need was a character in their story, you know by in large the media is doing stories and so they needed that main character family.
So and then my one client was like, "Well should I go on?" I'm like, "Well it depends." It's not going to get you anything; it's not going to sell you anything. You're going to be basically the media likes to think in terms of problem and solution and so you're going to be helping illustrate the story of a societal problem we all have. So you're just the visual. You're the illustration, it's not necessarily going to drive people, "Oh I gotta get these tips" because you're not going to be allowed to talk about those tips. So then, no that would be a huge waste of time and the only thing that would benefit you is to maybe get related to the particular producer, but that's not going to be the booking producer, that's going to be the field producer. So exactly so I guess what I'm saying Michele is I do agree with you in that many times in PR people aren't really considering the end result. And I mean I'll be honest with you, I think that I plan and that they've communicated what they're doing to me and then I'll actually suggest, you know a particular venue or run of them and then they might go, "Gosh, I don't know if that's really in my target audience. I don't know if that's" - And so then we have to have that conversation and that's why we have to work so closely one on one with our clients because it is you have to kind of explore that and research it every single opportunity to say, "Well what is this opportunity getting us?" What is this you know it's not only an investment in time, it's an investment in money and that's when you've got to ask yourself, "Is this really moving forward our overall plan?" And that is a huge pitfall that I see almost all entrepreneurs or all leaders of organizations doing is in every moment of your day, are you moving forward your plan or are you completely working on something that's just a busy waste of time?
Michele P.W.: Oh I love that idea because yeah it's so often people get people get yeah, they don't do I tell people, "Do a little marketing every 15 minutes because that's what's going to drive your business forward." And you're right, the thing is that it depends on your goal and if your goal is also like you don't have a lot of experience for instance, you haven't had a lot of radio experience, I think getting on some radio shows that maybe don't hit your target market or maybe don't hit a lot of your target market the practice would be a good thing because you need practice and you need to have a little bit of credibility and build up some PR credibility that you know other people wanted you.
So there is time, there's a time and place to do that, but just know that. Don't go - don't be on all these little radio shows and then come back and say you haven't sold a book. It's like well were you practicing or is book and why I disagreed so much with that PR professional too was because she was speaking to a group of business owners and they wanted to use PR to get more business. So I thought that she was doing everybody a disservice because again she was sending them off in the wrong direction. I mean if they wanted to do PR for something else, if they wanted to get on these shows for something else, great. I don't know why she did it because she doesn't need any practice, but you know-
Interviewer: Right exactly. She's trying to get to her target audience, but you know the practice pieces you bring up I know and a lot of people will get PR and the first thing that they say just if you do say to your publicist something about sometimes people say Okra, they don't even say Oprah's name right. But if you say to your publicist, "can you get me on Oprah?" Please preface it with these words, "I know you may hear this all the time, but" because yeah, you know what? She's not the panacea of media and there are plenty of people who get on Oprah and it doesn't move anything forward.
Michele P.W.: No.
Interviewer: Just because you're on Oprah does not mean all of the sudden that you're an overnight millionaire or billionaire or whatever you're wanting to do. And the other thing is is that it is a long time before you get to that place. Publicists like myself when we've been doing it for a couple of decades, we have our own reputations to worry about and if I send an unskilled, unpracticed expert or spokesperson to something like Good Morning America or Oprah or The Today Show, I will get blacklisted. So the other thing that we have to consider is are you good talent? Are you actually willing to do what it takes to do the local TV shows, to actually groom yourself so that you are a reliable expert for the media and I'll tell you what, the worst clients that I see that are willing to actually do what it takes are those that are already pretty successful in the world. They're like, "Oh I've already been there, done that, I've done all my training, I don't need to do any more training." Well you know what? Speaking to the media as an expert on the Oprah Show is much different than speaking to thousands of people in a hotel room.
Michele P.W.: You know that's very true and think about it just for yourself too. I mean not just what your reputation is, but what's your, as in the business owner's reputation? I mean do you really want your first shot in media to be on Oprah and you blow it, which you probably will if that's your first time, unless you get awfully lucky.
Interviewer: Yeah cause you get nervous and you tank-
Michele P.W.: practice-
Interviewer: And also then the next question is, ok great, how does being on Oprah move forward your marketing plan?
