How can you boost your credibility, and gain market share? Do you want to sell your product, and get VC money? Today Dmitri and Tristra discuss a topic that is near and dear to them both. It's the fundamentals of PR! This is an essential listen for startups – and if you’re well established, there are nuggets of wisdom for you too.
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Episode Transcript
Machine transcribed
0:00:18 - Dmitri
Welcome back to Music Tectonics, where we go beneath the surface of music, tech and innovation. I'm your host. I'm one of your hosts, dimitri Vitsa. I'm also the founder and CEO of Rock Paper Scissors.
0:00:31 - Tristra
And I'm the other host who can't wait to jump in and say I'm Trista Neuer-Jager and I am the chief strategy officer at Rock Paper Scissors.
0:00:40 - Dmitri
Yeah, we do a lot of PR and marketing for a wide variety of music tech and music innovation companies, and we've covered some amazing topics on this how to Startup series at Music Tectonics, from getting your mindset right to how to think about investment, and I truly hope that there are a hundred company founders out there listening to this podcast and building alongside this series. That was our goal. Our conversations are meant to help you make great decisions and try things out that get you further along in your music tech journey, but Trista and I realized that we work so hard not to self-promote our PR and marketing company, rock Paper Scissors, that we've left out the topic of how to PR, so we thought today we would have Trista interview me to help you get ready for that aspect of your work.
0:01:26 - Tristra
And even if you're not ready to launch your first press release right now, there are a lot of things you can do to prepare. So take some notes and think about how you could build up to your first big news announcement, and you know, if it's a couple months away, if it's a year away, it doesn't matter. You can start having that little corner of your mindset ready to PR. Okay, so this is really fun to interview you, Dimitri, especially because you're the one who dragged me into this whole PR game anyway and kind of taught me everything I know, at least in the beginning and now you teach me what I know.
Dmitri
Exactly so. First off, let's talk a little bit about PR itself as a thing. There seem to be a lot of different perceptions about the role of the media today and in some ways, you know, there's some people who might even say is this even a thing anymore? Why should I worry about this? What is the relevance of PR and the press these days for startups?
0:02:23 - Tristra
Well, it is interesting to look at the media landscape because it has changed quite a lot in the last 5, 10, 20, 50, 100 years. I mean, it's always changing, but it is tricky now because we live so much in this digital world and people do not hold very many paper magazines or newspapers as a way to get their information, their news. And in fact, just not that long ago I noticed on a forum online a traditional music PR expert saying hey, what's going on with press? Is anyone else seeing a drop in press? And I'm like yeah, for like the last five, 10 years for the artist facing or the fan facing stuff.
There isn't a lot of press being written about music. It's not quite the same with companies or with ideas. There's still content out there in terms of journalism and media that's writing about these things. You certainly have the trade press, the business press, the tech press, and then you have some relevant things to the wider consumer slash lifestyle world as well, and so you have this situation where a lot of people are gathering information through video or through digital platforms, social media platforms and so forth, and it starts to feel like, well, I'm getting my content from peers or from people all over the world, or whatever what you know. I'm not getting my content from quote the press.
There is something unique about having a third party, an expert, talk about your company or your product or your service. It can literally be transformative to get that kind of validation. And if you look at that type of content, yes, you might be reading it on social media, but oftentimes it does start with an expert, a journalist, a writer or an influencer of some sort that's creating content. It could be written content or articles. It could be video as well, but a lot of interesting news stories break through somebody writing about it as a professional who writes professionally, and then it gets shared socially. It creates word of mouth in the old way where somebody's literally like, hey, did you see that New York Times article, Did you see that Wired article? But oftentimes it's somebody posts it in social media or is talking about it in video form as well. There's, you know, hard questions that somebody needs to ask and the work to do, the reporting on what's going on.
So there is, I think, definitely media has shifted and certain industries or certain music, even certain music products, it's harder to get press for. There isn't as much income for media that writes about music, for example, example, and so it switched from. It switched from I don't know what the exact order was. It switched from magazines to radio, to blogs, to, uh, playlist pitching and now influencer pitching and so forth for like songs or something like that.
But, um, but with companies like the ones that run around in the music tectonics network, there's still a lot of opportunities for professional writers to interview you, to talk about what you do, to help share announcements and so forth. And I do have to say, if you haven't experienced it, there is a psychological benefit to having your work in the public record right Like sure. Maybe somebody posted a video that lasted for a few minutes about some consumer product that blew up at some moment but then was out of business later. But having that sort of written record can really have a positive impact on you as a founder as well as in the conversations that you have in the future. So, in terms of the relevance of PR and press these days, there's still opportunities. They have changed and they don't work for everything, but they certainly work for music tech companies and it can really give you the confidence to go to the next level with the business deals that you're doing.
