What it’s about
Andrew O’Brien, AKA ‘The Publicity Guy’, believes strongly in the power of media as a sales tool, a trust building tool, a credibility building tool, and a brand tool. But he sees a lot of entrepreneurs never going after media exposure because of self-doubt. They think it’s impossible to get an media exposure; they think their story isn’t strong enough, or they don’t have enough clients, or recurring income. “People doubt that their company is worthy so they don’t even give it a shot,” says Andrew. In this interview, Andrew shares his expertise on how you can get the attention of the media and how to turn that attention into revenue.
Takeaways
1. The press release is dead.
Journalists are overwhelmed by boring press releases. It’s hard to get their attention if you’re still doing it old school by sending out copy and paste emails with your press release. Andrew says that getting the interest of the media involves creating and building relationships. “People think building relationships can take months but I can create a relationship and get an interview within 24 hours.”
2. Start by reaching out on social media.
After doing research on a particular writer or host, Andrew and his team start every campaign by sending a message to them through social media. He points out that we all get hundreds of emails a day and it’s become really impersonal, but social media is very personal and people respond better. He sends a message that compliments the writer on a recent article and ends every message with a question. “If you end with a period they don’t feel the need to respond,” says Andrew. “By ending with a question they feel more compelled to respond.”
3. Pitch the contributor, not the staff writer.
While they both have the same level of credibility, the right person to pitch to is the contributor, not the staff writer. Staff writers usually only do stories about really big companies like Apple, Tesla, etc. A staff writer often has an employee mindset, where a contributor is more like an entrepreneur who is writing for this media outlet to build their own brand and audience. It’s easier to talk entrepreneur to entrepreneur.
4. Use Snip.ly to get return on your story
Andrew highly recommends the tool Snip.ly. It lets you create a custom banner ad on the page where your story is featured, like on Forbes.com, that links back to your own site. On this ad you can promote your product, a lead magnet, an offer - any kind of call to action that will help you engage with the reader and boost your return on the story. You can also create a Facebook ad that sends your paid traffic to the third party website where your article lives and it pixels and retargets them.
5. Don’t be the super hero
When Andrew does interviews, he starts out by talking about his failures and the hard times in his life. “Everybody gets stuck in the super hero mindset where they want to talk about how awesome they are,” he says.“All that is great for the end of the article but the beginning should be here’s why I suck, here’s what went wrong, and here’s how I used my business to get out of it.” People buy from people they like and they can relate to; no one can relate to the super hero.
Show notes:
Andrew has an amazing offer to help you fully automate your publicity campaign. He and the team at The Publicity Guy have combined direct response marketing with a media pitch. Facebook becomes your PR firm that pitches to the media 24/7 instead of you having to do it. You create a publicity campaign and run ads to it, and it brings the podcasts, the writers, and the hosts to your door.
