This week, Bill and PR expert Michelle Garrett delve into the intricacies of B2B public relations. Discover how earned media and trade publications can transform your visibility, why AI-driven search is making PR more critical than ever, how to determine what is truly newsworthy, and how small and medium-sized businesses can compete against industry giants without massive budgets. Michelle shares practical frameworks to help you develop a consistent, impactful PR program that builds trust, earns attention, and positions your brand where decision-makers are already looking. Plus, Bill and Michelle touch on the value of executive thought leadership and the rise of influencers in B2B marketing. If you’re ready to elevate your reputation, land meaningful media coverage, and take advantage of untapped opportunities for growth, this episode delivers the tools you need.
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Michelle: I feel like where AI is going to come into play is with the search because, and I've talked to some people that I respect in the space that have said, you know, it's going to be about showing up everywhere. And that's what PR and earned media can help you do. So say, of course, people are still using Google largely, but there are platforms like Perplexity, for example. If you want to show up there, getting covered by a trade journal is as or perhaps even more important than being covered by a bigger publication like a Wall Street Journal or something, because a lot of that content is paywalled and AI can't always include those results or pull that in. So that's why trade journals and even local publications or just lower tier publications, it's all important right now. I think it's going to be more important than it's ever been.
Bill: This I feel is like a cheat code that so few companies are leveraging right now. And it's something that we're going back in time. Like this is like back to the future. We're going back to where PR is going to earn a much bigger portion of budgets and focus because it's something you can activate. It's something you can proactively do.
Bumper
Bill: Thank you for joining the Missing Half podcast where we're discovering what's missing in manufacturing and B2B marketing. I'm Bill Woods. Today, I have a very special guest who's going to unpack the mysteries of B2B PR. Michelle Garrett, welcome to the show.
Michelle: Thank you so much for having me, Bill.
Bill: So Michelle, I just want to call this out and I have bookmarks in here and everything, but I just want to say congratulations on the book. I read it. I really feel like you did a great job of providing a framework for companies, providing a framework for practitioners, and also providing a lot of key insights for freelancers who might be interested in space. I mean, it's really to me, a Swiss army knife for small and medium sized businesses who want to think about B2B PR. So maybe talk a little bit about that and then we're going to jump back in and get into your background and talk about this. Like introduce the book and plug that idea, please.
Michelle: Well, thank you for those kind words. It's a lot of work to get a book out into the world as you probably would imagine. yeah, so I was really excited to get the book out there. I've been doing this for years and I really wanted to share, kind of compile all of my knowledge because for many years I have contributed articles to publications written for my own blog and newsletter. And this is kind of, you know, a compilation of all of my best advice and tips and just kind of giving people a hands-on guide to if they want to do it themselves, that's fine. Or if they want to work with someone like me, that's fine. There are also agencies, of course. And so there are all kinds of options for people. But the book is really for me, just it's it's really written for smaller businesses. The ones that, you know, again, B2B, manufacturing, I do a lot of work with those companies and many have a one person marketing team or a very small, you know, handful of marketing people. And most of them don't really have a dedicated PR resource, although it would probably benefit them to be doing some PR. So that was kind of the idea behind the book.
Bill: No, I think it's great because we run into this a lot with our clients and with just people in the manufacturing and B2B space. And they think that if they do something and then we write a press release about it, and then we post it on our social media accounts and then email it out to the customer list, that that is PR. And I unequivocally disagree with that. I mean, that's just another, that is distribution of a press release. But that is not public relations and that is not earning unearned media. And that is not getting in front of one of the topics which you talk a lot about, and I think is so important, is the key to marketing and PR is making sure we're getting in front of our target audience where they hang out. Right. And maybe talk a little bit about how that's such an important part of this PR process.
Michelle: Well, it is because I think a lot of people, first of all, I think they view PR as kind of a mysterious piece of your marketing program, you know, your overall marketing efforts. I don't think people understand exactly what it is. And so I, in the book, I talk about the PESO Model©, which is paid, earned, shared and owned. And that was developed by, Gini Dietrich of Spend Sucks. And I always like to give her credit for that because I just see it as a framework in your head because you're really, PR is the earned media piece. And then of course, I talk a lot about owned media, which is content. So if you're already creating this content, you want to get it out there. And you can of course, you know, leverage earned media PR, you can use social media, which is under the S, the shared media. And then of course, you could pay to boost it if you wanted to do that too. But I think when you look at PR as just like, yes, we're just writing a press release. We're just issuing it on the wire or we're just blasting it out to our list and just posting it on our website. That is a very rudimentary way to view it. And the other thing I think is that it's kind of an ongoing effort. It's not just when you have an announcement, a new product or somebody joins the team or whatever you're putting in your press release. It's an ongoing program and effort to keep your company out there in front of your target audience. When they are ready to buy, they will remember or perhaps something will pop up. They will see something, they will search and find it. And I think we're going to talk about AI, I think a little bit, but you know, with that, you know, AI-driven search, it's going to be more important than ever to show up in as many places as you possibly can. And that's what PR or media is really, that's a really good way to do that.
