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I think that's also one of the most important pieces gone are the days where we just send a piece of coverage to a client and say this is the possible readership of the publication and here's the domain Authority do with it what you will we need to be as PR professionals sharing with you here's potential sales enablement email that you can push this out to prospects maybe this is something that your Executives can push on LinkedIn and engage with some of those ABM targets so we're taking part in your SEO here or we're lifting up in our content as well and also we can provide you with the social post or provide you with other opportunities put it in a customer news letter give them recommendations on how to elevate this further but coverage shouldn't just stop at the time we send it to them on email or slack we need to figure out how do we get legs out of that long term and that's an area where it's up to us to strategically guide our clients in the right direction hi welcome back to SAS half full the only show serving B2B SAS marketers I'm lindsy groper president of blast media I will be both your host and bartender I'm pumped for this conversation because I'm bringing in one of blast media's own vice president of PR Kate Johnson we have just released an ebook at blast media called demystifying modern PR and I'm bringing Kate on to talk through the elements in that ebook now the reason we developed it is because we get a lot of questions from our clients and from prospects on the difference between digital non-traditional traditional modern PR and we figured it was time to address what the hell is modern PR anyway what does it look like today what are some things that have stayed the same what are things that are fundamentally different in our discipline and so I brought Kate on to give her take on all things modern PR if you'd care to grab a drink and join me as I speak with Kate Hi Kate welcome to SAS half full hi Lindsay thanks for having me oh my gosh I always love to have one of our own on this show I've been doing this for three years and you are the fourth internal last media guest that I've had on and you know what the people love when I have last media folks on gets a lot of listens and downloads so glad you're here yeah awesome big fan obviously so she has to say that people she truly has to say she's a big fan it is one o'clock on a Wednesday are you joining me for a drink I am yeah I've got a hazy IPA here I'm I'm less of a mock or a cocktail girl and more of a beer girl so love it I just grabbed the closest thing to me which not shockingly was a bottle of red wine I don't have the bottle I have a glass but cheers happy to have you on the show well the reason that I invited Kate on here is because we at blast media we recently launched an ebook which you know was a labor of love between all of us but the reason that we launched this ebook and it is titled demystifying modern PR is because not only in conversations with our clients but also me of being on the front lines of new client acquisition for I mean literally probably for the last year and a half is we get varying degrees of questions around traditional PR versus non-traditional digital PR modern PR and it finally just begged the question of like what is PR today you know how do we clarify what it is that we do today and also you talk a little bit about what hasn't changed but certainly a lot has so yes we've launched this ebook you can find it on our website welcome you to download it but wanted to bring Kate on to sort of walk through the different sections of it but Kate before we do that could you give our listeners a bit of background on yourself what life was pre blast media and then what you do at the agency today yes I actually just celebrated my six year anniversary with blast media so I have been with the agency for six years I have actually been in every position at the agency over my six years which I think is pretty unique and really fun I started at our entry level position and I am now a VP of PR so I lead one of our teams at blast media working closely with our directors and PR managers and our content folks so just make sure that the strategy that we're executing for our clients is really moving the needle for them on their marketing goals so it's really great I came to blast media from Indiana State where I was in college athletics media relations so a big pivot it from that into the world of B2B sass but it's been really fun and obviously something I love it has kept me on my toes for the last six years I literally remember the first time that I met you it was at a open house that we had for potential new hires we liked to lovingly refer to it as The Hunger Games just bring all these people in who are interested in working and then you know behind the scenes we're all sort of like jockeying of like oh I like this person I like this person and for some reason Kate you and I hadn't met during the event itself it was literally like people had filtered out it was after and I don't know if the blasphemia team had grabb a drink at this point or what but anyway I remember I had one exchange with you the very end of the event we all had like a clipboard right and I remember like putting a big star by your name in just that one exchange like immediately just felt like you were uh a good fit for us and lo and behold here we are so many years later thank you for doing all those roles and staying with us but it also makes you a great person to have this conversation because even where we were as an agency and our discipline let alone 20 years ago right but five six seven years ago versus what what is today has changed so before we talk about all the things that are are different sort of in our world of PR what do you think has stayed the same whether it's 20 years ago five years ago or today