Launching A Successful PR Campaign With Blair Nicole Housley

Episode 30: Launching A Successful PR Campaign With Blair Nicole Housley

 

Blair Nicole Housley is the CEO and Founder of Media Moguls PR, a ten-year-old 7-figure Whitelabel PR agency. She’s also a member of the Forbes Agency Council, host of the #KickassPR podcast, and columnist at Forbes and Business.com. Her agency has become the secret weapon behind hundreds of other marketing and PR agencies, and she’s trained over 1200 PR pros around the globe.

 

What the podcast will teach you:

• Why seven-figure businesses have very different PR needs from six-figure businesses, and why it requires a different perspective and strategy
• Why you should be looking at your PR efforts as a long-term investment and go into the process with specific goals and a plan
• How Blair and her team use engagement tracking and conversion rates to demonstrate the value and return on investment of a PR campaign
• Why the time frame of your PR campaign should be determined by your business’s needs and goals, and why seven-figure businesses tend to use PR as a brand engagement tool
• How Media Moguls PR often coordinates their efforts and works with a small marketing team within an organization
• How Blair and her team help their clients with thought leadership efforts, and why timeliness and responsiveness from their clients is critical
• Why it typically only takes an hour or two a week to pull off a successful PR campaign that shows results
• What kind of time commitment you should expect to get started with a PR campaign, and what steps Blair and her team take to get a client started
• Why clients often need help clarifying their messaging before they are able to launch a successful media campaign

 

Resources:

• Website: mediamogulspr.com
• Blair Nicole’s Forbes Archive: https://bit.ly/2Rem1MW
• Email: blair@blair-nicole.com
• LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/blair-nicole-housley-65406b2a/

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Listen to the podcast here

 

I’m very excited to be able to introduce our guest. Her name is Blair Nicolee. She is the Founder and CEO of Media Moguls PR, her PR agency. She’s been at this for many years. She’d been doing this a long time. She has a ton of expertise to share with us about how PR can benefit seven-figure business owners, how to think about PR, and getting the right exposure for your business out there in an increasingly complex digital world with lots of messages and noise out there. How do we get to the right places and get our message out there in the right way? Welcome, Blair, to the show. I’m super excited to have you. Thank you for joining us.

Thanks much for having me on. I’m excited to be here.

Let’s jump in and learn a little bit more about you and Media Moguls PR. I gave you a very brief intro, but I would love to have you tell all of our readers a little bit more about you and your PR agency.

Media Moguls PR is extremely specialized. We don’t do other forms of marketing. We do just PR. That’s what we do all day long. To be a little more specific, our area of expertise is media relations and influencer PR. Our goal for our clients is to go out and get them the earned media coverage, the interviews, and the features that are going to get them in front of their target audience and in the publications that their audience is reading, watching, or clicking on those sorts of things. Earned media is our area of expertise.

When it comes to our target audience and customers, we’ve worked with businesses of all shapes and sizes. We’ve worked with small local businesses, startups, and large corporations. Over the past few years, we’ve become the PR fulfillment house for over 100 other marketing SEO websites and even other PR agencies around the globe. When they have clients who need PR results that they can’t do in-house, or if they have campaigns that they’re not able to get results for, they come to us and we act as their partner to get those results for the client. We work with a lot of individual clients, but we also work with a lot of other professionals in the industry. We’ve become their secret weapon for getting results when they can’t fulfill that need in some other way.

What I want my readers to capture from all of that is that not only could you help them if they have PR needs. If any of them happen to be marketing agencies, it sounds like you do white-label services for lots of marketing agencies that need the PR specialty and the media relationships that you have.

We act as a white-label partner for those agencies, but a lot of times, we also act as their PR agency of records. Other agencies, a lot of times, fall into this trap of getting busy doing client work that we forget our own. Sometimes those same agencies will come to us, and request that we act as their PR firm to go and get that earned media attention for them as well.

To have that specialty, to focus all your energies on one type of thing speaks to the expertise that you have. We’re going to tap into that knowledge here for the remainder of our time together. For our readers, you know that I like to bring in business owners. Blair happens to be a business owner, but we’re going to tap into her knowledge as an expert. I bring in subject matter experts once a month. We have an expert of some sort and at other times, we talk to business owners talking about their seven-figure growth challenges. Blair, because you have both of those perspectives, we’re going to draw on your own experience growing a successful business, but we want to hone in on your expertise around PR and as much as possible, let’s narrow in on those seven-figure businesses from $1 million to $10 million.

