Today I am joined by my partner at prREACH, Shane Oglow to discuss the power of public relations! Shane explains what public relations is and how it used to build companies trust and authority online! In this episode, Shane and Norm discuss why Public Relations can be an amazing opportunity for small and medium sized businesses to take advantage of as they discuss the benefits of using PR as well as how companies are leveraging them to find great success online!
Date: October 26, 2020
Episode: 55
Title: Norman Farrar Introduces Shane Oglow, President of prREACH, Press Release and Content Expert and an Amazon Coach and Account Manager
Subtitle: “PR is performance recognition”
Final Show Link:https://lunchwithnorm.com/episodes/episode-55-the-power-of-public-relations-w-shane-oglow/
In this episode of Lunch With Norm…,Norman Farrar introduces Shane Oglow, President of prREACH, Press Release and Content Expert and an Amazon Coach and Account Manager.
Shane is a sought after and recognized thinker in the e-commerce space. He discusses the power of public relations and explains what public relations is and how it is used to build companies’ trust and authority online.
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Norman 0:01
Hey everybody, it’s Norman Farrar, a.k.a The Beard Guy and welcome to Lunch With Norm, the rise of the micro brands
Norman 0:20
All right, so today I’m going to be joined by Shane Oglow, he’s my partner over a prREACH. I am gonna have a lot of fun just kind of raking him over the coals. But anyways, in this episode, we’re going to be discussing the power of public relations, not press releases, the other PR and what it can do for small businesses, as well as Amazon sellers. So Kelsey, where are you?
Kelsey 0:46
Hello. Happy Monday.
Norman 0:48
How’s it going, son?
Kelsey 0:49
Hey, not too bad. I got a little haircut.
Norman 0:52
We got a little beard cut.
Kelsey 0:53
Oh, very nice.
Kelsey 0:58
Alright, everyone, you guys know the drill. You can follow us on Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, Tiktok, Pinterest, we got it all covered and you can find this on anywhere you listen to your podcast, whether that’s Apple, Spotify just search Lunch With Norm and you’ll be able to find us and if you haven’t yet, please join our Facebook group. We just put the link right here.
Norman 1:25
It’s facebook.com/groups/3157356. Whatever that is.
Kelsey 1:34
Yeah that’s right. So you can search up Lunch With Norm Amazon FBA and e-commerce Collective and you’ll be able to find us and yeah, that’s pretty much it and smash that like button.
Norman 1:47
That’s it. Don’t forget that count. What I hear, that’s very important.
Kelsey 1:51
It’s very, very important. So if you haven’t yet, for those watching, hit that like button, share this video out and yeah, enjoy the show.
Norman 1:59
All right. So before we get started, just like Kelsey said, if you have any comments or questions, throw them in the comment area, and we will get to them during the show or after the show. Matter of fact, Shane is going to have to kick around after the show for at least an hour for private consultation on public relations. He doesn’t know he has to do that yet. But anyways, we’re gonna make them stick to that. Okay, so anyways, sit back, relax, grab a cup of coffee and enjoy the show and now, the one and only Shane Oglow.
Shane 2:34
Hello.
Norman 2:37
How are you Shane?
Shane 2:38
I’m good. I really like that intro music just like you just.
Norman 2:41
You’re grooving to it. Were you?,
Shane 2:44
It was pretty cool. I don’t know where you found that.
Norman 2:46
That was Hayden. Hayden composed it.
Shane 2:49
He composed it?
Shane 2:50
Wow. Talented young man.
Norman 2:56
He’s a talented young man, not like his dad.
Norman 2:59
So Shane, just in case anybody doesn’t know if anybody’s listening, can you tell everybody a little bit about yourself? Oh, by the way. The one thing if you want to know, a detailed report on this guy who’s chased down bank robbers who’s been shot in the head, who’s, I mean, there’s a whole bunch of Shane Oglow that you got to hear and that’s on I know this guy. He did a full podcast with us and I didn’t even know the stuff that you were involved with and you probably have a whole bunch, he never told me or maybe your wife but I was blown away by the way. I just got to tell you that.
Shane 3:37
Well, that’s cool. Thank you very much and that’s all we could talk about in 45 minutes. I mean, that was just it was there’s 1000 stories in between those gaps so yeah, we need to do like a three hour special, we just sit around a fireside and and sip martinis or something in regards to cognac. Why don’t just cigars but all of cognac.
Norman 3:58
The popeye ones.
Shane 4:02
The bubble gum one.
Shane 4:06
Yeah, so I’m Shane, Shane Oglow. I work with Norm over prREACH. We have that and we’re doing a lot of media communication stuff. I’ve been an Amazon seller for quite a few years and probably got started around 2013. Yeah, that was good. That was the boom years.
Shane 4:27
Since then, Norm and I think we both really looked at a lot of areas that service the Amazon industry without necessarily always being sellers ourselves will certainly be. I think norms always maintained his finger on the pulse there, but I’ve been in and out. So yeah, it’s really cool. We do a lot of work with Amazon sellers. But of course now our scope is that prREACH went from being stuck. Presley’s company, the world’s first video press company, to more of a vertically integrated media and communications company. So we’re doing a lot of different stuff, but it’s all loosely integrated. That’s the fun, exciting thing. So part and parcel is all about branding and growing and building authority.
Norman 5:13
What I like about it is that most online sellers, specifically, Amazon sellers, don’t really think about some of the things that we’re doing building the brand, like through brand builder or public relations, which we’ll get into in a second. But it’s, we, I mean, we’ve talked about like these three pillars of growth, which is PPC, usually rebates and and press releases, and then your Amazon posts with Amazon live now. But really, there are other pillars, and that is building your brand on Amazon, or on Google, because if people don’t have that authority or trust, they’re not going to buy from you and then just getting the word out there. You want external traffic and, I mean, there’s just so much power in public relations. So just before we get into it, what’s the difference between a press release and public relations?