0:06:11 - AD
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0:07:32 - Tristra
I think we need to take a minute here to define what PR even is, because sometimes when I'm talking to folks who are fairly new to marketing PR, self-promotion, that kind of thing it's really easy for them to see the sort of blur between paid advertisement and PR earned media. What's a good way to clear all this up and get a good framework for understanding exactly what PR is and how it falls into this greater world of marketing and promotion?
0:08:06 - Dmitri
Well, over the years I've learned about a lot of different approaches to PR and what it means and so forth. But there's one that's been put out by another PR person not in the music industry, not in the music tech space called the PESO model. She called it, and so PESO is an acronym for paid, earned, shared and owned, and I think it's a really valuable way to differentiate PR from other types of marketing Because, really, shared and owned, and I think it's a really valuable way to differentiate PR from other types of marketing Because really PR, for the most part you could say, falls under the umbrella of marketing. Some old school PR folks might say marketing falls under the umbrella of.
PR and personally I think I would prefer if it was AESOP rather than Peso, just because then the earned would be first, which is a lot what we work on. But let me explain PESO model. The P stands for paid. That means anything that you pay for, like advertising. That could be banner ads, that could be pay-per-click ads on Meta, on Google Ads, youtube, tiktok, etc. That's paid. The E stands for earned.
Earned media means that somebody is writing about you, basically on the merits of the interesting points of your story. Right, You've earned coverage because what you're doing is interesting, it's new, it's fresh, it's a development within the field, etc. S stands for shared. Think of that as social media. Whenever you take any kind of content and you share it on Instagram, facebook, tiktok, youtube, etc. That's shared media. And sometimes that shared media can come from a variety of sources which we can talk about. And then the O in peso is owned media. So if you post something on your own website, your own blog, your own video channel, a tattoo on your arm, that is owned media. So you've got. Paid is ads. Earned is press and you know speaking opportunities and so forth that you're not paying for. Shared is social and owned is on your own channel. So the shared stuff frequently would either be owned or earned media that you are then sharing out as well.
So I think it's helpful to think about PR from that model. You can also think of it as earned media. We love that expression because we're, yes, as a PR firm. We get paid a retainer, we get a fee, so you're paying technically, but we're then basically becoming an arm of your team to go reach out and convince the media that you merit a story and you earn that. So that's one aspect, trisha.
The other thing that I think is interesting to talk about is PR versus marketing, because we get marketing documents that read a certain way and then we get press releases or we create press releases or other types of news announcements that are written a different way. A lot of times you think of marketing as sort of targeting a potential consumer. You think of it as a sales pitch a little bit. You're trying to convince people of something. Pr doesn't always have the same tone, and so there's. We think of it as like, if you really hyped yourself up, then you're probably writing with a marketing tone. If you're really doing more of a narrative storytelling approach something that somebody would like, oh that's interesting as opposed to oh, you're trying to convince me of something, oh, you're trying to sell me of something, then that that tends to have more of a PR style with it as well.
0:11:19 - Tristra
Yeah, and I think that's a really important point, because journalists are bullshit detectors by nature at least really the good ones. The ones you want to do are at the best outlets, and so if you come to them with marketing copy, they're going to instantly tune you out, and so taking a slightly more narrative, driven, grounded approach is really helpful. So we're talking about are we just talking about getting a hit in the media, like what exactly should we put under this PR umbrella?
0:11:47 - Dmitri
Yeah, I mean, the media is something that we can get into, specifically because there's a lot there. But before that, like in addition to say the music trade, magazines, et cetera, or what other publications we can talk about, podcasts is another form of earned media, like we're doing one right now. You can, you can.
0:12:07 - Tristra
Who earned? Who earned their way on here? Well, if it's your own.
0:12:10 - Dmitri
Technically, for us this is owned media. But if somebody were to, pitch us and get on our podcast. That would be earned media.
0:12:17 - Tristra
Does happen.
0:12:17 - Dmitri
And some of these other formats that you're asking about are a little bit like. You could also maybe pay to have an ad on a podcast as well, but so podcast is another category in addition to whatever the press would be. Now, conferences is another one. As a PR firm, we're frequently helping clients pitch to be on conference panels, moderators, et cetera, and it could cross into other types of events too, where you know there might be other opportunities. Awards would be another one. Sometimes awards are kind of a hybrid you have to earn it, but you also have to pay a fee. But yeah, it doesn't just have to be the written word as well and you can do kind of. You can do earned media in terms of influencers too, but most influencers these days in terms of video TikTok, youtube, et cetera usually expect a fee. That's pretty much their entire business model.
0:13:04 - Tristra
Yeah, Absolutely so in this day and age, and we've talked a little bit about how complicated or difficult it can be to secure press. So what press is out there? What should startups be thinking about in terms of their press?