Michele P.W.: Yeah so now you've got all these people yeah, somebody else, so then there was another well I've got lots of these stories because I run into it a lot because people _____________ this coach, they got on Newsweek and then they got tons of visitors to their website and no buyers, it's like well first off in that case it was definitely a target market mismatch because the woman sold, she was a coach for women who had midlife crisis and so Newsweek did an article on her. I don't know how many women with midlife crisis read Newsweek, but regardless she did get a lot of attention on her website because she got a ton of visitors, but nobody bought and I don't think she had it set up correctly so that she could get their email address so she could even contact them later because that's the other that's where the marketing comes in.
In PR what you do is you can get the people to come to the website, then what I can do once they're on your website, this is where I step in and it's like now you can start making the sales. And actually convert just because they heard you speak I'm trying to think if they heard you speak on a show or read an article about you doesn't necessarily mean they're going to run out and buy everything you bought, or even buy one thing that you or buy everything that you sell, or even buy one thing that you sell. They're gonna they're curious clearly and clearly they found something that mattered to them, there was something in it that appealed to them or they wouldn't have taken the time to visit your site, but unless you actually now close the deal with them, it's - nothing's going to happen, it's going to end right there. So you need the first thing you should do before anything is get their email address. And maybe their mailing address as well. Get a way to contact them again. To start the relationship it's actually build the relationship. I mean right now it's started, it's kind of a teaser, you've got the credibility of the magazine or the publication or whatever it was that you were on, on your side. They know who you are, so now let's start having getting a dialogue between you and them and so get their contact information.
Interviewer: And that's the thing I can see having a lunch with a potential client, you and I, and that's the illustration that you would have it, so that you can just capture people. You know you're actually baiting them with your PR and you're out there making the news and they're out there just checking you out. Oh that person seems interesting I'm just going to check them out. They do a one visit and then do you actually capture their email address? Do you capture their information so that you can then build a relationship over time because the statistics will show that most people are not going to drop a bunch of money with you if they the first meeting, but over time if they're buying your books or audio recordings or they see you time and time again, they begin to trust you as a credible source, then they're more willing to actually invest money and time in what you're offering. And I would say that that's the biggest thing that when you're actually planning your marketing plan, ok great, well you wanna actually look and see how does the person purchase, meet you and then move through to actually ok first they're going to ask is this person credible? Then they're gonna ask well what's in it for me? And then they're going to be thinking about, "Well is this worth my time and money?" And that whole process, what Michele is talking about, happened when they get to your website, they open your front door of your business or they're actually having a conversation with you on the phone.
Prior to that the back work is "Well who are you, what do you actually offer the public, what is your expertise and what are your product offerings?" So for PR one of a good publicist will actually ask you what's your ultimate product that you're wanting to sell. How are you going to build revenue and how does this PR actually move forward your marketing and ultimately your bottom line so that you're actually generating revenue? And then the publicist will also tell you you're not really going to sell a whole lot with PR. You're actually going to build a platform and it's a public platform of credibility. So if the pretty much we see people on the news and we're like, "Well if the news is going if the media people are going to have them on, that means I can probably trust them." But that doesn't do anything about answering what's in it for them or do they even want this particular product that you're selling. And that's where the marketing piece, what you're saying, your copy, your product offerings, how you're actually positioning them online and in the world and so forth. So big pitfall, we've actually identified is not capturing people when they come to your website, and then also just having high in the sky expectations about what your marketing plan and what your PR plan or that one actually exists without the other.
Michele P.W.: Well also and I was just going to jump in real quick with video the other thing to keep in mind is when they see you, especially if you get on TV, if they see you, not only are you getting the credibility of the news stations or whatever it is, the show, but you also when people can see you and hear you, they actually feel like they will know you faster. So that's it actually increases the know like and trust factor. That's why putting video on websites, using video in your marketing tools online is becoming so it's so hot. And that is because people really feel like they know you. And they also feel like they know you if they can hear you so radio works as well. So the more they can actually sense you you know see you, hear you, that kind of thing, the more trust they're going to build up and the faster they're going to feel like they know you, which then leads to like and trust. Print will do that, just reading about you, reading your articles, reading your stories, that will do that, but it's a slower process.
So that's one thing to keep in mind. I mean you should do everything because there are people out there that prefer to read over anything else, but do know that just reading it, reading about you reading even what you're saying, your words, that will take that jump to know, like or trust does take longer. Getting on TV or getting on the radio will shorten that curve, shorten that whole relationship building.