As those businesses are trying to grow, I would love some of your insights about how to think about PR and then, maybe we’ll get into some of the best practices for them or what to look for and a good partner for that. Let’s start with how should these businesses think about PR or why should they even care. A lot of business owners that I know in this space probably don’t have much of a sense of what PR is. Let alone, good PR. Let’s give a foundation here of why they should be thinking about PR. What is good PR? What does it look like? Let’s shape some thinking here around PR.

The way that 7-figure businesses approach PR is completely different, or at least it should be completely different than the way a 6-figure business or a smaller business would approach pr. A lot of times, we work with these smaller businesses and these six-figure businesses who come to us, because quite frankly, they need this third-party credibility and validation that PR, publicity, and getting mentioned in the media can give their business.

When we’re talking about a seven-figure business, odds are those business owners probably already have some validation or social proof in the market that got them to the place where they’re making seven figures. The way that we’re looking at PR when you’re already making those seven figures should be a little different. We shouldn’t be just looking at PR as this ego boost or as this credibility generator, but we should be looking at PR when you’re in that seven-figure phase to get you in front of your target audience to add value and focus more on engagement versus exposure.

We shouldn't be looking at PR as an ego boost or as a credibility generator. What we should be looking at with PR when you're in that seven-figure phase is getting you in front of your target audience to add value and to focus more on engagement versus… Click To Tweet

I could talk all day long about the potential benefits of PR, but the benefits to a 6-figure smaller to a 7-figure bigger business are completely different. When we’re in the seven-figure range and we’re trying to grow and scale, the way PR should be used is about engagement and boosting your brand perception in the marketplace.

You said some specific things in there. Let’s narrow in on a couple of them. One is around getting in front of your target audience. How can we leverage media mention? I’m not a PR person. I’m going to say some things that don’t even make sense. You can correct me. How do we get the right exposure in the right media places to get in front of our target audience?

Most of the people who come to us have this hit list of potential outlets that they want to get mentioned in. Usually, that hit list will include things like Forbes, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and all of these major publications that anyone would recognize. That is great if you need credibility or exposure or if you’re new and you need some social proof. When we’re talking about a seven-figure business, you need to think beyond that. Rarely do those types of mainstream media placements or mentions, get you the type of traction, ROI, or exposure in front of your target audience that you’re hoping for.

When we’re talking about a seven-figure business, what we need to do is drill down on who your customers are and who you want your customers to be, and figure out where they’re hanging out. For things like this, we’d be so much better served going after industry journals, blogs, magazines, and places where we can insert your executives or brand as a thought leader in that space to encourage engagement and more touchpoints with your potential customers. At this point, we need to think beyond the ego boost that some of these big well-known publications can offer and think more in terms of ROI and how we can use PR as a tool to create engagement with people who are going to become your customers.

I may not be the quickest kid on the block here, but I think what you’re telling all of us is that, if I can use a Facebook ad spend analogy, rather than spending on ads, we’re going to get more targeted in our spend and do some of those cool things where you figure out who your target customer is. You get your lookalike audience. You spend in ways that are going to reach your target specifically rather than the broad everybody. That’s what you’re getting at.

It’s not uncommon for businesses to come to me and say, “I want to do PR. I want to be in the New York Times.” When I ask them why, they don’t have any answer aside from, “It sounds cool. People will like that.” That may be true, but if you’re a seven-figure business owner that’s hoping to grow into a $10 million business, you need to be thinking beyond the immediate ego boost and beyond that. Think about every dollar you spend and look at it as an investment. That PR investment is so much better spent if we’re targeted. We can get you in front of either people who are already your audience or who are going to become your customers, focus on engagement, and create more touchpoints with them.

 

I’m glad you brought up this concept of ROI for a PR investment because a lot of business owners that I know are super sensitive to the ROI piece. Most of them aren’t thinking, “I’m going to blanket the Earth with our message at all costs.” They want some ROI. They probably shy away from this whole PR world because of a belief that it’s hard to measure. I don’t know how accurate that is. I’d love for you to tell us how true is it that it’s hard to get ROI measurement out of PR investment. How would we even know if we’re getting the o ROI out of our PR investment that we’d like?