what are some elements of PR that is have stayed the same yeah that's a great question question and I think the biggest thing that stayed the same really is the importance of Storytelling right not just having marketing and product collateral but being able to tell a story for your brand and and how you're doing that that is like a big facet of PR that's a big area where we fit into an overall marketing function is that piece and that hasn't changed and how we get there really hasn't changed it's still so important to build those relationships with media it's important to be able to mine the right ideas out of our Executives and be able to tell that story to an external audience and an internal audience that really has stayed the same I mean a lot has changed but that being like the staple pillar is going to stay around I think for the years to come for sure totally agree I have a lot of conversations specifically with prospects who will say like tell me about your relationships it's all about relationships relationships relationships don't disagree but it's not only about relationships it has to have that Art of Storytelling also even your best relationship isn't going to run a shitty or weak story just because they're your relationship it still has to add value and so yes relationships do matter but if you don't have a relationship but the ability to bring a good story forward then that's going to turn into a relationship and I agree that that has not changed at all and when I first started talking with our team about doing this ebook and we're talking about modern PR it occurred to us that it's like it's not necessarily modern it's just what it is it's evolved there's been so much that has changed even if we look at life postco right that's a huge moment in time but the different cultural shifts and sort of the the new normals that we've adjusted to have made it impossible not to evolve as a PR agency I almost equated it to like uber is if you're coming home from drinks or dinner with your friends you're not like oh I'm going to dial up some Modern transportation to get me home like it's Uber it's how we get around it's evolved and that that's just what it is and and the same thing holds true with PR so when you think about like what PR is today what are some areas that you see some marked differences yeah I think the biggest difference and you said it exactly right it's just evolved it's not this entire new way it's just like how we're telling the story and who we're telling it to but there's also a different in how executive leadership at our clients are thinking about their strategic Communications they're looking more to their comm's team or their Agency for that counsel and guidance because there has to be a symbiotic relationship now between internal and external comps anything internal can easily become external so having the same message and how you're talking about anything from like a reduction and force to Sea Suite changes or even to what's happening in the world around us I know you mentioned Co look at everything that happened during that time and people were looking to CEOs and executive leadership to respond and and have an opinion and it comes down to their Communications team being able to help them craft that message and also making sure that those teams internally are aligned on what that message is going to be shared and it's remaining consistent I think that's huge and another piece that I don't think gets talked about a lot is there is a whole expectation now around privacy and how we're talking about that and Tech specifically with the emergence of things like generative Ai and all of this new technology it's really important for Brands to be able to push that forward and explain that and I think that comes down to their Communications teams to be able to share that message of are you ethical and responsible as well I think those are two things that are really huge and then being able to prove your own value too is something that matters I mean being able to better track Communications metrics and results from PR is huge I mean if your agency or your com team is just looking at like the number of Impressions and sentiment that's not enough I mean that is just outdated we have to focus on areas like is it a piece of quality coverage is it really moving the needle for your brand like is it having an impact so you know a press release syndication from a newswire it's great it's good to have it out there but are you getting like a feature story to talk about that new product or are you having a quote on a tertiary topic that is moving the needle forward for your sh leadership like those are the things you need to be evaluating and then how you map that back to what's moving the needle in your marketing and pipeline yeah and one thing I think has been super interesting about this evolution is even I think about our agency specifically is since 2020 I mean we're in our fourth year now is we've never had to flex our like strategic comms internal comms muscle as much as we have and we've really leaned into that as an agency and I know like you've personally enjoyed that and it goes back to that internal external where is the line because that line is pretty much ben rased so the amount of strategic counsel that we've had to provide in internal messaging and internal Communications with could be your team it could be just with customers knowing that anything that you send as soon as you hit send could be screenshotted could be made public but I know our senior leadership team has enjoyed that part of it it brings on new challenges but it's really not an area that we had to lean into quite as heavily preco that now has brought a lot of new issues to light yeah absolutely I mean that was definitely the turning point on all of that we were just getting requests that we hadn't seen before and really had to