Bill: Well and I think the other aspect we have to deal with today is trust. And we're going to talk about AI and some of those things in the, in later on the conversation. But whenever we're looking for trust, we're looking for social proof, but we're also looking for third party validation. And the, and as many third party sources can reference who we are, what we do, where we do it, why we do it, how we do it, and those types of things. I think that's just going to help give AI and humans who are interacting a better sense of trust. And that to me appears to be a big part of the game that we're going to have to play moving forward. One of the things I thought that was interesting in the book that I hadn't thought about at all, and this was missing in my perception of PR and maybe an issue that isn't a big issue for Fortune 500 companies or really large companies, but is probably more uncomfortable for small to medium sized businesses. Is the fact that if you're going to do PR and court those journalists and go out there and give that information, you have to have a comfort level with sharing financial data. You have to be willing to kind of put your flag in the ground of where you are as a company, your size, your scope and your impact. What have you seen with that challenge maybe the smaller and medium sized businesses and how are you and they overcoming that portion of it?
Michelle: Well, I think it comes into play if we're pitching, say the local business journal or something like that. They like to talk about financials. If we're pitching trade media, they don't usually ask those questions quite as often unless it is a publicly held company. A privately held company, does not have to disclose. mean, sometimes it could be in their best interest maybe to talk about numbers, but I think if they're uncomfortable or reluctant to do so and they're privately held, I don't always think that that's necessary and most journalists really I don't think would push that as much, but it just depends on the situation I think.
Bill: Okay, good. No, that's great. And I think, one of the other challenges just in reading the book and in thinking about this space and my experience over the years is that whenever you go and start to prepare articles that you're pitching, when we, when we look at small businesses and medium sized businesses, they often don't have their branding or communication fundamentals established. How much of a challenge or like, do you see that as a missing component or first step that needs to occur before they really focus on PR?
Michelle: I think it's a very good idea to have those things the way you want them to be. Say, a lot of times if you work with a manufacturing client, they've been around for 50 years. That's a different situation than a startup who's just getting off the ground. So in the one case, you have to revisit periodically, right? So the messaging that served you 10 years ago is not going to serve you today. So you really need to have some process in place to revisit and make sure. Now, if you're newer, you wanna make sure that you've done some research so that you know where your customers are spending time and who they are and all of those things so that you can target your messaging accordingly. But if you have really either, I mean, I don't think companies have no idea, but sometimes I don't think they've spent a lot of time thinking through it. Or again, like they they're relying on something that they used five years ago, 10 years ago, 20 years ago. And that's the same thing with their website. Sometimes you see, you know, it hasn't been updated. I really like all those things to be ready. Because once we start contacting reporters, they're going to go in and look at your website and your social media and so on. And so if they write a story, you hope that people are going to go in, prospective customers, go into your website and look and look at your social media. So you want to make sure you kind of have your ducks in a row before you start drawing attention to yourself.
Bill: So as part of your book, you talk about a seven step readiness assessment to help kind of, am I ready for PR? Because just like anything like content marketing, inbound marketing, demand gen, you have to have foundational things in place to be able to do any of them. And I don't think PR is any different. When you look at that seven step process, where do you see most of the clients struggling the most, they miss the most, that they don't have ready, that they need to get ready to be prepared for PR?
Michelle: I mean, the website to me is number one, because again, the first thing a journalist is going to do if you get them to read a pitch that you send them, you pitch them a story, the PR person sends them a pitch, they're going to investigate to see, you know, is this actually the case? And they're gonna go to your website. So that's gonna be number one. And I'm not saying that every company has an outdated website, but I do think sometimes in B2B and in manufacturing, industrial, I don't think that they always think about that first because a lot of them are thinking about kind of an older way of networking and doing business. And now we're getting younger buyers and companies that really will go online and do all of their research before they ever contact you to buy anything. And so that makes the website and your content and what's up there when they search that makes those things really important. So that is to me the most important piece of it.
Bill: No, that's great. And I think we see this all the time, especially with like late adopters, which is more characteristic of small and medium sized manufacturing and B2B service companies. Their websites are not accurately reflecting their brand promise today. It's not accurately reflecting their products, services, or just what they do. And that seven to 10 word statement that really captures them, if that's not readily available, that becomes a problem because I'm sure a journalist is like any other viewer if they get at a pitch for an article and it's going this direction and they go to the website and it's going this direction there's there's a disconnect and all that work is done, right, and then as PR professionals we can only burn so much dry powder with these folks because then if you send them four or five in a row like that they're not going to read your pitches. Because they’re like, yeah, this this person doesn't make their job easier. And you probably have a higher probability of success than if you make them dig a whole bunch.
Michelle: Yeah. You don't want to cry wolf with these things.
Bill: So one of the other things you talk about, I just love this book, I geek out on this type of stuff because I feel like if we do things fundamentally correctly in a lot of these cases, we can have outsized impact for our clients in the market. And I feel like PR is something that used to have much more prevalence. Social media kind of overshadowed it, but social media, like all things, now has its lane. And PR still has its lane. So I think a return to PR is important and more of an emphasis. But when you talk about targeting a list of journalists and maybe talk about that process and what you recommend for clients and like figuring that out and coming to grips with, we aren't just going after the Wall Street Journal and Forbes and whoever, AP. So maybe talk about that, please.
