How to Land New Clients Through Media Features

Jeffro (00:02.376)
Welcome back to Digital Dominance. As we continue to jockey for attention to get in front of our target audience, it can feel like some people have an unfair advantage. Some businesses seem to get articles published about them all the time, or the founder gets interviewed a lot. They’re getting all this free publicity while you’re over here handing out flyers. You know, earned media is in some ways the holy grail of marketing, especially if your product or service has broad appeal. It can seem confusing and frustrating though to actually get publicity. And there’s an important question that should be asked, is it worth it? 

If you serve a very localized or very specific market, does it even make sense to go in that direction? And if it does make sense, how do you capitalize on that attention? To help me dive into these questions, I’ve invited Jen Hartman to join me today. Jen is the founder and CEO of NEET, a boutique PR and marketing agency where she’s advised nearly 300 brands on positioning themselves in front of the right customers at the right time through media features, social media campaigns, podcast interviews, influencer collaborations, and all sorts of stuff. So welcome to the show, Jen. Thanks for being here.

jen (01:00.974)
Thank you for having me. I’m really excited.

Jeffro (01:04.552)
Definitely, me too. Now, Jen, you and I first connected because you posted something on LinkedIn about how businesses are always trying to target the whole world. And when you’re trying to target everyone, you’re resonating with absolutely no one. And that resonated with me as a fellow agency owner because targeting is a constant challenge. And we’ve talked about the importance of knowing your ideal target customer in past episodes. It’s always worth reiterating. So I just wanted to mention that. Today, though, I do want to focus more on PR specifically.

I listed a few questions in the opening about publicity and earned media and I’m hoping you can help demystify some of this for us.

jen (01:39.63)
Absolutely. I’m so excited to dive in. I definitely have a lot of thoughts around PR, especially because you mentioned your audience is mainly service -based. And I do think that PR, when done right, is incredibly impactful, regardless of what business you operate in.

Jeffro (01:55.08)
Definitely. Well, let’s start by defining the process for public relations. You know, at a high level, you first need to get someone to write about you or interview you. This can feel daunting if you’ve never done it before. After that, you have to capitalize on that attention when the piece is published. Is that a good summary? I mean, how would you describe that?

jen (02:11.022)
Yeah, I think you hit the nail on its head pretty good. I would say that when it comes to PR, we definitely start with who is your ideal customer or your ideal client and where are they spending time? And that kind of helps to determine what path we take. For example, if you are targeting someone who is a business owner, right? If you’re an agency owner and you’re targeting a business owner, it’s important to think about, well, where are business owners truly hanging out? Are they…

listening to podcasts. If so, what podcasts are they listening to? Are they reading Forbes? Are they watching the morning news, right? Like where are they really spending their time? And then that’s a good starting point. You can really figure out which PR avenue to go down once you have that that hashed out.

Jeffro (02:56.776)
Right, well, and that’s part of building a strategy, right? Because if you just try to start sending stuff out, hitting journalists up and down everywhere, it may not go so well. And even if you do get something, you might end up with 15 minutes of fame that’s really just an ego stroke rather than a lead generator. So can you tell us more about how do you actually build that PR strategy? Is it built around events like a product launch, promotion, or do you put together campaigns that are just, you want eyes on you all the time?

jen (02:58.764)
Mm -hmm.

jen (03:26.222)
Yeah, great question. It really comes down to the client’s goals, right? Because we’re going to take a different approach if you’re telling me that your main goal is sales or if your main goal is credibility, we’re going to look at things differently. So for example, if your goal is credibility, we’re likely going to look at some of those larger tier one outlets that we can attach you to, whether it’s Forbes, CNN, USA Today, whatever it may be that’s going to provide credibility for you as a founder in your industry. Now,

If you are saying, you know what? No, Jen, like I need to see dollar signs at the end of the day. Okay. Well, it might not be Forbes. Don’t get me wrong. I pick on Forbes all the time and I love Forbes. We have clients into Forbes all the time, but a lot of times what’ll happen is we get a client into Forbes and they feel really good, right? Like it kind of strokes the ego, but they’re like, wait a second. I didn’t see any conversions for being in Forbes. And I’m like, yeah, like there’s not always a guarantee there. And at the end of the day, your ideal client or your ideal customer might not be reading Forbes. So.

