How To Do A PR Campaign?

Key Takeaways

welcome welcome everybody i am just going to do that kind of awkward lift holding music for the first minute while you arrive just to allow for everybody to come into the room i should have probably set something um up earlier because it's always that fill a bit right at the start um but yeah wait for you to come on in so i'm just going to sit quietly for a little bit and then we'll kick off okay so today we're going to talk about how to write your pr plan and i'm just actually going to start off with a little abc welcome introduction that you can borrow for when you introduce yourself so a would be attention so my attention is hi i am lucy werner your b would be your benefits so today the benefit is we're going to learn really simply how to put a pr plan together for this um focus of this one i'm thinking about for the next three to six months because we might have a particular focus on our business at this time we're looking at and c so when you're doing your introduction you might have your credentials or your call to action so my credentials are i've i've worked in pr publicity for 20 years i've written a book called hype yourself in the last eight years i've run my own consultancy and i've also focused in the last two years on hyperself.com off the back of my book on teaching entrepreneurs and small business owners how to do diy opr and brand building for themselves so hopefully you're in very safe hands today i will be talking for 20 minutes with as many practical tips and takeaways as i can on putting a little pr plan together and then i will leave space for 10 minutes at the end for q a please feel free to put your hand up if you did want to come on or save your questions and pop them in the chat and without further ado let's get going so anything to do with your publicity sales marketing i always say start with your business goals so whether you are a product or a service-based business this could differ but it might be you want to grow your audience it might be you want to attract investment it might be you need to grow your email newsletter um database it might be that you're trying to secure a retailer it might be that you're just trying to get more sales so i would start any kind of pr strategy start with what is your business goal right now because there's no point doing publicity for ourselves and taking ourselves out there and getting ourselves into forbes for example if none of our audience or our target audience is reading that publication especially if as with founders or small business owners we're quite often time poor so we want to make sure that the publicity that we're doing for ourselves is the most effective as possible so really nailing what your business goal is is the crucial bit to start with oh let's go the right way shall we then we go on to key messages now in this example i've put small laundry tablets um and if you only had three things to say about yourselves what would you say so in this example for them i've put like delivered to your door eco-friendly and about the sustainable packaging so that actually fits into certain different sort of buckets we've got d2c we've got sustainability we've got independent brand but if you could only pick three things that you want to say about your product or your service what would those be and even to start with a leading message so with myself i would say i'm lucy one i'm a pr expert now actually there's two arms to my business and i do lots of other things i do teaching i have courses i've got books but just by starting with the key message of i'm a pr expert for small businesses it instantly tells my audience what you know the kind of umbrella term of what it is i do so really think about what your key messages are that align with your business goals so if you've got multiple parts to your business but you're focusing on one business area right now then make sure your key messages and the way that you're talking about yourself always link to that business goal then we're going to look at target audience right who are we talking to are we talking to a very specific type of consumer are we looking at um a very specific type of business owner we want to get as much information as possible about our audience and it might be that you could already clipboard with your existing clients are they the perfect clients for you if so you can ask them information to help you inform for the next step and the next slide that i'm going to share but finding out about your target audience is going to then help you to figure out what is the tactics that you use in your strategy and how you reach them um so garner as much information as possible if you don't currently have the right target client for your business think about maybe doing a coffee or an interview with somebody that is your right target client and find out what it is that makes them tick um a tool that i often use in presentations but i'm not doing it today is called menteemeter.com and you can actually use a word cloud function to ask your audience specific questions and get them to use the language of what their challenges are when you know this it then helps you with your key messaging and your con strategy to be able to serve the language of the challenges back to them because at the end of the day when it comes to publicity and marketing we kind of want to stop selling and actually start sharing and sharing stories and using that language and examples that resonates with our audience so then we're going to look at what i call target media which is where are they playing so once you've found your ideal client or or customer where are they consuming information which social media platform are they on are they using newsletters are they listening to radio are they reading lifestyle publications are they attending events also play to your strengths so if you know that you're really good at speaking think about which podcast they might be listening to or what radio shows they might be listening to if you're really good at writing or you feel confident in writing or you have somebody that can go swipe for you you might want to think about placing thought leadership or opinion pieces so i would sit down and write a map a medium up all the different places and spaces that your audience at and again going back to your target audience in the last slide you might want to ask them and do some research because there might be some really surprising results in the type of media publications or events that they're going to particularly if you're in a bigger city or close to a bigger city sometimes co-working spaces or other events can be a really great way to talk about your product or service and attract a new audience so once you've got this target list again as we're founders with small business owners we are quite often limited on time so all i always say pick your top five top pick and it could be that you have um one radio show one magazine one tv slot and one podcast or you might have five podcasts only that you're going after and then study them once you've picked that place you want to be in it's so much more powerful for you to make connections with the journalists or the researchers or the producers of those shows so that you can actually figure out how to do a tailored