Michelle: Sure, well I think in B2B trade publications are really where you want to be making sure you're covering the bases because I think no matter what vertical and B2B you work in, I mean again we've talked a lot about manufacturing and yes we both probably work with a lot of those clients, but technology or insurance or financial or like any, health care, anything you want to pick and under the B2B umbrella. There are going to be a list of trade publications that cover that space and those publications are, usually they have a very small staff, they're looking for material to fill up their digital and sometimes still print yes pages. And so they if you make that easy for them by packaging up a very strong say a customer story with some visuals, pictures that were taken in the customer's facility. They love that. Maybe some video if you can swing that, you know, and you package it all up and send it over, chances are they're going to run that. And a lot of times for me, they don't even come back and ask a question. I make it easy. I put everything in there. I even include captions for the pictures. That's another opportunity to brand yourself and just package it all up, send it over. And I'm not kidding that it's almost like voila, it shows up, you know, so maybe not the next day or, or, you know, sometimes it takes a little bit if they're backlogged with material. But I mean, it's, it's amazing. When you do the legwork for them, they really appreciate that. And of course, you know, if you make it easy, they're probably going to want to come back to you for comments on a story they're working on or if they have something else coming up that they think you might be a good fit for. We had a reporter, for example, with one of my clients ask us if we had a customer that would fit this profile, they needed to talk to somebody in this particular space with this particular issue. And so we provided that for them and they looked to us as a resource. So that's it. You talked about trust and that's what I'm trying to build with the reporter on behalf of the client. I'm trying to build that with the publications, the editors and so forth.
Bill: So you really have to treat these journalists like they are a target market that have a problem and you're providing a solution and it takes that type of dedicated effort. It's not just requesting that a copywriter writes a press release and then we just cast it out and then hope some, cause like, but I mean, I think that's a lot of what people think because they just aren't willing to engage the process and they don't have the foresight, or maybe they feel they're too small. What I've seen is a lot of these trade publications, they, they don't just want to cover the Fortune 500 or the, you know, multinational brands. They would like a little more color to the stories that they're telling and a little bit different look at the industry because it's not just like they want to copy and paste off of the press releases and their websites and social media, these huge brands. So I feel like there's a gap that we can fill for our clients in that space and really give these journalists more to chew on and more to really add texture to their stories.
Michelle: Yeah. And I think too, it's like if you just do it when you have an announcement and you're just doing a press release, again, it's like a one-off and it should be kind of a continuous, consistent stream of content. For lack of a better word, I mean, stories, news, content, you can use customer stories, you can use thought leadership to fill in maybe in the times when you don't have any big announcements or anything going on to really put in a press release, for example. And I want to just be clear too that not everything requires a press release. I think whenever you have that conversation, and I think sometimes PR people are reluctant to push back if it's coming from the C-suite or something or their boss. But I just think it's worthwhile to have the conversation. Because a piece of news or a story does not require a press release in order to get earned media coverage. You can package it up different ways and journalists, yes, I'm going to say that they do sometimes ask where the press release is, you know, because it's got all the information in it that they're used to getting in a format that they, you know, that they are used to. I'm not saying don't ever write press releases, but I'm also saying you don't always have to write a press release in order to achieve your goal.
Bill: Well and this is the next thing I want to ask you and this is kind of a hot take or a controversial statement or you know is in it. Here's the statement. Most of the topic requests made by companies to develop and distribute press releases are not newsworthy. I mean I see this all the time. Hey our new model XYZ now has a 1 2 3 option. Guess what? Nobody cares. Right, your current customers who got the old model might have been begging for this feature, but it's not gonna be in Times Square on the marquee. This is not, so I feel like one of the challenges we face with manufacturers is every feature and benefit improvement, every product or service improvement is not newsworthy. What's your hot take or feedback on that statement?
Michelle: No, I think you're exactly right. I see sometimes I think press releases are used, the sales department gets a hold of them or something. And sometimes it's almost like an ad. And that's not really what the purpose of it is. I mean, I would say for some of my clients, we are pretty we issue press releases pretty sparingly. Because again, not everything is like big headline news. And if you if you use press releases that way, you kind of do, you you bring your credibility down a little bit. So I would say to be careful with that and to think through. And again, I don't know who sometimes is determining what is newsworthy enough for a press release, but if you have a PR resource, internal, external, whoever it is, be sure to have them in that conversation so that they can help you determine if that's really a good way to go. Because I think just babbing out a press release, every time you have something to say, I just don't know about that, you know?
Bill: Well and even, you know, pitch, I'm thinking, okay, pitching that idea to a reporter, they don't care. They don't care. Now, if there's an amazing human connection and a human story or a case study or something where there's outsized impact. And I think the tension that we struggle with is the story for the manufacturer and the engineers and the C-suite who've worked for maybe years to bring about this feature benefit change to them is amazing and impactful. And as an internal story for internal stakeholders, there may be tremendous value, but as soon as we go to the market, nobody cares. Now in six months or a year, that product may be distributed. It may perform its function and dramatically improve a company or people's lives and then it becomes more newsworthy. So I think part of it is just the timing of when we need to really apply the PR layer to the communication is the issue, not necessarily that PR shouldn't be used, but it's just like, nobody cares that they now have it in the color green until that color green has this amazing impact later in its life cycle. So that to me is a challenge and I know you face it. I face it when the CEO or the C-suite's like so excited about it. And it's just like the market doesn't care yet.
Michelle: Right. Well, reporters don't care. And this is the problem with when you're just doing product PR. I mean, there is absolutely a place for that in your PR program and your overall efforts, but it shouldn't just be focused solely on products because honestly, a lot of companies are not going to have a new product announcement all that often. And so if you're relying only on that, you know, it's not gonna probably get you quite as far. So reporters are really tired of hearing about just a new product. They wanna know how the customer's using it, how it's making a difference for the customer, those kinds of stories. That's why I think customers are so important too with PR. And that's why PR kind of needs to be in step with the sales team to a degree so we know when we have a good customer story or we have a happy or unhappy customer that maybe has been a good reference for us in the past, maybe right now they're having an issue and now isn't a good time to be using that customer. Some customers see the value of PR and they're very excited to be included in your PR efforts and others would are, you know, for legal reasons or, you know, just they just would rather not be featured. So I think that's another relationship I think is important. We talk about PR and content, PR and social, but PR and sales also an important relationship.