0:13:20 - Dmitri
music ally, hype, bot, digital music news, music connection. There's actually a lot more trades than most people realize, I think, um, and some of them are more specific than others, some are regionally differentiated from others, etc. But that's a category that a lot of clients come to us and that's basically what they want, and it's that's what's going to move the needle for most b2b music tech companies that want to work with other music tech companies or with record labels, or with publishers, or with streaming services, or with social media companies or gaming companies, etc. They want to be seen as a leader within the music industry.
In addition to the trades, there's a lot of business magazines that are interested and relevant to what's happening in the business side of music as well. So you've got your Forbes, your Inc, your Fast Company, your Fortune, your Wall Street Journal and on and on, and some people overlap business with tech, but there's a lot of separate tech publications. Some of them are kind of like industry rags, like TechCrunch, venturebeat, things like that, and then some of them are more consumer-facing. They could be gadget-related You've got Engadget, you've got the Verge, and then there's sort of like hybrid business and tech as well.
0:14:37 - Dmitri
there I was going to mention things like Progressive Grocer. I think we pitched them once Did we. I can't remember the client, but there was a reason to pitch Progressive Grocer and there are other trade publications.
0:14:47 - Tristra
That's a great point because you know like to pitch progressive Well. And there are other trade publications. That's a great point because you know like a lot of our clients work in music tech but they also overlap with sports or they overlap with video, or they overlap with gaming.
0:14:59 - Tristra
Telephony, telecom yeah, absolutely.
0:15:00 - Dmitri
Or health, health and wellness, or mixed reality and spatial computing, and so there are other trade magazines for each of those. Another good trade category that some of our clients are relevant for if they're pitching like ad agencies or brands, are the ad trades, the ad weeks and the ad ages and the Marpex and things like that as Digiday, the drum, things like that. So you've got the music trades, but then you've got these other trades that are relevant to some of our clients and to some of you that are listening out there, and then we also on occasion get to pitch consumer and lifestyle outlets, which is a very broad category. Some of them are very specific to specific types of lifestyles. There could be the more yoga, sports lifestyle stuff, and there could be more like the homemaking or fashion lifestyle stuff.
There's just so many different categories. The consumer side could be the kind of gadget that could be literally like the publications that write about things you could buy, that review things that you could buy, or just lifestyle, and you have news publications as well. That wouldn't necessarily fit into the trade, business or tech, but maybe the ideas, the ideas lifestyle. There are people out there with ideas and still want to read and talk about it, but the point is like for each of our clients or whatever type of company you are out there in podcast land listening, you may have some publications that resonate for you specifically, that are different than another music tech company that's out there.
0:16:26 - Tristra
I love that. I think it's great for startups to think really broadly about where they might fit in and to kind of even outlets that may seem like a reach not like a crazy reach like we will be on the front page of you know, this big old newspaper but to really powerful. I'm thinking of some clients that got regional TV or a really good article in a local business journal that made a new revenue stream of you know building up more business in the education side of the business, which is super cool.
Yeah, so that success story suggests my next question, which is how can you tell if PR is working? Like, say, you get a bunch of press hits, what should you be looking for in your business? What kind of things can happen?
0:17:31 - Dmitri
Yeah, it's interesting because there's actually a wide variety. I think most people just assume that the main reason to get press is to generate new leads and to convert new customers, and that is true. We definitely hear from clients where a certain press hit. They can literally link their sales success back to one particular article or a handful of articles and they start to know like, oh this, every time we get reviewed by this publication, this product goes up in sales. We can actually assign a dollar value there. But I will say that's really just the tip of the iceberg and that's not the thing that happens for everybody every time.
And with a lot of music tech companies, a lot of it's on the business side, regardless of whether it's a business, b2b company or a consumer-facing company.
Word of mouth is the thing that I think clients notice the most.
People mention to them hey, I saw the article about you in such and such, or I saw you posted that article on social media, on LinkedIn, and so it's just like it's this and it just kind of raises the energy level of all the conversations.
And another aspect about that is kind of the credibility and legitimacy that you get as a result of this expert, third party, noted media brand talking about you or your company or your product. And so not only are they saying, hey, I saw this hat, you know, I saw that article, I know more about you now, but also they're you know, they they're like oh, wow, you're really doing this, you, you know, this is, this isn't just something you work out of your basement to create, but people are talking about you, people are writing about you. That creates, creates credibility, that creates third-party kind of social validation, et cetera. And education actually, in the sense that before you walk into your next meeting for a potential partnership or investment or hire or acquisition or something like that, people they already know what you do and so you're kind of further along. Those next conversations go that much further. So there's some other benefits, trisha. I don't want to just give you a whole laundry list, but you know we've thought about this a lot we hear from clients about what's working for them.