pitch so let's think about when somebody approaches you on linkedin or cold emails you let's say in this example they're an apprentice right or they want an internship with you you can instantly tell the difference between somebody who's approaching your business and knows everything about you and has shown an interest demonstrates the nutrition service who's applying versus the person who's just got their cv and sent it out to 300 people and doing pr is very similar i don't think you need a press release when it comes to talking about your products or services i think you need a good pitch at the right time and at the right moment so studying these places is going to really help you because you're going to know what's the name of the column or other sort of angles that they are talking about what have they just recently covered that you really enjoyed that maybe you could mention when you're doing an email pitch so focus on your top five and spend some time studying them make connections with them on linkedin twitter is also a really good space for finding media looking at the hashtag journo request and then you can actually see media putting callouts for information then the next thing to do in your pr strategy is to look at both internal and external events this goes back to the why now point that i mentioned earlier so it might be that you have internally you might have a launch date of a product you might have an anniversary you might have a tipping point where this is where you make a million pounds in sales or it's your millionth customer or even it's just your first 100 customer or whatever it is like a big turning point it's the day that you receive investment get all the key internal dates written down because this gives you a lot of why now reasons to promote and talk about your business externally also works really powerfully for media and podcast hosts researchers events because it's give you're giving them that reason of why it's relevant so national news hope days when things are being discussed in government for example um maybe you're looking at some key dates you know key research is going to be released that is related to your business and you as a founder and expert in that subject matter can comment on that subject area take some time to really craft out those key dates and then this is going to then help you when it comes to giving the reason of why it's relevant for somebody to be writing about you at this moment in time then crisis pr so you always want to be one step ahead what is the worst thing anybody could say about your product or service what could somebody find out about your business that might later on cause you some trouble i encourage everybody it doesn't matter how big or small your business is to sit and write a q a section for your business that answers anything that you could get asked that you might think um could be troublesome later on the reason why doesn't matter how harmless your business is that you want to have a crisis document prepared it's because in the eye of a media storm you don't want to be scrambling around with high emotions to be responding to a packaging or a distribution issue so just think about the worst sort of things that you could go wrong in your business and get the q a prepped then should you ever be in that situation you have something already ready as a basis to start um forming your response then you'll press toolkit this is actually kind of the hardest work piece but we have your biography so for any business founder again go back to my original point we kind of want to stop selling we want to be sharing stories around our business and if you are asked to host um a lunchtime learning session like i am today or speak on a panel or be on a podcast the very first thing they're going to ask you for is your biography so i would think about getting a biography together for yourself outside of your business that's no more than 100 words um then sorry hold on i've got a oh my chat box is right in the middle of my slide uh oh dog there with caller there we go your headshot the headshot's so important as again when you're doing a talk like something like today the first thing that you're going to be asked after your biography is your headshot so they can use it for promotion so i always try and encourage people to get something where it's head and shoulders straight on don't worry about spending loads of money on lifestyle imagery particularly if you're starting out just that head and shoulders straight on shot is going to be so important and a little hack on this one as well having a landscape photo is one of the ways i've been able to dominate news articles for my clients because quite often people don't pitch that they have an image when it comes to doing a story and actually that is doing the journalists job for them but also because most people think about getting their portraits in that portrait shot when you send landscape you quite often dominate the top of the newspaper page and it also works really well when you're thinking about reading a blog post online because we're looking at images in that landscape format so that's a little tip for you then think about your one-liner as we discussed earlier so you're kind of your key message your lead message so for me it would be lucy werner pr expertise and small businesses or pr to for um entrepreneurs and founders to raise their profiles something is just a really broad seal does what it says on the tin don't get too clever and quirky with like disruptive innovative things that make people not understand what it is that you do you don't want to be using too much of your marketing and communication copywriting when it comes to just introducing yourself the other thing you need in your press toolkit is what we call the boilerplate so traditionally press releases were created on a printing plate they went to press sort of verbatim as news stories so the boilerplate was the bit of the business that never changed so in effect it is the biography of your business um when i do pitches i will typically have a very bespoke and tailored email pitch and then i will have the bio of the founder or the person who i'm putting forward and then i will have the bio of the business just for wider context and then last but not least the press release now i kind of gave the press release a bit of hard time earlier if you have a product or a product that's specifically for christmas i definitely think having a press release in your toolkit is part of the artillery however i would not use the press release to be pitching up to media it would be underneath my pitch email and in the pitch email that i'm sending out if it's to review the product or for it to be included in the mystical i would just be saying three to four bullet points only if you have a service based business probably even less so if you've got that business biography do you need the press release unless you're announcing something massive like some groundbreaking research or a massive slug of investment um and even then you probably don't need a full press release you could probably get away with just a media alert but it is always worth just having it in your back pocket so should somebody ask you for that further information they will get it but really the press release is