Bill: One of the things we deal with a lot is component manufacturers. And one of the challenges they face is that we can't even really do a lot of case studies on them because they don't even know what their stuff ends up going into per se. Or with NDAs and agreements, it's proprietary and they're not allowed to talk about it. Michelle, what have you seen as an approach or just some like green light thinking about how to engage PR as part of their strategy when we're limited by what we can say and like what subject matter there is in and around the actual items produced? What thoughts have you on that subject?
Michelle: Sometimes we have to do blind case studies where we say, a leading company in the so-and-so space, we work with them and they used our product to do this. And so you can do it that way. A lot of times people know you imply and they can kind of figure it out or guess it's probably one of a few. That's one way to go about it. I think sometimes it's just sometimes when you pick a maybe a customer that's a smaller company, that might be a better fit for your PR efforts. Because again, I think you can, if they don't see that it's an advantage for them, you can explain that it's an advantage for them because they're really getting some free PR out of it if you feature them in a case study and the case study goes in a trade journal and their name is out there and it comes up in search and so forth, I think that benefits them too. And so if you can explain it that way to them, sometimes they get it, sometimes they may not until you do the explanation. Yeah, I think that might be something but I know it's really tough when you have a great customer that you want to showcase and then you can't for some kind of a legal reason. And I do think it's important not to go around your legal team. Of course, you want to work with them because that will only lead to trouble later if you don't stay within those parameters.
Bill:So you mentioned search, I think this naturally pivots to our next topic. AI is everywhere. It's all everybody can talk about, right? So when we look at the historic approach in PR, there was even in the past 10 to 15 years, there's been a tremendous amount of recognition that the SEO impact of PR is just tremendous. Backlinks, the whole nine yards. Now we're seeing maybe some change or anticipating change in that space because AI is going to, and AI agents who are going to do a lot of the searching for people, how that's going to impact you. Could you maybe talk about what you see changing and the impact of AI on PR-created value online in that whole space?
Michelle: Yes, well, it's very complicated, of course. We can probably just talk all afternoon about this one thing, but I'm going to pick out a couple of points to kind of, you know, discuss here. So one is, you don't want to use your AI to do all of your writing, right? Because that's kind of outsourcing your, your think tank your thought leadership, right? And AI doesn't really give it any nuance and really what helps a company stand out when you're doing thought leadership content is having a unique perspective or bringing something to the table that maybe somebody hasn't really talked to death about already. So that's one thing I would say. I don't really, I'm not excited about AI like writing your press releases either, although I know there are companies doing that and there are lots of tools that do that. I feel like where AI is going to come into play is with the search because, and I've talked to some people that I respect in the space that have said, you know, it's going to be about showing up everywhere. And that's what PR and earned media can help you do. So say, of course, people are still using Google largely, but there are platforms like Perplexity, for example. If you want to show up there, getting covered by a trade journal is as or perhaps even more important than being covered by a bigger publication like a Wall Street Journal or something, because a lot of that content is paywalled and AI can't always include those results or pull that in. So that's why trade journals and even local publications or just lower tier publications, it's all important right now. I think it's going to be more important than it's ever been.[a] And so I think it's always a good idea whenever you have an opportunity to contribute to an article for a trade publication, be a guest on a podcast, speak at an event, anything like that, that is going to get fed into AI based search, that's going to benefit your company. And so I think, again, you don't, never, I've always told clients not to say no to things unless it's, you know, I mean, occasionally, but most things, if you can participate, and it's an easy ask, I would say do that, you know? And maybe it isn't the Wall Street Journal every time, but that's okay. So I think that's where we're gonna see AI kind of making an impact here on PR and our media.
Bill: Yeah, I think we're going to see purchasing managers at all levels become, and we're all amateur prompt engineers now, right? Because we've typed a question into ChatGPT, but they are going to start doing research with consistent prompts for their products. And all AI is going to do is accelerate the speed at which they can search the entire internet and find the most relevant and the sources with the highest value signals and the most signals. And to me, it feels like we are going to have to become much more strategic and surgically focused on making sure that we show up in places that maybe we haven't before. So that that trade, like if there's four or five trade magazines that are very relevant in your market, you better be in there somewhere. You better be referenced by them. And it can't be just buying an ad in their program or sponsoring the coffee at the trade show or whatever, you know, I mean, those are good things. And that's a whole other, that's a whole other bucket. But in this arena, when we're trying to earn our space online and earn the right to show up when the prompt comes from the purchasing manager, this I feel is like a cheat code that so few companies are leveraging right now. And it's something that we're going back in time. Like this is like back to the future. We're going back to where PR is going to earn a much bigger portion of budgets and focus because it's something you can activate. It's something you can proactively do. Yeah, I'm excited about, I think AI is not going to replace us all. And I agree that for writing, if you use AI to write, it will not provide a unique perspective from your company. It will provide a like an amalgamation or of all that is already out there. So you're just going to be me too. You're just going to be the next person saying a very similar thing. Because, now, if you're really sharp and you could figure out a way to prompt engineer with that unique perspective in mind, but that's going to like Gen 2, 3 or 4 from now. Like let's deal with where we are today, right? So I think that having that unique perspective that only you could experience is what people are going to care about. Because if not, everybody else is going to say the same thing. And that is not going to yield results.