That’s a great question, and it’s one that we get all the time. Is it hard to measure the ROI on PR? Yes and no. Is it more difficult to measure the ROI on a PR span than it would be something like a Facebook ad or something that’s super simple and has a direct outcome? Of course. If we’re looking at it over a designated time period of 6 months or 1 year, we can easily measure the engagement, traffic, conversion rates, and things like that from the placements and earned media mentions that we get you, and we can see what your business has done over time because of that.

Some of the things we look at when we’re measuring the effectiveness of a PR campaign for a client are all of their placements. We’ll see what this website has done in the search engine rankings over that period of time. We’ll see how many social shares each of the placements is getting, how much traffic is flowing through to the website because of it, and what their sales conversion rates have done over that time. We’ll look at the estimated number of views.

Is it a little bit more ambiguous than some other forms of marketing? Definitely, but there’s certainly a way to measure certain metrics around what we’re doing to see if there’s effectiveness taking place and if there needs to be a shift in the strategy. If we’re measuring it over time, there’s a way to evaluate it, but it’s not as straightforward as some other form of marketing.

We may not have an exact click that says, “Here’s how much it costs you per click.”

We can measure it over time, which is what I always recommend to clients like, “Let’s give it the next six months. Let’s track these 4 things for the next 6 months and see what happens. When we look at it that way, clients are usually extremely impressed with the results we’re able to get.” Our own brand is a great case study of that because we’ve never ever hired an SEO company. We’ve never focused on SEO.

By using the same PR strategy for our own brand that we’ve used for all of our clients, we’ve been able to go from not ranking in the search engines at all to now, we’re ranking number one on Google for four of our search terms. That’s resulting in leads that come in every single week just because we use the same PR methodology on ourselves that we use for our clients. It does work, and we’ve been able to measure that, but it’s something we’ve had to measure over time.

That must bring a lot of confidence to you in your own sales conversations when you get to tell people, “We do the same stuff that I’m telling you. Here’s what it yields for us.” You mentioned six months a couple of times. That intrigued me. It made me wonder and want to ask the question. What is a recommended timeframe for seeing whether or not the ROI in PR investment is going to pay off?

It’s one of those things that depends entirely on the objective. If I were talking to a smaller business or someone that’s brand new or a startup, it wouldn’t be uncommon for us to do a small 1 or 2-month campaign where we’re trying to get them some media logos to put on their site. That would be a typical engagement that would make sense for that business. Once we’re looking at the seven-figure businesses who probably already have that social proof as we talked about, we’re looking at it as more of a long-term play because we do need to be able to measure how things are working and performing over time.

Especially since these seven-figure businesses tend to approach PR from more of an engagement standpoint and more of a brand perception standpoint, it is something that makes more sense to measure over the long term. A typical engagement for something like this generally starts at around 6 months, probably not less than 3. That’s if we’re running something extremely aggressive. It’s not uncommon for clients at this phase in the game to work with us for several years but typical engagement start at around six months for something like that just so we have some benchmarks to measure. We can measure them effectively.

As I think about the money that I’ve invested in our business to grow, you could try to do some of these digital ads out there, whether it’s on Facebook, LinkedIn, Google AdWords, or anything. You’ve correctly stated more than once, “Let’s get clear on the objective before we start doing anything,” but if you’re clear on the objective and you believe a certain media or investment is going to yield the results you’re looking for, it’s more than, “Let’s do 1 or 2 things for 1 week or 1 month. We have to try this over a period of time and make adjustments as we go, as needed to get the results we want.” It sounds like it’s important to make a commitment. If you’re a seven-figure business, be ready to make a 3-month or 6-month-long engagement to see what’s going to work.

At least from our experience, people who are in the seven-figure business range inherently understand that already. Most people didn’t get to that level of success in their business by not being consistent. Most of the business owners we talked to who are making seven figures understand that consistency is key when it comes to any marketing strategy or deliverable. It’s usually not much of an issue for the seven-figure businesses that we work with, and they go into it with the understanding that it’s something that will need to be measured over time.

