How to do PR right in the B2B Tech Space [Ed Zitron] | The Marketing Innovation Show (2024)

Today’s episode brings Ed Zitron, the CEO of EZPR, a Media Relations company based in San Francisco, Boston and Portland. Join Andrei and Ed on this episode, as they will be discussing how to do PR right in the B2B Tech Space.

Ed was named one of Business Insider’s Top 10 PR people in tech, as well as one of Adweek’s 30 under 30. Additionally, Ed is a 2x best-selling author of This is How You Pitch and Fire Your Publicist.

Connect with Ed:

Twitter: https://twitter.com/edzitron

Website: https://www.edzitron.com/

EZPR: http://www.ez-pr.com/

Email: ed@ezpr.com

Connect with Andrei:

Marketiu: https://marketiu.com / https://marketiu.ro

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andreitiu/

Marketiu on Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/marketiu

Marketiu on Twitter: https://twitter.com/marketiuagency

Marketiu on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/marketiuagency/

Email at hello@marketiu.ro

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Episode Transcript:

Andrei

Hello, everybody! This is Andrei and you are on The Marketing Innovation Podcast Show. Our guest today is Ed Zitron who is the CEO of EZPR Media Relations company based in San Francisco, Boston and Portland. He was named one of BCC ciders top 10 PR people in tech as well as one of a week's 30 under 30. He's also 2x Bestselling author of This is how you pitch and Fire your publicist. Today we will discuss how to do PR right in the B2B and tech space. Hi Ed, how's everything going?

I'm well, thanks for having me.

Andrei

Thank you for being on the show. You are tuning in from San Francisco today?

I'm actually in Las Vegas. I moved to Las Vegas. We still keep ourselves slightly in the Bay Area. But I personally live in Las Vegas, I moved here when the pandemic started and well, here we are. I like it. I like it a lot.

Andrei

Nice. How is it out there? How are you guys with everything?

I mean, it's restricted. But I have a bigger place. I have more room to roam around. And Vegas is great. I'm so glad I'm not in the Bay right now. It's a little bit grizzly over there.

Andrei

How's business? How do you find it?

Pretty good. I mean, as it's expected, everyone's being hit. We haven't had to lay off anyone, we haven't any danger laying off people. We still have clients coming in. It's working out. Everything is a little bit harder at the moment, but I think that that applies to literally any job.

Andrei

For sure. Okay, so let's see, let's discuss a bit about the ship. Let's share some of your background with everybody that's tuning in today. So everybody gets a feel of where you're coming from, your history with the PR and media relations space, and really get to know you a bit better. Tell us: who are you?

So I started out when I was 16 as a games journalist in London, I grew up there, I spent most of my life there. I wanted to move to America, I wasn't really sure why I wanted to. But I liked it there. I did a year exchange at Penn State. So I wanted to move to New York, I thought PR was one thing, it was totally a different thing. But I didn't know that before I moved. And then I moved and I wanted to stay. So I stayed in public relations, I was not in a great situation almost immediately, just because no one teaches on the job in PR, you pretty much just work it out. And I realised fairly quickly that no one was good at media relations, which means the ability to talk to a reporter and get him to write about something which a lot of PR people treat as a kind of a one-way street, it's a thing where you have to find a way of doing black magic to get reports cover something. And the talent there is around the ability, according to them, of basically finding the right key and the right lock, which really it's about building relationships with reporters. So I found out fairly quickly that when you actually know the reporter, and you get to learn what they're actually writing about, and you get to learn who they are, you can do a hell of a lot better. So I left that first year, went into another agency, and was a lot better, good people there. And then after a while, I was like- You know what, I can do this on my own. I wanted to start my own thing. So started EZPR in about 2012. And been doing it ever since I was on my own for a few years. And then I hired. We've got four people now, which doesn't seem like much, but we get good clients. We do good business. And it's a lean business that works. It's funny actually thinking about that. It's why we were kind of insulated. Insulated is the wrong word. We were less hit by the pandemic, because when everything shut down, everyone had to go remote. We've always been remote. Because why would I spend money on an office that the person doesn't need, none of the people who work for me wanted to go into an office anyway. So I thought why would I bother with that? I never hire particularly fast. So when it all hit, I was kind of like- Oh, okay, so we just keep being remote, I guess. And actually, in some ways, I don't want to say the pandemic is good in any way, but it helped us. It helped get over a, I don't want to say an issue, but sort of an argument that we can have in sales where they ask: 'Well, you don't have an office, where's your office?'. It doesn't happen anymore, no one cares where my office is, whether I have a big, fancy office or how many people I have in a call. A lot of the aesthetics of PR are just gone now, which is a net benefit to us. Everyone's recovering and it is tough.

