Publicist Heather explains how PR amplifies social media reach into actual sales. She shares two wins: Regina Bonds grew 40% through publicity, and a hard kombucha brand went from zero to 84% of category media mentions in 16 months, then expanded nationally and sold.
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So you have to have a social media following regardless. Because if people go to your Instagram account and you're not posting well, they're going to think you're not in business. So you need to have a social media following. Building a robust following that's engaged is a long term strategy. It's going to take time and it's going to take money. Right. Why I really value PR is you could literally, if you have a thousand followers on Instagram, you could go in your local morning news, throw three minutes, reach 2 million people and you're in front of other audiences. Right. Like there was a mom that had a cookie company in Texas and she just had her website and had no sales and her One TV segment because of her story brought in $12,000. So I'm seeing local media convert extremely well when it comes to brands or people that have a heartfelt story. Typically more though on it's easy to buy cookies. Now, if you're a business coach, sometimes that's harder because everyone loves cookies and it's understanding, it's easy to buy cookies. But if you're trying to sell your services, that's a little harder. But I believe that it's very easy.
For me to ask my daughter to, hey, should we buy some cookies? These look, that's an easy sell.
That's an easy sell.
It's very hard for me to say to my daughter or anyone else in my family, hey, let's buy some professional business consulting for 6,000amonth. That's a harder sell.
Yeah. So I've seen people like Regina Bonds, for example. She had an Instagram account, but from publicity, her business grew by 40%. And it was really just her Instagram account. It was a mixture of reaching new people, reaching new audiences, integrating the media logos into her Instagram account, into her marketing. People that were on the fence of working with her started working with her. She had a higher sense of confidence. She had a higher sense of credibility and street cred. She gained confidence. So it's a mixture of, you know, getting in the media, but then, well, what do you do with the media to scale your business? And that she did increase her prices over time because she was in more of a demand.
Tell me about the success story you're proudest. I'm not necessarily the most profitable client, but the person you took, they were here and you worked with them for, you know, a year or two, however long you got this outlet, this hit, this hit, built to this, this, and now their business is here.
Yeah, I mean, it Would be anything from like a consumer brand, a beverage of hard kombucha. In 16 months time, 84% of all the media mentions for all the brands in their category was that brand. When we first started working together, just had distribution at retailers in Washington, California and Arizona. They went national, they had an exit which was exciting. Right. They were bought by another company and that growing that, that consumer demand and interest. Um, I remember when press would go live, had posted on the founder's LinkedIn page and the amount of engagement, like hundreds of comments on his interview supporting him. It helped him behind the scenes having conversations, which was incredible. Or even someone like Regina Bond, who we started out with local media, blogs, syndicated blogs, articles, radio, just that layering effect. And then four months later, article on Martha Stewart, another month later, later the Today show. So it's definitely the building approach. But now Regina is paying for paid like she gets paid to speak, right? Like the media always wants her on. Her business grew by 40%. So here are two different examples.
Back to the. Is it kombucha? That's a type of tea, if I'm understanding correctly. How do you differentiate that? Because they're. First of all, there's a lot of tea companies, number one. Number two, there are a lot of huge, huge established brands in that market. How do you, how do you cut through the clutter? I mean I have experience working with, with Sambazon, nice media training for them, but they were sort of their own new category in a sense. You could say that's easier. How did you get something for a category which in some ways is established? How are you able to get the media to pay attention and come up with a different story?
It was consistency. It was pitching the media every single week. It was looking at trending topics. It was building out awareness days. You know, National Nutrition Month is in March. Let's look at the health benefits of probiotics. In June. It's Wildfire Awareness Week and the name is Fly with flying embers because they almost burned down in Ojai. So it's just always creating stories and always being proactive instead of reactive and having a plan. And it's that consistency piece.
What an inspiring entrepreneurial journey living in an Airstream while starting out. Heather. And thanks to me for bringing you on today. Well, thanks Heather for joining us today. And by the way, Airstream is considered like a Rolls Royce of trailers. Are you still living in the Airstream or you keep that as a guest house or what do you do?
We have it on our property. We ended up in North Carolina, we live on two acres and then we have 22 acres where we're building a homestead. But once it became pregnant and had Rose, and now we have Rose and Banaya, who Rose will be two in June and Ben, I will be one in June, we had to get a home so in just on our land with us.
Well, it's a beautiful area and many, many people who know me will laugh because they'll find this shocking. I actually cleared brush in the lands near you in Morganton. Back in the 1970s. We were building a Boy Scout camp, Camp Grimes, named after the late Gene Grimes. There's a Boy Scout camp for the Boy Scouts in Charlotte, North Carolina, where I grew up in your area. And I helped build the camp with other scouts and still, still remember that and have fond memories of it. So very pleasant area and always nice to be back North Carolina, whether it's the Asheville area and Charlotte, which I'm going to this Friday. So I'll be back not too far away from you. Yeah, nice, nice part of the world. We do live in a time where if you're a great publicist, people don't care if you live in the North Pole. When I started out in the 80s, I mean, my only thought was, well, I live in North Carolina. I was attending. I just graduating from Duke. I have to go to New York City because that's where all the PR firms and I did and I loved it. But you don't have to do that anymore. You can live anywhere.
Right.
How has that been and what are the strengths and the, and the weaknesses of living where you are dealing with national media people competing with publicists who can take producers out to lunch and buy them drinks if they're. They work right down the street from 6th Avenue and down the street from Good Morning America and the Today Show.
Yeah. So definitely with the pandemic and everything, things have evolved. There's been a lot of consolidation of media companies, a lot of writers working from home. So that has changed. Dust sides used to be really popular. Media is way more now that we're in a zoom virtual world, if you will. Like media members are way less committal, meaning that they used to be way more, yes, I'll do this press tour or dust side and they're a lot more resistant or say no. So that's changed. I do think because we focus and partner with purpose driven brands, media trusts us or they know we're really working with people and businesses that are making a difference. So I do think that you know, makes a difference.