flex that muscle like you said and be able to advise our client clients and learn alongside each other and I think it is a really great experience and I think we are just more equipped to handle those situations now than we ever have been I consider us experts on that now and it's just been a really cool experience I want to shift gears and talk about today's B2B buyers because we think about who those buyers were and who were making those decisions 10 years ago versus who they are now most of today's B2B buyers are millennials and you think about also who who your investors are and there are Millennial decision makers there on where they're spending money there from a partner standpoint as well as potential hires your senior level Talent is now Millennials and we all know we here we've pitched these story lines we've consume these storylines we all know that Millennials value different things and the primary things that they value whether they are looking to work for someone buy something from someone partner with anyone is they value this higher sense of connection and purpose so like all things considered equal if we're looking at sass as an example yall are relatively have the same features benefits pricing Etc what's going to make that difference is how a buyer feels about your brand so talk to us about how SAS companies can better communicate with and form that connection with these new buyers yeah I often think about this from the B2B side as B2B is just catching up to B Toc business to Consumer buyers for a long time have expected the brands they're purchasing from to stand for something and have a story to tell outside of just their product and I think that's where we're getting with B2B these buyers are looking for authenticity transparency consistency you know they want to work with brands that have leaders who have an opinion on things like deib initiatives or sustain ability they're not looking for just like a product speaking robot they want to hear leadership get personal they want to know that and that AIDS from a buyer perspective as well as from an employee perspective if you're telling a personal experience that aids well to your culture that's going to help in those hiring initiatives and if you're able to effectively communicate why your brand should be trusted I think that's a huge piece of it I mean we recently actually surveyed a hundred different SAS marketers and building trust for their brand was the number one priority this year and I think that's huge to call out because there's multiple ways that you have to be able to do that but if you're just pushing product talk that's not going to get there what gets there is vulnerability is sharing the things that are pertinent like I brought up data privacy earlier the ability for Brands to be able to effectively communicate that you're upholding data privacy standards that may not even exist yet right I mean the EU is ahead of the US by miles with gdpr and we've got state regulations here but a lot of our clients are thinking about okay how do we get ahead of that and be seen as an early adopter because that's going to build trust with our buyer base and that's just really important so getting personal and not just talking about product is huge and it's up to us as PR professionals to dig out what those stories are and be able to elevate the diverse voices and experiences within a company that can move the needle in those different areas whether it be with your target buyer or perspective hires it's important to figure out what that is that needs to be communicated to the world yeah and even how you build trust today is different it used to be when [ __ ] hits the fan all the parties affected get together we say nothing until we have come together on the message and then we have a controlled way that we're going to get that out you said transparency but also like spe and Agility saying nothing or waiting too long causes mistrust so like even how we create trust is different you talked about elevating things like theb initiatives mental health programs it could be sustainability G if those are important to your organization can you talk to us about any specific examples that you can pull from other clients where maybe you've leveraged either a what I'd consider like a non-traditional spokesperson or worked with a CEO to get them comfortable with being uncomfortable yeah that's a a good question there's a couple different examples that come to mind one that I think about a lot is that we worked with moft for a long time you know AI Ops for developer teams and so when you're talking to developers they don't really want to hear from seite Executives they want to hear from practitioners so we learned that pretty quick and actually had to instead of traditionally working with like a CEO or a VP of product for those tracks we found actual developers in mof and honestly in a lot of our other devops clients now moving forward who are able to speak to media from that practitioner to practitioner level so there's an understanding of the pain points and telling that story so that's a way I think with like using a non-traditional spokesperson that's been really quality for us and has been great for all of companies we've worked with it bats really well with media from the side of a personal story that I think really a good example that lifted a brand would be Heather Shoemaker from language iio she is the founder and CEO of language iio and we got a feature opportunity with her with Inc for her to discuss what it was like for her fundraising with VC's as a woman in Tech and also in a pretty tough fundraising environment and she got really personal in the story and we talked about it before and and she decided that she didn't want to hold back and she wanted to be raw about that experience in it it was it was a raw vulnerable piece she talked about how she went