Search engine optimization is still a thing. You still want to show up when people are searching for your product or service type. You don't not want to be on the first page and getting press hits in legitimate articles whether they're trades or business, or tech or consumer publications will definitely have a positive impact for you on SEO.
0:19:57 - Tristra
Seo has always been about tracking links back to your website, so that's very helpful, and this is still true in the era of AI search, because a lot of people who are messing around with the weights, right, and what it's going to, what's going to crank up in a summary, are looking at okay, where are the legitimate outlets or the legitimate sources that have some kind? I mean not always, but there's definitely an effort. So getting a press hit will make a difference, even in the age of AI search.
0:20:27 - Dmitri
Absolutely. There's any minute now we're going to see tons of LinkedIn posts about GPT optimization Instead of SEO. It's going to be called GPTO or something like that.
So that's going to happen. And, that being said, you know these articles give you a great thing to post on social media. I think people struggle with, like, what should I put on social media? How much should I promote my company? People struggle with, like, what should I put on social media, how much should I promote my company, or how can I sort of change the angle or change the perspective of what it is that I'm posting on social media?
You get a press hit. It's a great opportunity to post on your, on your LinkedIn, or, if you're consumer, facing on your other socials, on your Instagrams, et cetera. You know, a little, a little snapshot with a pull quote of something some publication is talking about you as well. So it's, it's great for not only getting word of mouth, but also creating word of mouth, you know, so that you can also generate some word of mouth thanks to some some legitimacy out there.
What can this? I mean you know all this stuff. What can it lead to beyond just um, these types of things? You know, if you're looking for investment, you're going to get some not only some potential interest from outside parties, but also, you know, when you walk into those conversations you get that sense of legitimacy, like, oh, this is a legit business, people are talking about it. If you're looking for potential acquisitions, you want somebody to buy your company. That's another opportunity as well. We've seen press play a role specifically in needling a larger company and that larger company, after one op-ed, would then buy your company as well. So there's some interesting things you can do with press around that as well.
0:21:59 - Tristra
Yeah, Press can really induce FOMO in somebody that you're you kind of, maybe you're competing with on some level, but they're much bigger and maybe you're hoping that they might acquire you. We've seen that little move work really well.
0:22:13 - Dmitri
And you know I'd say a couple other things on this point before we move on. You're going to get some confidence from being covered in the press about talking about your own business. Sometimes a journalist will frame things in a way that actually you're like, oh, that's how people want to describe this. I've been using these other jargony, words or whatever, but a journalist has kind of like filtered through and now given you some great talking points and, regardless of whether that's the case, just the fact that they're talking about you will help you walk into a meeting feeling like, okay, yeah, I'm not, you know, like you're still testing ideas sometimes and like getting that third party validation can help you internally, psychologically as well.
0:22:50 - Tristra
It and like getting that third party validation can help you internally, psychologically as well. It's especially important if you're doing something very, very new, that where the market maybe is still emerging or where it's not quite clear how the technology is going to fit into the existing industry or tech stack or whatever. If you, if you have someone kind of give you their view, it can be great things to pull on. Yeah, or you can also see like, wow, this person, really they covered it, they were positive, but maybe they missed this whole thing. We really need to work on bringing that out in our messaging. So it's always a great learning experience, no matter what.
0:23:23 - Speaker 1
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0:24:36 - Dmitri
So there's one last thing regarding sort of what the impact can be of press. That is our measure. This is going to sound a little crazy for all you.
0:24:44 - Tristra
Vanity metric for RBS. Yeah, for all you quantitative folks, this is going to sound a little crazy.
0:24:48 - Dmitri
Our biggest measure of success is client happiness, and that may sound crazy, but clients have different needs. I just listed a bunch of stuff that can help you in PR, but you know some of them might not be relevant to you. So you know, there's like almost like, it's almost like um different, different measures of how how important is SEO for you versus leads generation, versus you know getting content to talk about, versus the psychological impact on yourself, or how you know how a meeting goes, because you've been written up in music business worldwide or music ally, etc. And so the client happiness is the, I think, the biggest factor. And Tricia, as our chief strategy officer, you're kind of on the front lines with this.
0:25:32 - Tristra
Yeah, client happiness is a really fun measure, and part of that is because people are happy in different ways and the success can be measured in different ways and it really depends on what you're trying to accomplish. So, startups, if I can give you one piece of advice, as you begin your PR journey, think carefully about what the number one thing you want to achieve. So the clients that do the best with an agency or on their own, with their own in-house kind of efforts, are the ones who keep you know, keep focused on what the actual goal is. So think strategically, not just tactically, like oh well, we're gonna get the word out, we're gonna do it right away and we're gonna get it to all these different outlets Like that's. That's not a strategy, that's just like a random plan for for what we call spraying and praying Right. So the the needs that you may have can really vary. So if we've had some really great like super deep B2B clients that really only needed two or three really key hits in specific outlets and that is what made the difference for them, I'm thinking of someone like Mogul, which is a basically a royalty administration kind of streamlining platform that helps artists and their teams and labels, potentially find all of the money everywhere and bring it all together in one place, and they also, I think, are building a service to help collect these royalties, which can be a very onerous and tedious process.
