Find Business Opportunity Leads for Public Relations with airSlate SignNow

How to create outlook signature

[Music] hello I'm joined with Cheryl Hershey who founded action PR Cheryl thank you so much for joining me so Cheryl you are a PR mastermind and I'm loving these balls that were sitting on so might be killing your dear life to join this interview and tell us a little bit about what you feel are the benefits of PR for a small business well I think that PR really is one of the lower cost marketing tactics so if you don't have a huge budget PR is a great place to go it's also traditionally more trusted than other forms of advertising and marketing which can give you a bit of a boost as well absolutely now let's say when you're starting out you might not have that huge budget as you kind of touched on what are some things that women could do to kind of get their business out there to get some exposure with a really tiny budget well I think I think if you can write or you know someone that can write you've really got nothing to lose by having a go of writing your own press releases you just need to really think about what your news hook is and if you don't immediately have a new hook you'll be creative if you might put together an event or you might do some sort of charity partnership the more creative that you can be the better chance you've got of getting featured amazing and what about in terms of if somebody did want to come and use a PR company and how much does it cost I guess how long is the piece of strength it can be anything but you know is there an average cost in PR I think rather than sort of assigning an arbitrary figure to it it's much better to think in terms of return on investment what does what is PR worth specifically to you in your business and I think it's worth having realistic expectations as well so if you're looking for a profile boost or you want to get your name out there or information about a specific service that you offer PR can be a great Avenue to take if you are purely looking for sales lead off sales lead off the sales leads you might want to go down the PR you might look at a different form of marketing and you've worked with so many different companies haven't you have you got kind of one story one really major PR success that you have love so recently we ran a campaign to celebrate 125 years of school swimming lessons and we had the teachers on the side of the pool in their Victorian swimming dressing we recreated an old-fashioned Victorian swimming lesson and we it was a it was a really really lovely hook and their media particularly interested in what we were doing and we had five TV crews broadcasting live from the event and I think we generated somewhere in the region of the equivalent of a quarter of a million pounds of advertising revenue and then I will just share one more yeah recently I think this is a really good lesson learned is that you know we've been doing PR for seven years and traditionally we've always been hugely focused on our clients and as we should be and in what we do for those clients but we've we have neglected our own PR and it's only recently that we've started to do a lot more with titles like PR week getting our news out there and it's it's made a massive difference to our own new business pipeline and I think it took us seven years it caught on to that and women PR agency so I think running a business and you have all these wonderful ideas and then suddenly when you're kind of busy doing the day-to-day in your case working with the clients your own kind of marketing and PR stracciatella go go yeah and I know I'm guilty have you had because that's some amazing successes have you had any campaigns no we did a I can remember one we did a commissioned a female body confidence survey and we had some fantastic results but for this client the timing was less good and we released the survey exactly the same time as some major news on brexit and our wonderful story just got completely overshadowed by that news agenda and it didn't get anywhere near fulfilling its potential but it just goes to show you know you can you can be so well-planned and sometimes things can't don't always get pulled off that's it because I know I've used PR a lot in my own businesses and sometimes I think I've got this amazing story and sometimes timing isn't right or the story just doesn't get in to the right hands it doesn't get picked up and other times I've had things where I think oh that won't get picked up and then it's everywhere so sometimes it's quite hard to tell isn't it and it's a bit of trial and error getting things now seeing what bites and seeing what people are interested in and that kind of comes back to your idea of having an interesting story doesn't exist gotta be interesting and it's got to be interesting to people who are good at read it because we can fall into a bit of a trap of this is really interesting to me because I am interested in it so how do you you know how can people at home who are thinking of a story how can they come up with an interesting idea and test whether it's actually interesting well I think I can give you a quick quick and dirty list if you like so is it new and timely because old news is history is it is it topical is it on trend because that always makes it more newsworthy are there any freebies involved are you offering something for free is it hugely well subsidised that will help you to get coverage are you is there a human interest angle think about your triumph over adversity stories you're achieving a once in a lifetime ambition stories they will always go down well as well awards are a good one if you're nominated or if you win an award I'm sure there are others but amazing and one of the things I want to trash your backs it's happened to me is I think quite a lot of women are quite nervous about putting themself out there because sometimes with PR you know people are interested in you the human being the person as opposed to the big business and it can be quite daunting to put yourself out there and maybe have a photo of you in the press and things as long I know I was certainly bit but what made me really cringe was the first kind of massive piece of press I got with me for my matchmaking business saying the world's best matchmaker and I just felt like oh you know I had won an award this small award for it but I just felt really embarrassed by it and a bit cringy and I got over it well I took a lot of money from that piece of PR but you know how have you any kind of words of encouragement for them in here feeling a bit apprehensive about putting themself out there and I think you can you can be in control of the process you know and I don't know I'm guessing that someone like The Daily Mail that wrote that okay and if you're gonna do anything the Daily Mail they probably are gonna sensationalized a story but but if you're not working with the tabloid you're gonna have a lot more control over over that piece and how that piece turns out you you don't have to be the spokesperson for your own business if you absolutely don't want to do it you could be colleague it could be someone on a board an investor if you are gonna step up and be an expose person you still have a choice you can provide information in the form of a written quote where you don't have to speak to anyone on the phone or you could go the completely other end of the spectrum and you can do a live TV broadcast but you just have to decide what you're comfortable with doing and and and be sure that you can you know you can do your business justice and represent it in the best way wonderful advice so if you're an introvert you can still do PR there are ways around everything and another thing which brings me back to some kind of piece of press I've done I've made fatal errors if I've been in you know the tabloid press they're churning it out on a lot of different articles out all the time and people can be a little bit cruel sometimes if there's an article about you and it might not be a negative article at all it might be something very very positive so my case it was kind of like ten top tips for finding love and I made the mistake of reading the comments in you know some people are like oh what's this Tosh you know another matchmaker a dating expert you're you know and you're like oh you know have you got any tips or is that normal in PR I mean how should we handle that I think it's probably worth saying that most businesses aren't going to attract those sorts of comments if you if you do have if you do something controversial and you are worried then that probably is where you are worth it's worth consulting a PR professional because they will be able to foresee any any problems and work with you to craft messaging that perhaps is a little bit safer and less likely to encourage negative comments I think ultimately yes you know if it's something that is a little bit controversial you are opening yourself up to to to feedback but done well positive PR is always going to outweigh the benefits of the odd comment on social media you know grow a thick skin you're going to be benefiting from that piece and the person making a comment you know absolutely how you are you know as soon as the money hits your account from all those sales suddenly that comment doesn't matter no much wonderful and before you go have you got any kind of final tips for people looking at kind of dabbling in PR for their business I think that it's really about knowing your market and where your business sits in that market I think that's absolutely crucial because if you if you know where you sit against your competitors within that landscape it's much easier for you to make the media or whoever you're working with understand to know that's not to say you are drawing comparisons but if you can give them that understanding it really does help and at the same time highlight what your usps are and what your key messages are and what that news angle is you'll have much better results amazing that such greater bye Cheryl thank you so much welcome