Collaborate on Marketing Invoice Sample for Public Relations with Ease Using airSlate SignNow

Marketing invoice sample for Public Relations

if you're an author there's a good chance that you are looking into some very viable avenues for marketing and promoting and uh maybe you've exhausted all your resources maybe you're just getting into this maybe you've heard about public relations or otherwise known as pr well we're going to be doing a little bit of a public relations 101 with an actual experienced publicist so you're going to want to make sure you stay tuned to today's video what's happening it's dale here and i am just tickled to death that you took a little bit of time out today to spend a little bit of time with me we're gonna be talking about marketing and promotion and more importantly public relations we're gonna be starting at the very basic the very bare necessities public relations 101 and i'm excited i'm going to be bringing on to the channel today good friend of mine actually been chit chatting for the past half year so his name is jason jones and jason jones is an experienced publicist who worked with the veritable who's who list of celebrities public figures and authors he spent five years with the country's largest christian publishing house thomas nelson publishers leading campaigns for ready for this 11 new york times best-selling titles and managing some of the industry's most successful authors it's pretty freaking cool with nearly 20 years experience yeah 20 years by the way here folks that means he's been around here in public relations jason's pre-publishing career includes having directed the efforts of one of memphis's most widely respected agencies of sosa men and associates in six years in professional baseball as well where he managed the media media and pr efforts of the memphis redbirds the aaa affiliate of the saint louis cardinals and the nation's first not-for-profit professional sports franchise so it is my pleasure to introduce to you folks jason jones jason how are you doing today buddy what's up dale hey you make me sound really important and old by the way i'm sorry man i gotta bring you along with me because you know you and i are pushing the same age yeah you look like you're in a better shape than i am but i'll go with that uh you know here's the key man and i'm gonna tell everybody that's in the same position that you that that we're in all right you gotta shave it fools everybody cuz as soon as that grows out everybody's like oh yeah yeah he's definitely in his 40s [Laughter] uh i do want to first of all address the live chat the people that are tuned in here it's great to see each and every one of you tuning in if you're watching this on the replay and you're watching it live right now let me know inside the comments and if you've got any kind of questions for jason please load us up because chances are very very likely jason's going to be able to answer your question with a couple decades of experience but selfishly i've got questions to ask him first because you know that's the way it rolls that's that's why i've got this channel so in any event uh if you can just start it out man tell us a bit about your background as a publisher what got you into all this business yeah well um i don't know how far back i should go we could talk for a long long time about how i got where i'm at i you mentioned my decade in baseball and um in corporate pr but i guess i'd just say for the last 13 years i've been working in the publishing industry you mentioned my five years at harpercollins christian um i i led the non-fiction trade side there uh while in my time at harpercollins and then i spent five years running the nashville office of a texas-based literary pr firm and then i launched uh jones literary in january of 2018. so that's that's my my my career in publishing prior to that i worked with some really cool folks uh too as you mentioned the cardinals and and at the agency in memphis where we work with the university of memphis and le bonner and st jude and all sorts of cool clients so i've been pretty blessed uh to work with some great folks over the years anybody notable that you can mention it all or is there any like a non-disclosure agreement yeah okay i'll start naming i'm not i'm not a name dropper oh okay you don't want to name drop that's totally cool i totally get it uh i'll do all the name dropping for you maybe uh one of these times here you shared a story last time we talked uh the one fun uh story that i told you was i was on a book tour once with shaquille o'neal and his mother lucille and then of course that led you to telling me about your week with the iron sheik and that was fun so she can shack right right let's do a collaboration you and me yeah right that'd be that'd be a phone book no uh shaq was a lot of fun his mom lucille actually is really sweet lady she's taller than me i'm 6'4 so i'm walking around downtown new orleans with with lucille and shaquille and i'm you know i'm a little guy which doesn't happen very much but they're great folks and that was a good time but um you know it's it's been an interesting ride for sure you started out in sports correct yeah and then you moved over to books like what happened what led you from going from sports into books well when i was a kid i've been a cardinals fan all my life i grew up wanting to be jack buck i wanted to be a big league broadcaster and uh you know i figured out about five years into my time in baseball that it was it was a young man's game right um you know i got married in 2002 my wife and i had her first baby 2003 and uh at that point i had to make a decision you know about where my priorities were you know being at the ballpark 90 hours a week 