322: POCKET PR ESSENTIALS / Zooming out: Introducing my ‘Marketing Communications Pyramid’

Speaker A: Thank you for joining us here on Earn the Right, your audio platform for building reputation based authority. What we're all about is turning credibility into recognition and recognition into opportunity. This show is for credible founders, professional experts and solo practice owners who have earned their stripes and are ready to amplify their voice. The podcast is made up of four different tracks. Now, they're different tracks, but they are all interrelated. Today's track. Today's track is Pocket pr, uh Essentials. Think of Pocket PR Essentials as your audio playbook for mastering pr, uh, content and digital communications in a way that's strategic, sustainable and respectful. So let's get into this particular track. Pocket PR Essentials. Pocket PR Essentials, Episode number seven, introducing my marketing communications pyramid. Thank you for making it this far. You're a week into this micro coaching. We're going to continue on the theme of big picture. And I reiterate why we're doing that is because if we look at the big picture and work out what PR is and what it isn't, where it fits in the marketing communications mix, which is what this episode's going to delve into. And also, you know, as marketing, what is commonly, you know, thought of as marketing. And the reason is just if we zoom out and we get a bit of clarity on this, then you're going to be in a position to think more strategically. And once you can think more strategically, you can burst forth with enthusiasm and clarity and confidence. And you know, because there's so many tactics and we're going to, don't worry, we're going to get into the weeds. But if you don't go through this process first, I believe, and go straight into the weeds, you'll get entangled very quickly. This, you know, just about every business that I've ever seen gets, loves the weeds and the tactics and the tech and the shiny new toys, but is not doing a lot of things strategically. And you can't understand the strategy unless you understand where all the moving parts are. So today I just want to unpack my marketing Communications pyramid. And this is a frame, I suppose you could call it a framework. I've been using this for many, many, many, many years to break down the various make up what you could call, or what some call the marketing mix, the marketing communications mix is probably more correct terminology. And I do that so I can, for my clients, my coaching clients, my consulting clients, I can isolate what are the PR elements and where they sit in the broader picture. So this is a visual, obviously, uh, it's a Pyramid. And so I'm going to describe it for you. So we've got a pyramid now at the bottom. We have at the very bottom, at the very base of the pyramid. It's shared, it's shared between owned media and social media. Owned media, uh, and we will be coming back to this again and again and again. But owned media are those media channels you own and control. So a podcast is something you own and control. Your blog, your website, your live stream show, uh, your email newsletter, the uh, the subscriber list that the newsletter goes out to, webinars, events, books, ebooks, guides, that sort of thing. This, these are uh, this is what we call owned media. I'll put YouTube in there as well. But as I like to say, you know, you don't own and control YouTube, but you do own the, obviously the content you put on it and the videos. But if YouTube went down tomorrow, which is very unlikely, but you can still use another video player to put those videos on your website. So videos and live streams are uh, part of the owned media remit as far as I'm concerned. And next to it in lockstep is social media. And of course social media is everything from Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest, all the things that you might be on one or more or all of them. And that's the social media. And there's two parts to social media really. There's the content that you put on it and, and it's, you know, social media is driven by uh, content but it's also driven by participation. That's the social side of social media without the social. And that's the participation, the commentary, the uh, you know, commenting on other people's uh, posts, et cetera. It's just media. So uh, at the very base we have owned media and social media and we will be looking at these, really dissecting them from a PR perspective. But let's just still say stay in the helicopter above uh, Earth for the moment. The next layer up is what we call earned media. Now earned media, what falls under this? This is, it's, it's getting exposure, I suppose you could say it's getting editorial exposure in independent third party uh, channels. So at its, at its greatest and highest you might be on tv, you might get an interview on TV or interview on talkback radio or you might have a profile written in uh, in your trade journal, uh, that services your industry or local newspaper or you might be quoted by a magazine or an uh, industry, uh, paper, newspaper or white paper that someone does you get the idea there. But of course, today earned media is really broader than that now. So when we talk about, you know, going out and getting coverage for our brand, our product, our thought leadership, our thinking, our, you know, organization, we call that media relations in the PR game. And that means we're building relationships with the key media that are really important to us. And so they, uh, it has stemmed from, you know, those mainstream type media outlets. But of course today the media has taken on a whole new ballgame, whole new meaning. And it's got everything from, you know, blogs and, uh, blogs, uh, run by individuals, blogs that are published by brands and organizations. You know, but they've built an audience and they need, they need others, other people to submit articles and opinion pieces for them. For example, podcasts, if you're on someone else's podcast, that is a great earned media opportunity. And so, uh, some people would say that, you know, a podcaster is really an influencer. Forget the names of it. They're a podcast, they're a content creator, they might be an influencer. So if we put it under the whole media