Interviewer: Well that's really those are really great points and I think that people often ask, "Well what do I start with? Do I start with getting mentioned on the Internet, websites?" You know you can do bylined articles and submit them to web portholes, you can target the daily newspaper in your area, you can target radio stations or magazines or TV shows, I mean there's there's an abundant amount of media venues to target today. And there are reasons to do things outside, I can just think of this one radio interview recently, you know and my client was like, "I don't really think this is a good fit." But one of my motives to actually put her on that radio show was to see how she would do. Cause you know she wanted to be in the national shows and I was actually looking to see if I was going to get burned if we put her on something national. Right? And so sometimes I can be honest with people and sometimes I can't. I'd love to be honest with everybody, but not everybody can take straight talk. You know what I'm saying?
Michele P.W.: Yes I do. Unfortunately more than I-
Interviewer: And if you're going to be in the public eye you've got to be able to take feedback from a publicist. I can most politicians, their publicists have to get straight with them about what people how they perceive things you know? So let's just let's just pretend we're at the lunch and then the client we've sent them a proposal and now they're our client. What we take people through Michele is a process of, we do messaging with them. We interview them just like the media would and we try to get up under the core messages and then we develop an online press kit and then we actually then do a series of distributions each month, an outreach, maybe mailings, maybe email, maybe phone calls, not so much fax anymore today, although there's a rare few that do like the fax still. And then some Internet strategies, outreach to bloggers, maybe some social networking, presence and blogging and so forth. Then that's really the execution of the campaign and we've actually developed the online press kit, which is a unique took that I find other publicist, even some of them aren't using, which I think is so stupid. But they're just relying on things like press releases and press releases by in large had the media feel like cattle, like once you actually put it out on the wire, then there's no scoop, then there's nothing special for them so they really appreciate that little, "Hey I've got a news scoop for you" phone call or email.
And I would say that if somebody was out there, you know we brought this client in and then they were like, "Look I really just want the bare minimum, what can I just the first three things that I must do if I want to have a successful PR campaign?" I would say you have to have a marketing strategy, then you have to have an online press kit and you definitely have to make regular outreach to your target media every single month and not like it sounds like this I hear this all the time from the newsmakers, they go, - people call them and say, "When are you going to cover me?" I'm not kidding. I used to kayak with this one reporter locally and I just was laughing. We were out on a river one day and I said, "Are you kidding me?" She goes, "No, I actually had this woman, she was in the medical community and she would call me and she would just berate me that I hadn't actually put her in one of my stories." I said, "I'm just - I just can't even believe it." She goes, "Oh I know." So you know I said to her, I said, "Well my philosophy is that I always just call you and that I help you. I help you get your job done, so I'm going to give you a good story or I'm going to give you an article or some research or some statistics or something to help you move forward in whatever beat that you're actually reporting on." She goes, "That's all we need. Then that's a good source for us, then you become a trusted source that we call time and time again."
And that's it, that's really all it is. I mean if you're just going to do a bare minimum, you don't even need a publicist to do that. You need some good technology online, I always recommend Presskit247.com and if you don't want to pay for an online press kit at the very least you should do a free service called pitchrate.com and that's where you can sign yourself up as an expert and then actually respond to media requests who say, "I need this type of help." And then you help them and hopefully you'll get mentioned in what they're covering. That's p-i-t-c-h-r-a-t-e.com; I spelled that right, right Michele?
Michele P.W.: Yes, I've already signed up and it's great. So I've been telling people to sign up.
Interviewer: Ok great, yeah people should definitely it's, the media's really all a buzz about that service and it's free. But those are the basic things and then you know to actually reach out to the media of your choice once you get your list compiled, which is also free on the Internet, but if you want to save some time, just order a list from a media source. And make sure that someone's doing regular outreach for you, those are your basics, if you want to do your bare minimum. Of course there's the really what you really invest money in for a PR firm, like what we have are the development of whatever stories that are getting pitched to the media that include you. And then you would then integrate that with whatever marketing language you have from your marketing plan. Now what if our client that we just got from lunch, Michele, said to you, "Ok what's my bare minimum? What do I have to absolutely do if I do nothing else with my marketing plan," what are your bare minimums that you tell people?
Michele P.W.: I would say, again, when you actually do the when you're doing the speech, like if you're getting interviewed or something, see if you can work something in about how I'm having, like a list of tools or special report or something into the interview, whatever it is. And then you may not be able to get that with print, but you might be able to get that with radio or television.