9 a.m to midnight you know all the travel was not real conducive to a healthy marriage and um you know kind of family life that i wanted so i had to make a choice at that point jumped out of baseball into corporate pr and uh did the nine to five thing for a few years so nice excellent so all right we're going to start with the basics here man i know this is kind of remedial and you're probably like oh man come on dale but i'm gonna let you do all the talking here on this one what does a publicist do what is your job oh man that's a big big question but a good publicist should first and foremost help you to identify uh what's unique about you you know what's relevant about you and your book given what's going on in culture today they're going to build your press kit they're going to draft key messages for you uh help you identify your audience know what media that audience is consuming they're gonna you know craft the right pitch emails to send out to those media outlets uh be able to do the media research to figure out who they are and how to reach them and have the communication skills uh hopefully to uh in the relationships to book some interviews for you beyond that basic media training is always nice not everybody offers that organizational skills are important if you get busy and you've got interviews on top of interviews it can be a lot to keep up with um who's calling who what time is the interview where do i need to be what are you going to ask me do you have a copy of my book how do you pronounce my name all these little things so somebody that's very detail-oriented usually makes for a good publicist and but again it all comes down more than anything else to communication skills and relationships uh and then being able to identify what it is that's particularly unique about a person and their story or their message because there were over a million books published a year at this point yeah you know separating yourself is a really tough thing uh to do so that person should be able to help you id that stuff should an author hire a publicist do you think this is a prerequisite or can people go without no well i know um all the things that i mentioned just now sound really overwhelming so you might be surprised to hear my answer and it's no um you know most authors should not hire a publicist it's too expensive you know first of all it's generally several thousand dollars uh to hire a public system most publicists work to uh we're pitching national media um you know and as an indie author you're not ready for that you know you're skipping a step if you're pitching national media so your focus really needs to be local and with some help you know that's something you can do yourself but um no i don't think most indie authors should be hiring a publicist nice so as a publicist that's you know seems a little it seems counter-intuitive yeah and i'm glad that you're able to kind of you know parse that out here and i was going to say is and it seems almost redundant for me to say anyways but maybe you can kind of expand just a bit more is a publicist essential to marketing and promoting a book well a publicist uh is not publicity is but a publicist is not okay um you know it is really important there's nothing you can do that's going to fuel your audience growth in book sales like doing traditional media yeah radio tv um you know but you know you reach tens of thousands of people at once all the you know there's nothing else you can do quite like that you need to do it you need to try to do it yeah but you don't need to spend several thousand dollars on a publicist um you know and then turn around and have to do that same thing next year and the year after and the year after every time you write a book because the publicist owns the relationships you don't you know um and you need to turn around and hire them again and again um so no no it's it's it's publicity as publicist is not um so between like say traditional marketing and promotion and publicity which is the most effective for authors well there's so so different the best marketing i always say is marketing that's been consistent and engaging uh you know preferably for many many many months before your book is is released uh it's it's relationship driven you know not product driven and that that takes time so that's something you need to start way way way out in advance months or years um you know i don't know that one is any more important than the other um you know hopefully the the the fruit of all your labor your marketing labor your relationships after months and years is such that you're able when your book drops to say hey friends several thousand friends i've got you know across my social feeds my book has been released you've known this we've talked about it for months i've got endorsements coming from here and here you know you're able to plug some things in and make some things happen um you know call in those favors when the time is right um you know ads i'm not you know some people spend hundreds of dollars on ads on boosting posts and all those things and it can be hit or miss um i you know i don't know that that necessarily needs to be at the top of everybody's uh list of strategy but i think you know as far as the most effective marketing and promotion the second thing i would say uh and i just touched on it influencers if you can if you can plug into an influencer somebody that thousands of people know like and trust you know and they're going to post something about your book or plug your book that's the most effective form of marketing much more so than an ad and then of course third is just have write a good book you know um wait i can't write crappy books all the crappy books you want as long