Shane 6:16
Well, a press release is a tool that a public relations pro would use as part of their arsenal. So a press release is just a written message that goes out distributed in a bunch of different ways. But, these days, it’s primarily through digital means that conveys a specific message that you want to send and that’s the cool thing about it about press releases. I don’t want to go too far off, is a press release is a really valuable tool. Because you’re pretty up the message that you want put out, it’s not somebody blogging about you, it’s not somebody over there writing a review, it’s your message, specifically, we want to put up with your keywords and everything in there. So it’s a powerful tool in the arsenal of a PR, professional and PR being public relations and that’s affecting the perception of the public of you or your brand, your service and what do you have? So a press release is just one of those tools in there. Norm, one thing, I was thinking about this the other day.
Shane 7:15
I was in the kitchen and I think you mentioned here at the beginning, you said a lot of Amazon sellers don’t leverage this stuff. I think a lot of Amazon sellers don’t know about this stuff, period and why is that? Because most Amazon sellers, I know, even the ones that are just Uber successful. A lot of their first business they ever had was an Amazon business. So they didn’t have this outside experience, they never had to do with advertising or marketing or like they just didn’t know the power of that repetition and how building authority, how that was important. Constantly keep your message in front of people they have no idea and they come into Amazon, maybe through a course or something and it’s just very night, tight, narrowly defined universe and it’s like, oh my gosh, okay, Amazon didn’t know anything. All they do is operate within this act, Amazon ecosystem and then number one, PPC came, I was like, oh, PPC and people are like, do I have to, or Oh, it’s bullshit that I have to. I have to do PPC to gain rank and all those things. But that’s like, that’s normal from the outside space. It’s only in your little ecosystem that didn’t exist. So, you’ve got your Amazon seller, let’s say he’s doing 50k a month or something. He’s super happy, his revenues going up. Great. Wonderful. It’s so important to make that transition off of Amazon and most people, this is their typical pattern. They’re like, Okay, my sales are up. I don’t want to be dependent on Amazon and what if I get suspended? What if this, What if that happens, because we all hear the horror stories. It’s getting tougher, Amazon is getting tougher, it’s easier to get this, it’s easier to get little things that used to be, it’s not the Wild West anymore. Anyways, so they say, Okay, I’m gonna start my own Shopify account, for example. But what happens is they go out and they’ll just get an order or two, maybe 10 in a month. That’s it, like it just it’s a totally different game because now you’re responsible for your own traffic and that’s where I think both of us really see the power of public relations because it’s like you have to first of all you need to start building some Google love that’s the only way to get traffic. I shouldn’t say the only way but there’s advertising on Facebook, Google ads, YouTube, Bing, but whatever you’re gonna do, great. Social media? Sure. But you need to have a search engine presence. That’s all there is to it. So you need to start building some authority, coming up in search rank, whether that’s your site, your news article, we get up there about you about whatever it happens to be but some real estate taken up on search engines, once you do that, then you’ll start to get a bit more traffic, okay, then you’ll start to steamroll a little bit. Then we can really layer in the public relations and that’s when you’re and I don’t want to go too far in here, but you’re getting the high traffic, high authority placements and you can drive those links to your Amazon page, your Shopify page wherever you want. But the point is, he started building a brand, a real brand, not just the nameless Amazon brand, like everyone else. That’s what makes it a lot easier to move into Walmart, or to eBay, or into physical retail, or other marketplaces, because you came that brand weight with you. But it’s a process. I mean, it takes time, it’s not gonna happen overnight. But when I go back to that example of an Amazon seller hitting a milestone, they’re like, Hey, now I need to start paying off Amazon, they do that and they kind of get their head smacked. They go back into Amazon, because that’s your bread and butter, who can blame them? Right. So that’s, I think, really when it comes to the Amazon side and sellers, I think that’s really our focus is to help those small and medium sized businesses, especially absolutely large companies can do it too, to start establishing that presence off of Amazon to try and get some of that authority going and I think we can both we can probably come up with 100 reasons why you need brand authority, like charge higher prices, higher conversion rates, you become a bit more recession proof. Like this, your multiples go when you go to sell, you start building a list, like all these things start to happen, that we’re always told about, but how do you make it happen? How do you build that authority? How do you drive traffic, this is how. It’s so much more economical than advertising because you do advertising, that’s great and it should be a component to what you’re doing. You turn the ads off, that’s it. PR sticks around forever. It’s there forever those links, so you can continue to use those and leverage them in social media and all kinds of stuff and this one from one little tiny explanation to me going off on 10 minutes on a tangent.
Shane 12:02
You should have a mute button.
Norman 12:06
I wish, I do. No, Kelsey’s got the power. But anyways, one of the things that blew me away when we were looking at bringing on press or public relations was when Michelle who is our senior public relations person. We said what kind of return can we expect? So, Shane, why don’t you talk about that a little bit? This is crazy.
Shane 12:31
Yeah, the return is nuts.
Shane 12:35
I mean, it can be 50 to 100 times ROI over the course of time and I think that’s the typical range, and also the retention rate Norm, or like I said, Michelle, prior, when she before she joined our team, she had an agency for, like, 17-18 years and the average length that she retained a client was seven to nine years, because it’s just so effective. I think the big thing for most people is getting over that initial hump. Because the first one to three months, you need to get that flywheel going, right? You’re building media lists, you’re understanding the product or the service, you’re perfecting the pitch, you’re starting to get things going and then if you want to get into print media, for example, they run on, maybe as short as three, probably more typically close to a six month timeline. So, if you’re wanting to get into Cosmo magazine, well, they’re already planned out six months ahead, or four and a half months ahead or whatever that case may be. Now little opportunities might come up in the meantime, for placements that are, something fell out, or they need to make adjustments. But for the most part, get that flywheel going, that first few months to really start cooking with gas and as you get deeper and deeper, the opportunities, just roll and roll and roll. That’s a really cool thing about it.