If it really comes down to sales, then we need to have an honest conversation about that because, for example, I’ll give you an example. We have a client here locally in Louisville, Kentucky. They are the go -to milliner of the Kentucky Derby, and they have a local store here. And in order to actually see a return on their investment, we have to push people into their store. So getting them into Forbes,

probably is not going to help them see more sales, right? So we have to increase store traffic. So what we’re doing is we’re doing a lot of in -store collaborations. We’re doing pop -ups. So we have pop -ups planned with Drybar. So for example, Drybar is going to come into the store and actually help women style their hair while they pick out a hat for the Kentucky Derby.

Jeffro (04:50.952)
Right.

jen (05:08.014)
So we’re gonna see more store traffic that way. And we have a bunch of other events planned in that way. We also have a client who makes candles. So we are going after all of these different collaborations with bourbon distilleries here.

So she’ll see more sales that way because her candles are going to be in all of these distilleries that are visited by so many people every weekend. So again, it really just depends like what is your goal at the end of the day, be honest with your publicist. If it’s about your ego, that’s fine, we’ll stroke your ego. If it’s about sales, we’re going to get you sales, but it’s going to look a little bit different and it’s probably not going to like be super splashy PR. But from there, once we figure out what your goals are,

who your ideal client is. That’s where we really start to build out a PR strategy.

Jeffro (05:51.816)
Well, I like that you shared that example because I do think people have a limited view of what PR is, right? And it’s very limited to, okay, I just got to get on the morning show or, you know, get in the New York Times or some more of my local newspaper. Like, but you talked about creating events and partnerships to generate attention, right? And so that’s all part of it. You’re just creating interest in various ways to get people’s eyes on you. And if you do it right, then their wallets follow, right? That’s just like you said.

jen (05:57.228)
Mm -hmm.

Jeffro (06:21.48)
So I love that. Now, what about, you know, some small businesses are very small, right? Small businesses can mean up to a thousand employees, right? So we say small business, people will have different understandings and are at different places in their journey of running a business too. So if you say, oh, if you’re a small business, you should do a PR campaign. Okay, but where does it actually make sense for a small business to do this? Can you break that down?

jen (06:50.154)
Absolutely. And the term small business drives me insane as well, because a small business could mean that Etsy shop or that mom and pop shop on the corner, or it could be quite a big business, right? So yeah, the term small business is kind of dated at this point, and I don’t think it means a whole lot. But anyways, to answer your question, I would say that there are a couple of boxes that need to be checked. Number one is do you have a tried and true product?

Jeffro (07:02.342)
Mm -hmm.

jen (07:18.83)
I don’t like, okay, so when it comes to PR, all you’re doing is you are putting more eyeballs in front of your product, your website, your storefront, whatever it may be. And if things are broken, then all that’s going to do is hurt your reputation. So if you have a product that is cheap, it’s broken, it’s gotten bad reviews, you don’t want to put the spotlight on that product. So I would say that’s really important is do you have a solid product?

Okay, number two, do you have a website that works and it’s converting without PR? Because again, all you’re doing is putting a spotlight on something that’s either working or not working. You’re just amplifying what’s currently going on in the business. So good product, good website, solid social media presence as well. Because what happens is when we’re reaching out to journalists and you’re getting featured, people are coming back to your social to see what’s going on.

And if you’re driving traffic back to a social media presence that isn’t that good and it’s not cohesive and it doesn’t represent your brand, well, you’re just going to lose customers that way as well. Um, so yeah, those three items that I would say knowing who you are as a founder and as a person helps as well. If you don’t really understand your founder story or what makes your product different PR is going to be really difficult to get.

Jeffro (08:38.952)
Yeah, well that makes sense. And I like that you highlighted how you have to be ready for the influx of a successful, the results of a successful campaign. If I 8x or 10x tomorrow, what would happen? Would I be miserable for about two months and lose clients and get some bad reviews because I couldn’t keep up with everything? Or would I just, is my team ready for that? Are my systems ready for that? And if not, okay, maybe you should start there and then come back to the PR.

once you’ve kind of got all that in place.

jen (09:08.686)
Yeah, exactly. I like that you touched on that because we actually had a client that we were helping and she was a small business owner. She had just recently launched her bakery in a small town in Pennsylvania and she was getting so much press with us. She was selling out of product every day by nine or 10 in the morning. And so what she had to do is she had to go buy a bigger oven, a bigger mixer, like she had to spend so much money in order to keep up with the demand that was being created. And she wasn’t prepared for something like that to happen. So it is really important to think about.