as you don't plan on selling them right right um you know write a good book i mean that's what's beautiful about social media you know um if you write a great book people are going to talk about it and they're going to tell their friends they're going to buy extra copies to share with their friends i mean if you write a bad book then people are going to find that out too um so write a good book but it the key to this whole thing and if you've already written a book and you didn't do all this legwork all this background you haven't spent years marketing and building this audience i understand that you might hear that and say uh oh i didn't do that um but you're probably gonna write a second book and a third and a fourth start now you know and and you can start now and spend the next year or more doing these things and sell your book um release dates aren't what they used to be you know uh if you got a book that you can sell get started if you haven't already nice well put all right so uconn has said look publicist isn't for a publicist isn't for everybody so how can an author do publicity themselves well i might really tangle you up in a knot here but it's it's it is tough with no experience yeah and no guidance to do it yourself i will say there are certain things that media is going to look for uh no doubt and i know i said not to hire a publicist and i mean that but i did not say to do it with no guidance there is guidance available and since you asked specifically you know there is affordable professional uh guidance available in the form of a pr toolkit that we've spent the last year building so you can find someone to help you that's not going to charge you you know you don't have to take out a second mortgage to get a publicist uh to work on your book yeah it just so happens to folks by the way um uh jason just point right below your head there uh local prtoolkit.com that's where you can get some of the information and i actually got to read one of things that are part of the toolkit am i correct you did yes landing local media fantastic read um and i don't gush much about any any books and this one was a lot of fun um it was so funny i get reached out by a lot of people to hey read my book read my book and for some reason i think the way you had connected with me which definitely speaks of you know how good you are at communicating and actually building a relationship normally i go no i'm i don't have enough time but for some reason i was like i gotta check out take out look at this book and i sat down and read it cover to cover i was like this is good and i think i raced to you and i'm like you and i got to talk right so but yeah i remember that was a really it gave a lot of great information and even made me go in to my own press kit and try to fine-tune some things in there and i'm still trying to fine-tune it ing to some of the specs that you'd shared with in that short read yeah it's everything you need to know before you pitch media during your interview and after your interview um you know and and that information is fluid i mean media is changing constantly uh hopefully we'll have an updated you know book out next year and we can keep this thing fresh but uh it's a pretty comprehensive guide i've gotten some had some nice things said so i appreciate your kind words about it yeah yeah absolutely uh and anyway uh let's go ahead and shift over here you've worked with many authors many authors what are some mistakes you see authors most commonly doing yeah well there are there are a lot of mistakes but the big the biggest most gigantic enormous mistake that most authors make is they skip their local media um they overlook their local media they you know uh people they hear people telling them in their facebook feeds all the time that you can book all these big national shows with no publicist and no experience and that's cool um and they think because they wrote a book you're in you know you're an author now the today show has got to be interested in me right um but it's not how it works um not to you know bust anybody's bubble not to say that you can't eventually be on the today show because you can yeah uh but there are certain steps that you need to take um you know the thing is and i'll i'll tell you how this works i mean you know this these network morning shows talk shows have producers whose jobs rely on putting together a show that gets great ratings right yeah if you're that producer are you gonna take a chance to fly up an author who self-published a book and has never done media before probably not right no yeah um i mean you just you can't take that there are too many other people out there too many other qualified experts and authors out there that we can talk to we have on our show and these folks get hundreds of emails every day i can tell you firsthand you do not want your first experience doing media to be on the today show i've been on the set sitting right next to al roker with an author doing media who had never done media before and she only was able to do this because she did something that in the history of the world had never been done very unique situation um and it was it was a train wreck oh no and we tried we tried to give her a little training it was just when those lights come on and matt lauer is asking you a question or you know whoever it may be not matt lauer anymore but somebody else may be all bets are off you know you want you want to have done some things before you need some seasoning you need some experience so you need to do local media for that reason and also because having that local media clip to send to the today show to say hey look i'm an engaging informative entertaining uh interview you want me on here's proof