Press like data, they don’t want to hear from the CEO, they want to hear about real data: Carmen from Ignite X

A Marketing veteran with 15+ years of experience, Carmen’s experience spans working with a range of companies from start-ups to industry leaders. She has got multiple unknown companies on the map and to a leadership position quickly. Previously served as principal of Mindshare Communications and now heads up IgniteX.

Here is her story:

Transcript (auto-generated)

0:00media, I have found the press when I say media the press, they like data.

0:09They like they don’t want to hear from like the Ceo, not not really, they don’t, they want to hear from the customer and the customers and they want to hear about like reel data.

0:23It’s based on facts.

0:27So that way they can make their own determinations and evaluate and come to their own conclusions more so than what’s in the press release and according to the Ceo and their quote, I’ve always had an appeal to both sales and marketing and so I thought well you know I know I would like either but I ended up getting falling into agency life and I actually really loved it because I like variety and it’s a perfect so you’re not necessarily marriage a particular company so that you can see a range of how different companies and organizations attack a problem and look at really kind of busy building their brand visibility and just getting lots of creative ideas from different people and you know being able to measure this with these various campaigns and so I just really loved it.

1:30So and I’m still you know, it’s just a perfect fit for the kind of individual I am in terms of my interest, it’s always changing.

1:38And then I ended up going from agency which was actually just broad consumer and and I happened to be from Silicon Valley SAn Francisco area and I thought well I really don’t want to have anything to do with tech.

1:50But somehow I felt I ended up going to this agency, it was half consumer, half tech.

1:55And then they started pushing me in into the tech.

1:58And then about a year later all of a sudden I started realizing I knew some of these acronyms which were really techie and it’s like oh wow.

2:05But actually as it turns out tech is absolutely perfect for me because I love the variety, it’s so fast paced and so it changes so quickly all the time.

2:16And you know, I would just say that’s what you like then just jump in the fast lane and strap on and enjoy the ride.

2:31You know, it must have been like around, I’m gonna date myself in 2005 where I was at a conference in L.

2:38A.

2:38and listening to all these fantastic people that were really doing some cutting edge things in marketing and in digital basically digital marketing and I was really hooked.

2:54so it was the likes of like Neil Patel and some other folks that we’re sharing what they did from the website and and from just the content and it was really eye opening because you know from traditional pr they didn’t really take that approach.

3:12And being in just sort of looking at helping companies from so many different granular aspects of how you can help them make a difference in engaging with their customers and engaging with basically building their their footprint.

3:32And and with the digital marketing too at the same time it’s so focused on data and it’s so focused on measurement and you know every day you know you have to be in there looking at how much you move the needle and or if you move the needle at all and then if not then you know kind of figure out how to adjust and and look at what other people are doing.

3:57I mean it was it was very interesting and I loved it because they were they were looking at nuanced things like you know an email subject line and looking at you know how long the the content should be in a piece and and you know what the metrics were about.

4:16You know for example a lot of times in the pr world publications will just say oh you know you want the article to be 1000 words or 700 words, 2000 words or no more than 1200 words.

4:29And but if you looked at like for example, but sumo they do these annual reviews on you know, 2 to 3 million articles and found that actually articles that are long form really high quality well researched that are in the in the range of like 5000 words are actually much more successful and more widely shared than these short pieces that are under 1000 words.

4:57So you know that’s just an example of something related to data and and kind of how I started like deciding.

5:05I really like these different tools that are available, that, you know that Pr and other marketing professionals could could start start adopting and using and on a daily basis.

5:22So, you know, in traditional pr a lot of times the clients are, well, I want to start off before I go there is that as as you know, in the world of media and publishing since, you know, facebook and google have dominated and and attracted the Lion’s share of advertising.

5:49it’s been really challenging and affected the publications and the health of the publications.

5:55So that has had a big impact in the world of pr because for example, I think it was last year Approximately 35,000 publications died in the us.

6:11and and so it just gives you an idea, you know, I remember when I first started in this business, like these newspapers used to be really healthy and thriving and there used to be in some cities to different public, two different newspapers, one in the morning and one in the evening that’s all gone away and, you know, these days newspapers with exception of a couple of them like new york Times Washington Post, and a few, a few others are are strong and have a big staff, but those are the exceptions.

