 Great photo by Grok. Podcasting has exploded. It’s been around so long now that many people don’t even realize that the word “podcast” has its roots in the word “iPod.” Which doesn’t even exist anymore.
But you’re not interested in etymology. You want to build your business and make more money. Sure, you could create and host your own podcast—quite the lift—or you could essentially ride the coat-tails of someone else who already has a big following, and grab a little bit of that love for yourself. If only it were that easy. What are the odds? The sad reality of today’s podcast landscape (“podscape”?) is that the numbers are driven by popularity. Media exposure, once it gets going, can snowball. But it’s hard to get it going. We hate to employ this analogy, but it’s useful nonetheless: If you’re some business wonk, how many people will follow you? How many companies will be lining up for paid sponsorships? Now replace the words “business wonk” with “Kardashian.” Ouch. As we’d said, sad reality. This is not to say that business-related podcasts can’t have influence or big audiences; they can. But before you aim to be a guest on Acquired, for example, set your sights more realistically. You, too, can build momentum and rise up the pecking order. Who are you? (And who cares?) An easy way to approach the I-want-to-be-a-podcast-guest-to-promote-my-business challenge is to look at it through the eyes of the podcast host. Why would they want you? Why would you help them? If you can definitively answer that question, you’re in good shape. Some considerations:
The more of the above boxes you can check, the better. Money can’t buy happiness It wasn’t long ago that we would advise clients to reach out to attractive podcasts on their own—usually in the form of a note from, say, an underling who would say “Hey! I think my boss would be a great guest for your podcast! Here’s why!” And then that underling would rattle off as many of the bullet points we’d listed above, as possible. Dirty little secret: No underlings were harmed in the making of that email. They were actually ghost-penned by—you guessed it—Copel Communications. Looking back, those days were quaint. As we’d said at the outset, podcasting has exploded. There are well over four million podcasts out there today. Not episodes. But actual podcasts. And the good ones—the ones you want to be on—are overwhelmed by entreaties from wanna-be guests, 24/7. So what do you do? There are actually agencies out there, today, which specialize in booking you as a guest on podcasts. No kidding: Google them and you’ll find them. And you’ll quickly see a pattern, too: They’ll often offer tiers of service, for, say, booking you on two podcasts per month. Or four, for a higher fee. But here’s the catch: You can’t simply hire one of these agencies. Throw money at them—it won’t work. Because they need to vet you first. It’s like any talent agent. They can only take your money if they can sell you in the first place. Which brings us back, once again, to all of those bullet points we’d listed above. What do you think those podcast-guest-booking agencies’ applications look like? Yup. Just like our bullet points. We can’t guarantee that we can get you “signed” by a booking firm. But we can help you burnish your credentials and make an honest assessment of your odds. Contact us and let’s talk.
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 Okay, that’s a confusing title, isn’t it? “How to promote promotion.” What on earth are we talking about? And how will this, to be blunt, help you make more money?
Trust us. We’ve got the answers. This one comes from a recent story with a client of ours. It’s a “teachable moment.” So we thought we’d share it with you. Spilled ink That client of ours had had a turn of good luck. A big company—one of the nation’s largest banks—chose to feature them in an article they published. Sounds great, right? Of course it is. This bank is a household name. Their brand is worth billions. They have a powerful media presence. So just to have them say anything about our client, let alone feature them in an article, is pretty great. Why, then, are we writing about this? What’s “teachable”? Our client, understandably, wanted everyone on earth to know that Huge Bank wrote an article about them. Sure, Huge Bank did publish this article (online). But would it reach our client’s niche audience? Our client wanted to push out a press release, telling their clients and prospects about the Huge Bank article. This still seems really straightforward, doesn’t it? Well here’s where it starts to go off the rails. Our client brought in a writer to pen the release, and gave him the Huge Bank article as input. That might seem logical, but it was a mistake. Because here’s what happened: That writer scoured the Big Bank article, pulled what he thought were the most important points, and drafted a press release around them. And that release, well, sucked. Teachable moment. Mind you, we’re not blaming the writer here. He simply followed his directions, which were insufficient. And here’s why: The article from Huge Bank was all about how our client leaned on Huge Bank for a business line of credit, and how Huge Bank was able to meet their needs. Totally straightforward. Sure, it made mention of what our client does and who they serve, but the big focus—no surprise—was on Huge Bank. It was about how Huge Bank has all kinds of creative lending solutions. And how Huge Bank works extra hard to help its clients. It was a puff piece—no surprise—about Huge Bank. So guess what this press-release writer’s release read like? You guessed it: It read like a promotion for Huge Bank, and not our client. Ooops. We needed to swoop in and rewrite the release from scratch. That’s because there was a time crunch; ordinarily, we’d simply re-direct the original writer. Our new release—which the client loved and