you know producers here in phoenix or wherever it may be have already vetted me they have me on you know check it out you're already ninety percent of the way home you know at that point uh and doing local media is doable you know there's something that's so much more achievable to me about that than sending submitting a form to info todayshow.com and sending it off into the night and crossing my fingers um you know and just waiting uh that that's not that's not a great strategy so i think mo the biggest mistake most folks make uh just circling back is they want to skip that local media they want to go do the big stuff you know uh they want to do all the big popular podcasts and they just they overlook their local tv and radio shows interesting so what would be the best first step let's say you're giving me some instructions what would be one of the best first steps for me to reach out to say a local news station or radio station should i see about taking some of my video clips of interviews or maybe podcasts and share that with them what are some good essentials for me to get in good with those stations and channels for you specifically or just for an author let's say use me generically yeah yeah well i think the most important thing for them is to see and hear you um they're gonna see you dale roberts and say wow this guy's got a lot of energy obviously he has experience behind a microphone in front of a camera i can see that he can carry a conversation yeah uh you know that's that's that gets you to third base you know now what is it that this guy wants to talk about and is it relevant to what's happening in the world right now you know is it important to our audience is it going to inform or entertain our audience and if you can do both then great um so i i think the biggest part of this thing is putting together a press kit that tells them who you are why you're relevant you know and and does have some some of your clips um you know maybe a pertinent uh short paragraph from your book something that's particularly uh compelling you know there are a number of different things that the media is going to look for in a press kit and and having done what i've done for a long time i know what those things are you know where they need to be placed in that press kit in order of importance what they're looking for you do not want the media to have to hunt through paragraph after paragraph to pull out and cherry pick what they're looking for you've got to make it as easy for them as possible they've got about 10 seconds that they're going to give your press kit if they open your email at all yeah and they need to be able to find exactly what they're looking for and so that's what a good publicist will do is help you identify those things um you know and that's one of the things in our toolkit you know we build you a custom press kit as part of our toolkit and we do through our one-on-one coaching we're going to figure out we're going to help you figure out what it is that's unique about you and your message and your book and then translate that into a press kit that's going to um it's going to work for you so i think those are the two most important things um you know identifying some local media too some some not just the outlets but some particular uh contacts and and writing a personal email not a not a blast not something to a hundred folks that wants you something to each individual reporter or producer and you need to follow them on social you got to do your research you know who these people are what's important to them what stories they've worked on because again as i said a few minutes ago it's all relationships it's relational um and if they know you've done your homework and you care enough to have dug that deep um then you probably have something worth hearing you know nice if you were to put together let's say a highlight reel how long should a highlight reel be so for instance if i've been on podcasts or i've done videos should it because it sounds to me like you really want to be as brief and as impactful as possible yeah yeah a couple minutes tops i mean and enough to have a couple of full sound bites with as much context as you can give i mean you know um two minutes tops you know there's no they're not gonna they're gonna see what they need to see in that amount of time you know but i understand if you cut it too short then all of a sudden you know it can be a little awkward to make some of those cuts yeah and you lose some context but yeah two minutes stops awesome do you ever have contacts that you're able to set somebody else uh somebody up with so for instance let's say i say to you jason i've got all this video and stuff like that do you have anybody that can put together a good two-minute highlight reel for me uh i do yeah and these days the great part about uh you know all the tech available to us is you know my 13 year old can put together a great looking video clip you know on any one of a dozen apps on you know on my phone um it doesn't have to they're not looking for anything that is uh you know first class uh you know a-list production quality type stuff they just you know they need to see something that's uh you know what your what your average iphone can can produce um is fine um so it's just the example they're looking for they're not looking for a hollywood quality like no no no not not at all i mean they know they understand that that most of us don't have the capability of putting that together yeah um you know the thing is too if you if you don't have you know any experience sitting down in the studio to do a podcast with a friend or who any experience in front of a camera at all you can sit down uh write some questions out sit down with