6:47whereas and so what happened is that really impacted, the the I think the expectation and pr professionals ability to go in and and have a good sense of what could be done on a national basis, or even a regional basis with a particular client’s campaign.

7:11and so once that landscape changed, it became much more difficult, I think, for the pr industry to be able to to be able to have a better, a good estimation in terms of working with clients.

7:26And so things started changing quite a bit.

7:28And and so with with the work that we do with our clients, what what now is really important is also too, with the advent of so many blogs and so many different places like medium where people can create a community and, you know, sub stack and they can create audiences, right?

7:49And then you have the Youtube and you can create audiences and then the podcast, right?

7:53You know, it’s just like, it’s such a different world now because there’s so many different channels that are bonafide channels depending on where your client is and you know, who you’re targeting, right?

8:07That you really have to rethink your campaign and how you’re going to roll it out and who you’re going to target and how does the content look?

8:16And is it gonna be audio, video and print and content marketing?

8:19And so it’s gotten in some ways more complicated and certainly far more fragmented, What we’ve done is so going back to where I think about like some of the clients we’ve worked with and some of where we’ve had successes.

8:34Media I have found the press, the media, the press they like data.

8:42They like they don’t want to hear from like the Ceo.

8:47Not not really they don’t they want to hear from the customer and the customers and they want to hear about like real data.

8:57It’s based on facts.

9:00So that way they can make their own determinations and evaluate and come to their own conclusions more so than what’s in the press release and accord to the Ceo and the quote.

9:11Right?

9:12And so what we’ve tried to do is when we work with clients and we know that they actually have access to what I call kind of like an untapped gold mine of data.

9:25We encourage them to think outside of the box and say look at how can we how can we package up this data in a meaningful way that we can share with the market the insights that this data has.

9:40And so we’ve done this quite a bit with actually many many companies that they don’t know necessarily how to go about package up their data.

9:51And so you know we help them out.

9:52We are very much working closely with their marketing department, we help them think about.

10:00So we do quite a few data surveys and data reports.

10:04And those are really successful because if we can do them on a on a I’m gonna say a limited basis because sometimes they work really well and the clients get a little bit, I’m gonna say they just get a little bit over excited and they want to do these surveys or reports all the time and it’s like no you really need to have some level of constraint in when you do them.

10:28So that way the reporters don’t feel like, you know, it’s one thing if you have a consumer price index coming out every month, right?

10:35But it needs to be authentic and it needs to make sense.

10:39And sometimes that data needs to be built up over say a quarter or half a year or what have you.

10:46And so we we have found that we know that the media the press really like data and so if we can work with our clients carefully and coming up and putting together really good data analysis, data reports and an announcement around that and then we roll that out.

11:03We found that just like on a general traditional pr basis that can be very successful for a company.

11:10And so we’ve been able to do that where you know, we’re getting literally dozens to, You know 50 articles on on 50 good articles on a report like that if the reports done well is not out of the realm for some of our clients, and then what, what we started to do too is a couple of years back, we decided to, because remember I told you like the publications were starting to not be as healthy and there were so many more publications coming to market.

11:44You know, we have always been mindful about if we’re gonna have our clients put together, for example, a thought leadership piece and they’re going to put a lot of time and effort into, you know, drafting that up.

11:58Right?

11:59we we want to make sure that, a, you know, we’re gonna provide them council on, on the content.

12:08We’re gonna work with the editor to make sure that they like the idea and they give us some kind of, some kind of boundaries of what they don’t want to see and what they do want to see.

12:21And then we work with a client, Right?

12:22But at the same time, all that effort, right.

12:24We want to make sure it pays off.

12:25So from a long time ago, we started measuring the health of the publication, the traffic.

12:32Where is it?

12:33Where is that traffic coming from?

12:35Is it?

12:36You know, where is the client faces a client base?

12:38Us so clearly, for example, the client could be based in Berlin, but they’re trying to build a visibility in the US.

12:47So whatever publications were going to, we want to make sure publications the new size.

12:53we want to make sure that the audience is, in this case US based, but there’s tools that will show you, You know, the percentage of, you know, first of all how healthy the traffic is by number of people coming on a daily basis.

13:09On a monthly basis.