But then we've also had clients, you know. So they needed a really key set of things and when those happened it worked out. It worked wonderfully for them. We've had other clients, like Playtime Engineering. They're super, super fun. They make synth, you know, full-blown synthesizers, but they are safety rated for young children and they were building their first sort of, I would say, an all-ages product and they really needed so they had this great base, but they really needed help, kind of getting more oomph behind a Kickstarter and then just spreading the word about this new product. That was somewhat different from the kid-oriented stuff they'd done before, and so they were really looking for lifestyle press and for you know, the sort of gadget reviews and fun recommendation gift list kind of things, and we were able to get them that and they just killed it with their Kickstarter. So that was pretty incredible and pretty fun to see.
0:27:52 - Dmitri
As a publicist, it's always so rewarding when somebody does really, really well and gets to where they want to go and it's cool to see that there's this diverse set of needs and approaches as a result of those needs and you know being really. I like what you said, Trish, about sort of like being really clear about what your goals are, because that will impact what and we can help you identify. Why would you do press and PR and so forth, but then really like tracking those business goals to who you're trying to target? Because if you're a B2B company like Mogul, you're not going to be looking for the same types of press as a B2C company like Playtime Engineering and MyTracks. So, yeah, that's really important to sort of line that up and go from goals to audiences, to media targets, to tactics, and that's something we can help you with.
0:28:37 - Tristra
And you can not be afraid to. Sometimes, if you're really new to this game, you're not quite sure where you're going. Start small Right. Think of it as your first round of press outreach could be a dress rehearsal, where you get on some podcasts that are going to be fun to do. You're going to practice talking about what you're doing. You're going to get some good first hits, though Sometimes the strategy is, even with startups, like we want to go really big, really fast and we need to just have a big, splashy launch. And that's possible too, but you need to make sure you have all the pieces in place for that.
So, Dimitri, what do you need to have in place if you're going to start doing PR? What does a company need by the time they're either going to press play on their own PR plan or, as we hope, they will hire a wonderful outside PR firm?
0:29:20 - Dmitri
Yeah, there's a variety of things that you can have in place that will get you the best value for working with a PR firm. The first and most important one is have a product or service that's ready. We have been hired by pre-launch companies that are not planning to launch anytime soon, and it is more challenging and I'll talk a little bit about things you can do in those situations. But the truth is, you're going to get the most value out of doing a press campaign if there's something to press about, and a product or service in the case of a music tech or music innovation company, typically is important.
Now I say that some of you listening out, there are not startups. Don't worry about this. It's really more for when you're a startup, when you're a startup founder, you have a lot of ideas. You have a roadmap in mind In your mind. You are further along than anyone else knows. You might be further along than you realize, or you might not be as far along as you realize too. You're like, oh, we've got the first thing and the next thing's coming, but be prepared that the roadmap for technical development always takes longer, as does the road to investment.
0:30:24 - Tristra
And Dimitri, just to speak to that point for a second. That means if you have a bunch of features and hires and we'll get to like the whole list of things, you can stay quiet, and it's really hard to do as a founder. You're so excited, but please hold it, keep it to yourself if you're even thinking about doing PR, because if you've got a bunch of that stuff already in your basket, you can dole it out carefully over time and always have something to talk about, as opposed to just like announcing it randomly on LinkedIn and then you've lost your chance to get it out to the press.
0:30:55 - Dmitri
Yeah. So, speaking of which, it is great, if you're going to do a PR effort, a retainer, a campaign, to have a variety of different types of news announcements that trist was talking about. There's the launch, and sometimes people come to us and that's all they have. Um, sometimes we can get some press with that, but typically you need more than that. So what else, what else would be great to have to build the momentum, new features. After the launch, you may do uh, you may a beta, you may come out of beta, you may do a 2.0, etc. There may just be like one little button that you've added to your dashboard or to your app or to your machine or whatever, that all of a sudden is getting tons of traction. Maybe it opens doors in another vertical, within music, or maybe it's outside of music as well. Those new features are super great for announcements, investment, a great excuse to make an announcement. There are some publications out there that love to report on that type of news. So we definitely encourage you to kind of like put these things together the way that Trish was talking about, like build momentum through this cadence of things. So just because you raise the money doesn't mean you have to announce it right away. You might want to actually have a product so that by the time you announce your investment, people have a call to action that actually will help your business. If you're buying companies or if you get sold, that's another news announcement. But there's even small things, like a new person that you hire that came from an interesting past. Maybe it's from a different field, maybe it's from a same field, but they're a veteran or executive from, say, a major label or a streaming service or a social media or gaming platform, things like that. If you hire somebody that's in a new region, you have the opportunity to quote, open a new office, and that's another opportunity to reach out to the press. They can start to see that not only do you have a strong presence in LA, but now you have a Nashville office too, which could open up new types of conversations and then any types of events whether you're organizing your own events or you're part of events, part of conferences or launches that are in person, things like that that's another opportunity to make an announcement. So make sure you've got a product or service, make sure you've got a string of news announcements with quite a lot of variety as possible there.
