How could you make your personality more valuable than your business?

Welcome to this episode of Speak PR. Today I'm delighted to have Omri Hurwitz with me, and Omri actually is with us today from Israel. Hi, Omri.

Hey, Jim, thanks for having me, man. It's a pleasure.

Mate, it's my pleasure. Thanks for joining us. In fact, you are our first guest from Israel, but we originally connected because you have an agency in California as well. Now tell us, how are you helping business owners to get noticed? You've got an interesting Article in the California Herald talks about how you help companies to build a brand around their company.

Yeah, sure. So our main services is starting at advertising. We do advertising and PR for clients. We help them build a media company around their brand by helping them elevate their podcasts, by getting them press coverage, media coverage, and by advertising certain thought leadership pieces both on LinkedIn And catching intent on Google as well. So that is our main services.

And can you tell us then this idea of building sort of a brand around the product and all the media company around it, is that accessible for anybody or only big companies? Because it sounds like quite a big job.

It is a big job. I think everyone can start out with doing it on their own. And once they want to scale it, they can work with an agency, but a few specific tactics that you can do by yourself. Is first, you can open up your own podcast. Podcast is an amazing networking environment. Also, you have an amazing way to reach so many people through, through promoting your podcast. Podcast is number one. The second thing is writing blogs, doing thought leadership videos on LinkedIn, on Facebook, on YouTube. That's number 2. Everyone can do that. Number 3 is pitching to journalists. You know, on your company and what your company is doing. Everyone can start building up his own network of journalists in his specific niche. So I think those are the 3 main things that literally everyone can start off by themselves.

Now you make it sound easy, but content creation is actually not easy for everybody, right? I mean, that's the bugbear for most people as they're building a business. They haven't got the time to then kind of write about or make videos. Can you give people some advice on where to start or how to start doing that, Omri? Because a blank sheet of paper is, is kind of hard to work with. So where do you get clients to first put pen to paper or the cursor to the keyboard?

So I would start off with letting the key players in my client's company write about the things that they are most interested about, things that come very natural to them. Not to try to write an article, not to try to write some very complicated blog post or something, but really use emotion and use their own experiences from their profession and let that flow. I think once you start doing that and you really treat blog articles or even media outlet articles more as a personal post, like you post on LinkedIn, for instance, I think that helps them, you know, free themselves up And, you know, it's like a snowball. Once you start doing that, you start writing the way you really want to.

It's an interesting point that it doesn't just reside with the CEO, for example, or the marketing person. You're suggesting it starts within the organization, that you might have the head of production or the head of HR write an article. Is that right?

Exactly, 100%, right on, Jim. So the CTO, let's say Chief Technology Officer, I want him to write about and talk about the technology, right? Things he knows about. The SDR, the sales development rep, can talk about his experience as a salesman, the way he communicates, the way he outreaches, the way, you know, the things that come natural to him, exactly like you said.

How do you ensure consistency of voice then, Orey? Because in the old days, you know, when I was working in PR with big corporates before the internet, you know, the company had one voice, one author, one press release channel, one person dealing with the outside world. That has been blown apart by the internet. The downside of that is lots of different people speak about the company from their own perspective. How do you make sure there's a consistent look, feel, narrative to the business?

That's a great question, Jim. I tell you, a lot of people, a lot of employees actually, are not as comfortable expressing themselves on social media, on news media coverages. So the thing is you try to allocate the 2 or 3 or the 4 extroverts on the team who actually really like, you know, being publicized and you play on their strengths. That's what you do. It takes a lot of time to try to convince someone who's not ready for it to do it. And it's not, and I don't feel comfortable doing it. I just go with the guys who want to, want to, you know, turn the show on.

Okay. So. You're like finding the people that are natural communicators within the organization and lifting those guys up and letting them have a platform.

100%. Every company has 2 or 3 individuals who are extroverts who want to market themselves out as well and brand themselves out.

What about those people that are struggling for time? Can you tell us what's your view on using sort of audio and people maybe recording an audio and giving it to an agency or a writer? Because that's another way, isn't it, to help people that aren't writers but are good communicators in some way?