Andrei

And so you've always been in PR, right?

No, I was a reporter before that, like I said, previously. I never really stopped being a reporter. I was officially a reporter from 2003 through to 2016. I was doing freelance work on and off for a long time. And I loved it! Games journalism was the best job I've ever had, including public relations. Like way better, I would do that job again, in a heartbeat if it paid what I make now.

Andrei

So what drew you to PR, specifically?

I was lied to, that's really easy. I was lied to about what it was. So when you read most PR books, they tell you that PR is this big, sexy, flashy, impressive job where you do press conferences, and you get put in the hot seat and you go on TV. They build up this belief that people want to talk to you, which is not the case with PR. People mostly do not want to, they will talk to you if they need something, but they don't really want to talk to you about anything, especially in the beginning. And especially when you start out in PR depending on the agency, you could get given the crappiest clients. I mean, just the absolute worst, because when you're hired at that level, you're doing media lists. So literally a list of people who might cover something, and managers don't really do any work. So I went into PR because I was lied to, I thought it was gonna be this big job. We work with big clients. And it's always good and fun. Not remotely, but I stayed in it. Because I like the relationship building with reporters. I'm good at it. It's a rare discipline to be good at, because most PR people are sociopaths. And they say stuff like- I love people. Anytime I hear someone say I love people, my first reaction is: Have you met them? Have you actually met people? How many people have you met? And what were they like? Because if you love people, and you've met a lot of them, you don't have emotions, you just had very surface-level conversations with everyone you met. And so this world of PR is really not relationship driven by the industry. But if you're good at relationship building, you can get very far, because media relations in particular is a tough discipline. It requires domain expertise, you actually have to know what you're talking about to work with these reporters. And when I say that, it happens in marketing too. You get people in marketing saying- I'm a tech marketer, but the truth is their actual knowledge of technology is low. You need to know what you're talking about. When everyone went remote, I upgraded myself. Got a DSLR, got a soundboard. I did that because I know what I'm talking about. And I believe that PR people should be like the reporters they are pitching and actually learn what they are talking about. It's not difficult. I've seen people of my generation and younger, where they're taught to learn the buzzwords and the terms, but never the substance. And that is something that is pervasive. I've given a slightly longer and more complex answer, but it's something that stands out in PR for me.

Andrei

And I think it also applies, as you mentioned, to marketing and in many other fields. And there is another question that occurred to me and I think it would be worth answering, from this longer but more comprehensive answer, which is- How do you feel about understanding what the reporter wants or needs or responds, helping you become more successful in doing PR right?

I'm gonna be honest, not that much until I worked out what the job was because reporters appreciate it. They really do appreciate knowing you are a journalist. But there are a lot of PR people who used to be journalists. And there are a lot of journalists who moved into being PR people who did so, because they wanted more money. I did it to move to America, which is very slightly different, borderline the same. But on top of that, there are a lot of journalists who transfer. That's something I did early on. When you don't know what a PR person does before you go into PR, the lessons you've learned from journalism aren't that great. They don't really apply. In my early days, you would say- oh, yeah, journalists are always looking for stuff to write about. That's not totally true. It is true, they have to write about stuff, but they're not looking to you. They're looking to the world at large. And if you're good and you actually get a client stable that fits there, yes, they will look to you, but they're not going to come to you and be like- Hey, have you got any stuff for me to write about? No one does that. No journalists do that. Unless you are a White House reporter. Sometimes you might get an inbound request, but that is not the same thing as a journalist blindly going to you and being like- I need a story, please give me things to do. The thing that I brought over that really matters is being able to talk to a reporter. Because a lot of PR people, not marketing people, I'm sure you've seen, they talk in this really weird, stilted way. They communicate like robots. PR people manage to break their brain and be like- Hello, hope you're having a pleasant day, I'm writing a big story. It's 300 words later, and no one's paying attention. I never really successfully broke my brain. Or at least my brain was too broken to fix in the PR way. Where I never did that. I was just like, you know what, I got to communicate how I communicate. And the moment I just boil down, everything I did was how I used to write. I was taught by some really great people like Will Porter from PCs on Graham Boyd from CVG. Graham's now at Microsoft, I believe and Will is a game writer. I mean, those are my editors. And those are the people who mentored me and said: 'Look, write like you talk, don't write like you think you should talk, right? Like you actually talk'. And the moment I started doing that report, started responding to my emails, reporters started actually giving me a minute. And people don't do that. Or if they do, they talk really stupidly, they sound awful. And it's just it's a, it comes back to what people perceive to be intelligent versus what they perceive to be effective. If you talk a certain way, and communicate well, that's effective, it might not sound as smart as the weird architect scene from the matrix. But you actually do work better. And it's confusing to me. But I think it comes down to this aura of PR people that they want to feel important. And they always say 'Oh, PR people aren't the story, but they want to be the star, they want to be important. They want to be told how good they are'. I've never had that problem. Perhaps it's just being a big depressive guy. But I've never really had the problem of needing to feel important. I've always wanted to just get the job done and get paid. Not completely mercenary, but I've wanted to do a good job way more than I've wanted to feel like I'm a big-time, Big Shot type. I feel like the money shows you're the big show guy, not the work.