Consistency is key when it comes to any type of marketing strategy or deliverable. Click To Tweet

That helps a ton. You came up with tons of great concrete ways that you would look at impact over time, whether that’s the number of visitors to your site and in terms of sales conversion or lots of ways that you can measure if you have the right window that you can look at and track it over time with that business. I hadn’t anticipated going here, but my mind keeps coming up with new questions. When you work with a seven-figure business, I know they’re not all created equal, but there are some patterns as you work with seven-figure businesses. Are you typically working directly with a business owner or is there usually a marketing leader of some sort that’s leading the charge internally and partnering with you guys to make this happen?

It depends on the business, but the most common scenario is that we are working with some marketing director or small marketing team that the business already has in place. Not always, we’ve certainly worked with our fair share of CEOs and executives of these seven-figure businesses, but it’s a little bit less common. It is a common engagement for us to be working with someone’s small marketing team or someone’s marketing director and keeping that line of communication open throughout our campaign so that what we’re doing on the PR side of things is complementary to what their marketing team is doing internally.

Would it be fair to say that your business is more ready to engage in services like this if you already have some marketing function in your business? Is that too broad a brushstroke and we should say, “Anybody who wants the benefits of placements in various media outlets is a good candidate for these types of services?”

That’s a bit too broad because looking back on some of the campaigns that we’ve run with our seven-figure clients, we’ve had some great success with some of the CEOs we’ve worked with directly who don’t have that internal marketing team as much as we’ve had success with businesses who already have that marketing team in place.

The key here is to make sure you’re looking at it as more of a longer-term play. If you’re looking for some quick hit or overnight success to save a business or boost a business that isn’t performing as well as you’d like, then PR is probably not right for you. 1) Looking at it as a long-term play, and 2) Going into the campaign with realistic expectations of what that looks like and what PR can provide for your company or organization.

Those two things are the key. If you’re willing to make the investment over a longer term period of time, at least 3 to 6 months. If you’re willing to figure out the right expectations and allow your PR team to educate you on what that looks like, then you’re a good fit and you’re probably ready for some PR and can get some serious traction and momentum built within your audience by using PR as a tool. If you’re looking for a quick hit, an ego boost, or quick sales, PR is probably not right for you. You should probably go back to the drawing board when it comes to your marketing strategy.

That’s much more in the promotional ad space right realm. That was helpful clarification. I don’t want people to think, “This is for me. It isn’t for me,” if they’re not clear on that. To recap, if seven-figure business owners are looking for another avenue for getting in front of their target audience that is a longer-term play, it’s going to require some investment over time, but we know as a proven method if it didn’t work, it wouldn’t exist. It works for lots of businesses, but it does require some investment and focus over time. That’s to get in front of the right target.

You’ve also mentioned, more than once, the word engagement. I’d like to shift into that space because at least for me, it makes a ton of sense when I think about PR around getting more exposure and getting more in front of your target audience. I don’t always think about PR in terms of engagement, but that is exactly the world we’re living in now. I’d love to transition to the rest of our conversation around how we use PR as a medium or as a vehicle to get more engagement with our target audience. I’d love your expertise around that.

I don’t want to downplay the role of PR in getting exposure. PR is vitally important in getting exposure, but for most of the seven-figure businesses we talked to, they already have some level of exposure in front of their target audience or they wouldn’t be in that phase. If we shift to looking at it as more of an engagement tool, that’s where we see some of the real results and traction in the higher conversion rates for our clients. When it comes to PR for large brands, people don’t always think of it as a tool to grow, but if it weren’t helpful, then why would brands like Coca-Cola, Nike, and all of these well-known established brands be throwing money into PR? The answer is that it works and it helps your brands stay relevant.

When we’re looking at it in terms of engagement, what we’re trying to accomplish is creating more touchpoints in front of your target audience, and existing and potential customers, and creating more engagement with them so that you stay relevant and top of mind. Not only if they start researching competitors, but it will boost loyalty to your brand as well. It comes down to engagement, relevance, and staying top of mind in the marketplace. Consumers have more options than ever before and more information is available at their fingertips and bombarded with information every single day.