Norman 13:57
Yeah and I am not, I don’t even want to say the name of our company, really. But this is about public relations and one of the reasons why we got into this was because people got public relations and press releases mixed up and even like, this week, last week, people did a press release, thinking that it was public relations and they’re expecting that they’re going to be nationally exposed, every keyword is going to be covered. They’re going to drive tons of traffic and it’s just not the case, especially with press releases. If you’re publishing one press release, you’ve published one press release, big deal. You’ve got to do that continuously. But the other part of this is using public relations to tie it in. So another reason why we got into this was people were asking us to get into Forbes or in the New York Times or in these major papers, thinking that we could do it with press releases. Press releases will publish it. But just think of it as your brand. So for me, so if somebody’s going to go out and or Norm the Gnome is somebody’s going to go out to the Washington Post and they have they know my brand automatically, of course and then they’re going to look up Norm the Gnome and there’s going to be tons of traffic, it’s not going to happen. Press releases are typically driven for authority. They’re typically linking back to your Amazon listing or your Shopify listing to gain authority links. That’s it. But to get that extra exposure, and to have that ongoing exposure, and to have that link, that’s incredible, like we’ve had I know, Michelle’s contacted us just a few weeks ago, about gift guides. If you’re an Amazon seller, and you’re not thinking gift guides, you’ve missed out. You’ve probably like the average Amazon seller probably missed out on at least a third of their sales. What do you think?
Shane 16:12
Yeah, yeah, could be. There’s some really famous ones, there’s lots of up and coming ones, but people really lean on those for gift ideas that they’re getting more popular than ever. It’s not a fad.
Norman 16:24
Yeah, and you get like, for instance, at least the ones that we know, there’s 2500. Well, and there’s the niches in those 2500 and then you’ve got the niches in the different trade magazines. So, if you’ve launched something that’s for pets, there’s so many different outlets for it. But again, Shane, let’s talk about the different types of exposure that you can get and when people talk about earned media, what are they talking about?
Shane 16:54
Yeah, earned media is where you’re getting media placements, like Forbes, or websites, TechCrunch, or even with influencers, bloggers, gift guides, it can be anything like that and some people, like you can go to some PR companies, and you can go out there and pay for these things. We don’t operate on that model. We operate on where we’re not paying for the placements, it’s all relationship based. That’s what earned media is getting those media placements all over the place all the time and that what we’re doing is we’re keeping you not only at the top of the news cycle, if you’re looking at news, but on top of the media cycle as well. So you’re always in the media and the great thing is, let’s say we get your product, your service, whatever a really high traffic or high authority placement and magazine or website. Well, again, like I mentioned before, it never goes away. That link stays there forever. So you can do press releases about both that placement, you can put in your social media, you can use it in a newsletter, you can use in your advertising, you can just keep using it and use it like and we’ve seen examples probably in the past where someone once got lucky and they got in Forbes, in 2014 as seen on Forbes, that’s true. You can say that. So I think that that’s a vital component of earned media is it’s powerful tie traffic, it’s high authority, and it never goes away and you can just squeeze every drop of juice out of it forever and what we’re doing this month after month after month. So your competitors look around going, what the hell. How are they constantly giving gift guides? How are they getting places to be here? How to get an interview at this place? What the heck is going on? Now they got a PR pro in the corner. That’s all there.
Norman 18:50
It’s the traffic Blitz. Yeah, and I was gonna talk about, it’s very interesting. I learned so much about public relations. I thought I knew a lot like, I knew nothing. But it comes down to the experience of the person on hand and their niches and if you’re going and you’re working with a company, that’s just sort of a one person operation, you’re going to lose. Because, like, again, going and talking with Michelle, she’s an expert. You sit down with her and you say, oh, Michelle, I want to get into Entrepreneur Magazine. Oh, hey, can we get into Fast Company this month? Yeah, I just have to call so and so and she’s on the phone and okay, we got you an interview, like, even with this podcast, some of the ways that she’s been able to market it. She is an expert in certain niches. However, if you’re in the pet niche, she’s not handling it. She’s handing it over to someone, somebody else and one other thing I want to talk about is, one of my pet peeves is when I see somebody that uses a press release and says that they’ve been seen on ABC, NBC, Fox, blah, blah, blah, blah. I don’t think that’s a true look, I don’t put that on mine. Yeah, you’re there, you’re online. You’re not seen. If you’re on the Wendy Williams show, if you’re on Rachael Ray, if you’re on, like the circuit for public relations. Now, I can put that on my listing and I have no problems with that and by the way, like, we’ll hear things like, Oh, hey, do you know anybody who wants to be on Rachael Ray? They’re looking for this, or Wendy Williams, or whoever and, that’s, again, what these professionals are doing. You can do it yourself, just like press releases, you can do it yourself, if it’s gonna be effective. I don’t think it will be, just like a press release.
Shane 20:55
Yeah, sometimes people will get lucky. But for the most part, 99 out of 100 emails you send out will never get answered. You don’t even know if it’s the right email address and these people get flooded. Tell about personal relationships and that’s what, with Michelle, over 20 years experience will do for you. There’s no media organization in North America, where she hasn’t dealt with or as a contact and so, when she guards those very, very well. She’s not going to pitch any old thing to so and so at Forbes, Good Morning America, or BuzzFeed or what have you. It’s got to be the right fit, because she’s got her reputation, as well. So our camp contacts each individual place, are really what comes into play and as you said, those contacts know her and know she can deliver on things. So they’ll often come here and say, Hey, geez, we need something really quick, by next Friday, on this, that other thing. Do you have anybody in mind? Those opportunities often just come to us, as well as pitching, which is really, really vital. I think, too, I know, we’ve talked to other PR professionals, over the years and in recently, and there’s a couple of big differences. Number one is you can get, a kid right out of school came on to public relations school, and that’s fine. But it’s gonna be a long, slow battle uphill, they might have learned some techniques and if you talk to a PR professional, it’s like, you have to unlearn a lot of stuff they learn in school, which is typical for a lot of professions, I think. But they don’t have the context. So they can write a great pitch, probably. They can write a wonderful press release, but they are not going to be able to get you that media exposure, or that earned media very well. It’s gonna take them a lot of years to build up, or what will happen is, you might see a PR pro who really only deals in the medical industry. So if you’ve got iPhone accessories or something. Good luck. I mean, it’s just not gonna happen. The other difference is that most big PR firms that have the contacts, like we have asked for a long contract, it’s typically a year. Sometimes you might get lucky and do less if you pony up some heavy cash and it’s usually a big commitment, it’s usually 50,000 plus retainer, just to get started. So that’s kind of the model we set out to bust, having the context of the big agency without the big upfront fee, so that small and medium sized businesses can actually leverage this stuff and not having such heavy upfront contracts. There are still a contract, because we need to get the flywheel going and you can’t do it for a month and expect great results. It takes one to three months to really start picking up speed. But the one thing it does do for those small, medium sized brands, it levels the playing field. Because you are now able to get into publications that you only thought the big brands could before, we can absolutely do that. Some of them will take more time than others. Sure. But it levels the playing field and it gives you an unfair advantage and nobody is doing options and nobody very, very few people in the Amazon space even know about this, let alone do.