a friend have them interview you pop out your iphone pop it on a on a tripod and have them interview and at least show the outlet that you do have the knowledge you do have the personality and the energy to carry a two or three four minute interview okay um because some people just flat out don't you know they might have an encyclopedic knowledge of whatever it is that they study or whatever they do for a living but you know you could train them to the cows come home they're just going to get on television and they're not going to be able to carry an interview yeah and what do i do with my hands yeah so fantastic i i'm glad that we're getting this out because there's going to be some people that say but jason i can't afford to publish this but jason i can't afford to put together a video i've never been interviewed before i haven't i love that you are pretty much very much pro diy whenever people can do it and understanding it doesn't have to take a million dollar budget to put together a good two-minute highlight reel or a decent press kit to get somebody's attention no absolutely not and you know the thing is i i've enjoyed i've worked with a lot of of authors that have sold a lot of books um and a lot of them are wonderful people um but truth be told in the last 15 years i've enjoyed more than anything else working with the little guys you know the first time authors the self-published folks when i've gotten to work with them which hasn't been often because there's still so much enthusiasm about what they're doing you know they have energy they really believe in what they've written and they and they just they go to the ends of the earth to have somebody hear or see what they've done a lot of the the authors that have been doing it for years and years for them you know it's you know i signed a three book contract i got two more books to write you know it's like they don't it's fine it's what they do it's a job you know um i love working with the little guy but you know my model has been such that i've worked mostly with the big publishing houses and the bigger authors who can come along and say hey for the next four months work on this book you know here's a check for whatever um you know here's we want 100 hours of your time you know here's a check most indie authors don't have that and you know they also don't know what to do i i heard from hundreds of these folks over the last few years as the industry has continued to evolve and the self-publishing sector has just grown and grown and grown people reach out to me and say hey can you help um you know i got a budget that's about that big what do i do and i haven't been able to until about a year ago i started figuring out how to put together this toolkit i haven't been able to help yeah because i didn't have the time but then one day something clicked in my head and i thought you know what i don't have the time but i do have the tools i can i could give these tools to these authors and on their own time and i know they don't have a lot of time either raising kids and working nine to five jobs but on their own time they can put together some things and they can work on their book just give them a chance to do what it is they want to do so we spent the last year building this press kit or this toolkit and so far you know we've had great reviews on it and and i love you know how excited people are to get their hands on it and finally have feel like they have someone that's willing to help yeah you you were really working your tail off you know over the last few months you're like we're almost there we're almost there now i'm still not all the way there brother there's you know this there's always something that can be improved oh yeah another idea and another thing you want to do and but you know we're there i can deliver a great great tool kit right now and not to say that in six months this thing won't just keep getting better and better but yeah uh you know well here's the thing i will say this um you know i'm almost at capacity for 2020. we're only going to sell 100 of these things in 2021. so it's just because there's so much customization that i can only do so many of these things i'm already gonna have to bring in you know some help to get them done uh there's you know the one-on-one coaching and the custom press kit and the custom media list and all these things they take time to build um so i can only do 100 of these things so the idea is to go ahead and start getting folks in a queue for next year and um you know help some people out i i i've written a book trust me i know how hard it can be and how frustrating it can be to spend hours and hours and hours months or years writing something then all of a sudden you've got something in your hand that you're really proud of and you can't seem to find a way to tell anybody about it it's jeff yeah it can be for sure before we do a transition over to the live question and answer session uh i wanna of course ask how can viewers get a hold of you uh well localprtoolkit.com is our website okay that is i think you said right here underneath my face although i can't see it localprtoolkit.com and then on instagram localpr toolkit localprtoolkit on facebook uh is the best way to find us fantastic folks and of course i have an affiliate link inside the description down below please feel free to use that if you wish to help to support the channel if you want to go directly to jason by all means uh there's a good reason why i brought him on the show to kind of share just a bit more so i'm going to come on over here to the live q a i want to give a few shout outs to the people that came in jay prince what's going on john wasser it's good to see you aubrey hudson ray r wise