 

It’s just noise. There is so much everywhere. I don’t know if there’s a way to give a concrete example over an audio format like a podcast interview. How do we move from just awareness or exposure to more of the classic things you might think about around PR? How do we move into more engaging content? What are some of the tools that you use to crank up the engagement for these companies looking to capture attention In a very noisy world?

It might sound super simplistic, but the way we approach that for most seven-figure clients is by looking at it from a thought leadership perspective. What can we do to make the brand stand out as a thought leader in front of its target audience and existing customers? That might mean getting you a byline, a column, or a syndicated piece of content in one of your industry journals, or magazines. That might mean going on Twitter or LinkedIn and inserting yourself into trending conversations in the industry.

1) It’s all about inserting yourself into the topics that are already trending in your industry. 2) By creating something of value and putting it out there in industry publications and in front of your potential customers and audience establish yourself as a thought leader. In a nutshell, it comes down to thought leadership. That sounds super simple, but it does become very time-invasive and research-oriented when you’re doing it on a daily basis and trying to stay on top of those trends for your clients.

For all of you elite entrepreneurs out there who read what Blair said, I know some of you’re thinking, “I don’t have time to go be a thought leader. I’m trying to run my business.” People put that idea in the same bucket as, “I should write a book someday.” There’s this whole heavy lift in our brains around creating content or being thought leaders. This isn’t an infomercial for Blair’s business, but how much can you help a company put together that content or do they still have a lot of work to do to be thought leaders? How can they get help with that?

We can get you 90% of the way there. We are never going to be as much of an expert in your industry as you are, hopefully. We can do the research on the trends in your industry that you should be talking about. We can do the research and create the media list for you. We can go out and we can build the relationships for you and make the connections. We do need the clients to be responsive to media inquiries and hop on phone calls with us from time to time to give us their expertise and to send us statements about things that are going on in the industry.

Those are generally the things that we need from the clients, responsiveness and to be timely in getting us some of their expertise in nice easy soundbites that we can pass along to the media. Flexibility when it comes to media interviews and stuff like that when it comes up. Aside from that, we can do the heavy lifting, research, and some of the writing.

I know a lot of clients who are wonderful experts in their industry, but they hate writing. That’s not a problem. That’s what we do all day long for our clients. We need clients to be flexible as far as scheduling available when the media comes calling and we need them to get us things in a timely manner. That’s pretty much it. We can do the rest and so can other PR companies who do what we do, but we need clients to be available and get us things in a timely manner. We can do the rest of the heavy lifting.

That provides some level of relief. I’m thinking about seven-figure business owners. That seems too big. I felt the same way when I was going to launch a show. I was able to partner with somebody, like what you do in the PR space. There’s somebody who does that well in the show space, who helps me do this and make sure that this keeps happening.

Let’s take one notch deeper in terms of practicality and concrete. If I’m seriously considering, as a business owner, that PR could be a good avenue for me for a long-term investment, getting in front of target customers, and establishing myself as a thought leader, doing all the things that would increase engagement with my target audience, how much time per week or month are we talking about here to do this well? I know it’s project by project, different timeframes, and all that, but l don’t even know how to size that up sometimes as a business owner. I can’t even imagine doing it on my own. Now you’re telling me, “You don’t have to do it on your own. We could do 90% of it,” but what does that mean for me in terms of time investment, week in and out to make something like this work?

For a typical engagement, for a seven-figure client, it’s probably taking the average client maybe 1 hour or 2 a week. A lot of that depends on how aggressive we need the campaign to be. If we’re going after 100 different media outlets trying to get you 100 different interviews, bylines, or columns, that’s going to be much more aggressive and time intensive for us and the client. If we’re doing an engagement, we’re trying to get you a few solid pieces of media coverage in industry journals or publications every month. It shouldn’t take the client more than 1 hour and 2 at max every single week to help us make sure that’s running smoothly.

The average campaign for something like this isn’t super time intensive for the client. It is very time intensive for us, but that’s what we do all day long. There’s no one answer. It depends on the campaign, but a decent thought leadership campaign, if you hire the right PR agency and they’re doing most of the heavy lifting, it shouldn’t take the client more than 1 hour or 2 per week.