Michelle: Not really. And I think, again, with the thought leadership content, that's always, I feel like the things that we've always known in PR are just gonna be truer than ever and companies are gonna be wanting and needing what PR can bring for them. And I hope that you're right, that it's gonna get a bigger share of the budget and more attention because I just feel like it can be repurposed and leveraged in so many ways. And if you get a good PR partner, you, they can help you just make more out of what you're already doing. You already have, you know, content on your website. You already have case studies. You already have blog posts. You already have like how-to articles and a lot of those things could be repackaged and pitched to get earned media coverage in a trade publication, for example. So I just feel like it's very valuable and I hope that companies can see the value that PR can bring.
Strategic Roadmap Promo
Bill: So whenever you look at PR campaigns and you have an extensive career and you've done this for a while and have, I'm sure made a lot of successful PR campaigns, had some that weren't so successful. What do you feel if you were going to like boil it down to like your top three, one or two, whatever it is, things that you see are missing? Cause this is the Missing Half podcast. We try to discover what's missing. What do you feel is often missing that probably is outside of your control as a PR professional, is missing from PR campaigns that would make them successful if we were just able to do them? And this is a tough question, but these are the, like to, we're like hard-hitting journalists here. We're going to ask the tough questions.
Michelle: I'll try to answer, okay? So, I mean, first of all, I think I mentioned earlier, I don't view PR on a campaign basis. And when I have companies that come to me and they want to hire me for a, we've got a new product launch coming up, can you help us? Of course I can. Sometimes it works. But I really think the ones that are more successful are companies that are doing PR on an ongoing basis as a program. Yes, there could be a campaign within the program or two or three or four or however many throughout the year. But I feel like if a journalist has never heard of your company and you're coming to them to pitch a product, which often is the idea behind a campaign, mean, maybe it's something bigger than that. But a lot of times I think companies are focused on a product PR type of campaign effort. They're not necessarily going to write about you if they've never heard about you and this is the first time they're hearing about you. So one thing I would say is instead of just having one announcement, maybe you could have two or three announcements in a row. So you could have, you know, if you're, this is for a startup example, announce the startup, you know, announce that we're launching a company that does X. Announce some funding maybe or some major new hires that join the C-suite. Then go in with the product announcement, the launch of the product, something like that, where it's kind of a multi-pronged effort. That's one thing I would do. Another thing is don't skimp on the visuals. I think visuals a lot of times are overlooked and not just in a campaign effort, but across the board and they really can help us stand out when we're doing PR. Reporters can be swayed if you can provide strong visuals and that means maybe hiring a photographer, videographer you can't do that in every case. If you take pictures with your phone, just make sure you save them in the highest resolution possible. That kind of, those kind of tips can really help you stand out because journalists love the strong visuals and readers or viewers also love strong visuals and you're gonna get more attention for whatever if it's online, in print, wherever it is, you're gonna get more attention if you have compelling visuals.
Bill: I love those two. I think, you know, so what's missing is one, it has to be in a nurture campaign. We can't just show up once every 10 years with that product, right? Like the, the, the, the journalists are human beings and they want, maybe you would reference the primacy recency theory or whatever, but you have to be in front of them consistently so that you're in their scope. And then I love this. And I think what you just said about visuals is so true. I mean, when we're thinking about a picture's worth a thousand words, and I don't know if anybody is quantified yet how many words a video is worth, but we see that whether we're redesigning a website, whether we're doing brochures, like the age of stock photography is over. It has to be organic and candid. I would say that's true for marketing materials. I think it is more appropriate and more true for PR because a journalist doesn't want to have a, a Getty image representing this, this story. They want the story. They want the stuff. So I think those are two great takeaways as far as what's missing in, in B2B PR. And I think those are so true and, and ignore those two pieces of advice at your peril because you will be much more successful if you leverage both of those answers. So Michelle, thank you for that. I think that's worth its weight in gold.
Michelle: Sure. Yeah, I wish I could convince clients sometimes. I have had them send me stock photos. I'm like, do you have an image we can send with? And I'm like, no, or AI generated. I have seen trade publications putting in their guidelines, do not send us AI generated answers or imagery. And I'm like, do you have, they have to say it, I guess, cause somebody's done it. I'm like, oh no.
Bill: Yeah I'm sure. I'm sure. Everybody's lazy. You know, everybody defaults to that. So I'm sure people are just trying to do it. And there's value to you. All tools can be valuable if used in their place. And I think we're starting to define the bookends of where we are going to accept AI today. And then of course that will evolve. One of the other things you talk about in the book which I really enjoyed was the topic on thought leadership. And you have kind of a list of alternative thought leadership approaches. Which ones do you think are missing from most companies that they should explore more or which ones perform the best? I'll just kind of open that up and let you talk about those thought leadership approaches and what you think is missing or would work better.
Michelle: Well, one thing that I enjoy doing and that the clients also seem to like is sitting down with hopefully the CEO or someone from the C-suite, maybe once a quarter and getting their thoughts, interviewing them for 30, 45 minutes, and then perhaps ghostwriting a thought leadership piece for them. And of course they review it and make their edits and so forth, but it helps them get everything out that they're thinking, get it down and then we can use that in a number of ways. So we would create a post that can be on the client's site, but we would also pitch that to a trade publication who would run it as a kind of a guest column type of situation and it has their photo and you know it's not a commercial for the company, but it definitely brings visibility to the company because in the bio of course it's going to say, you know, by CEO, you know, Joe Schmo, and it's gonna have his bio and so forth, it's gonna have a link back to the company website. So in that way, we are leveraging, we are getting double duty. And then another thing you can do is take that and turn it into a LinkedIn post. So, or maybe a couple LinkedIn posts, you know, so I feel like if you're wise about how you're spending that, the time and resources to make that happen, you can really get a lot of value out of just that one, you know, sit down with the executive and it makes them, helps raise their visibility, helps raise the brand's visibility. They like it. I mean, I think it's a win across the board.