13:10How that traffic for that, news outlet ranks in the greater scheme of things, you know, in the entire, you know, you know, for example, if you were to think about the top 100 publications and news outlets in the United States, you know, there’s a lot and, and so the ones that have the highest traffic they usually have, for example, like for example, yahoo, right, it’s gonna have a big, yahoo news is gonna have a big volume of, of traffic going to it.

13:42And so if, if it’s, there’s another publication or news outlet that It’s not that well known or, you know, we think it’s good, but, but then we take a look at the traffic.

13:51It’s like, Hey, wait a minute.

13:52This is barely in the 100 you know, 100, top 100 or it’s like, it’s not even on the, it’s not even registering, right?

14:00We want to be mindful about the outlets that we’re recommending to our clients and that we’re also going to that they’re healthy, that they have the right traffic that they have significant traffic and it’s going to be worthwhile, investing resources and targeting that publication.

14:18So from the get go, we’ve always measured the traffic as well as how that traffic is broken up in terms of, regionally nationally and, and so on and so forth geographically.

14:28Right.

14:29That’s just one example.

14:35So we did, we, as I mentioned to you, we work with venture-backed startups that are fast growing.

14:44typically, you know, when we work with them, they might be, that’s typically are sweet spot by the way.

14:49So they might be five people, but we will help them grow to, two or 300.

14:56And then, you know, a lot of times they get acquired at that point typically is what we’ve seen.

15:02, but most recently we had a we have a client that needed to launch, well, they always have to come to the market and, and, and launch, right.

15:12So they had a funding announcement and they had, you know, they were getting ready to introduce their, their new app.

15:21And so it was aimed at consumers.

15:25and what we did was, you know, typically within this case because it’s so competitive in the United States to launch a company.

15:36Sometimes a lot of times we would bundle that up.

15:39But what we decided to do when I say, bundle that up, bundle both of those announcements to make it really strong when we approach publications and reporters that they would more than likely say yes because they’re always interested in a new company doing something cool in this case they were doing, it was an Ai based app for consumers to help them with their finances.

16:01Okay.

16:02And what we decided to do was because like over the past year and a half it’s been incredibly crazy with the funding environment in the U.

16:15S.

16:15Now.

16:15That has changed since like March of this year and it has you know, radically changed.

16:22Right?

16:22But before then literally it was almost it was really difficult to get a client covered if your funding wasn’t more than 40 or $50 million because reporters were getting more, they were getting pitched every day for funding.

16:39That was closer to three figures.

16:41And that’s you know reporters need to make a decision.

16:44They got a small staff going to cover this $2 million funding or might cover this $100 million funding round.

16:49It was a no brainer.

16:50Right?

16:51And so that’s how competitive it was.

16:54And we knew that if we just went out there before and the funding announcement you could get a $2 million or less funding announcement covered.

17:03Right?

17:04So what we did was rather than bundling them up both announcements to make it strong to make them say yes we’ll cover that.

17:13We ended up we ended up specifically breaking them apart and we went with the funding announcement which we knew was going to be difficult because it was less, it was less than 10 million.

17:25Okay.

17:27it was more than five, but less than 10 was the high, just under 10.

17:31Right?

17:32and we actually, again with a funding announcement usually it takes about at least four weeks to plan from start to finish to do a good job on that funding announcement.

17:44Okay.

17:44So we told the client we need to get started right away as soon as possible and we ended up reaching out to reporters almost seven weeks in advance.

17:53Almost two months in advance because we knew we were gonna get a lot of nose right.

17:57And so anyway, we ended up going after pitching it as an exclusive because we knew if we can reporters like exclusive and they don’t wanna they don’t want to have an embargoed announcement.

18:09And so we knew that we’d have a stronger opportunity, but we also knew that we needed to double the amount of time to knock on the doors to get a lot of knows.

18:19But we were looking for the s and we built in the time where we knew we could get the yes, we ended up placing the piece with Venture B and then what happened from there was a big raid radio station, tech radio outlet podcast heard about actually invited the reporter and the reporter started talking about this app.

18:41This Ai based app and then that got picked up and then there was a lot of actually good coverage on the funding announcement, I think at the moment, I don’t recall the numbers, but I mean typically with our announcements when we roll them out,, you know, when we do a good job, 40 or 50 press clips on the announcement isn’t out of the realm even despite the environment.

19:10But in this case, I think they might have gotten 20 clips on that, at least 20 clips on that announcement.