I love that you simplified it like that. I know that there are circumstances where that would be different, but having in their minds an opportunity to go, “If I were to consider this path, there’s a financial piece.” We’re not going to get into that on this show, but there’s an investment that they would make in lots of different types of marketing approaches. In PR, there’s going to be some financial commitment, but the time commitment could be as easy as a couple of hours a week to do something that they would be able to see whether or not that was working within a few months, maybe six months, they could see how that was impacting their business.

The cool thing about PR, when we get to this stage of business or you’re a seven-figure business and we’re approaching things from more of a thought leadership perspective, is a lot of the PR and the media pieces that we’re going after have a much longer shelf life and term value than they would have if we were just going after PR for exposure. If we’re going after exposure for a client and trying to go after some viral story, it might get 100,000 views this week and then be completely off the radar next week. That story’s no longer relevant.

There’s a flash in the pan.

If we’re going after PR from a thought leadership approach from a client that’s already got a seven-figure business that’s already growing and successful, we’re going to be approaching it from the angle of establishing them as an expert in their industry. A lot of those PR pieces that come out with their expertise, feature, or whatever are going to have long-term value for people who are searching for those things on Google.

 

They’re going to have long-term value, not always, but a lot of the time, three months from now as they are right now. These sorts of PR pieces have a lot longer shelf life, long-term value, and ROI than something that’s going to get you some quick exposure. Case in point, I’m still getting traffic to my website and getting clients inquiring about doing business with me from articles I’ve written Forbes years ago because they’re as relevant now as they were then.

Anybody reading can draw from their own experience on that. Not that they were the thought leaders, but if we’re searching for something, we pull up articles all the time that are 2, 3, or 4 years old or even older. If it’s still relevant, it’s still relevant. It pulls up and we go, “There is some exposure.” These things do have a long shelf life, which I never even considered. That’s a fantastic point. A couple of hours a week when it’s going, I know this from launching a show, there’s an initial setup cost.

I’m not talking about money. I’m talking about the time to get to know each other and help you or any other PR agency as a service provider get to know the business and the objective. We’ve got a see eye-to-eye on things. There’s a startup cost. What is that time commitment like if somebody were to say, “Next quarter, I’m going to carve out some space for this and I’m going to do something like this? There’s probably an initial push that looks more like what in terms of time commitment?”

It depends on the campaign and the industry. If we’re working in a client industry that’s super technical, that’s going to require a lot of conversation and back and forth and training. The lead time on getting something started will be more. For the average client campaign generally to get something started, we’re looking at about 3 to 5 hours of time investment upfront.

What that entails is coming to an agreement on the media targets that we’ll be reaching out to and messaging, having an initial strategy call that goes over branding guidelines, communication, talking points, and things like that. Creating a schedule of reporting and things like that. Educating the client on our processes they know what to expect from our side of things. Initially, for most campaigns, we can get all of that training done, and all of those initial calls out of the way in about 3 to 5 hours’ time.

That’s helpful. I imagine that happens over the course of that many weeks. Is it like 1 hour a week or 2 hours sometimes?

It depends on how quickly the client wants to get things up and running. Sometimes we’ll have a client reach out who’s interested in working with us. We jump on the call the same day and by next week, we’ve already got the campaign launched.

“We’re going to do a half-day intensive. Let’s go.”

It depends on how excited people are to get started and how much time they have in their schedule. Usually, those conversations occur over a couple of weeks. That’s the most common, but we’ve had clients who have inquired on a Monday, and by Thursday, their campaign’s going. A lot of it depends on the client, how excited they are to get started, and how much time they can make in their schedule.

What I want people to take away from that is there is flexibility still. If you’re like, “I can’t carve out 3 to 5 hours this week.” You don’t have to. It can be over time. I have an interesting question that popped up as you were talking about that. In the getting started phase, you have to understand their business, messaging, and position.

If you’re going to go and help them share a message out there, there’s got to be clarity on what that message is. I’m curious, how often do you get to that point where somebody knows, “I want to invest in PR as a way to get in front of my target audience and engage them more fully and established my thought leadership? How often are you helping customers get clear on their messaging that you can do that with them?” I’m imagining sometimes you get to those early conversations and the message isn’t super clear. You’re probably guiding a little bit along the way.

More often than you would think.

The reason I thought of it is I bet it happens a lot.