to bed a lot of the time before meetings thinking about how she could mask her voice to sound like a man and think if that would get her more respect in the room she referred to some of the VCS she met with as the rude dudes with the money and because that's really how she felt about them and even though a lot of that sounds negative how this piece turned out was raw and vulnerable and had some really great insights for other female Founders to follow and insights and things that they should know and questions they should ask so it was great advice and really lifted up Heather's personal brand but it also talked super highly of language iio as a company so it told their story and a great story about the VC's who she did end up going with and why they were different and why they were the ones that she picked and are great for the language brand so it was such a positive story for language IO Heather and her VC and I think that is just a great example of a personal story that you can use in so many different ways absolutely and I even think about it from a employee stpoint not even a new hire but I would imagine that there were plenty of employees at language iio that didn't know that journey and that might have limited touch points with her just as their virtual or as we go along with our lives right and might not have felt that connection with her and then see that like oh my gosh she's a human being and she's had all these struggles I you didn't realize that and as language I was selling is you're likely selling to other women who work in Tech and they are resonating with that story and being like well man if I'm choosing from this vendor this vendor like I connected with them so it's a perfect example of that PR we all know brand awar play and traditionally hard to measure this question has been around you know how can I type yard Roi as long as I've been around which is quite some time and spoiler alert we don't have the answer to this question so don't be hanging around thinking that we're going to like B this is it that being said you did bring up expectations around data measurement reporting and you had said that if you're only measuring Impressions and sentiment dear Lord and all things that you find holy pleased if we're still doing at equivalencies let's stop I haven't seen that in a hot minute I haven't seen that we haven't had a request for it in a long time I'm thrilled that that went away yeah but that being said I know a lot of other agencies I see other agency reports and lo and behold we've graduated to some Google Sheets but it's really around a lot of times quantity yes there's share of voice that has emerged which we can do our whole other episode on our thoughts on that but what does the new measurement standards look like or from our perspective we're working with mostly SAS marketers sort of what are their expectations and sort how has that measurement framework evolved yeah I think the biggest difference is between being static and being agile and it's not just how you're reporting but it's what you're doing with the coverage that you get to and I think the expectations around that from our clients has definitely evolved if we we are very good in my opinion about what we're providing to our clients and how we're leveraging that like we use Propel which is a CRM just specifically for PR so it's tracking those leads like you would track leads through a sales funnel it's doing that for you from the time a request comes into the time it runs and our clients have realtime insight into those metrics but it's up to us to report on those in a way that showcasing why that piece is Meaningful you know is it driving traffic back to the site what is the key message pull through there is it telling the story we want to tell maybe it's elevating a thought leader who we had a goal that quarter to get more coverage for and it's doing that it's lifting them up but I think it also comes down to are you being agile with how you're securing those opportunities you know it's one thing to make a plan at the beginning of the quarter and then go down campaign by campaign by campaign and just check a box we have to use our media monitoring tools to our advantage like herrow and quoted to look for those quick reactive opportunities so we can stay one up to date on what's timely and happening and two are we getting our clients into those trending conversations I think that's an area where I know I've challenged my team over the past couple of quarters and we as an agency have seen a huge jump over the past year or two even in quote inclusions just from being on top of areas like that and looking for those reactive opportunities and what I said about how you use the coverage I think that's also one of the most important pieces gone are the days where we just send a piece of coverage to a client and say this is the possible readership of the publication and here's the domain Authority do with it what you will we need to be as PR professionals sharing with you here's potential sales enablement email that you can push this out to prospects maybe this is something that your Executives can push on LinkedIn and engage with some of those ABM targets so we're taking part in your SEO here or we're lifting that up in our content as well and also we can provide you with the social post or provide you with other opportunities put it in a customer newsletter give them recommendations on how to elevate this further but coverage shouldn't just stop at the time we send it to them on email or slack we need to figure out how do we get legs out of that long term and that's an area where it's up to us to strategically guide our clients in the right direction yeah and you mentioned a bunch of tools and and one of the things that stands out when we look at like what is the modern PR agency infrastructure or even if you don't work with an agency