19:16and you know, for us, what we do is we look at, we don’t just look look at clips.

19:22We actually look at the publications, we look at the traffic, we look at how they cover the publication.

19:29We look at many different aspects of the coverage on.

19:32And so that was like the very first, I’m gonna say coming out party for this client and then the next month we ended up rolling out their app.

19:44And so they had momentum because it’s like, oh, that’s the company that got funded and that got some really good coverage too.

19:52And so the thing with little startups is, it’s really important.

19:56And this is not unknown with a lot of tech pr firms startup has to have news, good news every month liberally and they have to plan it very carefully and they can’t just, you know, do it like one week out or, you know, they just, it has to be well planned out and a lot of you have to build in a lot more time because it’s so much more competitive in the marketplace and so what we’ve done with the client is, we’ve at actually been on track with, I think we’ve actually been a little bit aggressive in the market more because his client is sort of a serial entrepreneur and he knows that he has to be, he has to be talking to the market regularly and so we are actively planning and plotting what’s, you know, what’s newsworthy out there?

20:51and you know, finance is a big, is an ongoing topic, right?

20:56And, and so the first of the year, you know, people start thinking, oh my God, my taxes, I gotta work about the taxes.

21:01So we’re always planning, okay, december is gonna be a big month, You got a plan for, for january, but so what we’ve done is we have, we have plotted, every announcement we look at what we do is we actually look at the tools that there’s a whole range of tools, h refs, which we love.

21:22there’s also just a bunch of different tools that you can take a look at to see, as you had mentioned what are the competitors and who covered their, who covered the competitors?

21:35You can actually look at who covered them, how often they’re covering them, Where are these back links coming from?

21:44and when you start looking under the hood of the using these different tools of of your, your clients competitors, then you can start seeing, okay, you know, these 10 publications covered your competitor in these 10 different product reviews.

22:05Let’s go knock on their door and see if we can get into those product reviews as well.

22:10You can also, these tools will also show you sometimes they might cover.

22:14For example, here’s the 10 best apps in the market for X.

22:19Right?

22:20And sometimes these apps get acquired or they go out of business.

22:24And with these tools, you can actually discover if that article has a broken link and the link is broken because that company’s website is no longer there.

22:35And so it’s an opportunity and these tools will actually show you where there’s broken links in these different articles and you can actually reach out to report and say, hey, you know, I know you’re really busy.

22:45But we also recognize that you have this, you know, what’s really great article.

22:48Our client happens to, have an app that fits in this article for your readers.

22:55Instead of having this broken link, we’d like to see if you consider putting our clients in there and we’ve written paragraph for you that would perfectly fit and replace your broken link.

23:04So that’s just for example, one thing you could do.

23:07But yeah, and these tools are really great because they show you exactly which publication wrote about the client, the company.

23:17Which which pages on their website are driving the most traffic.

23:24and which pieces of content are driving the most traffic so that we can help our clients understand look at.

23:31in fact the same plan I was talking to.

23:33I saw that this one company their competitor had done a a report a market report using their data.

23:42And it’s like look at and they combine their data with some public available data.

23:51Say with the I.

23:52R.

23:52S.

23:52Right?

23:53And we show that to our clients and look at this the I.

23:56R.

23:56S.

23:56Makes this data available every year.

24:00They haven’t made it available yet.

24:02But why don’t we go ahead.

24:03Excuse me.

24:04It’s it’s they recently made a big trench available for new year.

24:09Why don’t you take that data?

24:11And and do something with it?

24:13And we’ll create a report and we will share it with reporters and we will push it out into the market.

24:21And so we’ve actually started doing that where we they did the report we’ve actually placed in an exclusive couple different places.

24:30I don’t know if you’ve heard the information to the big publications well regarded here in Silicon Valley.

24:36And they did a nice piece Peace on it on an exclusive basis.

24:39And we’ve actually had it covered by other publications.

24:42And the next part two is we’re going to be sharing that survey with the market through a press release.

24:50So this is just an example of what can be done when you’re tracking not only your clients, your tracking and planning, your clients work and activity and campaigns but also tracking your competitors because that’s really important just to make sure you’re doing a better job than they are or you’re on on top of what they’re doing because it’s always important.

25:16Right?

25:17Were there were sort of their marketing, their external marketing bench?