100%. 100%. Audio is, is, you know, is really increasing in the last few years. You were seeing Clubhouse right now, the new social media app. I haven't tried it yet, but it's the talk of the town. You know, it's an audio— for people who don't know, it's an audio app You basically don't write anything, you just record and you talk straight. It's like a virtual, it's like a kind of a podcast setting and audio is really helpful. So to answer your question, let's say you don't like writing, but you're on the phone a lot. Why not record those phone calls and use it as a podcast? Why not? You're talking to the person anyway, you're communicating anyway, you're talking about valuable things that can help a lot of people anyway. Use that as a podcast. You don't have to go and think about making a podcast. You just have to record conversations that are already happening.

Okay, so this is the great point that it doesn't actually mean extra work. It's just capturing the work you're currently doing, right? And then you talk about building sort of a media company around the brand and you talked about these different elements. But Omri, one of the biggest challenges for everyone, myself included, is How do you get people to know it's there? How do you help with that?

I have one answer for you that I truly believe in, and that is advertising. There is no shortcut for that. Advertising. You've got a great piece of content, but everything is so saturated. You advertise. You advertise to your targeted, to a very targeted niche. And that's how you promote your thought leadership pieces, your podcasts. Your blogs, you advertise.

So when you say advertise, on which platforms? Because it seems like Facebook is like the Sargasso Sea, you know, huge and myriad. And then there's LinkedIn, which is very focused, or there's Instagram. Omri, how do people choose? Should they be advertising on all of them or one? What's your guidance on that?

If you're a big B2B company or a tech company, and you have the budget, I recommend LinkedIn. You do LinkedIn advertising and then you can do remarketing through Facebook because Facebook is a really wide audience. But actually Facebook remarketing works well if you're doing website remarketing through Facebook. So that's number one. If you're a B2C company, I would stick to Facebook and Instagram. Try to incorporate them both. And YouTube right now is very cheap. It's, it's the CPMs are very low. So I would recommend everybody who has a podcast or a thought leadership video series on YouTube to do advertising on YouTube.

And how much money are we talking about, Omri? For those of us that don't, I don't advertise on YouTube, for example. You talk about needing tens of dollars, hundreds, thousands?

Yeah, sure. So it really depends. It really depends on, you know, on the budget for every platform and every company. I can, I can dig on it like this, okay? So if LinkedIn— for LinkedIn ads, you're— for people who advertise on LinkedIn ads, they usually have a budget of, let's say, $3,000, uh, monthly, um, up until $15,000, right? So I would recommend using 20% or 30% of that to advertise on thought leadership stuff, on demand generation stuff that are not lead generation, right? Your podcast, all those kind of stuff. I think on YouTube you can get really good results with, let's say, a budget of $1,500. I think that is a good place to start off. And same thing as Facebook, $1,500. That's what I would recommend. That way you can do the testing correctly and you can see if it works for you.

Okay, so there's $1,500 a month to start to get some traction on those 2 media and more on LinkedIn.

LinkedIn is much more expensive.

Is it more expensive because it's more productive? The ROI is better, Omri, or is it just because there's a cachet to it?

The targeting is— there's no— excuse me. There's no better place for targeting than LinkedIn. Job titles, companies, you can actually target specific people in specific companies. And on Facebook, you can't do that. You can't do that anywhere except LinkedIn. That's why they charge a lot. But I'm a big LinkedIn fan, both organic and LinkedIn ads. And by the way, LinkedIn organic, that's another place to go, right? You have a good— even if you're a B2C company, start promoting organic LinkedIn stuff. Start putting your podcast, you know, cut a few clips, short clips out of your podcast and do LinkedIn organic. LinkedIn is amazing for that.

Can you give us an example of, if you like, a campaign that you've put together which has helped a company that had a product but not necessarily broad awareness Once, let's say you have a company and you're not doing any advertising, right?

The minute you start doing advertising and you're doing it correctly, your company is gonna grow, you're gonna get more leads generated, you're gonna get more brand awareness, and hopefully that will translate into revenue. If your company is already doing advertising, but it's only doing, let's say, lead generation stuff, so they're gating ebooks and they're gating webinars and those kind of stuff, So I would come in and I would add more demand generation stuff. It's like ungated content, more thought leadership stuff, more podcasts, blogs, et cetera. And then there's another— the company's going to see an impact. You're going to get more website visitors, more people are going to know about them. And I believe that will translate into revenue. And the third case study or big picture strategy is if a company is already doing demand generation and they're already doing lead generation, I come in and tell them, so guys, let's get media coverage for you guys. And then media coverage completes the whole picture.