Andrei

Which are the industries that you and your agency focus on, so that the audience understands where your approach comes from?

So enterprise tech, B2B, a lot of consumer tech when I can get consumer tech. PR is hard to get because it's a lot easier. And that really is our focus. Consumer tech is my favourite, but not always the thing I get. And that doesn't mean I don't like enterprise or b2b. It's just easier for similar money. You got to be pragmatic. But I really have gotten to enterprise, though. Enterprise is tough because you have to learn so much so fast. And you have to be able to take that and spit it out the other end in a way, that's way easier. But anyway, sorry, you had a question around strategy.

Andrei

Yeah, exactly. So this is very useful. We also talk a lot about b2b and enterprise marketing as well, here. So when you are, let's say, starting out with a new client or you take on new clients on board, and you need to execute a PR strategy for them, maybe they didn't do one specifically before, or they don't know exactly what they are after, how are you looking at PR strategically? Or how do you integrate it in a broader mix of marketing channels, let's say?

So strategy is an interesting word, especially for PR. When it comes to media relations. There's only so much you can strategize for. If you're a very launch focus company, like I used to work with this company called Wyze, they do sign out with a 1080p camera, and they've done all sorts of stuff, since that's when you can be very specific and strategic around you because you've got a launch. You have these targets, you do these things, but when it's a broader thing, and you're ideating more you're seeing with the client saying okay, what's interesting about you what's interesting to reporters, what relationships can we build with these reporters. That is where a strategy is more difficult, or at least a week, by week or month by one month one is. It's not impossible to do PR with them. But it's a little more freeform jazz, than most people would think. And you can come up with a lot of poison with MPRs. PR people love coming up with big documents, like four or five angles. So the issue with coming up with an angle for multiple people is, if it's very specific, it's not applying to lots of people, if it's very broad, it's not going to be particularly in-depth. So a lot of this comes down to breaking the egg and seeing what comes out. And understanding what the client actually has and at some times in the new business process, telling them not to do it. I had a call last week where I told one company, brilliant story, released, it had already gone out. And I said I don't think you should do public relations about this, I think you should hire anyone. And she was shocked. And this happens to me at least once a month where I tell someone not to do PR. If you have a conversation with someone, and they're able to see a path to success, they need to be specific, like I will get you to Forbes in this manner. Nothing's guaranteed. But I think this will work. If you cannot do that, as a PR person, it's fine to say to someone, I don't think this will work because that person will come back to you. I'd say at least like 50% of the time that person will come back to you when they do have a story and be like, you know what, I didn't spend 10 grand, I didn't 15 grand because of you, you saved me money. That is good business. That is how PR agencies should work. They very rarely do. Perhaps I do it more often than I should. But I can't bring myself to convince someone to spend money they don't need to. It feels greasy.

Andrei

And what are some good examples of when you advise a company to do PR or to exploit opportunities in this area? And also what KPIs are you looking at delivering towards? Is it awareness, is it traffic?

