Marketing and PR Strategy

Esther Kiss (https://www.linkedin.com/in/esther-kiss-650b301a/) is our special guest on today's episode of Traffic and Leads Podcast (http://trafficandleadspodcast.com). She is the founder of Born To Influence (http://borntoinfluence.com)—a PR marketing company that specializes in working with experts and people who are building a personal brand (marketers, entrepreneurs, authors, speakers)—Esther gives us all of the best tips and tricks she’s learned over the years about perfecting your marketing strategy, and what makes the best PR marketing strategy work so well. Let’s get started!

IN THIS EPISODE YOU WILL LEARN:

* All about what Esther does with her company. By working closely with entrepreneurs, speakers, authors, consultants, marketers, and so much more, Esther helps them get more traffic and leads through publicity. With her connections, she gets them in with the media (blogs, television, podcasts, radio, newspaper, magazines, etc.), and leads them towards whatever makes sense for their business to build credibility and to build leads and sales.

* Esther explains why having a good PR strategy is important for more traffic and leads. Depending on where you’re at in your business, you might have different goals for your publicity campaign, and Esther gives us an amazing example of a client she worked with that booked 80 shows over the span of 11 months to promote his book! For every podcast interview he completed, he’d offer a free 50 book give away to audience listeners. Then, when people read the book, they wanted help with the implementation of the method, so they’d sign up for his paid membership! That’s where the revenue comes from.

* Esther also explains that PR is important to carry on through months, and not just a one-time thing. If you’re planning a slew of interviews, much like the previously mentioned the client, you want to make sure that you have 3 - 4 months to let leads come in successfully, especially with bigger shows. You need to make sure that you leave enough time for the marketing to start gathering those pre-orders and interactions before the service is available, and the same can be said for a product launch or a live event with a deadline. You need to be building momentum continually.

* Esther then explains what to do if you’re a small business owner that can’t afford a publicist. Can you do your own PR strategy? Yes, of course, you can! You can always benefit from publicity no matter where you are, even if you’re just getting started and you don’t have any clients yet. How are you going to get clients if you don’t have traction is the real question, and Esther encourages people to reach out—learn how to pitch, how to develop relationships with members of the media. Once you know these things, and once you feel like you have a story that would contribute to that audience, pitch yourself and recommend that you do an interview!

* Esther tells us what to do when people doubt the usefulness of media logos on your website, claiming it’s just for vanity. She gives us an example of a client who had media logos on their website, and because of them, they gained a client. It psychologically works on people even if you don’t realize it.

* Esther also explains that a lot of times, people tend to release a paid press release when they want a quick win and aren’t willing to put in the energy and effort required to get real results. These releases end up getting picked up on the back end of websites that are associated with big media outlets, and while people try to connect that to a real connection and employment with the media, it’s not! Most of the time, it’s not even something you can find on Google.

* Overall,