Bill: I couldn't agree more. I mean, I think this is probably going to be a controversial statement. CFOs won't like it. Companies should be investing a portion of their budget to extract thought leadership from C-suite and publishing it on LinkedIn, publishing it in trade journals and using that approach. Here's an okay. Why won't CFOs like that? Cause we're spending money. Why should, why should they like it? Because I can, from personal experience, and I just posted about this a couple of days ago, people are 10 to 20 times more likely to reach out to an invite from myself than they are from our company page at 50 Marketing on LinkedIn. I grow my LinkedIn every day with outreach and connections and people trying to connect with me. Our company page is much slower because people connect with people on the social channels. They're less likely to connect with brands. And whenever, and then I think the other controversial part of this is like, and I think it was Richard Branson who said it, you know, what if we train all of our people really well or invest in them and they leave? And then he offered the contrary statement. Well, what if we don't and they stay? Right. So, you know, if, a company invests money in the CEO or one of their leaders in helping them develop thought leadership and kind of launching their own semi-personal brand on LinkedIn that is going to bring more visibility through PR, through social media, to that company and to that individual. Might that person, well, you know what, we can't even, that's HR's problem to figure out if they need to hire somebody new in the future or whatever, but do you see that approach of personal thought leadership and personal branding working to help CEOs and founders elevate their company's standing whether it's through social or through PR?
Michelle: Absolutely. I think that's another thing I would say is kind of a secret weapon. If you have a CEO or then the C-suite supporting the PR effort, that makes such a huge difference. And because they believe in it, they're willing to work with your PR team or person or whoever it is to get that person what they need. Now I've had situations where clients just say, can you just write like a think piece for our CEO and then you don't get to spend time with the CEO. I mean, you're really, mean, whose thoughts are they really? So I mean, I think it's so much more effective when they enjoy I mean, that's the thing I thinking of a particular manufacturing client, but he he enjoys that time, he looks forward to that time, because it helps him, you know, kind of work through what's in his head. And that's what this is really about is sharing what they know because they're out there at trade shows and they're traveling to customer. They have a lot that they can share, but often it doesn't get out there because they're too busy or making the time, dedicating the time, and then they look forward to doing it. And they also see results in that, you know, when they go somewhere like to an event, they'd be like, wow, we're seeing you everywhere. Like, wow, what are you, what's going on over there? You know? So, and that's the power of PR. If it's done well and done right, and you get that support that you need from your marketing counterpart, from your C-suite counterparts, it's, it just makes such a big difference.
Bill: Well, and I think one of the other things beyond I know a lot of these executives are very, busy and time-constrained. I think another thing is just like that imposter syndrome or that, you know, they're so self-aware that they don't want to put themselves out there. And I think one of the things, one of the conclusions I had to come to, and cause we really started on my efforts in this space about a year ago, we launched the podcast. I got active on LinkedIn. You know, we had grown our business with referrals through our historic business performance in the market and a of other businesses have been successful, but we decided, okay, to go to the next level. We need to go out and practice what we preach. We needed to do this stuff. And I was not really excited about putting myself out there. I was not really excited about all of that. But I got over it. And I came to the conclusion after having a number of conversations with people that some of my experience was valuable. It was not necessarily, and nor was I ever going to claim that it should be prescriptive, but that there was information and then the talking to people and sharing ideas and bouncing ideas back and forth could be valuable. And, to go to your other point there on thought leadership, I have someone on my team, Johanna, who she's going to love the, attention here. she helps me write a lot of the things that I post and a lot of my thought leadership pieces, because I, I'm really great at visualizing them, I think, and coming up with the concept. And then I can speak into some type of device that records it. And then she makes it amazing. That's okay. Like if you're a CEO, who's really sharp and really understands your stuff, but isn't great at penning a short piece for social media, or for a trade journal, that's okay. That's not your job. Just give us the stuff. And then Michelle, your team or our, somebody can go and help you go from point A to point B. How do you feel about that? And what have you learned in your experiences?
Michelle: Yeah, I mean, I think if they don't have time to actually sit down and talk to you, like we don't do it in person, but of course we're on Zoom and we do it that way. But I mean, if they don't have time for that, I think if they can record something for you, that can work too. I just think you really need to have access. And I think a lot of times, again, I don't know why, but sometimes PR doesn't, I don't know if they don't speak up or people don't listen, or I don't know what it is, but I feel like there's a little bit of a disconnect there because it's very important for PR to know what is going on with leadership. Because I mean, PR is about reputation. We help you build and protect and maintain your reputation. What if there's a crisis? What if something goes haywire? You know, something you weren't expecting, which we all can think of many examples. Yes, more than ever, right? Because everybody's online and things can get blown up really fast. So we need to kind of be aware of what's going on. And I think those check-ins with the leadership team really help us stay engaged in that way. And again, if they don't have time, I don't know if it's great to go into a PR effort if again, if your marketing counterpart and this the leadership counterpart don't have time to spend occasionally at least I mean with with the with the marketing counterpart, I would meet every month for sure. That's one thing I kind of insist on with clients just because we need to stay in step. And hopefully they enjoy that time and think it's important too, but with leadership, then I'd say at least quarterly we need to kind of be sitting down for 30 to 60 minutes and talking through, you know, what's up and what's happening and what they see coming up because we need to see that too. And that just feeds everything that we're doing and it's just invaluable.