If you just raise the round of funding, don't put out a press release, come to me, come to the PR person, that's a great event to do PR around. Absolutely. I also think that like a new launch that's super applicable to a whole bunch of people is a great idea. But if it's really niche, don't hire a PR person. Work out who the one reporter is who would care, write an email yourself. That's it, you don't do the run-up. KPIs, usually we do like a two-week ramp up with a written Q&A or just kind of get the client familiar. We do a medium media list, so like a list of the people we think we can take this to, and then within them, then we start pitching. KPIs usually like coverage. So tier one might be a TechCrunch or Forbes, Business Insider or Fortune. Tier two would depend actually. It really depends because like DevOps might be tier two to some person, but to a heavily DevOps focused company, it's gonna be a tier one. The new stack, same deal. Depending on who the client is, they may not care about TechCrunch. The important thing is the conversation. But those KPIs for us, at least, are based on the actual coverage because traffic is very hard to understand. We have had clients who have had like a Kickstarter launch, where one TechCrunch article led to $85,000 worth of sales. I've had ones where it's led to 2000 clicks, there's nothing else. Now, that's it. That last one is an extreme edge case, usually it sends a good amount of traffic. But the thing I always insist with clients is we cannot guarantee client coverage. And we cannot actually guarantee traffic, because we are not in a media control country. There's a freedom of the press here. It cannot guarantee anything, but we can give you fair odds. And usually clients are, I would say most, like 95% of clients are happy. And because you set these expectations early, if you have these conversations, sometimes the client will say 'You know what, if you're not 100% sure we can get this, this isn't worth it for me'. Absolutely fine. Walk away from something you're not willing to pay for. And it's weird. I'm talking a lot about not taking business, but especially right now. I feel like the companies that are gonna win are the ones that are on both sides. So the companies that don't spend money, but they don't have to, and the companies that tell people not to spend money. Because in some cases, it's not worth it. If you need traffic, you may want to do Facebook advertising, you may have other things that could drive more traffic. If you need brand awareness and SEO, PR is pretty unrivalled for that. I actually think the SEO industry, I think that whole business might die. It's kind of a ballsy thing to say. But I get this weird feeling like Google is trying to stay ahead of them. And when you have giant companies trying to, frankly kill your industry, that's scary to me. I'm sorry for an SEO plus, I'm sure you're a lovely person. But my experience right now is that Google is really, really trying to curb that, like, obviously, high domain authority website is gonna get you. Good SEO.

Andrei

So how are you working with SEO people?

I don't. That's really easy.

Andrei

In PR, a very good augmented benefit that you could get from being published and the brand awareness are the backlinks that you could potentially get from Yesterday, or Forbes or Wall Street. So how do you go about it? Isn't there a marketing person on your client's team saying 'Hey, we want backlinks here'.

So that will happen occasionally. The moment a client mentions backlinks, usually I have to explain some stuff. Because in most cases, you will get a link, Wall Street Journal, oftentimes doesn't link. New York Times will sometimes link, sometimes they will not. You can't go and ask for one, they will get very pissy with you, if you ask. It's not the journalist's job to cover you, they have covered you out of an interest in what you're doing. And they are not gonna they're not gonna play ball. Some cases, they may. But it really depends, you have to ask very nicely. You have no demands here, friend, you have to just ask. Now, that is not the same thing as when I've had clients go 'these are the websites that work for us'. So there is a, I forget, I think it's called an infinity chart or something like that. But basically, it says, if someone clicks through from this website, they are more likely to buy. That is hell of it. If you can get one of those when you would like deep into a PR strategy, or even not. That's a really good way of targeting because then you can say, all right, spend your entire life. And this only works to a certain extent going off to these if there's like 30 of them, or 50 of them, great. If there's three of them, I'm gonna have to just spread it around a bit. I rarely work with an SEO expert. If you write something you pitch, it's like The Next Web or TechCrunch or what have you, you can fit in terms that you want to be known for. But best find a way to write normally as well because some of those terms do not fit nicely into a blog. So it's kind of a back and forth say the least.

Andrei

This is a very interesting debate because you can pay to get in Forbes...

No, you can't, not legally. You can pay to get into the Forbes council where you can write your own things. If you find a Forbes person that you can pay for coverage and it does not say pay coverage. You have broken a law. Walk back from that one.

Andrei

What's a good PR budget?

Usually 8 to 15 thousand a month is what you should expect. You may find people who are cheaper. Always question why. And ask them for more recent results. Any PR, I mean, talk to and say 'Hey, what's something you got recently? Give me a few links to things you got recently.' So within the last three months, because a lot of PR firms love to go 'Oh, yeah, we did this and this and this' and it'll be two years old, or a year old. But it's more than six months old, you are talking about a different airpark. You need recent coverage.

Andrei

We discussed PR fits into a marketing mix and how to think about allocating perhaps budgets towards it when you are looking at your cross channel budget allocation. Would you say that PR is more of a thing that you should be doing at key moments, as you mentioned, like launches? Or is it something that you can constantly do a bit of and then have spikes?