Okay, what happens when I do have so much demand? Can I meet demand? If not, then you might want to just press pause on PR.

Jeffro (09:46.088)
Yeah. And I’d say too, we want to avoid the perfectionist mentality or analysis paralysis. We’re like, okay, I don’t know. Could I handle exactly a thousand orders? Maybe I could get like 750. You know, you don’t want to do that. If you feel like you’re 80 % of the way there, sure, go for it. Right? Because that’s a good problem to have is you’ll find those places where you can improve, but you need to at least have something. You don’t build a rocket and say, oh yeah, this engine will be fine. You do static test fires.

You know, make sure it doesn’t break when you’ve got it under full load. So that’s kind of the idea we’re getting at here, but I think I get it. Now, let’s say you’re ready for it. You know, you’ve got the systems in place. How do you actually capitalize on that successful campaign in terms of generating new business? You know, instead of just people looking at you and say, oh, that’s cool.

jen (10:36.238)
Great question. So I’m going to come back to the website. We want to make sure we have a solid website. You want to make sure all the buttons are working. There’s no broken links or anything crazy going on. But on top of that, I really like to see some sort of pop -up when people land on your homepage so we can capture those people that are visiting because you just got featured in an article. So capturing first name, email, and even phone numbers so we can move people from top of funnel to mid funnel. And maybe what happens is when they opt in, they get some sort of discount.

Maybe it’s 10%, maybe it’s 15 % off your product or your service, but you want to make sure that you are capturing people when they’re landing on your website from those PR opportunities.

Jeffro (11:18.44)
Yeah, and now you’re in my world. This is what I like to do, websites and all of that. So I will say for pop -ups, I always recommend that people offer something of value instead of just, hey, thanks for coming and sign up. Why would I? You know, you need some kind of lead magnet or something you’re giving for free in exchange for them giving you your email. So just want to throw that out there. What do you typically recommend?

jen (11:20.78)
Yep.

jen (11:38.422)
Yep. I couldn’t agree more.

I like to say kind of like you said, there has to be some sort of incentive, whether it’s like a free lead magnet. And I know for a service based business, we all have lead magnets, right? So make sure it relates to your services. Think about things that you would like your ideal clients to know before they work with you. For example, our lead magnet that has worked really well, it’s called 10 media pitching secrets that agencies don’t want you to know. And it’s all like our top secret tips and tricks. And it even includes a pitch template as well if you want to try to pitch the media yourself. So

It is super, super juicy. You want to make sure it’s good information, but not so much information like a 52 page ebook that nobody is ever going to read, right? There is a balance between giving some good information and then giving too much information and leaving somebody overwhelmed. So I like to say an infographic, a script, a template, a spreadsheet, things like that in the service based business world.

work incredibly well. I think the days of like 60 minute webinars are probably phasing out at this point. Our attention spans just aren’t that great anymore.

So yeah, things that are short and sweet and like somebody can implement today and actually see results from, I recommend. The other thing that I mentioned too was some sort of discount 10 % off, 15 % off your product or service. I would say, like you said, stay away from like, join my newsletter. People don’t just join newsletters. We already get so many emails, right? So it has to be something, there needs to be some sort of incentive to get people excited to join.

Jeffro (13:09.096)
Yeah, and I also remind people that if you’re trying to hold on to your secret sauce, there’s not that many secrets out there. You can Google and find most of this stuff, but you’re just packaging it up for them nicely so they can consume it in a simple format. And most of the time, there will be a few people that go use that on their own. Awesome. Most of the time, people look at that and say, cool, I’m going to have you do it for me instead, right? Because they’re too busy. They don’t want to learn a whole new industry. So…

It’s almost a way to demonstrate your authority, you know what you’re doing, and just kind of starting off the relationship by giving value. And so now there’s a little bit of reciprocity there too.

jen (13:47.406)
Yeah, 100%. The other thing you can do too, and I know we, as I’m talking about media features and PR, I’ve focused it a lot on like digital and print, but I haven’t really talked about being a podcast, right? Being on podcasts can be so impactful, especially as a service -based business. And what you can do too is you can actually give the podcast host a link to your freebie and they can link it in the show notes, the show description, and then you can actually build your email list that way.