Interviewer: Well with print it would be like a little sidebar, which people don't know-
Michele P.W.: Yeah, or a sidebar and make sure it's really valuable. Like for a sidebar, maybe you've got 20 tips to reduce stress and include 3 of them on the sidebar and say, "for the rest of the list, go here and download it for free." So give them a link on your website, give them a URL link, something easy also something easy to spell and remember, so don't make anything like confusing or have a lot of initials in there. Make it pretty easy. And then the page comes up and the purpose of that page is to get their email address and that if you do nothing else that along is going to make all this worthwhile because then you're going to start building your own house list. And this is a list of people who are interested who like you on one level because they wouldn't be there if they didn't like you, or respond to you in some way. And they're interested in what you're selling because this is because that tip list ok let me make that let me make a caveat here. If you are like if you don't have anything to do, like if your business let's say you're a business owner who does pet photography, you don't have a list of 20 ways to reduce stress in your life because that's not the point. You know you want to have something that's going to appeal to your target market and it appeals actually to something that you sell.
Like if you had pet photography, maybe you want a list of 20 ways that you can groom your animal to the best to make them look their best, or ways to or health or grooming and nutrition and stuff to make them look healthy. Have something that actually ties in with what you're doing, don't just do something that's out of the blue. And then when you get their email address and they get the special report, now you've got a list of these people who are interested in what you do, they like you and you can start building a relationship with them.
Interviewer: Now and so let's even get really basic cause what I hear Michele saying and do not side step this, everyone who's listening, is she's saying have a website. I can't believe how many people come to us and their website it atrocious or they don't have one.
Michele P.W.: Even a page, at least it's one page website that just collects their email addresses, if you do nothing else, do that.
Interviewer: Yeah and then so it is amazing how people actually operate business today without an actual website, but that's bare minimum. So you've got a website that captures the email addresses for your relationship building and then that's what that's how the two, the PR and the marketing strategies can interplay. You can grow from there as long as you're capturing your audience, the people who know and love you and trust you and they're willing to give, ok here I'm going to give you my email address so that I can hear from you again. Then great, then what's next is you can actually grow with that and do different things like a direct mail campaign or a PR campaign or the things that are actually going to cost a little more money for you to actually do right.
Well I I love that and I think that our client who just signed up with us, even though they have no money, that's the bare minimum, that's all they can do and we understand that as businesses have to grow and they sometimes have to start out small and then actually invest in it over time. I'd rather see a business do that than actually shoot their wad at the very beginning and then spend, gosh I've heard nightmare stories where people have spent as much as they've spent on their house, on their website and it doesn't even capture email addresses.
Michele P.W.: Yeah and that's the thing, a pretty website, and that's a big mistake that a lot of people make because graphics don't sell. Pretty doesn't sell. You know the most beautiful website in the world, unless you have the words on there that's going to convince them convince them to do anything, words are what persuade people. I mean think about it, you can't how can you persuade anybody without words? If nothing else, just at least tell them what you want them to do. If there aren't words on there nothing's going to happen, you're just going to have a painting or a piece of art and a piece of art, that doesn't sell either. I mean somebody else has to be talking to the buyer to actually make the deal. So there's no way that pretty or graphics will sell on it's own. You need to have the words that can actually do it. And if our client has no money now they need a little bit of money, but actually I just started a I just services for people, so if they go to my website, I just put those packages up this week. They can actually take a look.
Interviewer: Oh good. So how remind everybody where that is again cause I'm going to look at it while we're talking.
Michele P.W.: michelepw.com and if you go into the services and then find the Ka-Ching Copywriting Agency, that's what it's called and it's a really cool way of doing it because it's basically based, it's customized, but it's based on templates, so these are successful templates that I've created and then you fill out a questionnaire and then one of my trained copy writers actually puts it together. So you have something that will still get your results, but you're paying a fraction of what it would cost to hire it you know hire a copy writer, cause copy writers can be very costly. Of all marketing professionals copywriters are probably some of the highest paid ones because what they do can directly relate to income, it's very easy to prove our return on investment, our ROI with copywriters. I mean they send out a sales letter and you know you send out a sales letter and you make $50,000.00 from that sales letter, ok, there you go. You can prove your worth, well I made you $50,000.00 so therefore my fee should be $10,000.00, if every time you paid me $10,000.00 and I give you a sales letter that produces $50,000.00, I mean wouldn't you do that everyday? If you could get a $40,000.00 increase in business? So copy writing in general, especially direct response does can be costly. And so this is my answer of really helping people you know still get results driven and direct response copy writing to proven stuff without paying a huge amount of money which a lot of people don't have, especially when they're starting out.