Norman 24:16
It’s like 1%.
Shane 24:18
Yeah, yeah. I mean, most people don’t even know what the earned media is. Yeah.. All they know is advertising, and social media, maybe. Oh, that’s it.
Norman 24:28
So I saw a comment that came back. It came out from Bronwyn about what does it says there?
Kelsey 24:35
PR is key to brand building.
Norman 24:39
Okay guys, I’m not blind, but on this screen, it’s a little bit blind. It’s about a millimeter. So everything kind of looks like it’s, push together. Well, maybe I am blind. Anyway, look, if there’s people out there with questions about PR, just general questions about public relations, about building your brand, about Press releases, and how you can use them together, please pop them up there. Shane’s here to help, explain everything over the next, 15-20 minutes. But please feel free to ask questions. So let’s go. Let’s talk about big brands. Okay, big bands are driven by PR, what’s stopping smaller brands from doing it?
Shane 25:25
Well, it’s traditionally I think, the cost and the knowledge that it’s even available. Most people think, Oh, my gosh, how could I possibly get into Ink magazine, or Martha Stewart or, shape or Fitness magazine, who knows, right? Depending on your niche, you would think those placements would cost 10s of thousands of dollars and they do if you’re advertising. We’re not going after those advertising spots, we’re going after the freebie stuff that is there, because they need content, they need good content and they need good products, services, and the reach out to their PR pros they deal with their contacts to pull those in. So I don’t think that there’s any and I might have mentioned this before, but I don’t think there’s any major North American publication or website or anything well known that Michelle has not gotten someone into and that includes radio, television, live events, she’s done things, she’s got an NFL celebrities to promote trade shows and sign autographs like collaborations. If you sell a baby product, I know that she’s got us. I think it’s like a, it’s not a hospital, it’s some, I think it’s something of a care facility somewhere in California that she does a lot of work with, and they can collaborate and they can cross promote each other. Interviews, there’s a lot of the PR spectrum is really, really wide. It’s not just websites, bloggers, magazines. There’s a whole bunch of in between stuff in the cracks. It’s all really powerful stuff.
Norman 27:01
So let’s go the other way.
Norman 27:05
Somebody feels confident doing it themselves, they want to do it themselves. There’s a couple places that they can start like Haro, for example, help a reporter out. You can get into their database, or you can go cision and you can, I think it’s around 1000 bucks a month, 500 to 1000, you can get into that database. Or you can go out and find influencers on the internet, or you can go to people like Tomoson or Intellifluence or Buzzsumo and you can track people down. Are there any other places where you that I’m missing, that you can go to find influencers, bloggers, reporters that might be able to pick up and help you out if you want to do this on your own?
Shane 27:56
I think so. I mean, some people scour social media, or they hire a VA to target different outlets, and then hire them to try and find any email addresses on there, add them to a database and do a mass mailing. Again, even if you’re using cision or you have some type of a database, are the reporters going to answer you? Are you pitching it properly? They get flooded with stuff, they’ll answer stuff from our people because they know her. But you can absolutely do it yourself and sometimes you will get one but I’d say for every hundred emails you send out, you’d be lucky to get one reply. That’d be pretty normal. It’s a frustrating, time consuming experience. Again, hire a VA, and just have them scour things, pay for subscriptions, do whatever you need to do and just I think if I had any advice to someone doing that is to really spend time on you have to have your sh * t together, in terms of your brand and your message. You can’t just be like hey, I sell widgets. How would you feature me? Forget it, who is that right? So you’ve got to have that kind of brand story presence coming at him so let’s you’re pitching a story, just pitching a product, pitching your story. Because the reporter doesn’t want to look dumb. They want to look like they’re putting something of value out there. That’s their job. So yeah, that’s what I would do and here’s another one like, as part of our packages team, we monitor Haro as well.
Norman 29:34
What does Haro do?
Shane 29:36
Well help a reporter out, I think it’s three times a day five days a week, they send out, it’s a tool that journalists use or other industry professionals use to gather information about a story they’re doing. So let’s say I’m a reporter for it, maybe could be from multiple sources, and I’m doing a story about turmeric and its effect on the elderly or sleep habits. It’s or whatever the case may be, I’ll put this out there say, hey, anybody knows or can comment on the effects of turmeric, they should be a medical doctor, or they should be a pro health practitioner or they should, there’s usually qualifications in there to try and get information back and so you basically give them your quick little pitch back and sometimes they’ll respond, sometimes they won’t, sometimes they’ll run your story, sometimes they won’t. But then you can get credit for it. So, they’ll send you a message back, maybe three months later, hey, I used your thing, here’s the link to the article, and we’ll give you a bit of credit, which is cool and then you can post that on your social media or to a press release on it, or whatever you want to do. It’s a time consuming process and the problem I think that most people have is that, number one, they don’t have that story dialed in and that’s super, super important. Because you need to not just be some dude, sit in your mom’s basement, right? Here today, gone tomorrow, or some gal, whatever, some person sitting in your mom’s basement, kind of flaky. You’ve got to have a solid background behind you, but also the timeliness of them. Because most of them are like, I need this by five o’clock tonight or, tomorrow by 3pm Eastern and most people aren’t prepared to have that fast turnaround for those stories and to monitor those emails, three times a day. So that’s kind of what we do is you have to be Johnny on the spot sometimes to nail those.