and this is just your internal team like we out of necessity by the market that we serve which is SAS marketers we out of necessity of had to digitally transform our agency to keep up with these expectations because marketers who work in technology their mtech Stacks are huge their sales or just revops Stacks are huge and the expectations of vendors is the same and so we've invested in a lot of technology to Kate's point that allows us to report in real time that allows our clients to have full access a live link where they can manipulate the data based on their needs at the time and they don't have to pull a static report that we've sent them try and figure out the data or wait on us to get something they need now and we invest I mean we invest heavily as an especially if an agency our size we invest heavily in technology because we know that that's a differentiator we're told that's a differentiator but it for us it mirrors the expectations that SAS marketers have around any data in any measurement that they're running from their campaigns like we're no different and we shouldn't assume that we are yep absolutely I mean even in our own hiring you hear that when we have new employees starting how different the tools are that we offer how helpful and and just how more advanced so I think it's really important and like you said Lindsay it's because of the type of clients that we have but there's an expectation around that and I think it's great that we meet it for sure and we are also as an agen seeing we're investing and testing AI we use it we embrace it you know we've all reached the point now which is we being the industry it's not if we're going to use it is is how and now talking more about implementation and optimization of it but if your agency or your PR teams aren't leveraging technology for better reporting and execution and efficent icy they need to be and again I mean I'm sure some of you are rolling your eyes right now like y du um but you'd be surprised I mean we again I talked to a lot of other agency owners and belong to agency groups and they are not leveraging technology the way that they should be and if you're servicing technology clients you will be left behind well and if your agency or your partners aren't transparent with how they're using AI That's a big red flag there should be a clear standard internally with any of your vendors around how they're leveraging that because all of the information that you're providing I mean that is proprietary for your brand so I think that's something that's also important to keep in mind I should know this but I don't how do we let our clients know how we're using AI yes we have an inake call with all of our new clients right off the bat and we walk them through specifically what our internal AI use AI policy is so right away before we even start the relationship before they share anything with us they know how we're using AI internally and we set those standards pretty strictly in terms of exclusivity if information is proprietary it will never enter a generative AI model or anything along those lines yeah well and that that's a great point we are privy to some very sensitive information very private not public information before it becomes public so yes ensuring that your team has a strict guidelines around throwing out exclusive specifically financial news that's forthcoming into an engine is not recommended well Kate is there anything that we didn't tackle that you want to make sure that we cover as part of this discussion no I think just echoing and and want to really bring home the importance of pushing your thought leaders and your Executives to be personal and vulnerable I think that a lot of executives are seeing that and they're getting on board with that and there we hear a lot more conversations about building their own personal brand too because that does reflect on their product brand now more than it ever has you know every once in a while we still get some push back and wanting to tell those personal stories and speak to others outside of just your ICP and I think that keep chugging and keep trying to get them to share and and equipping them with the knowledge and information that they need to feel comfortable doing so because those are the stories that really move the needle and definitely get the attention of some pretty high tier media love that reminder thank you well Kate you're such a big fan that you're going to know that I do this at the end of every episode which is I ask all of my guests if they have a signature or favorite toast to send us out oo a signature or favorite toast I actually am bad with toast I'm a pretty classic just give the cheers I'm too busy focusing on how much I enjoy my drink usually it's ironic that I ask this question because I'm the same like I don't have a cool answer it's literally cheers and I'm also like I don't know if I should be impressed or saddened by the fact that I drank this entire glass of wine during this discussion I poured a full glass and was like I'll probably just have a few sips you know it's 1:00 on a freaking Wednesday okay this has been awesome thank you so much for the discussion as a reminder we have the ebook demystifying modern PR available on blast media.com we welcome you to download it we don't ask your email folks so there is no barrier to download go make yourself smarter and brighter we appreciate the time thank you so much Kate yes thank you thanks everyone thanks again to Kate for joining me on Sasa full I always love connecting with her there's a reason she's been with us for so long she is incredible I managed to finish my entire glass of wine during this episode cheers to me hopefully you have a few things that you took away from this conversation that you can apply immediately to your own PR strategy I always appreciate you tuning in and until next time Bottoms Up [Music]