Interviewer: I think the template idea is a great idea and I've heard of this from past campaigns that I've done, cause I often have to interview the success stories of my various clients and there is this one campaign that we did where it was basically, she was a business coach and she had the templated the stuff that had already been written by a professional copy writer. And I remember hearing one success story person say, "I just didn't think it would sell." Right? You know cause that's not their expertise and so they're just like, "but you know" and this is another mistake that people make is they invest money in hiring a publicist or a marketing person and then they don't listen to the advice, then they argue with the advice. It's like, "hello? You're paying me for professional advice, I'm going to tell you." So that's this person had at least enough sense to know that's what he had paid for so he sent the letter out and unbelievable response cause when people actually know the emotional and psychological way to really draw people in to a particular you know their letters are just great so I'm that's really a great service, I'm glad to hear that you just put that up Michele. That's really needed out there. Oh so that's really I m looking at it right now and this one woman that you've got on here, one of your profile success stories, actually an 8 percent conversion rate where normally 1 percent is actually considered a success and then you got an 8 percent conversion rate, that's remarkable.
Michele P.W.: It was, I know it actually surprise me because I didn't think it would get that high, but yeah it was really pretty powerful so.
Interviewer: Well I just to summarize what we've talked about today is the intersection of marketing and media relations. So what are the main pitfalls that business owners and organizational leaders are making with their marketing and their PR and then the two of them working together? Any final words on what you actually would like business owners and leaders to hear from that little marriage right there, Michele, before we end the call?
Michele P.W.: That you have to be really clear about what each thing can do for you. I think that's probably the biggest thing, cause we've talked about it, but yet I think the more clear you get that in your head, the better because they're two different things. I mean PR is really exposure, it's building your brand, there's a lot of really, really good things about PR, but in terms of directly selling from PR is not always going to happen cause I mean that's not the purpose of it. And sometimes it happens, I mean don't get me wrong, but sometimes there are true overnight success stories out there too, but it doesn't happen very often. So if you don't plan for it and if you get it anyways and that's a happy thing, but and then the direct response part, that's when you actually close the sale because that's when you can ask for the sale. It's a lot harder to ask for the sale when you're on the media. So you need to be very clear what you're doing and why you're doing it. And also this stuff is PR is can be more of a long-term solution cause as you said you pray for publicity. And sometimes it can take a while, like for these magazines they have a four-month, national magazines are looking for stories, four, six, eight months out. I mean you're not going to get you've got a great idea, if you got a great idea for Christmas, don't be pitching them in December cause you're not going to make it.
Interviewer: Right, exactly. And people call us all the time in November, "Can you get us in a holiday issue or for New Years" it's like well not the magazines, you might actually get something on the Internet, there might be a blogger who wants to write about it. And they're going to have a short turn around, but it's definitely not going to be in Oprah magazine you know?
Michele P.W.: Yeah, you need to pitch them in August-
Interviewer: Yeah exactly.
Michele P.W.: So this is not like an overnight there's no some of this is not overnight. So that's what I think, if you get that straight cause I think where a lot of business owners make mistakes is they confuse one thing or the other and then they don't they're not happy with the results because they had unrealistic expectations cause they confused what the roles were.
Interviewer: Yeah, that's always the case is that your expectation isn't really matching reality and your I always say that if you talk to a publicist and they say, "I can guarantee you X, Y, Z. I'm going to guarantee that you get on something." That's about as bull as somebody saying, "Here drink this green juice and you're going to lose 30 lbs. in one week." That's like the equivalent of that, it's just a bunch of b.s. It's just not going to happen, they can't guarantee what the news plans to actually carry and your marketing stuff is really it's got to be planned out, it's got to be attacked in a way and executed in a way where it actually builds towards something and it's not the equivalent of sitting out on the sidewalk and then passing out fliers which so many people do. It's like that old saying of oh my gosh I spent so much money on that advertising campaign, well what, that which you just did was like a drop in a bucket of water, it's going to make no difference, it's going to make no ripple affect, you've got to actually consistently drop those little droplets of water over time and make sure that your consistency over time, rather than like a one splash job. It's gotta be something that you got the stream flowing over time. And so in closing I guess I there's one thing that we didn't even touch on this call, which we've talked about in the past, Michele, and that is search engine optimization, how do you once you get everything up there, like your beautiful videos and your beautiful marketing copy and the website address with the email capturing tool.