Norman 31:29
I think in general, too, when you’re talking about public relations, when you do sign up, you’ve got homework on your side, too. So working with the public relations person. If you’re not doing it just on your own, you’ve got to get back to them and I don’t know, I’m sure everybody that’s listening has tried to build a website. But if you don’t get back to the website developer, they can never finish your website. Same thing with a public relations person, if they say, hey, I’ve got something that’s due at five o’clock or next day at three, and you give it to them at 3:01, it’s not gonna happen. So it’s something that you both need to get started to work with. Now, if you have a VA that’s working with you on this, that the public relations agent can work with you on, then great. But it is something that you have to be careful of and one other thing I wanted to give out another, if you’re doing it on your own sort of free piece of advice that you can do. One of the things that we used to do, this was back in the day, we don’t use Hootsuite anymore, but we used to, this was especially for Twitter. So we would have keywords that we have a stream with the keywords and we’d monitor the keywords to see what would be coming up, see if there would be any questions and then, if anybody was looking for information about the product, then we could send it out to them, whether it be a customer, a reporter, an influencer, whatever it is. So just kind of keep that in mind too. That’s something else that you can do. But let’s go back to and we talked about it. We’ve been all over the map with this, but what can e-commerce, the online seller, Amazon seller benefit? What are the benefits of public relations?
Shane 33:23
Yeah, so maybe obviously, the first one is the authority. Like I said, your competitors kind of look around going, what the hell? How are they doing that? You become authority, and as we all know, we’ve all done it, you go on to an e-commerce site, you see a product, especially if it’s a high value product, or it’s a technical product, you need to serve a certain function. If it’s electronic, who knows, you tend to Google that company or that brand name, you want to see their website, are these guys legit? Sometimes they’ve got better deals on their website, they’ve got a little funnel Vegas and freebies. Who knows, like, people go off of Amazon or off of e-commerce platforms to search. So you type in Joe Blow XYZ company. All this stuff comes up. Press releases, interviews, articles, a feature on whatever, that crunch, big site, it’s like, Holy guacamole, like, these guys are legit. So there’s the authority and there will be traffic, you will start to get traffic because these, you get a placement in Martha Stewart, you’re gonna get traffic from it’s just gonna happen, right? There’s a lot of readers or there’s a lot of readership. There’re a lot of eyeballs are gonna come on it, again, takes a bit of time to get the flywheel going to sort of get those placements happy, we’ll get them. So there’s an authority, there is the traffic sales, you’ll be able to eventually start charging higher prices because you will, it’s a brand perception, right? It’s all about perception and I had a funny little interview or not an interview, a webinar I made. I just went out in a Google deal famous silicone spatula, I just wanted to see what was going to come up. I mean, so I typed in silicone spatula and I expected, I know the brand Oxo, Wilton and another one, Di Oro came up. I didn’t know anything about Di Oro. Di Oro came up first, two or three spots came up for, that’s a high search term, it’s more of a browser keyword, not a buyer keyword. So, it takes some effort to get there. So like, okay, Di Oro, cool. Let’s take a look at Di Oro’s products, let’s take a look at what they’re doing. They’re driving their links to Amazon, they’re driving links to their site, they’ve got a presence in different, like the ROB report, YouTube videos lately, all kinds of stuff to get all this media happening. So they’re always continually putting up this media, public relations and I look on Amazon and there they are, their prices I came up with, let’s say it’s 12.97 for one spatula. You’ve got competitors who have the exact same product, maybe even from the same factory, I don’t know. Selling it for less, sometimes three of them for less and that’s the power of having a brand name. The people are willing to pay more, you’ll have a higher conversion rate as well. You’re starting to build your list, right, because you’ll be starting directing traffic, and you don’t have to direct traffic to your Shopify listing. It is a Shopify beat on an e-commerce site. Right away, you can still drive all your links to Amazon until you’re ready to start making that transition. But as soon as you do, you’ll start to build a list and of course, the list increases your valuation and when you go to sell your company, if you’ve got all this external traffic coming in, and I think, anywhere from 30 to 40% of traffic coming into Amazon, for example, is coming from search engines. That’s a healthy piece of the pie, are you able to take a slice of. So all these things combined to really increase those valuations. I think that’s where a lot of Amazon sellers really focus. They’ve got that 2 year, 5 year, 10 year horizon to exit their business and public relations is what helps you boom, expand those platforms, marketplaces and have just better numbers across the board, and then flip that for a lot more money. So there’s a lot more too, but those are the ones that come to mind.
Norman 37:20
Yeah, and those would be the main ones, I would think about too. But yeah, just going back to what you’re talking about with authority, if you do not have that, if you’re a micro brand selling on Amazon, and you’re not a household name, people are gonna, like you said, search you out. If you’re the first thing if you’re not consistent with your brand. So if your social media is off target, your Shopify site is off target and it could be the content that you’ve got out on the internet is off target, then it’s going to add a little bit of doubt, it might be an amber flag. If you’ve got it all bang on, then you’ve got a sale. You’ll convert authority to trust and then you’ve got it and what I love about it is if you can drive it over to your Shopify store, and you can get them to build that list. It just asked, I haven’t had him on the podcast, I hope one day I’ll get them on but Charles Livingston. Ask Charles Livingston how important a list is, this guy has made gazillions off of repurposing that bloody list that he builds and that’s another thing that I think a lot of people don’t think of is building that list. They’ll think Amazon’s gonna take care of it. Well, you can build that out your own list and that list is just priceless at the end of the day. But I know what Kelsey, I think there was a question or two I can’t read.
Kelsey 38:53
Yeah, from Bronwyn. What is the average cost for a PR product launch campaign and is what the timeframe for traction on sales?
Norman 39:03
Yeah, first one of the things Bronwyn, is that with public relations, it’s an overall maintenance program, basically. So it’s not like a rebate program or it can be built into an influencer or brand ambassador program. But it’s really an ongoing program that you would have. There’s all sorts of packages, like Shane was saying earlier on most of the press release companies or public relations companies are probably charging anywhere from five to 10,000 a month, I would think.
Norman 39:44
We’ve got a program that we’ve developed for smaller businesses, targeting the Amazon seller, and the Amazon seller and the online seller and that could range anywhere from a few grand up to, I think, on average is about four grand Shane?