Depends on the company. If you're a company with a lot of launches, you can do it constantly. If you're a company that does one notable thing a year, do a project. With SEO, for example, you can do contributed content like mentioned you can do your own blogs, you can pitch them to a boss. You can do that fairly regularly and it has an effect. Now for the most part, though, project-based PR is fine. Unless you can find an agency that can continually get you coverage, you have to be aware that there are budgets and there are projects. I love projects. I'd much rather have a happy 45-day project than a three months client where they're pissed off at me. Every time. Clients love it, and it makes people happy.

Andrei

I agree. If you have a deadline, you focus easier.

Yeah, exactly. Well, it's just that and it's also you need an inflexion point. You need something to focus on. Now, if you're a consumer electronics company, and you have 12 launches throughout the year, it's probably too many launches, but you've got enough juice there to keep juice in the PR.

Andrei

Is it the launches that are better in consumer electronics?

Andrei

Yes, it's much easier in consumer electronics. It's not impossible with other things. But you have to amend your expectations. You have to say 'All right, I'm in DevOps, I shouldn't expect, like TechCrunch every month'. Now, that can change. I have a subscription API and enterprise and they have, in the last three months, at CNBC, New York Times, TechCrunch, Op-Ed, I mean, Christ almighty, they've been everywhere. And they are a subscription API, because we found the whole Apple epic thing, we kept them. I have Business Insider as well, in three months, then twice. The point I'm making is, with the right story, in the right crystallisation of events, we are able to do a lot of great work, but I'm always month to month. And I think that that's always good if you're hiring a PR firm. Get month to month, get 15-20 days out. Just be able to say 'I'll give notice'. Because guess what, things change, you may do. And you may think 'this is not ok’. Probably not the PR, but just like the story doesn't work, wonderful. Quit, then. The thing to watch out with, if you're hiring PR is long engagements, anything longer than three months, it's crazy to me. Now, if you are a company with a consumer electronic thing that people are going to review, go for it, you could do six months. But if you're not, probably don't. You may end up working with the person for six months. But if it's month to month, you'll be a hell of a lot happier. I had a client once, Hotspot Shield, anchorfree, wonderful company, wonderful CEO, David there. I think I worked with them for four or six years blended into one. At one point, it's month to month with them for that time. We'd like a few months off here and there. Worked really well. Happy client for the most part. You're in any relationship for years, you can have an argument, trust me, I've been married twice. That flexibility keeps everyone honest. And yeah, there is a degree of gun to your head every month. But for the most part, people stick around for a few months, because they know they don't have to.

Andrei

So what's a traditional scenario of you starting out in a project? I'm curious, personally, because I have never been into PR. A lot into marketing, but not so much into PR. I have a degree in marketing and had projects or worked with PR teams, but never had the insider's view into how things should be planned out. And I think this is interesting for our listeners. We also have entrepreneurs here or CEOs, but also a lot of marketing and PR and salespeople. So in order for them to understand what they should expect or how to think about building up a relationship with a PR agency or deploying a PR strategy, what would be a classical scenario, of yours, that would get them to a successful story.

So, for example, I've had several clients recently, and I'll have several more, I'm sure, but they have a funding announcement. And we do a 45-day sprint, we say all right, two weeks prep time, then kind of four weeks pitching with an embargo. So they raised x million dollars. You spend two weeks, you get all the information and all the prep work done in that two week period. Then you start pitching and you usually set an embargo for x day, which is like week five, give yourself about two or three weeks to pitch. And then you pitch, you get reporters to agree to an embargo, they agreed to the embargo. They all post the same time and everyone is happy. Everyone smiles all around. You get in, you get out. If it's a month to month thing, usually you have that same two-week ramp up, but then you have a degree of like 'Okay, now we're here, what do we do next?'. Now, there are clients I've had where there is just so much fertile ground that it doesn't bother me. I had this 3D printed house company. Last five and a half weeks, we've had Forbes, MBC, Yahoo Finance, Next Web, CNET. I mean, there's just so many places to take them. There may be ones where you have to say 'Okay, we've got these angles, now we're going to go and pitch to reporters', you would then hope to just get stories in a steady flow, as in covering the client from whatever angle. So in the case of the 3D printed house company, it would be alright. This the solution to the affordable housing crisis, or it might just be a TV appearance because they are cool and TV loves specific kinds of cool stories. Very rare, but they do. Then had KTLA as well and that was because they had an LA pop up. So we had a report in LA and went to meet with them. There are ways you work through it with a monster month engagement, where we want to get coverage for this company, you have to work with the client to find stuff to do every month. And if you don't, you have to find the relationships for them to build with the reporter. And there are many reporters you can talk to, and they'll say 'Oh, I find this person generally interesting. I find this person good to talk to, and they'll be a useful source'. So the API subscription company, the CEO, Jacob, has been speaking to multiple reporters, just about Apple's general goings-on, that's a way of doing it too. But you have to make sure you have something unique to say, because there are tonnes of app companies, tonnes and tonnes and tonnes of them. For the most part, it's gonna be hard to rise above the sea there. If you just want to talk about apps in general, if you don't have a thing that you're a master of. If you don't have a, it's not even an angle, it's like a weapon of choice. If you don't have something you are uniquely talented talking about, then it's going to be hard to build that reputation. But it's not impossible.