Bill: So another thing, and you recently invited me to participate in a collaborative online LinkedIn type of effort. Switching gears here, but could you talk a little bit about that process and how you're using collaboration amongst other professionals to create some momentum?
Michelle: Well, this is for my business. So I will post on my blog and I will probably share it on LinkedIn and share it on social. And I have actually placed them as contributed pieces before within trade publications in the marketing and PR space. So perhaps that will happen too again. But I've done this for the past few years and I don't like to ask for predictions because I think there's a lot of that, not to say it's not valuable, but I take it from the perspective of advice. What marketing or PR advice do you have? And I do usually ask, because it's 2025, this year I asked 25 people to weigh in and give me 25 experts will provide their best piece of advice. And of course, you know, we know that's very simplified boiling down to one piece of advice. It's just really, I think a lot of people enjoy and look forward to that because it does give some perspectives. And I like to pull from different parts of my network because I don't want everybody just to be in one. You know, I know a lot of people in the content marketing world, you know, I don't want them all just to come from that or just from the PR perspective or only for manufacturing. I want it to be a little bit more diverse so that different people can take away different points from it.
Bill: No, I loved it. I thought it was ingenious. I'm interested and I'm a fan and I'm following along. So I'll be interested to see how that journey goes. One of the other things I think that's the lines have been muddied over the years between social media and PR distribution because we can instantly, boom, it's out on LinkedIn. It's out on Meta, wherever. What, in chapter 20, you talk about social media and PR teams working together and how important that is. Could you maybe just really provide a framework or some input for marketing managers or marketing executives who might be watching this? It's like, Hey, you need to make sure there's alignment. Here's why here's some guidelines in that process.
Michelle: Yes, silos. We have silos. And it's obviously not the first and only place we have silos. But I would say get rid of those silos. I feel like sometimes, I mean, it's almost like a territoriality. And I don't feel like it needs to be that way. Because obviously, you know, we're bringing, PR’s bringing strengths to the table, socials bringing strengths to the table. I say content belongs in there too. And we can all work together because I would say that the social team would be absolutely, I mean, when we're doing PR, we're following the journalists and the publications on social media, right? And the platforms that maybe change, but we're still doing that as part of our research and our work with them, because we want to support them. And we want to be visible even when we're not pitching them a story, because we want to have a relationship with them and we want to have trust with them. So to me, social is just an integral part of what PR pros are working on. And I think it should probably be seen both ways because we want to share whenever we get a piece of our media coverage, we want that shared on social and we want to tag the publication and maybe the journalist, you know, so that they see that, they appreciate that. It helps the story get more visibility, which helps the company, but it also helps the journalist and the publication. They're going to view that in a favorable light. Whereas if you know, you know, we worked together for two months to produce this feature story and then it shows up and the company doesn't even share it at all on social. I'm like, that's just seems again like a disconnect or if they're a guest on a podcast and no one shares it, no one tags the podcast and the host. I just feel like this, it's a little bit of common sense, but I do think it's often overlooked. And sometimes I have to like wave a flag like you know, over here, like, you know, we got this coverage, you've got, please put it in the newsletter, please put it on social, you know, there's a number of ways you can repurpose after the coverage shows up or after your, your podcast appearances is out there. You can leverage those things and you should be leveraging them as those things. It helps you and it's just really good banners, honestly.
Bill: Sure. No, I love it. And I think one of the things we're seeing is specialization in our industry. And I'm talking about marketing, social, like all those areas, but we're also seeing a greater need for collaboration and integration because we shouldn't have to work as hard as sometimes we do on our own when we can leverage these other options and other resources to help our work in each area. So I love that. That's a great take. One of the other things we're seeing and this is, know, B2B and manufacturing always follows pop culture. And we're looking at the influencer space. I mean, the influencer space in D2C has been huge. I mean, you have these people like Cristiano Ronaldo, the soccer player who has like a billion followers or whatever. Like, and now we're starting to see that same type of situation in the B2B space. What do you see as like the the role and rise of influencers and that the next step for like PR to engage that space and what opportunities do you see there?
Michelle: Well, a few things. I mean, I remember when I was kind of starting out in PR and we had what we called an influencer index that involved, included journalists and industry analysts. So to me, journalists are our influencers, industry analysts are influencers. So in that way, it's always been a part of what PR pros are doing. We're incorporating those folks into what we're working on, what we're thinking about. But I would say another thing is with influencers, I always feel like you really need to have authenticity there because just paying a celebrity millions of dollars to talk about your brand, if they don't even know the brand or use the brand, why not pick people who are already online talking about and saying favorable things about your brand as use those as influencers? And yes sure you could send them products and make sure they disclose that you did that or pay them whatever you're doing there like just make sure you disclose it but I think in that way it can definitely be helpful. I would say I don't do that quite as much in the manufacturing space but I do sometimes have clients that are looking at particular, you know podcasts or you know things of that nature and I would call those the top ones are I would say they're influential, they're influencers.
Bill: Great, no, so the other thing I want to do, and Michelle, I want to switch gears almost completely here. Let's talk about you, your background, your business. We're all about shameless plugs here. So I want you to shame, you know, I've already been holding up the book, right? And let's make sure it's in, yeah, it was in focus, right? So yeah, you've got one too, so we can be book buddies, right? This is the book club of the Missing Half. But tell us a little bit about yourself, your background, your agency, and then certainly the journey with the book, please.