and influencer relations, that is what earned media is all about. So anything, I guess, where, you know, there's implied third party endorsement by being on someone else's media outlet, so that's earned media, really important. And for a lot of people that's all PR is. But it's just one part of the PR pie, as you will no doubt have grasped as a result of listening to previous episodes. And so what we're trying to do with owned media, earned media, social media, we're trying to build our audience, we're trying to deepen the level of connection we have with that audience. It's driven by content. And so it's a content first approach. But of course there's relationships built in there. You know, we're trying to, you know, deepen connection with our audience and reach new people all the time. That's, that's how we grow, by reaching new people. And so if we look at the foundations, what we're trying to do is build recognition for our, uh, brand and our ideas and our expertise. And I'm not talking just, oh, I know that brand, I know that person. Brand recognition, I'm talking about something deeper than that. You're becoming recognized for who you are and what you do and what you offer and what audience you serve and what you stand for. So there's, you know, recognition is, is a multidimensional thing. Resonance is really important because we want to be able to get out there and resonate with our story and our message. People might look at our stuff or read our tweet or, you know, take in our quote. But if it doesn't resonate with the target audience that we're aiming for, then we need to go back to the well and try and make sure that our content is resonating and you're not going to knock it out of the park every time. But over a period of time, being able to resonate with our content is really important. Relationships. We're wanting to try and build relationships with the media, with influencers, but also with our, uh, social media followers and people who subscribe to our owned media content. We want to build and deepen those relationships. That's absolutely critical. And reputation, everything we do should be trying to continue to be building our reputation ongoing. The next layer up is what we call partner media. And partner media is more so about leveraging other people's event or their media property. So for example, could be sponsorships and it could be as simple as a sports sponsorship or a local, uh, community partnership. Now that may or may not include elements of owned media, earned media, social media, and it might be paid. So a lot of sponsorships do will and I call partner media really a gray area. If owned media earned meat in social media very strongly in the PR camp, uh, partner media is a bit of a gray area because a lot of marketers handle the sponsorship side of things. If you're going to sponsor a large event or a sporting, a sports property or a sporting organisation or a team, then that kind of falls into a little bit of marketing. But a lot of PR people do manage those types of sponsorships and leverage them. Uh, when it comes to community partnerships, these tend to be probably more under the PR remit where you're trying to deepen your roots within the community in which you operate. And part of that is that license to operate is really to partner with community organisations, causes, issues that side of things and then leverage that cause or issue publicly. Use your platform to promote that cause or issue. Next layer up we have paid media. Now this is really very much in the M marketing remit, uh, social ads. So that could be anything on LinkedIn, could be TikTok, Twitter, could be, um, Facebook, Instagram, etc. Could you include their Google Ads, paid search and of course the traditional, the traditional media, radio, tv, newspapers, magazines, et cetera. And you know, paid media should be for leads and sales specifically and zooming in and getting to the right audience through your paid ads and Getting them to take action. Now whatever that action is, that's, that's to do with whatever your business is. The call to action might be directly for a sale or it might be to sign up for an event or download a, you know, a uh, white paper that then leads into a conversation with a client or a potential client client. Now sometimes the pr, uh, people will come in on the paid media side because they're out there creating content and they want to reach a bigger audience more quickly. And so to do that is the best way. One of the quickest ways is to, is to pay for that and to target your audience through social media channels, putting some money behind it. And then the last layer up is direct. And this is around, you know, gaining access to key players, influencers, clients, customers, you know, potential recruits if you're in employing people or business partners, that side of things. So direct communications falls under direct and that's email or phone pitches, face to face, meetings, boardroom presentations, you know, where you're going direct to people. And so, you know, there's an element of that in most businesses. And if you know you're running a business, no doubt you are doing direct communication all the time. The whole idea of this pyramid is that the bottom things, the stuff that falls under pr, uh, the owned media, the social media, the earned media, and then it starts layering up. That does the heavy lifting for your paid media spend and your direct communications. Because if you're going to call someone and it's a cold call, for example, and you need to, it's an influencer or someone really important in your industry and you put a call into them because you want to tee up a coffee or a meeting, you know they're going to check you out, of course they're going to check you out before they say yes, everyone checks everyone out today. And so will what they find do the professional you justice? Will what they find online do justice to your brand and your business? Now if you've done the work, you've put the yards in the owned media, social media, earned media, that is doing the heavy lifting for your more marketing, your more overt marketing activities. So paid media and direct communications and even sponsorships as well as. So that's how the pyramid works. And I'll catch you in the next episode. M.