Andrei

We lightly touched on this, but how do you pitch that? For example, we have a company that has a budget and can come to you and you can help them with everything that needs to happen within the process. Or you might have a smaller company, maybe a small niche that they know, the free publications that they want to get into. But they don't know how to pitch the subject or how to get in there. And now going to your book and some of the insights that you share there, what would be some piece of advice that you'd give to somebody that wants to try to get into PR with a story?

The client or a PR person?

Andrei

The client, in this case.

If they don't have a budget for the agency, I would tell them to read. Go and read everything you can. If you want to be in TechCrunch so bad, find the person for the thing you are in. And be honest with yourself. Don't fool yourself into thinking that you are just like a company, you are not. So if you're an enterprise tech, with TechCrunch, you're pretty much looking at Frederick Lardinois, or Ron Miller. In those cases, they kind of diverged, Ron will write about AI. Frederick will mostly write about web RTC. But he doesn't do it much. If he doesn't do something much, either means there aren't many companies or he doesn't really find it that interesting. So you need to go and you need to read what was interesting enough to rise above. Maybe it was a funding round, maybe it was an advisor who was a former big-time Facebook person. It comes down to an honest read of the industry and sending a short like 100-word email to them and saying 'Can I just get on the phone with you? No, I don't expect a story. Maybe I would love that, it would be wonderful'. But, I want you to hear a story. I think you'd find it interesting. And they may still say no, that is not ok. But that's life. Sorry. And I think that that is the easiest way to do it for free. But time is not free. I do this all the livelong day. Even when you don't do much for that two hours. Even if you're reading for those two hours and pitching for one minute. It is still time-consuming and exhausting, because a lot of mental energy is a lot of moving parts and trying to understand 'how am I going to get to this person who is not incentivized to write about me, to write about me'. And it may be as simple as 'I read all of your stuff. And I think this matters'. The way I've done this personally is, in any given report, if you really are 100% sure they'll cover it, you just send the pitch and it's great. There's some we have to go 'look you are about this, you're about this, you're about this. And I think that this matters, for this reason, based on this'. You have to really show your homework and still that won't work. You have to be ready for rejection as well. It's like the thing that you deal with within this industry. You are just constantly told no. I mean, all the time.

Andrei

Can press releases work? Can you put out a press release through a live wire or something like that and does it get picked up?

Unless you're a big, big, big company press release or big, big waste of time. It's no reason for them. You might want to write one because some reports just like gang information that way. But for the most part, you don't need to put anything on the wire, your investors may push you. That's your problem. But if no one's pushing you to, you probably don't need one. It doesn't help with your SEO.

Andrei

I was curious if it works.

If you have a really big funding round, around 200- 50 million, yeah, but you can get press for that. If you're doing a funding round, maybe put one out, but you really don't have to. It's $1000-2,000 each time, it's money you could spend on investing.

Andrei

And who picks the subjects or the angles?