Jeffro (14:16.072)
Yep, and we do that on every episode. We got show notes. My guests always have their links and I tell you guys to check it out. So do it on your website as well. All right, now, I mean, we are talking about the internet. Obviously, with that, there’s simultaneously more opportunities, but there’s also more competition. So how do you decide where to focus your efforts when you have all these different ways you could go?

jen (14:22.862)
Mm -hmm.

jen (14:35.918)
Yes. Okay, so it really does come back to where’s your ideal client hanging out? Where are they spending time? What content are they consuming? And that’ll help dictate which avenues you go down for PR. If you’re a service based business, I would say podcasts are probably going to be incredibly impactful. I mean, how how many different platforms out there?

allow you to speak for 30 to 45 minutes. You are getting somebody’s full attention when you are on a podcast for an extended period of time. That doesn’t happen anywhere else. So I would say if you’re a service -based business, focus on podcasts. Sometimes outlets like Forbes, CNN, USA Today, think about what those business owners are actually reading and keeping up with. The other thing too, when it comes to standing out, you really want to think about your credibility.

and what makes you different. And I have this, of course, in our freebie. I have a whole section about credibility and what makes you stand out as a business owner. And I think everybody has something that makes them stand out. Now, a lot of service -based business owners, the mistake that I see them making that doesn’t work when it comes to PR is they tend to wane into revenue.

a lot of them will be like, well, I built a six figure agency or a seven figure agency. And it’s like, okay, so like nobody else has done that. Come on now, like you really have to think about like, what has nobody else done in your industry. And I know it can take some, it can take some time, it takes some thought to figure out what makes you different, but it pays to be very intentional with that credibility point in your pitch. And if you come up with something, I want you to ask yourself the question.

Jeffro (15:57.256)
Mm -hmm.

jen (16:11.822)
has nobody else in my industry done this? Can anybody else say that they have this or that they’ve done it or they’ve accomplished it? If so, take it out of your pitch. That doesn’t make you unique and different.

Jeffro (16:24.84)
You want to be in a category of one. But I want to push a little more on the question about where your audience hangs out because intuitively that makes sense. Oh yeah, I’ll post stuff where my audience is. The most owners are like, I don’t know where that is, right? And even if they think, all right, I can figure this out, they’re going to have a bias they don’t realize. You know, just because I hang out on Facebook, maybe my people are in Facebook groups. Okay, I’ll post there. So can you talk us through how to actually figure that out?

jen (16:43.458)
Mm -hmm.

jen (16:52.622)
Yep, absolutely. And this might seem very simple, but if you have an Instagram, which if you’re an agency owner, you should have an Instagram presence, you should have a LinkedIn presence, post a poll, just post a poll either on your Instagram stories or on your LinkedIn or on your own Facebook and ask where your clients are spending time. Just ask a simple question of, Hey, are you listening to podcasts or do you consume information from

Instagram lives or what industry influencers are you keeping up with like just figure out? What they’re paying attention to based on a poll and then what you can do is you can DM everybody separately and say hey I saw that you voted podcast specifically. What are your favorite industry podcasts? So don’t be afraid to go out of your way to ask those questions or even if you have current clients Pick out your favorite client that you’re working with the client who is such a dream client for you and go directly to them and be honest and say hey I’m working on

pitching myself for different PR opportunities, I’m really curious which outlets are you keeping up with and why.

Jeffro (17:58.536)
I’m gonna push a little more. I’m the owner. I’ve got 200 followers on Instagram. I post a poll on Saturday night. I got three responses and they’re all different. What do I do?

jen (18:08.69)
Have a mental breakdown. I’m just kidding. I’m joking. This is where I would say like go directly to the source. So if you have those ideal clients, if you have those dream clients you’re currently working with, message them, have a quick conversation. If they are your clients, they will want to support you and help you out and give you some answers. If you have clients that you would love to work with, see if they would be open for like a 10 to 20 minute coffee chat.

Jeffro (18:12.296)
Ha ha ha.

jen (18:37.486)
and always give them something in return. I never like to just take people’s time without giving them something in return, but treat it as market research. See if they’d be open to a quick conversation, ask them the questions you need to know to help you to understand where to start with PR. And then in return, you can do like a free website audit for them or an email audit or whatever it may be.

Jeffro (18:57.352)
Yeah. Yeah. So guys, listening, this, this means you got to get out of your comfort zone a little bit, right? Put yourself out there. Yeah. You can start with past clients, start with people that you know, friends and family that might be a target customer. Uh, and you just got to start asking. And as you grow, as your following grows, it becomes easier to get, you know, more detailed and thorough information because you’ve got a larger pool to pull from. But yeah, don’t let that be an excuse guys. You can figure it out. Okay.