Shane 40:04
Yeah, 4000 bucks a month is a package and that’s actually our shortest term contract and for us, we’re sticking our necks out a little bit and the only reason we can stick our necks out on that one is like, unlike most PR firms, we guarantee your placements every single month. We’re not going to guarantee to get into Martha Stewart next month, because that would take some time, we will get your placements because we have such an extensive network of people. But most PR firms if you’re just an Amazon seller, and you sell silicone spatulas and kitchen gear, okay, great. We help develop your brand, your story, your corporate profile, CEO bio, those types of things. It’s all about the pitch, right? So we’re not just going to say yeah, here’s another black silicone spatula, it’s no, here’s why you want to promote this particular one. But with the product launch package, most PR firms don’t have these types of things. Norm and I have a strong Amazon background, that’s what I want to offer this, is we’re not going as heavily after those big media outlets. Maybe you do want to be in Forbes, maybe you deserve to be in Forbes, maybe you got a rags to riches story, I don’t care. So great. We’ll focus on that that’s long term. But in the short term, we’re focusing more on influencers, bloggers, micro influencers, gift guides, those types of things like those immediate product placement things versus if you want to take a longer term approach for a larger brand, or you’re a service based business or whatever the case may be. We’re going to go a bit heavier on those big media sites right away right out of the gate. So, we guarantee those placements, and we only have a two month contract right now for 60 days, because we know we can get some placements really quickly and I think we guarantee like six placements a month, like it’s insane. It’s insane what we can do there. But most PR firms won’t give you any guaranteed placements a month. But it’s only because of our network. Those are the types of placements, we’re going to go for right out of the gate and as we’re doing that, we’re going to be pitching bigger ones and bigger ones, bigger ones that don’t feel you’ll extend and stay with it. Because you’ll see the results we’re getting.
Shane 42:23
It was a long winded answer.
Norman 42:26
Bronwyn, I’ve talked about this, I think a couple of podcasts ago, but we have one client, and they get featured on wire cutters and they’ll all of a sudden have a spike in sales and now this is an eight figure company brand that we’re talking about. So it’s not a small brand. But all of a sudden, they’ll have an extra hundred thousand bucks that come in in a week or two over two. Usually it’s over a week or so. But 100 grand, like where did that hundred grand come from? Wire cutter, because they run a promotion, they’re featuring it as best in category product. So it’s a review site. That’s the other thing that helps with public relations too, like sites like that. Now I did see something from Dr. Koz that I want to talk about.
Kelsey 43:20
Yep. So can you explain which channels you use for press releases? Just vision, for example, business wire, any others?
Norman 43:28
I can handle that one Shane. I think I can, you’ll have to just let me know if I say anything wrong. But there’s a variety. This is really important as a great question, Dr. Koz. There’s so many different channels you can go out and there’s so many different types of press releases, so many different types of press releases, so many different types of distribution channels. So you’ve got a traditional press release, that’s typically the most expensive, could range anywhere from 500 to 1500 dollars. You’ve got your traditional or just your regular online media, social, sorry, your online press release, which is going out to all the online companies and then you’ve got social media press releases that go out to online companies, social media, like social shares. It’ll go to influencers, bloggers, journalists, Twitter, and traditional do the same by the way and these ones run from 100 to 200-300 bucks, maybe. So different quality press releases, then it comes down to the writing of the press release. So many press releases are written through people that are blog article writers, not the same. They don’t know how to put it together. They don’t know what the distribution or the media outlets are looking for. So media outlets, what am I talking about? Search engines, you could be talking about newspapers, radio and this is all online, by the way. You’re talking about news organizations, content marketing agencies like Market Watch, or the Associated Press, those type of distribution channels. So distribution, I always ask for a list. So when you’re working with a press release company, ask for their distribution list for the type of press release that you want and if you don’t see, like, any of the cision products on there, like, what is it, PR Newswire? Access Newswire, some of the bigger ones, those are all distribution channels. There’s also all sorts of other micro channels that companies work. They have their own, again, like e-releases or like with us, we’ve developed these networks with either trade magazines, or geographical regions. We have different people or magazines that we’d work with. So it’s important that you ask for that and the other part of this, especially if you’re working with that social media press release, or the traditional one, you want to ask about, or make sure that they’re going out to bloggers, going out to influencers. Especially, let’s say you’re again, you’re in the pet niche. Okay, are they gonna be able to do anything for you? Now, one thing not to expect is that you’re gonna get a ton of exposure. We had this question come up this week about authority links, and what was it? Pixels and why didn’t I get a 100,000 views? Well, first of all, you put the pixel on to like our press release, which is hosted on our site, you’re not allowed to put a pixel on the 400 that just went out, so that you can’t track it, it’s impossible to track. Also, you’re not getting a ton of traffic, you’re getting the links, that’s what you’re doing if you’re working with an Amazon, like for your Amazon listings, let’s say or to get ranked, and you want to do it multiple times. So if you’re doing an Amazon listing or a rank campaign, you want to have that tied in with 3,4,8 different press releases over a short period of time, if you want it to rank. Or sorry, if you want it just to rank on Google and become more of an authority site. Shane, what do you think like, even once a month is good, if at minimum, right?
Shane 47:52
Yeah, just be consistent, just like advertising, just consistently do keep it up there. It will start to have long term effects, you got to have you got to be looking in the future six months a year down the road, before you start to see search engine rankings really being affected by it for certain keywords. You’ll constantly keep that authority out there and that’s a nice thing to do for people on a real tight budget. Drip one in every month or two, where we’ve got our new site will be up here very, very shortly within a day or two and we’ve got a new little value bundle, we can do five PRs a month for a really, really low price. Especially if you want to make the effort to write it yourself, you can save some money too and that’s an excellent way to just build that authority, and it will start to build your search engine rankings and just to go back to something you said there Norm. Press releases, it’s really, really important that they’re formatted properly. A lot of times you’ll get a really, really good writer, like they’re fantastic writer, but they wrote it like ad copy or they wrote it like a blog and that’s not the best thing to do for a press release, because you’ll get limited distribution or maybe an outright rejection, if it’s too salesy. We just want to feed this machine what they want and Google treats a news item differently than other pieces of information and in fact, they viewed it more favorably, according to the last Google update. So if you want to teach yourself, it’s actually not that hard. It takes a few kicks to the can, but you just have to follow a very strict form, right? It’s not like you’re freestyle writing going for a Pulitzer Prize. It follows a very strict, strict format. So anybody can learn to do it really.