For the most part, the PR agencies should bring the idea in everything. Sure, it's great when a client comes in and goes: What about this? Because there are some companies I've worked with, who just come up with something I didn't think of like that's and it was bloody brilliant. And then you go and you use it and everyone feels good, you feel good, everyone's good. But for the most part, it should be at least the 75-25 split. Your PR firm should be doing way more than you. But, if things aren't working, if you're having tough times, get on the phone with them and hash it out. Jason Lemkin is the founder of SaaStr. He called me, he said: I want to be your biggest client. And I also want you to not lie to me. What's your experience with enterprise? I'm like: not great. I didn't have a lot of spec in 2012. He said: Thank you for not lying to me. I don't need that. I will teach you the enterprise stuff you need to know in b2b stuff. And that's where I got my stuff. He has so many good lessons about so many things that seem like that just about sales, but they apply to everything. And one of my favourite things he's written is Lessons for hiring your first VP. And one thing he says that really applies to PR people, is: no excuses. Just tell me what happened and how we can fix it. And this is a great managerial lesson, but it's great for PR people specifically. PR people love to do cat lettering, they love to hide the errors. Now, you shouldn't be cowardly. Just be like- this isn't working. And I don't know why. Or it isn't working and I think it's because of this. Don't go: Yeah, well, you know, the media is really tough at the moment. And, you know, there's a lot of COVID. Let's find a way through this or not work together. Everyone loves making money. No one likes losing money. But if you have this conversation: No excuses, let's just work out how to go through this. And is there a way to this place? Or is there no, and if there isn't, is there something else we can do to make this work? Have that conversation with your PR firm and you'll be a lot happier. Excuses are a pain in the ass unless they and the difference between an excuse and something that happened is an excuse is usually vague, a reason is usually definitive. If they weren't interested, they might just not be interested, you might never get closure on them. Or they might say: I find this boring. And the answer there may be: Your subject is boring and you have to move on. It's really that simple.

Andrei

I'm totally with you on the no-excuses approach in general in business.

Indeed.

Andrei

Some recent success stories and what made them successful apart from these ones that we discussed. I'm happy that we brought them up before, in the beginning of our conversation. Is there any other case study or success story that comes to your mind, that was recent, and that maybe we can look into and draw some learnings from?

I mean, I'll talk about Revenue Camp. They're a subscription API company, I mentioned them vaguely, but I'll be more specific. We had a funding round with them. It's really good. It's a great way to start a relationship, then the whole epic Apple thing happened. We then were talking to Jacob fence and proprietary data around the fact that when you go a year into the subscription, with any given user, you go from making 70% on the subscription to 85%. What their data showed that was because of the way that subscriptions churn, very few companies actually see the benefit of that. We took that story to multiple reporters, and we were open op head on it. We pitched that op-ed to TechCrunch. He got put on TechCrunch. Because guess what, it had good proprietary data that told the story. We took it to share a review day of the New York Times, she said, 'That's kind of interesting'. I want to talk to Jake about broader things. She talked to him broadly. He caught a lovely write up in the bloody New York Times because he talked very authoritatively on how Apple interacts with developers and how developers are dealt with. The reason that that worked was partly relationships. I did the entire pitch with the New York Times through dm. But I did that because I have a relationship with her, I've done it for years. I've pitched her twice in the last few months. But I've known her for years because I've read her stuff. I'm like 'Okay, there is a way we're into this'. With Walter over at TechCrunch. I pitched him the op-ed, I've pitched him several op-eds. I've learned that he likes stuff that tells a story and he's fairly direct. And I happen to be a pretty good writer. And thus, I know what writers look for and that kind of stuff. That's great. I know that

Ryan Browne and CNBC. I know that he writes about these big picture tech stories, the news of the day, so he's going to need someone. And here's the way to be the best source: be cleared spoken, very direct and quotable. Just say x happened for y reason I think this and this and this. Don't try and sound smart, be smart. All of this worked. Because we have good relationships with reporters. Ryan, I got to know him three months ago, via Twitter, because I've read his stuff forever. And you have to take a while to break through with these people. It just happens. This case study, as vague as it may be, grew out of the fact that we learned what the company did and then we pulled out what was interesting. We work with them to find the data internally, but also the story internally that they could apply to. That's why they've kept in the press. Also, Jacob is a dynamite CEO. He is charming, friendly down to earth. He likes talking to the media, but also he talks to them in a way that's not condescending or indeed impenetrable. A lot of CEOs, sometimes they go very high-end buzzword types. Jake is very straightforward, lovely, smart, and a fellow developer. He's just this straightforward, lovely guy. So the learnings there are: read, read, read, read, read, read, learn what the reporters want, and match that kind of stuff to your stuff, but also be direct with all these conversations they refuse. Here's this person, they can talk about this, it's relevant for this reason. Direct. No one's got time for that. And then on some level, they're doing you a favour. It's not really doing a favour because you bring them something they want, but they don't have to listen to you. They'll have to read your thing. So at least through them the solid of responding quickly, and getting them the things they need and being respectful of a no. I've had several experiences from both of those writers. Guess what? Didn't get bought, huh? I was just like, okay, no arguments. That's an important one. If someone tells you No, unless you're like- I have read all your things they know this is so perfect for you which will happen like 1% of the time, just back off. Thank them for responding. Seriously, say: Hey, thanks for getting back to me. Because that's all you can ask. It's so hard to even get a reply in PR. So be respectful. People remember that people remember people are rude, they will remember people are useful. If you are useful and interesting, you can go quite far. So being respectful of people's time is very good for you.