How do you then get people to just find you? Just to kind of trip over you and that's where search engine optimization it's called SCO, also, and there's all kinds of technology and tools to get your search engine optimization high. I've never found anything that is as good as presskit247.com and that's just you both get your online press kit and then boom, the Google ratings just kind of sky rocket and for my clients in PR they've got to have an online press kit that pushes them to the top of I like to call it page 1. Like in PR a lot of celebrities go, "god I gotta be on page 6" which means that they're kind of like the "it" girl and they're being talked about by the celebrity media. Well I like to say forget about page 6, you want to be on page 1 and that's Google page 1. Cause if you're on page 1 and you're coming up as an expert under the terminology in that you're talking about, so we want Michele PW to come up under the topics around marketing and copywriting and so forth and we want Michelle Tennant, me, Michele T, to come up under publicity and public relations and so forth.
And when you Google my name or you Google Michele's name I can guarantee you we're page 1. That's and the funny thing is, Michele I had a friend who she's a librarian and we were just doing a friend weekend in Chicago and I went to her library conference and she says, "You know there's another Michelle Tennant out there?" I said, "I don't know because I dominate page 1 with my name." I don't know, I'm dominating page 1. She goes, "I think I did see another Michelle Tennant on page 3." And she goes, "You know who that is?" She goes, "That's the person that creates this library conference."
Michele P.W.: Wow.
Interviewer: Right there's another Michelle right? And I was walking around cause she just took me to this conference; I was just kind of a tag along. She got me a badge and everything. So I'm walking around with Michelle Tennant, my badge, and everybody they were walking up to my friend, Marci, and they were like, "Why does that girl have Michelle Tennant's name?" Because they only know the other Michelle. And I'm like your Michelle, she's not even on page 1, I'm the real Michelle Tennant. You know like from that show from the 70s, will the real Michele PW please stand up? Well if you're on page 1, baby, you're the real one.
Michele P.W.: Exactly, nobody else it doesn't matter. And unfortunately if you're somebody whose got the same name as a celebrity, good luck. So then the real deal ____________ work is possible.
Interviewer: Yeah you're going to have to work a little harder, maybe include your middle name so that you actually stand out a little bit or initial, do the initials like you've done, Michele. I think that's pretty ingenious when people can't pronounce your last name, right?
Michele P.W.: Yes I know cause it's well or spell it because it's Pariza Wacek, that's why I went to PW because a Pariza Wacek is like a mouthful.
Interviewer: It's smart; it's smart messaging on that one. So well and just and how you actually find the two of us, I think we should start our own little series, Michele, called the M & M's, you know like the little bag of M & M's, the M & M's of marketing and media relations.
Michele P.W.: And we could have a different color for each call. Today we're doing the green; we're going to talk about-
Interviewer: Yeah I love that! I love that! So well we're definitely able to assist any business leader, author, gosh we work with non-profits and businesses and writers and authors, all different types of the one category that we focus on though over at Wasabi Publicity is people who make a difference. We did get a call there are some products that we actually turn down or some platforms that we actually turn down because it doesn't fit within what we're passionate about in the world, but of course we can always provide you great tools and services to do whatever you need, but I have to personally believe in who you are and your product to represent you. And you would reach me by going to Wasabipublicity.com and if you can't spell Wasabi, no worries, you can go to www.publicityresults.com and check out my blog at storytellertothemedia.com and I usually update about the Wasabi Club and different teleseminars and such like this there. And of course I'm going to be using www.pitchrate.com now that it's in the world and so that's the other resource. Why don't you leave everybody with again your resources, Michele, and we'll end our time together and plan the next one pretty soon.
Michele P.W.: ___________ and that's the main website and then to reach the blog it's www.michelepw.com/blog.
Interviewer: Awesome. Thanks so much for spending time today and I will be in touch soon about maybe the red M & M.
Michele P.W.: Yes please do rednecks I think.
Interviewer: Sounds good Michele, you take care.
Michele P.W.: All right, thanks, bye.
Interviewer: Bye-bye.
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