Another thing that's great to have is positions that you want to take. I mean the types of things that you could work with your PR person to do guest articles, op-eds. It could be that you have a blog that you want to amplify. We've worked with clients who already have a content person in-house but nobody's reading their blog, so we syndicate that blog out to another publication. It could be on a one-time deal or it could be where we literally syndicate it. We're like, hey, would you guys like to take a monthly article from this client that's writing all about this, that or the other thing? But really those we call that kind of stuff like the thought leadership component of it is how you establish yourself around certain concepts that then push your business or your service forward as well. So be prepared to have certain positions that not only you want to take, but that you're willing to talk about. We also have clients sometimes who have a strong feeling about something but for political reasons or partner or stakeholder reasons, they can't actually say anything, and that makes it challenging. Yeah.
0:34:06 - Tristra
Yeah, Be aware of those pitfalls before you start. Like you know, putting all your, I keep wanting to talk about baskets, but before you put your eggs in that basket, I don't know what's going on with me today. I'm in a basket-y mood.
0:34:18 - Dmitri
So another thing that you probably want to have in place is a budget, and what I mean by that is you mean you have to pay publicists?
0:34:27 - Tristra
What is this?
0:34:28 - Dmitri
Typically, pr firms work on a retainer and, as a result, you want to make sure that you already know that you're going to have cash in the bank at the beginning of each month when that invoice becomes due. That could be in the form of investment, which is great for a news story as well, but also great for keeping your PR firm alive and well. And then the other option is cash flow. If you're cash flow positive, that's a great. You know that's a great source to work with partners like a PR firm or other agencies and things like that too. So just a reminder that even though you have a product or service and you have lots of news and you have lots of ideas and you want to be in the press and you like all the benefits that come from it, this is a lot of work. It's a labor intensive thing, so just make sure you've got enough runway to help you get there.
Another, just last bit on this Tristra, in terms of what to have in place before you hire a PR firm, would be great if you have some visuals and branding. We actually have the ability to help with that. Some firms don't, but we now have a network of folks we can work with too. We can help you with a landing page and a website. We can help you with logos and images and that sort of thing, but a lot of times people come to us with that ready, ready to go. That means we can just move more quickly with getting you press and so forth. It just makes you look legitimate. It gives us opportunities to run, you know, pitch articles with some imagery and so forth. If you have a video demo, a sizzle reel, a teaser of some sort, one that really shows off, like the, either the value proposition of what you have to offer, or even the um, uh, just not a, a very hypey version of a sizzle reel, like if it's just like this thing is coming, we can't really do much with that in terms of press.
0:36:09 - Tristra
We need your monster truck voice right there.
And for the video it can be short, it can be a minute and as long as it's actually it's a wonderful opportunity, especially if you have a technically complicated product or a very innovative product that, again, people aren't very familiar with. It's an opportunity to educate folks like journalists, who you know they may report on AI, but this aspect of AI, for example, it may be a blank spot for them and you've got a chance to fill that in and that's a really, really cool opportunity. So using a video can really help with that, along with, you know, written descriptions and press releases and that kind of stuff. So we got a long list. There's a long list of to do's there, guys.
Sorry about that, but let's go back for a second to thought leadership and news. Like where does this stuff come from? How should a very busy team who are all wearing five hats lay the groundwork for this? What can people do to start understanding their place in the broader conversation? Because it's easy to get in your bubble and think this is the best thing since sliced bread. Everyone will just want to cover it because it's so awesome. But, alas, we live in a world where there's lots of competing things for our attention. So what can people do to place themselves in the broader music industry conversation?
0:37:29 - Dmitri
Well, and this is something that we can definitely help with too, After I answer this question, if you're still like, yeah, but what are you talking about?