ray your book's in the mail buddy uh tania stephenson author hello how are you doing lee jones how are you doing buddy branches counseling center great to see you john keeler kevin mcguire kevin stayed up late he's over in ukraine so i think he's about seven hours ahead of us so probably put about almost 11 o'clock hey and shout out to branches counseling center is is uh mike courtney i'm sure is who's watching there mike's an author as well and a dear friend uh and uh mike's got a couple of great books that he's written too awesome thanks for very much for tuning in mike that's really awesome to see some new people fatima molly sung what's going on molly great to see you oh branches counseling center just said it's a great tool highly helpful folks so um i don't think that's a paid review right there that's actually somebody coming in giving good testimony uh alrighty so i saw a question here all right this does come from branches counseling center what social media platforms are the most advantageous where do i invest my time well the answer is whichever one you'll use uh i i personally you know like instagram um you know it's instagram or facebook for me are the only two options really um you know if you're on the younger side maybe you give a little attention to uh you know some of the others tick-tock and some of that other stuff but for my purposes it's it's instagram or facebook and and uh without i'm not going to give away mike's age here okay i think the older older you are the more you probably need to lean towards facebook um and i love facebook you know but my kids don't use facebook um but it it i think it's um for conversational purposes you know uh and sharing it it's you know i enjoy facebook but instagram seems to be what the majority prefer nice and they can find you what is it local pr toolkit or is it pr toolkit local pr toolkit okay excellent yeah i know i do follow you on over there what's going on walter wyburn great to see you buddy speaking of influencers uh popping on in here he's getting ready to hit a hundred thousand subscribers over on youtube congrats buddy what do you think about distribution with local bookstores ray wise asks distribution with local bookstores you know what i'm gonna be completely honest and tell you i it's been so long since i've been on that side of things i um i don't want to sit here and pretend like i've got you know an answer for you when i i don't i i don't think it's ever a bad idea to go into your local bookstore take them a copy of your book if you if you've not cut corners and you've you've had a great cover design put together and and your book is high enough quality that they're gonna you know be proud to pop it on their local author shelves um go for it i don't think that's ever um something you should not do um but you know i do think you need to know going in that their their standard is going to be their bars can be set pretty high i mean if you you know if if you've if you've pinched pennies on exterior interior design you know i might not get my hopes up too high um just being honest there i see a lot of book covers they get scary or don't they but honestly again though it's been a long time since i've been involved with you know uh brick and mortar stores um on that side of things so i i don't really have a whole lot of input on that so i'm sorry ray hey okay i'm sure he probably was appreciating that all right if anybody has any other questions please fire them off i thought i would share this comment here john wasser sharing just downloaded my keyboard keyword book this morning have not had a chance to look through it yet too busy reading not heard of this book before how to tell your cat about trump [Laughter] i've been holding off on telling my cat about trump she's too busy you know cleaning herself or laying out in the sun so i don't want to bother it with that uh alrighty well ray says thank you so it's great thank you so much all right uh so it looks like we're starting to kind of wrap up get around the bend here thank you so freaking much for taking some time out your day again how can viewers get a hold of you and also get a hold of the local pr toolkit and what's involved in a local pr toolkit again yeah so the toolkit includes a custom press kit that i will build myself a custom media list depending on what market you're in or if you're a christian author a christian media list we have a 365 day news cycle forecast with pitch prompts so you'll know weeks or months ahead of time what the news is going to be covering access to our private facebook group we're going to do live streams and webinars with media pros publishing pros all sorts of interesting folks other authors so you have some community one-on-one coaching time uh there's a three-part media training video course we've also put together and then uh email pitch templates like some of the very emails that i've used to pitch and book thousands of shows i mean i i drop those into a document so you've got the uh the 365 pitch prompts the email templates the custom press kit the custom media list the one-on-one coaching all of it is there so localprtoolkit.com is the website and then again same on facebook and instagram just follow us over there uh for updates fantastic thank you so much again jason and folks as we start to wrap up today's broadcast i want to thank you of course taking a little bit of time out your day if you enjoyed this video smash that little like button so it turns blue and then share with somebody else who'd be into it too while we're out of here this very next video is all about marketing and promotion actually it's a full series you want to make sure you take a look at it i'll see you on over there take care folks