Michelle: Sure, well, I I started out really as a writer. I have a journalism degree, but I've never been a real reporter per se. I've worked, done some freelance reporting, I guess, in the industry, but writing is my first love, but I got into PR because I thought it would be a great way to keep a lot of variety in my work life because I really get bored just doing the same thing all the time. I think, you know, like, I like you know, some days I'm pitching stories, some days I'm writing customer stories, or I'm writing a press release or something like that. So it is quite a mix of things. Some days we're just having strategy meetings or, you know, maybe I am at a photo shoot with the client, helping them, you know, figure out what visuals we want for this particular, you know, thing that we're working on. So I love the variety that PR has provided me. And then just, you know, kind of across industries, I started out, I'm in Ohio now, but I went to Silicon Valley and worked for seven years with companies like HP and Adobe. And so I have that tech experience. And then I worked with startups out there as well. So that was a really fun chapter of my career. And then I came back to Ohio really for family reasons more than anything else. But it's great because, of course, in the Midwest, we have a lot of manufacturing companies. And it's a great place to be because I'm really pretty focused solely focused on B2B for the most part. And then within that, I really enjoy manufacturing, technology, industrial type clients.
Bill: Great. And yeah, so moving back to Ohio, you certainly are in the Rust Belt as it were, right? Tremendous amount of manufacturing in Pennsylvania, Ohio, New York, Michigan, that whole Rust Belt area. So you're right in the Silicon Valley of manufacturing as it were, right? So we're in that space here. But Michelle, tell us about, and these links that you're going to talk about will be included in all of the the show notes and in the posts, but tell us about where people can find you, the name of your company, website. And then certainly we can't forget to plug the book.
Michelle: We won't forget that. So yeah, so I have a website. It's michellegarrett.com. I am a solo consultant. I do from time to time collaborate with agencies and other partners, but when you hire me, you work with me because I am a one person show here, which means I don't work with a hundred clients. I work with a handful of clients and I work really closely with those clients for the most part. So. And I enjoy that because I really like to dig in and get to know my clients and I like them to view me as a partner and somebody they can turn to to bounce ideas. I think that's kind of the value of having somebody on board like me because they know if they have a question, sometimes people just don't know. They don't know what they don't know and it's good to have somebody who's kind of been there and can help maybe give some advice to help them figure out which way they want to go. So that's that. I have a newsletter. It's free, once a month. You can go to my website and sign up. I think all that's required is your email address. And let's see what else. I'm on LinkedIn. I'm on Threads. I'm still on Twitter/X because reporters spend a lot of time there still. So I'm over there too. And let me think what else. I have a show too called PR Explored where I interview people in PR marketing. Experts that can help us kind of dive in. And one of the things we're going to be talking about is the AI driven search. That's the next episode coming up. I think it's next week with Andy Crestadena. So that'll be coming up. And I do those live stream and then they're all available on YouTube. So you can pull any and all of those up.
Bill: All right, so whoever's watching, will be able to find all of those links in the whether they're the captions or the comments or wherever they put such things. I don't know. I don't do it, but the team does and they do a nice job and they're available. So well, Michelle, this has been fantastic. Let's quickly talk B2B PR That Gets Results. Your book. Tell us take a minute or two and tell us about that journey writing it. I know that I've never written a book because I'm afraid to I think it's too hard but maybe encourage me to take the plunge, I don't know or or say, Bill don't do i,t it's not worth it, I don't know.
Michelle: Well, if you're gonna do it, you have to find a dedicated time every week in your schedule. That's the only way I got it done was like every Friday morning from like eight to noon. That's what I worked on. I focused solely on a chapter of the book. But it took me a couple of years to get it all really together. And yeah, I mean, to me, it's just, again, it's a platform. My website is a platform, but this book is another kind of a platform, a basis, you know, where, you know, I can point people and, you know, not everyone can hire me or a PR consultant. Instead they can, you know, pick up a copy of the book. There might be courses coming at some point. So we'll see about that. But yeah, you know, I speak and I do other things and this just felt like a natural next step for me in my own journey and marketing my business. I've been on my own for over 20 years now. And so I, yeah, it's, I mean, I just feel like I'm always trying to, you know, and adding the podcast, the YouTube show, whatever you want to call it. I think vidcast is what they're calling them now, but I don't know. That's another step because I, like you, I'm not naturally like inclined to be on video, but I have kind of pushed myself this year because I knew YouTube was going to be big. And it's been big, but you know, it's getting even more important, I think. And so the book, the YouTube, those are all things that I'm doing to kind of, you know, go to the next level for my business.
Bill: No, I love it. Michelle, congratulations on 20 years. Congratulations on the book. I think that's amazing. And for anybody who's interested in B2B PR, I really want to recommend this book. I really believe it is a Swiss army knife. I mean, it talks about from a company perspective, from a freelance perspective, from an internal marketing department standpoint, a readiness checklist. I mean, there are so many. Whenever I read books like this, I'm hoping for one to two gold nuggets. Right. Because that's kind of like what you're trying to extract and nowhere to lie. There were probably seven to 10 nuggets in this book that I thought could be applied immediately. I know they won't be by many companies and that's why you need to reach out to someone like Michelle to actually get it done because you know, we can all read about things. We can all read about weight loss. We can all read about having a better diet. We can all read about all these things, but at some point in time, you need to get a professional who can help you walk through it, who understands how to get it done because you need to get it done quickly. So I couldn't recommend this book more. Michelle, thank you so much for joining us today. And I really appreciate you coming on the show.
Michelle: Thank you so much for having me, Bill. This was great.