You mentioned the difference between gated and ungated. Omri, do you wanna just tell us what's the difference?

So gated content is content that you ask your potential customers to fill in a form so they can get the info. So for example, if I write a blog and I'm not gonna let you, and I'm advertising it to a potential client, But I don't want— but if my potential client wants to read my blog, he needs to fill out his phone number, his contact info, his email address. That's gated. That's lead generation. Ungated is demand generation, was when I advertised the blog, but with no commitment from the potential client. He can literally click that and go see my blog without leaving any contact info. I'm a big fan of ungated stuff.

How How do you get the proportions right, Omri?

So my advice is doing 70% ungated stuff and capturing the demand with 30%. So for instance, the 30% of doing gated content will be remarketing stuff. People who have already seen your blogs, your podcasts, your content, they're already exposed to you. And then you use lead generation as remarketing, basically. So that's the 30% and 70% for ungated stuff.

So what about this sort of creation of funnels? I've been working with a client on lead attribution. If it comes from PPC, from pay-per-click, it's quite easy. How are you dealing with attribution from public relations? Because you've mentioned the importance of PR. How are you overcoming that reservation that many clients have?

On the tactical side of it, through Google Analytics, you have a feature to see where your traffic to your website is coming from. So if you have, let's say, an article published on, let's say, the New York Times, you can actually see how many people clicked on a backlink from the New York Magazine back to your website, right? And then you can track it and see how much attribution you want to allocate to that. That's on the technical side. On the big picture side, the philosophical side, I recommend not doing that at all. If you're doing PR correctly, you feel the PR working. You don't need the numbers to tell you. That's like how I look at it personally. But to answer your question, to tracking it, you can do it through Google Analytics or another analytics database platform.

So it's really changed from the day when public relations or media relations was in print. And then there was a separation between someone reading it and someone maybe going to the store or ringing the factory, right? So digital has really brought that together.

100%.

Are there some companies or people that you think have kind of mastered this brand around the company?

You talk about building up— That's a wonderful question, Jim. Okay. So I would start with Ryan Serhant. For the people who don't know him, he's a real estate expert in New York. He has, he's, he's, he's basically a celebrity. He has built his real estate business through his billion-dollar real estate business, if I'm, if I'm correct, through, through amazing PR and marketing tactics. He speaks about it a lot. You can catch him on LinkedIn, on YouTube, everywhere. The second guy is obviously Gary Vee, Gary Vaynerchuk, right? Things he's doing. He invented, in a way, you know, digital personal brand. I think he's a guy that really does it correctly. So those are the 2 guys that I think you should look into what they're doing, how they're honing their craft.

Any companies that you think are doing as well as those individuals?

Yeah, yeah. Gong. If you know about Gong, they're an AI sales platform. They've really mastered B2B marketing. They've actually even had a Super Bowl ad. They had an ad on the Super Bowl so that they really know what they're doing. I'm trying to think about B2C companies that I think are doing a great job. Obviously Red Bull, you know, they've been doing a lot of influencer projects and stuff like that. They're going strong. Yeah. Gong, Red Bull. I want to say my clients also.

Then tell us how people can find out more about you if they want. to have you as their consultant?

You can reach me on LinkedIn. LinkedIn, it's basically where I live. LinkedIn, Omri Hurwitz, search Omri Hurwitz and send me a DM and hope to get in touch.

Omri, thank you so much for joining us and sharing your wisdom on this episode of Speak PR.

Jim, thanks a lot, man. I really appreciate it and keep up the great work.

Thank you. Very kind of you. And so thank you for listening to the Speak PR podcast. I'm here with Omri Hurwitz. And we wish you the best of health, that you have a sustainable business, and that if you are gonna be building a brand, think about building a brand with multiple sources of content and building a business that's supported by a brand that is as important as the business itself. Thank you so much for listening to this episode of Speed PR.

Thank you.