25:27Well for example, what we do is, you know, because we’re working a lot with clients and content.

25:33so what we’re doing is if client has an idea, I used to get excited about all our clients ideas, but, you know, it’s one thing that, you know, you’re like, wow that sounds really interesting, but you really need to measure it.

25:47So we always start with google trends and say, okay, well how big is it, you know, how how interesting is this?

25:56Is this trending or not?

25:57Right.

25:57So we measure, we take google trends, We check it out, we add, we measure different things.

26:04For example, the resignation the future of work, how does that compare?

26:09Is it rising?

26:10Is it is flat, Is it like a flat line?

26:13And and if it is and we’re gonna tell the client that we don’t think that you know that that rodeo has has has passed, right?

26:21So we need to think about something else for example and I’m just making that up here, but but it’s really important that we measure google trends.

26:31and then we also, there’s different tools you can use that like some brush summarize and HRS will allow you to go in and you can put in like in the content, you know, the idea of, you know, four day workweek, right?

26:47And it’s like, well what’s going on there, Right?

26:50and you can see if it’s if it’s trending, how many articles have been written about it and you actually might have a good opportunity to see, okay, google trends says it’s trending and there haven’t been a lot of articles written about it.

27:03Maybe I should jump in and evaluate and start talking about this before everybody else does.

27:08Right?

27:09And so that’s really important to do.

27:13And also what we do is, for example, on a topic, you can use any of either of those tools and it will show you how many authors have written on that publication and how much it has been like who’s done really well in terms of the authors, who are they with typically these reporters?

27:30Right?

27:31And importantly, how much has it been shared within the like within the social media channels.

27:39Right?

27:39And you can see what I also do is I use a sumo and take a look at, you know, you can put that topic in there right?

27:46You can put it in there and you can see how much is this, like a really boring topic, Is it like getting a lot of traction because Buzz sumo will show you this is how much this topic it’s been written about and you can see, oh my gosh, it’s been shared 3500 times or you know 50,000 times.

28:04So you know, you have a strong topic or idea trend and so it’s really important to use these tools to go outside of your, wow, that’s a really great idea, which you know, like I said, I get excited about all kinds of things, but it’s not about me, it’s about what the real data is shown, the top three would be.

28:28I personally love HRS and I like Buzz sumo and I like google trends, but there’s other things we use because we’re in, you know, we do a lot of pr stuff, we have to also be looking at you know, trends stuff and so in addition to, you know, keeping a pulse on what’s out there, there’s also different public, there’s different organizations that they just focus on trends and for example, I just ran across which I thought was amazing, it’s called It’s called, it’s just a second, it’s I think it’s just ran across it, I can send it to you later on something like Cyrus eight or something like that And they do amazing job.

29:22And then there’s also trend, trend trend works, I think it’s called which they’ve been around and they do spectacular work slicing and dicing different trends across multiple topics, wow, okay, this is what I would say.

29:45I would say keep your eye on, I think the newer social media channels and how to help your clients navigate those and also to that there’s, you know, that the market is shifting more toward you know, the power of creators where creators are becoming their own, they’re becoming like these little satellites that are attracting brands that are attracting audiences.

30:20And so the market is shifting in terms of where people are going to get their news and to get, you know, to build their brand and to build visibility and thought leadership and so you need to break into some of those channels to talk podcast, Youtube video, and if you can do those, I think that will really help startups because those are really challenging and they’re all new, not not Youtube certainly isn’t, but some of these are new and trying to figure out how to grow community, how to become you know, somebody that can really navigate with creators, right?

31:08And it’s such a growing kind of ecosystem.

31:14So I would say that’s where the opportunity is, and certainly too with a lot of ai tools because I haven’t even talked about the ai tools, which thankfully for pr and marketing, those are two Ai tools are going to be really helpful for a lot of the work that they’re doing.

31:32It’s very complementary to helping them with content helping them, you know, like I use Ai tools for every email, like for example, you know, there’s a i tool that boomerang will show you whether you’re going to get a response on that email.

31:49I use an email, I use a tool on the email subject line.

31:53I use a tool that these are all Ai based, I use a tool that will show when to send that email and when, you know, for that particular person across the hemisphere.

32:04Right?

32:05and so these are all tools available that will help the professional be a little bit more savvy and successful.