It’s not at all uncommon, which is why we insist on doing a branding and strategy call before we ever work with anyone because a lot of times, not only do we need to understand the message, but the client needs to understand the message. Everyone thinks they understand what their key points and key takeaways for their business are, but a lot of times we get to that point in the conversation and they don’t have a clear answer.

If we’re going out and we’re trying to get you the media coverage and get you in front of your target audience, we need to know what the message is. We need to make sure it’s a message that’s going to deliver, and that’s going to be in line with the objectives that we have for the campaign. It is extremely common that we’ll get to that point, and a lot of times, we need to go back to the drawing board and help the client with the message a little bit. That’s not at all uncommon. That’s something that we anticipate with most campaigns.

It hit me like a ton of bricks. That’s probably the case. This is how twisted my mind is. If you’re reading and you think, “That’s probably me. I don’t have a clear message,” that doesn’t count you out for getting help from a PR company. It might be the reason that you need to go get that help. It might be the way that you get the clarity. You probably leverage the opportunity to go get some help with PR to finally get the clarity that you’ve never made yourself get around the messaging. There’s a good insight there.

Blair, this has been super fascinating. I keep coming up with questions honestly, that I didn’t think of ahead of time. They just keep coming to me because our business owners reading need to be thinking about this the right way. There are many interesting facets to it. It’s not an infomercial for Media Moguls PR, but how would I know as a business leader whether or not I’m ready to engage with a PR firm of some sort? What would make me think about that?

The question comes down to examining why you want to do it. It goes back to, are you looking for some quick hit or quick marketing win? Are you looking to stroke your ego with some mention in the New York Times, or are you looking at it as an investment? If you are in a place in your business where you’re trying to go from $1 million a year to $10 million, or from $10 million to $100 million, you should be thinking of any marketing play or any business play as a potential investment in your business.

If your business is in a place where you're trying to go from $1 million a year to $10 million, or from $10 million to $100 million, you should be thinking of marketing play or business play as a potential investment in your business. Click To Tweet

If you are going into this, looking at it as an investment, then you’re probably ready to make the leap. If you’re looking at it as, “I’m going to try this out and see what happens. I’m going to hope that this gives me an extra $9 million in business.” Looking at it from that perspective, then you’re probably not ready and you’re probably going to be disappointed in what you get. If you go into it looking at it as an investment and approaching it from an investor type of mindset, then you have room to create a campaign that’s going to win for your business.

It’s not short-term lead gen that we’re after with PR campaigns. It’s more long-term brand awareness and health target audience engagement that we’re after. We want results. We want more sales and customers but those come over time. When you do this correctly, you’re establishing your thought leadership, you’re engaging your target audience, and you’re building a brand that maintains relevance that people go, “I’ve heard of those people. I keep seeing so-and-so, and their thought leadership’s amazing. I read stuff about them. I searched for this need that I have, and I found a great article from somebody.”

It happens to lead them to your website and they now become a potential opportunity for you. You’ve helped me see that way more clearly than I did before. I hope that the same occurrences happened to our readers. Let’s wrap this up in the best way. If they do want to talk about this conversation with you specifically or reach out to you and what Media Moguls PR can do for them, let’s tell them how they can connect with you.

To learn more, they can always go to MediaMogulsPR.com. You can also read a little bit more about our PR methodology and some of our thought leadership in our Forbes column by searching for Media Moguls PR or Blair Nicole Nastasi on Forbes.com. As far as reaching out to me directly if you’re interested in having an introductory call, doing a quick strategy session, or finding out more information that way, I can be reached via email at Blair@Blair-Nicole.com.

This has been fantastic. Thank you for being a PR expert for us. All of the seven-figure business owners on our show will benefit from reading what you shared. I appreciate you answering my questions. It’s been not only informative, but very engaging, and I appreciate you making time.

Thanks so much for having me come on and do an episode. I’m certainly appreciative. I look forward to connecting again soon.

That is this episode. If you like what you’re reading, please review, rate, and share it with others. We want to help as many seven-figure business owners as we can, continue to grow and/or conquer the chaos that is running a seven-figure business. Thank you for reading and stay tuned to future episodes.

 

Important Links

• Media Moguls PR
• Forbes.com
• Blair@Blair-Nicole.com

 

 

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