It's definitely part of the process, we think in terms of crystallization being one of the phases of the work that we do with our clients where we're helping you position yourself within the broader context of what's happening in the space you're in and that can be helping to educate you about what we see going on out there. But a big factor there is also understanding your real differentiators. If there's other people in the market that you're operating in that do similar things or the same thing or overlapping things, really being clear about that. So part one is sort of like do some horizon scanning, pay attention to what's happening in the industry, scan the news, see who else is out there, who are the players, who are the players you're going to be selling to, who are the players you're going to be partnering with and who are the players who you're up against from a competition perspective. And you can't really say, oh, I've got this product for record labels or for publishers or for managers or for artists, without really understanding what are those people talking about, what are the problems they're really solving as well?
One little plug here we do something, trish and I do something called the Rock Paper Scanner. It's a weekly newsletter that helps you with some of that horizon scanning. We do a combination of sort of where's the industry revenue? What are kind of like the top level big thinking things that are happening in the industry, and then what are some of the like interesting flavor, you know, like what's happening with gaming, what's happening with Hollywood, what's happening with AI, et cetera, and then just sometimes one of the things I love doing.
This with Tricia is because Tricia reads so much different media. Her horizon scanning goes way beyond the music industry or around tech, and so we get some other interesting articles in there.
0:39:11 - Tristra
I was going to say it's my excuse to read all about you know nanotechnology internet memes.
0:39:17 - Dmitri
But it's all going to impact music at some point, right?
0:39:20 - Tristra
Yes, exactly, it's all very related to music in some way.
0:39:24 - Dmitri
So you want to do enough horizon scanning that you get some of those big picture, futuristic, trista style stuff, and then you want to dig into the music industry details and the personalities and the needs and the problems that are being solved there. So start with horizon scanning. And then I mentioned understanding your differentiators as you start to see, like who else is in the market, who are you competing with, who do you overlap with? Because a lot of what's happening now is that you used to feel like X company was competing with Y, but now it feels like ABC company is competing with C, d, e company, in the sense like there's something that competes, but in another way. They could be friendly partners or whatever too.
But really understanding your differentiators, you know what makes you unique, what is your value proposition and honestly, this is one of the fun psychological parts of PR too is it could be really about your life, mission, work too. Like, what are you doing? What is your contribution, founder, to the world and how is it manifesting through the mission of the work you're doing as a company?
0:40:26 - Tristra
And be more specific than than I want to help artists or I'm going to help artists make a living like, how, why? What exactly um? Is that that the answer will be different for all sorts of different music companies?
0:40:33 - Dmitri
exactly so, yeah, yeah if you're gonna, if you're gonna help artists, then what we actually want to know is I'm gonna help artists by creating a direct to fan platform. That's different for the following reason, and then have a really good reason that's different. Or I'm going to help artists by being a marketing platform that does something that people do in ad tech, but it's never been done for music, and this is how we do it, and this is why it's cheaper, faster, better, more impactful, et cetera. That's the kind of differentiator we're talking about, and that may sound very specific and very in the weeds, but that is ultimately what journalists are going to want to know, like why should I cover you versus somebody else? Why is this new? Why is this different? That's really where I think the fun business storytelling happens as well.
0:41:21 - Tristra
This is all. This is really great. I feel like we've given people a big, big sort of chunk to chew on and think about. But I want to make sure we hit one really important thing which you know, we sort of began with talking about how the overlap between paid media and earned media and owned and pesos and espos and whatever.
But you know, I'm curious how should we think about, like, how does, how should marketing and PR play together? And like, what are some things that startups need to think about if they want to do both?
0:41:52 - Dmitri
Yeah, it's interesting that things have changed so much with media and PR that it starts to bleed together a little bit in a way. I think, for one thing, you can use some of that PR voice that we talked about. That's different than the hypey marketing voice. People are looking for more authenticity, and so start with just the type of storytelling that you're doing as well, so, like if you feel like you're looking at what other brands have done, that might not be the right approach to how to tell your story, not only through the press, but also through marketing direct to your potential user or customer and things like that. So one piece of it is to let your PR voice influence your marketing voice, and I know that's kind of like maybe higher level than what you were thinking I was going to say Trisha.
0:42:40 - Tristra
No, no, I think that's great because that and to give a concrete example, we have an amazing client right now called Eternal Research and we I got the opportunity to work with the founder, who's an incredible person, and write a bunch of her stories up and her perspective and really help her focus on what she wanted to say, and that influenced how we executed the first tranche of marketing for the company and it ended up being a distinctive, wildly idiosyncratic, like really beautiful statement that reflects this company's ethos really well. So sometimes doing that deeper narrative work that's a little bit less like distilled crazy, dialed up to the max like marketing can get, can help.