Norman 49:42
Yeah and there are PR guidelines. You can find them anywhere on the internet. I mean, you can go to our site, and you can just download them, and it’ll tell you exactly what to do and what not to do. But anyways, let’s get back to misconceptions. Oh, you know what? No. I want to talk about George’s clear ads and what public relations brand building can do. So guys, I was blown away and again, this is just in general. Okay, so we’re talking about what press release public relations can do. It’s not what this company can do. It’s what PR can do.
Shane 50:28
Yeah, I mean George’s, for anyone that knows him, he’s a hell of a nice guy.
Norman 50:36
Smart guy.
Shane 50:38
Yeah, he really knows what he’s doing. He runs an Amazon advertising agency, they focus on Amazon DSP. That’s the demand side platform and if you’re a new seller, you probably don’t know what that is. Anyone want to use it anyways, it’s, once you start selling, it’s something you want to look at. Anyways, we started off with George, just doing a high end press release, we call our news Dominator which gets on our site shortly. It uses the highest authority. It accesses our group of nearly 2 million influencers, reporters and trade magazines and stuff and then we switch them over to what we consider intermediate kind of PRs on this side, getting into what we call brand builder, which uses PR, and then a lot of other different types of content. We create videos and podcasts and all kinds of stuff in articles. We bundle it all together and syndicate it and then we have on the far end of the spectrum, we have that public relations and earned media, we’re going out there actively trying to find you these high traffic, high authority placements. So anyways, George started with this high NPR before we moved him into the brand builder product, but after a single month, he sent me these panicky emails. He’s like, holy crap, I can’t believe this and there’s big red circles. He already has an SEO guy. He’s got a service based business, and they couldn’t believe the jumps they’d made and their Google rankings and I was like, oh, man, that’s awesome. I’m just so happy for you a great, great, great, and he was just over the moon. The problem is, it did a little bit too good and we started outrank Amazon for some of their own terms. Advertising on Amazon and Amazon DSPand the other two terms and it got noticed by Amazon. Unfortunately, for George, the article he submitted for us, though, was published, I guess, technically, he was in violation of the terms of service. So it was up for him and said, Hey, George, we see you’re doing great. We got a problem, though. He’s like, Oh, what? You’re in violation of TOS. He’s like, Oh, I have no idea. So he calls me up. He’s like, Shane, I had no idea what I was doing. We need to pull these down. Like, yeah, we could do it. It’s gonna take us weeks. So he’s in a big panic, he was worried. They call them back. This time, it was the head of the R&D. I think it was the head of R&D for Amazon DSP called back and said, Hey, George, about those articles are, he’s like yeah, there’s only one or two left. Yeah, yeah, that’s great. Because , you wouldn’t have been in violation if you were a partner. So if you want to be a partner, just click the link below. It was like, Oh, the heavens opened up, right, and the sun came down and shined on him. He said further to that, we’d like to talk about working together to develop our products together as we deliver these products, because the information that he put out was high value information and he has got a really good writer. So it’s very technical to DSP. You can’t just go and hire someone from Fiverr to write a DSP article for you. Right? So it was very interesting. It opened up this huge opportunity, just with Amazon itself, but from this exposure, we said he was another thing I noticed, Shane, was that conversations I’ve had with people, three months, six months, maybe even a year ago, we had great conversations, but just no business really came of it. All started creeping back into the woodwork because it’s seen that exposure that he had, and it just validated. It’s like, Oh, yeah, George’s in the news, he doesn’t he’s talking about. He’s featured here, he’s featured there. So that was a wonderful story and again, he couldn’t be a nicer guy. So super happy to get those results. Now, I think, managing expectations here if you sell a silicone spatula, are we going to put you at the top of page one for a silicone spatula or iPhone case in one month? Probably not.
Shane 54:35
That’s a very competitive term. We go after competitive terms all the time. But more often than not, what’s happening is we’re taking you from not being anywhere on Amazon, nowhere to be seen, or sorry, on Google to page three, page two, sometimes onto page one somewhere great, wonderful. Well, we can target quite a few terms. When we’re doing like the brand builder product for example, because we have numerous products in there so we can do 10,12,20 keywords wide, and just see what we can get going. So it’s a, I like to call it an SEO shortcut, because if you went to an SEO agency and said, Hey, I want to rank my Amazon listing or my Shopify page at the top of page one for silicone spatula, Good luck. That’s going to take, what a year, maybe less.
Norman 55:28
Maybe a ton of money.
Shane 55:31
Maybe a ton of money, and you might not ever get there, because we know it’s hard to dislodge those people on the top. This is a shortcut, we were getting people there sort of in 72 hours, it’s not your website, it’s not your direct Amazon URL. Sometimes we can get those for some terms and that’s our goal is to get those there. But we’re getting the Yahoo article, or be picked up by a partner like Martech. They’ll put, they’ll repost and that will be showing up top of page one. Not always, but quite often and certainly, very well if you look on Google News, sometimes we’ll get images up. So it’s basically just getting your exposure, exposure and it’s month after month after month, just like any other SEO or advertising product, you just got to keep at it, keep at it and slowly you’ll start to get those direct links to your site or to Amazon to appear as well.
Norman 56:24
Yeah and there’s, while that’s happening, you could always go and start building out your own influencer network to, just for social proof, and all, lifestyle images and stuff like that. But you know what, just going back and wrapping it up fairly soon here. But George would not have got Amazon’s attention if he didn’t have the authority. He just goes back to what I said at the very beginning, no authority, no trust, and that I mean, that was incredible. I mean, I still just shake my head, from what we actually took Amazon down two pegs, his clear ads were number one and number two on certain terms and Amazon went down to number three, so that took them off. All right, so let me see here. What have I not talked about? What else can we talk about? Is there anything that you can leave everybody with?