immediately approved for publication—was all about our client. In a word, Duh. It talked all about how great our client is, and the kinds of problems they solve for their clients, and that nowadays, they’re so well-known and respected, that they’ve even been featured in a new article by... wait for it... Huge Bank. How much, then, of Huge Bank’s article informed our press release? Hardly any of it. We just wanted to promote the fact that Huge Bank was talking us up. Indeed, our press release was worth more than Huge Bank’s article. Naturally, we included a link to Huge Bank’s article in the release itself, but we couldn’t have cared less if the readers actually clicked it. Tracking it down As we noted above, our client was delighted—indeed, pleasantly surprised—by the quality of the new press release we drafted on such short notice. But this gets to the bigger question, the one you’ve likely been wondering about all this time: Why did this mistake happen in the first place? Why, indeed, is this teachable? Why were we forced to “swoop in” (our own words) to fix this? Why was the original release subpar? (As we mentioned above, we don’t blame the original writer.) Most importantly, how can this be fixed—and avoided—in the future? Oh, you’re smart. You figured out most of this already. By which we mean, “Our client mis-directed the writer.” Which is absolutely true. What we didn’t tell you, however, was that our client had reached out to this writer without telling us, and only informed us after the original press release was written, i.e., a quick “Hey, could you review this before it gets published?” Had we known, from the get-go, that our client was only going to give that writer the Huge Bank article as input, we would have instantly intervened and given him proper direction. That didn’t happen, and so this situation quickly became a fire which required dousing. The go-forward solution? We had to gently admonish our client: “Don’t do that again.” We can certainly appreciate their enthusiasm and excitement at getting some “ink” from Huge Bank, but if we hadn’t intervened, and if they had actually published that original release, it would’ve been a Huge Mistake. Need help “promoting the promotion,” or any other marketing-related challenge? Contact us. We’d be happy to help.  Here at Copel Communications, we’re often asked, “What’s the best way to reach prospective clients?” More specifically, “What medium—such as LinkedIn ads, or direct mail, or whatever—should we use?”
These are great questions. This article will answer them. If things like your website, social ads, and eblasts are different media, then the way you combine them is called the “media mix.” It’s an advertising term. Don’t let it intimidate you. Every business that promotes itself in any way has a media mix. Of course, that’s not saying it’s a good one! We’ll start here with a basic assumption: You’re not Jeff Bezos. You don’t have unlimited funds. You need the biggest possible bang for your buck. How, then, do you proceed? First things first If you’ve read any of our articles, you’ll know that we’re downright passionate about taking a customer-first approach to marketing, and that applies to the media mix, too. If you start with your prospective customer, and really understand them, the elements of the media mix will actually fall right into place for you. What might at first seem daunting will quickly become straightforward. Let’s say you’re targeting logistics executives. You need to know everything you possibly can about them—the more, the better:
If you don’t have ready, and detailed, answers to each one of these questions, get them. Because you certainly can’t get into the tactical weeds of the media mix without them. But if you do have these answers, the next steps become progressively simpler. Know thy message If you know what’s keeping these people up at night, you also need to know how to flange your offering with it. We’ll assume, for the purposes of this article, that your offering brilliantly and uniquely solves these prospects’ problems. Then it’s simply (!) a matter of telling that prospect, in your messaging, how their life will be better with your company in it. So. You know their needs. You have a way to address them. You know how to communicate that solution, compellingly. Can’t you see how “the media mix” is now a really, really straightforward exercise? Carving up your options In today’s world, you have lots of choices when it comes to the media you employ. These include—and this is just a scratch-the-surface sampling, to get you thinking in the right direction—things such as:
As we said, the list goes on forever. And this is why it strikes people—people who approach it, list-first—as intimidating. There are so many choices! Which is the best one? First off, you should have caught the inherent error in that last question. It’s not “which one,” singular. It’s “which ones,” plural. You can’t have a “mix” with just one ingredient. Second, use your customer-first exercise, above, to begin your prioritizing. Are you into B2C (business-to-consumer) ecommerce? Then it’s hard to not consider Facebook. Is your business B2B (business-to-business)? Well then LinkedIn is hard to ignore. By the way, “Your website” is kind of an essential anchor to all of the above. It needs to be awesome, and quickly tell your story/motivate visitors to take action. (Far too many sites are hopelessly bloated. That’s the topic of a popular article of ours: “Your Website Is Too Big.”) Diving into details Once you know which troughs these prospects are feeding from, that’s where you go. It’s where you prioritize your efforts, and your spending. “Knowing what they’re searching for” will also inform your SEO (search-engine optimization) efforts, so that your site climbs the ranks in their search results. Some media cost more than others. It’s still expensive to buy a full-page ad in the print edition of The New York Times, even if that print edition isn’t long for this world. So make your best, educated decisions about how to allocate. A couple helpful pointers:
Get help There are businesses that are solely devoted to media buying and placement. We’re not one of them. If you’ve got the budget to use one, by all means, partake. Our sweet spot, for our direct clients, is for businesses who have the hunger and the wherewithal to do it themselves, with a combination of internal and external resources. If that’s you, let us help. We can help you answer the fundamental customer-discovery questions which underpin the media mix; we can also help you create killer materials that motivate those prospects to choose your business over others. Contact us now and let’s talk.  We recently interviewed a client’s subject-matter expert (SME) to help us create some materials for a virtual trade show they’d soon be attending. As the phone interview was winding down, and we were re-capping some of its big take-aways, that SME mentioned, “This is good info; it could help at that virtual trade show.”
As it turned out, he was going to be pulling double-duty: not just as an in-house technical expert, but as an ad-hoc salesman, too. We quickly realized that this SME—and others on his team—would benefit from an age-old tool: a set of talking points. The owner of the company agreed, and quickly green-lit this little project. What are talking points? The best description of “talking points” that we can think of is “cheat-sheet.” That’s basically all it is. Ideally, it’s a single page of quick headline topics and supporting bullet points, meant to help someone prep for a live (or virtually live) engagement where they’ll need to appear spontaneous, yet be fully prepared. It’s important to understand what talking points aren’t. They’re not definitions or descriptions of anything. That would be far too detailed. Think of the SME we’d described above. He already knows everything there is to know about the offering he would be pitching at the trade show. Indeed, he may have known too much to handle the trade-show venue comfortably. The cheat-sheet—er, “talking points”—was just a quick guide to help him remember important topics to touch on when asked about the offering. Simple as that. In that regard, it’s kind of like a mnemonic device (such as “My Very Educated Mother Just Served Us Nine Pickles,” for example, to help you remember the planets Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto, in order). Indeed, if you can create some kind of easy-to-remember acronym, so much the better. Let’s say your offering boils down to six important things to remember. Then try and make a six-letter word out of the initials. There’s a reason for this: You really don’t want to be using the talking points when you’re actually talking. In that regard, they’re a misnomer; they should probably be called “pre-talking points.” They’re not a teleprompter. They’re something you, ideally, memorize in advance. Sure, you can keep them handy when you’re at the podium or working the booth, but if people see you looking down at them, it robs you of credibility. When should you use talking points? You might be surprised at how useful these things are; you might also be surprised to learn how often we’re tasked with creating them, here at Copel Communications. The trade-show example cited above is perfect. A great sales rep is practiced and polished, but when someone else is manning that booth (whether live or virtual), they’ll need—and appreciate—help. Now, fast-forward to the soon-returning post-COVID-19 reality: Let’s say you’re going to present at the office of a new prospect or client. Sure, you’ll have your PowerPoint deck all ready to go, but what about that non-presentation time when everyone’s taking a bagel break? What about the junior members of your team you’ve brought along? They should have talking points, too, given to them in advance. They can practice in the plane, or the car, en route to the meeting. Feel free to help them. The practice will help you, too. The classic use-case for talking points is public relations. If you’re going to have an audience of any kind, whether it’s a reporter calling you on the phone, or if you’re surrounded by cameras, you want to be prepared and “on-message,” as they say. This could apply to the rollout of a new product or service your company will be offering. If it’s new, then the ink is still drying on the marketing materials, and your head will still be swimming with all of the different versions of selling points that you and your team had argued over, leading up to this moment. So talking points will be your savior. Saving the biggest for last: Talking points are required for damage-control. You don’t want to pick up the phone, or face a camera, without those talking points locked down. In such a situation, you won’t have much time to create them—it may be just minutes—but don’t shirk the responsibility. Among the kinds of points you’ll cover, i.e., the narrative you’ll spin, will be:
Pretty straightforward, when you see it written out here. But just try and do that, off-the-cuff, when your company is caught in an awkward situation, and the lights are glaring in your face. It’s impossible. A final talking point One of the many nice things about talking points is that they’re a really low hurdle. They can be crafted quickly; even when you tap an external resource—such as us—to create them, they’re inexpensive, too. But they’re worth their weight in gold. So take advantage. Get your facts straight, and keep your brand clean. Need help with those talking points, or any other marketing-communications challenge? Contact us today. We’d be happy to help.  Boy the year goes by fast. It doesn’t seem like it’s really been that long since we wrote a year-end roundup, but the calendar doesn’t lie.