0:43:26 - Dmitri
You have like a basis of truth right that you can always go back to and that you can always make something crazier it because it's like, when you think about marketing, you think about sort of like, how do I raise the energy level, how do I stand out in the, in the masses, by elevating, amplifying, you know, turning up the volume? When you look at that sort of internal approach, it's really it's it's it's really about like it goes back to that differentiator, it goes back to, like, what is my story? And really going back to the core of sort of like, who am I and why am I unique as a business, as a founder, as a product, whatever. And then you talk about, okay, well, what's the right timbre for how we talk about this? Rather than just volume, it's more like timbre, it's more harmony, like to use some musical metaphors.
0:44:16 - Tristra
Yeah, yeah, yeah yeah. You got to EQ the whole thing. Don't just turn it up Exactly.
0:44:20 - Dmitri
Yeah, so there's that kind of storytelling component of it. I would also say, like you know, we mentioned, when you get press hits, you can then use them in marketing as well. When you get a press hit, there's a lot that you can do with it. You can put it on your website, you can put it in an email newsletter, you can post it on your social media something people forget to do, which is super powerful. Put your latest press hits below your email signature, you know, put a quote and put Billboard next to it, music Business Worldwide next to it, new York Times next to it, whatever it is. And then, of course, you can also help generate word of mouth by just making sure people know about these articles that are coming out as well.
We talked a little bit about video before. Video can strengthen press. Don't rely on it solely, but there's a great way to. You know, you kind of want to think of your storytelling as an accordion or something that starts small but then can expand out. So you have your tagline, you have your boilerplate, you have your about page, you have your press release and then you have your video and you have your social media channels. All those things should sort of head in the same direction.
So I think part of it with marketing is to make sure there's alignment across those, and sometimes, you know, having those folks work closely together can really align that message throughout all the different formats of mediums as well as different moments in time. You know, if you're going to do a Kickstarter campaign, it makes sense to have press go along with it. If you're going to do an influencer campaign, you want to make sure that your press is aligned with the same type of story that you're telling through the influencers, and vice versa. You can actually amplify influencer impact in press as well if you're lucky enough to jump on some viral meme-y type of thing as well.
0:46:06 - Tristra
This is really, really awesome and, by the way, everyone, I'm going to set aside my usual Midwestern humility and say you can hire us for both. That's. The great thing is you could have one team that works together with you and gets both of these things going in parallel and in deep conversation, and that's often like really, really fun for everyone involved.
0:46:28 - Dmitri
Yeah, I mean, we could probably go on for hours on this and maybe we should do a future how to PR Part 2, or something you know.
0:46:35 - Tristra
Oh, absolutely. There's more to talk about on the marketing front as well.
0:46:37 - Dmitri
How to Market would be another one. There's, you know, we could talk about the role of events in public relations, because you can use PR to get events, you can use events to get press, and you can create events that then are cultural moments.
0:46:51 - Tristra
If you have the budget and intestinal fortitude, it's definitely something that can happen. Let us know, hey, listeners, tell us.
0:47:00 - Dmitri
Tell us what you want. What do you need most Absolutely? And we do have some downloads like white papers and things to help you with some of these things. We have one on cultural storytelling for music creation and tech companies. We have one on why AI innovators need to speak human, which is a little bit about translating kind of that technical voice into a more press-friendly narrative and then very direct when and how to Hire a Publicity Firm. So if you go to rockpaperscissors.biz slash resources, you could download any of our white papers. We'll add more as time goes on, but again, that's rockpaperscissors.biz slash resources.
0:47:41 - Tristra
All right, this was fun, Dmitri. It's always fun to talk shop with you.
0:47:43 - Dmitri
I know we rarely do it on record, so it's kind of cool. The interesting thing I do want to hear from folks what you thought of this episode, because we don't. We've been really cautious about promoting ourselves too much in the Music Tectonics brand, but it is part of the how to startup journey and we certainly hope you got some good value from this regardless. Thanks for listening to Music Tectonics. If you like what you hear, please subscribe on your favorite podcast app.
We have new episodes for you every week. Did you know we do free monthly online events that you, our lovely podcast listeners, can join? Find out more at musictectonics.com and, while you're there, look for the latest about our annual conference and sign up for our newsletter to get updates. Everything we do explores the seismic shifts that shake up music and technology the way the earth's tectonic plates cause quakes and make mountains. Connect with music tectonics on Twitter, Instagram and LinkedIn. That's my favorite platform. Connect with me, Dmitri Vietze.
0:48:45 - Speaker 1
If you can spell it, we'll be back again next week, if not sooner.
Let us know what you think! Tweet @MusicTectonics, find us on LinkedIn, Facebook and Instagram, or connect with podcast host Dmitri Vietze on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook.
The Music Tectonics podcast goes beneath the surface of the music industry to explore how technology is changing the way business gets done. Weekly episodes include interviews with music tech movers & shakers, deep dives into seismic shifts, and more.
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