Shane 57:28
Yeah, I think I mean, everybody’s on their own different journey. We all have our own budgets or own ideas or an experience. You might be doing your first thousand dollars a month on Amazon, you might be 100 grand, you might be a million a month, who knows? Well, what we’ve done is, we don’t want to be a one trick pony, as I said, being everything’s holistically interrelated. So whether you’re doing a billion nano influencer networks, whether you’re just doing a press release, or two a month. Whether you’re digging content done, all these things can tie together. That’s what I think that’s the picture that most people miss. You want to get that web of links going as much as you can over time, and he can’t do everything out of the gate, especially if you’re new, I wouldn’t go for everything. I mean, no, crazy times, right? If you’re just getting started, got a little bit of budget, get the press releases, going start doing that great, wonderful. If you can move up to the brand builder to start to get that search engine authority happening in a bit of traffic starting to flow and build more authority, that’s the next step and then the final step is public relations, those can be done at the same time, some people Hey, I’m doing an average of 150k a month, I’m ready to do both great, wonderful. But you don’t have to. Well, I mean, this is typically what I’m helping people with when I’m talking to them is dialing in on the goals, their budgets, where they are, where they want to be and figuring out the right approach for them, and then say, Okay, let’s do this for six months, and see when we get there, we’ll move into something else. So there’s something for everyone in there, you don’t have to feel excluded. Because you’re not a big brand yet, you can start to do things to build authority. But, on the other end of the spectrum is you got people who do really good cash on or a really great revenue on Amazon and they still don’t know about this stuff. It’s like, you need to tell them you’re doing 5 million a year, and you had no idea that you can get placements and I’m like, dude, where have you been? Just don’t know and again, it comes back to a lot of people who started this Amazon business 3,4,5,6,7 years ago. It was their first business and they just didn’t have that experience on advertising and billboards and like all the things it’s possible to do, or you had to do it in the past. It’s all there.
Norman 59:51
Yeah and who would have thought five years ago or 10 years ago that you could be a real business? Yeah, you’re a micro brand, but you could do eight figures. But anyways, look, thank you for being on the podcast. I have a lot of fun when you’re on here, get to pull your chain. But anyways, look completely transparent. I think everybody knows that I am involved with the press release company. What I’d like to offer and this is, check it out. But I didn’t even talk to you about this, Shane. But if there’s somebody on that’s live right now, that wants to get a full press release done, like, send us over your information, we’ll publish it, and we’ll give you the results. All we want you to do is just come back later on. Let us know how your results were. But if you want it for free, just type it in the live chat now and we’ll get the first person that types it in a free press release if they want it. If there’s nobody that’s interested in it. I’ll do it myself then. So there you go Shane, I didn’t talk to you about that beforehand. Anyways, Shane, thank you so much for being on the show. Oh, Michelle. Okay. Michelle gets it. So Michelle, do me a favor. Send me or Kelsey over the information about your product and All right, we’ll squeeze two in. Simon you got one, too. Okay, so anyways, yeah, you’re gonna be loaded up. Anyways, send over the information to Kelsey, or to get over to Kelsey. We’ll get that sorted out for you. All right. Ronin, okay. This is the last one. Brandon, we got you taken care of. Okay.
Shane 1:01:50
So I didn’t say earlier, we got three comments here. I know, Simon, dude.
Norman 1:01:56
I don’t know if you know Simon, but Simon, everyone here, we’ve got a great community and everybody kind of tunes in every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. So that’s the benefit. We’ll get them out something so Shane, expect that. I’ll send you over that information once I receive it from the three winners and I think that’s it. We’ll see you later, buddy.
Shane 1:02:21
See you soon.
Norman 1:02:24
Oh, hey, contact information.
Shane 1:02:26
Oh, yeah, just shane@prREACH.com and that works. So s h a n e, like the 1957 Ellen lab movie. It was sometime in the 50s I think, wasn’t it? The movie Shane.
Norman 1:02:41
I have no idea.
Shane 1:02:42
You’ve never seen the movie Shane?
Norman 1:02:43
No.
Shane 1:02:44
It’s a classic actually. Clint Eastwood in the 80s did, you know Pale Rider? He stole the story from Shane.
Shane 1:02:51
It’s like a little kid. Shane, come back. He’s like, you could watch it. Just watch it.
Norman 1:02:58
I’ll watch Ben.
Shane 1:02:59
No. Watch Shane.
Shane 1:03:01
Nurses know shortcode Norm. Probably for a reason.
Norman 1:03:07
All right. So your contact information again, shane@prREACH.com and we’ll see you later, Shane.
Shane 1:03:13
Thanks, man.
Norman 1:03:15
All right. Thanks for coming on. All right, Kelsey, where are you?
Kelsey 1:03:19
Alright, I’m here. Hello.
Norman 1:03:20
You got some homework to do. There’s people that are gonna be sending it over information. Okay?
Kelsey 1:03:24
You got a little carried away there.
Norman 1:03:27
I did. But anyways, my company and Shane’s.
Norman 1:03:32
But alright, so what do we got?
Kelsey 1:03:36
Okay, first of all, for those three winners. My email is right here. So k@lunchwithnorm.com and I guess yeah, email me and yeah, I hope you guys enjoyed the episode. If you haven’t already, please like and share and let me see, you can find us on Apple, Spotify. Anywhere you find your podcast, you can find us. Just search Lunch With Norm and yeah, actually, I know you’ve been sending me some screenshots of our success. Slowly climbing those ranks. Yeah. So we just want to say thank you. I think it was like New Zealand.
Norman 1:04:16
Australia, Israel and Turkey and Russia.
Kelsey 1:04:19
Yeah and we’re slowly popping up in different places. So that’s great to see. Yeah, and if you are looking to find the full episodes of Lunch With Norm, you can always go to YouTube. Right now it’s called Norman Farrar. We might change that to Lunch With Norm. But you will find all the episodes there. Full length and highlight episodes, so you can get it all.
Norman 1:04:46
Alright, so last thing is remember, you can subscribe to our newsletter. You can either go over to Lunch With Norm or to NormanFarrar.com and you’ll see subscribe. It doesn’t suck. It’s got great content. It’s for online sellers, to help online sellers to maximize your online experience and profit. All right, so next or Wednesday. Our next guest is going to be Darrell Patterson. He’s going to be coming on. He’s going to be talking about PPC, some new tricks and tips and tricks for the fourth quarter, and I think Laura McCall might be on. I haven’t got word back yet, but anyways, it’s gonna be a good one. So we’ll see you on Wednesday and remember, join us Monday, Wednesday, Friday, Eastern Central time at noon and everybody have a good day.