for big news big news announcements they're going to expire after 24 hours so really think about when you write it how you are using it and then last but not least is the creating content idea so again i really want to get through this message of doing really good pr is not about selling your product or service it's telling stories and as small business owners the best thing we could be doing is to borrow ideas from big business and in big business is the personal founder stories that do really well so i bucket my founders into three different pillars um and you can kind of pick which one of these is most relevant to you or you might have all three start with what are your expertise so it could be if we're using me as the example top five tips to doing pr um but it might also be how i grew my team from zero to ten in a year and then shrunk it back down again um you know or whatever the kind of expertise you've learned since setting up your business because you as small business owners and founders are going to have advice about how you got stock is how you got distribution how you greet your team how you work with a remote freelance team those sort of things they're all going to be quite relevant so definitely think about your expertise um human interest this works really really well it's not necessarily going to all be talking about your business but you'll quite often get the plug underneath so it um it will have in the bio um for example like i've written three articles for the metro now paid in their blog section and it always has in my bio that i run the one consultancy and i'm the author of hype yourself so every time i do an article for them i'm still getting that business mention it might be for some of you that you've actually set up your business because of um you know something that's happened in your life or there was a gap um you know you really needed something and you felt like there was a gap there in the markets that's why you created it so when it comes to um your own kind of triumph over adversity stories if you're confident about telling them sharing these can actually be a really great way to promote your product and service and then last but not least there's passion points so i quite often encourage people to think of themselves like a publication you have the news of your business that'll be like your internal kind of news dates you have the wider features like you would in a magazine so it could be industry trends or things that you want to comment on and then there's that bit at the end so what's that equivalent for you of the horoscope or the recipe pages that you can comment on um you know do you have a really unusual commute to work do you play bingo as a way to unwind with your local pensioners you know what is it that you do that kind of relates to what your job is that you feel confident about sharing it doesn't have to be about talking about our partners or showing the inside of our house or what we've been eating for lunch but those bits that show a bit of your personality and again it allows your audience to connect with these i quite often talk about the pr relevance of different netflix shows and then quite often people aren't even interested really in what i'm saying about that netflix show but they'll have an opinion on the show itself and so it creates dialogue and it's a way for me to connect um so ultimately if i could get one thing for you to sort of take away from doing a pr strategy and obviously we're doing this in 20 minutes so it's a whistle stop tour but we're starting with our business goals we're looking at who our target audience is to reach them so if we want to be in front of investors where are they playing um looking at our target media studying that target media to see what kind of content it is that they're they're looking for and picking a few of them to really study start to build those relationships look at journalists in that space or podcast producers whoever it is event producers see what it is that they're asking for and start creating content ideas and dates around our business that gives us a news that gives us a reason for people to be talking about us right now and i guess as a final sort of um sort of takeaway really for me pr is not just promoting yourself to journalists it's everything you do in the public eye so it's what you say on linkedin is how you open the door for somebody at an event you know we live in a very digital world now and whether we like it or not we all have a personal brand if you google your name that is going to be what the person you know what looking to work with you is going to find out about you and your business so whether or not you want to control that is really down to you um but i think taking ownership of the little bit of diy pr is a is a great way to do that and a final thought you know if we don't have big corporate budgets we don't have to worry about that big shiny go button for launch it's actually just about consistency and in in the kind of promotional race it's really like the boring and dull people who win you just can't keep consistently sharing that key message keep sharing what it is that they do telling personal stories connecting with their audience and doing brand building all the time for themselves um so i hope that helped and gave you some ideas of how you could bring a pr strategy into your work and i will now leave space for q a i'm just gonna stop the share on the slides oh she says there we go someone said can i show an example of the toolkit um so i don't have an example to hand of all the um the different things of the biography um and the press release but i do have that in my book hype yourself or if you go to the freebie section on my website hyperself.com there are downloads there with templates um so they also said what is advertisement by word of mouth so um an advertisement is actually typically something you pay for which isn't pr so if somebody is asking you to pay for something that is advertising pr is all public relations so it's all um it's what's in the public domain so it isn't necessarily um it you wouldn't necessarily get advertisement by word of mouth it would be um word of mouth uh would be something separate to that it's kind of when somebody sees you and um and then talks about it so word of mouth is quite you know when somebody reads my book for example and then tells somebody else about it um or they recommend it to their book club that would be an example kind of word of mouth felix has asked where can i watch this um seminar again and the purposeful project who are hosting this today are actually going to share this on all of their channels and i believe that everybody who signed up has sent a link to the recording as well so you can watch it does anyone else have any questions that they want to ask lucy if not we'll wrap up early great well thank you so much lucy and i know you're feeling a little bit rough today i really appreciate you doing um this master class for us today and just to reiterate the um recording will be up on our youtube channel later today i will send a link to everyone and you'll receive that by tomorrow i just want to say thank you so much lucy again for sharing your insights with our community thank you for having me thank you everybody have a good day bye bye