Andrei

Mm-hmm. Super. Okay, so now let's try to do a wrap-up. Because there are so many interesting things, let's try to sort of prioritise them for somebody that never looked at PR in-depth, and they found out all these things, there may be considering it now and maybe they are trying to find their best starting point. I already have five things that I picked up that are relevant, but I would rather let you say which would be your top three, and then maybe add on top of them, because you are the authority in this case.

Andrei

Read, I cannot be clearer enough, read, read, read, read, read, read, get to know everything in your industry. If you want to be in the media, learn the media, build relationships. If someone says no, thank him, move on. Get a conversation with someone, a warm introduction will do wonders. Just have a conversation. Don't be demanding. No one likes anyone who's demanding. If you're hiring a PR agency, set expectations, tell what you want and talk to them about it, find a direct path to that. If you don't do that, you're going to be miserable. But if you do it, you'll probably have a great relationship. I would also think of projects versus month to month, unless you have a lot of launches. If you're in consumer tech, that's brilliant and always ask for recent coverage in media relations. Asked for stuff that's happened at least six months ago, even I'd say three. And if they can't do that, then walk away.

Andrei

Mm-hmm. One thing that I want you to add, and I think particularly I found it very insightful, and it kind of validated one belief that I had was this one of having to go and understand exactly what certain journalists write about, that's why I also put the question of who thinks about the angle? Is it the agency? Or is he the client? Trying to be in the clients shoes, I'm thinking: Okay, if I kind of know the publications, maybe try to understand before starting the conversation with the agency, what would be something that a certain writer would be interested in, so I can better communicate my idea to the PR agency.

Yeah. But that should also be their job. They should do that for you. They should be doing that stuff.

Andrei

Well, I guess it's much easier if there's already a bidder.

Yes, have some knowledge, because then, they won't befuddle you with nonsense.

Andrei

So what are we up to with the EZPR, now? Where are you guys heading towards? What partnerships are looking for?

We just want new clients, we're not hiring generally, we've hired five people in five years. People leave, people enter. Generally, we want things that are evaluated. If we're gonna do a partnership with someone, I need to know how that is going to get me more coverage or more money. You're not going to do either of those things. I respectfully asked you to not ask, but you should be doing that with any sales. Please find a way to actually bring value. Um, we're generally looking for consumer tech, enterprise tech B2B tech. Tech is really good for us, post series, post-seed round, but if you get a big enough seed round, we can help you. Big enough would be over two and a half million, you probably want to raise more up to three to get in the press, but we've done it. And try and think of where you'd be in the media and if you honestly can't think and contact me. I'll give you an honest read. I'll give you a barometer. I've put you in the right direction. If you can work with me, absolutely. I'm not a monster I want to help.

Andrei

Either particular geographic areas where you focus more on?

Usually just focus on the US. We do some UK. In my experience of UK genesis, they want someone in the UK with good reason, same way. It just makes more sense. But you can do a lot of stuff with that.

Andrei

Super So, particularly North America, I guess. Right?

Yeah, North America. I don't believe anyone on our team speaks anything other than English. I tried to be an English speaker in North America from tech.

Andrei

Super. Okay, so I think we have a good bunch here of the people that would be certainly interested to speak with you. So for you guys. I'll leave the details in the description below. And in terms of other platforms, is it LinkedIn a good place?

I'm on Twitter- Ed Ztron on Twitter. On Twitter, you'll find me there. Awesome.

Andrei

Sweet. Okay. Ed, until next time, thanks so much for being on the show and the really insightful chat also full of energy. So loved it. Thank you for taking the time, for all the insights and looking forward to meeting again, hopefully soon. Guys, if you have any questions, shoot them over to me to add directly if there are PR related and if you guys want us to maybe try to organise another catch-up, a second time to maybe dig deeper into some of the areas that would be relevant for you, then just let us know and we'll certainly try to make it happen.

Thank you for having me on.

Andrei

Same here. Thanks a lot, man.