Richard Branson, I got to bring him up when we talk about PR because he’s known for being great at it. What is it that makes him so successful at capturing attention?

jen (19:36.782)
I actually don’t know him as well as I should working in PR, so I feel like this is a question I just can’t answer.

Jeffro (19:44.232)
Okay. Do you have another example of someone, you know, that does a lot of PR that what sets them apart? Cause Richard Branson, obviously he’s got all these companies, you know, he’s a billionaire, but he still has a history of all these big PR stunts that people remember, right? The wind surfing with the model on his back and stuff like that. Like, how do you come up with that or why? Like, how is that even connected to a business? Does that work? Like, so what’s going on there that maybe you can help us understand.

jen (20:15.532)
Yeah, that’s a tough one. Again, I just don’t know him really well. But there are quite a few brands out there that I admire when it comes to PR. I specifically I’ll mention Bay’s bags. I don’t know if you’ve ever seen them or heard of them. But they create these really beautiful suitcases. And they were recently under fire for

The fact that their bags get dirty after traveling once and these bags are expensive. It’s not like you’re going to target and buying a $50 suitcase. Like these, these luggages cost funny. And so there was all this bad press about this product that wasn’t really working at the end of the day because it was getting so dirty. People didn’t know what to do with these luggages that were dirty. And so the founder created this really cool pop -up luggage car wash event in LA, I think one or two weeks ago.

and you could just bring your bae’s bag to this car wash and they would wash your luggage for free. And so they turned really bad publicity into a really fun PR pop -up event that turned bad PR into good PR. So I really admire how they’ve done it. Another brand that I really like and how they do PR is Tarte. There’s a whole thing called Trippin’ with Tarte and once a year they bring all these influencers to some…

beautiful island and they have this like great couple a day event where all these influencers create content. And they have like fun events going on within the trip in with Tart event. And there’s always conspiracy theories that come out of the trip in with Tart event. So they just like they know how to start conversations online.

from this event and I know that last year there was a lot of conversation around like how dare they spend millions of dollars or whatever it may be on trip with Tart to Dubai like that’s insane.

jen (22:04.91)
Like the influencers like fluid first class, like there was just so many conversations happening happening around the event. And it was like, okay, clearly what they’re doing is working because you are thinking about this, you’re breaking down the event, you’re angry over the event. So Tartt knows that they’re doing and once a year they have this and in fact, tripping with Tartt is happening right now. And I’m really excited to see what conversations come out of this year’s tripping with Tartt. So yeah, there are brands out there who like do PR and they do it well. And

though it might seem kind of silly, whatever they’re doing for PR, if you’re having a conversation about it and you’re thinking about it, that means it’s working, however ridiculous it might be.

Jeffro (22:45.96)
Yeah, so if we boil it down, I mean, it kind of sounds like the point of PR is to start conversations or control the conversation, like the example of the bags, right? So that’s a big piece of it. And then on the back end, just being able to capitalize on that attention as you have it. And that’s where the strategy starts to work for a business.

jen (22:54.094)
Mm -hmm.

jen (23:01.292)
Yep, exactly.

For sure, yeah. I mean, a lot of PR comes down to somebody’s perception of you, your brand, your reputation, and getting as many eyeballs on your business as possible.

Jeffro (23:17.064)
Yeah. Well, I think that’s a good place to wrap us up. So thank you for joining me today, Jen. I’ve enjoyed our conversation. I’m bummed out that we’re already out of time. Listeners go connect with Jen using the links in the show notes. She also has a high proof PR deck that you can add to your toolkit. So be sure to check that out as well. It’s in pre -order right now. By the time the show comes out, actually it’ll probably be ready. So go check that out. Final question for you, Jen. What’s one thing that you want the audience to remember about public relations?

jen (23:45.038)
One thing you’re killing me. I would say one thing to remember is just when you’re pitching, whether it’s to a podcast host or to the media, think about what makes you special and unique and credible. I know we talked about this early in the episode, but it is so important because journalists only want to quote people who are experts in their industry. So how are you an expert? What makes you an expert and be able to sum it up in one to two sentences.

Jeffro (23:46.984)
One thing.

Jeffro (24:16.552)
Yeah, hard but doable and worth it. So thanks again for being here, Jen, and thanks to all of you for listening. If it makes sense for your business, PR can be a great way to dominate your niche. So get out there, good luck, and I’ll see you in the next episode.

jen (24:18.414)
Mm -hmm.