Sure, we at Copel Communications would love it if you read every single one of our blog posts the minute it came out. But we also know you’re busy, so here, in convenient compendium form, is an overview of our posts for consultants from the year. (We alternate between posts for consultants and what we call our “creative clients,” i.e., ad agencies and others that directly contract us for creative services. So we annually do separate year-end posts, both in December, for each audience.) Each summary/tease below has a link to the full article, so feel free to binge away!
Do you have a topic you’d like us to cover? Or a marketing challenge you’d like us to help you with? Contact us today. We’d be delighted to hear from you.  Getting media exposure for your company is like solving a crossword puzzle. It can be tricky. It takes patience. A method for proceeding certainly helps. But here’s the key part of the analogy that will really make you sit up and take notice:
The puzzle taker and the puzzle creator share the exact same goal: They both want the puzzle taker to solve the puzzle. Kudos to New York Times puzzle editor Will Shortz for that insight. It’s counterintuitive, but it’s true. Some puzzles are hard, so you might think that the puzzle creator doesn’t want you to solve it. That’s not true. If you fail, they fail. Now substitute “crossword puzzle” with “news story about your company.” Your company and the reporter share the exact same goal: They both want to publish big news about your company. Betcha never thought of it that way, did you? Taking the proper approach We didn’t say this is easy; neither is a Saturday crossword. (In case you’re not a puzzle nut, know that the easiest ones are on Monday, and they get harder each day as the week progresses, with the hardest one on Saturday. [The Sunday puzzle only looks intimidating. It’s big, but not hard.]) The key is to understand the needs of that reporter (or “editor”) out there, and work backward. So step back for a minute. Put yourself in his or her shoes. What’s your job for the day? Better yet, what’s your dream job for the day? What would be the greatest day of your professional life? You don’t need a journalism degree to answer this question. You only need to watch old episodes of Superman. Or any old movie that features a reporter in it. Put this way: What does Lois Lane want? That’s easy. She wants a scoop. A big, front-page story. One that no other reporter got to, before her. One that takes America by surprise and by storm—and sells a ton of Daily Planet’s in the process. Fast-forward from comic books and printed newspapers to social media and viral videos, and the needs are identical. With apologies to Marshall McLuhan, the medium has changed, but not the message. Importantly, the motivation is identical. What reporter doesn’t want to be a star? And if not to all of America, at least to their boss? The daily grind Now try and picture a typical day in a modern Lois Lane’s life. She still needs “a nose for news,” but her way of “sniffing” is updated. Sure, she can scour the internet, but most of what she’ll find (just like you will) is stuff that’s already been reported. It’s other people’s scoops. So much for secondary sources. To find truly breaking news, you—or Lois—have got to get it from the source, as it happens. When it breaks. How do you do that? Your local six o’clock news team has a police radio scanner. When they hear a hot call, they roll. They send up the chopper. That’s great for criminal activity, but it doesn’t apply to your challenge. So think of venues where breakthroughs either occur, or are first announced. Now you’re getting warmer. This is places like:
In a word, Bingo. This is exactly the stuff that today’s reporters follow. Think about that. It’s not as sexy as it’s portrayed in the movies. There are reporters, right this minute, who are slogging through Journal of Nanoparticle Chemistry (we made that up), squinting through arcane scientific jargon, trying to find the story. Many of them succeed. Many others need help. Which leads to the One Big Thing we’ve purposely avoided mentioning until now: The press release. The press release, at face value, saves the day. It’s the magic matchmaker that connects puzzle-taker and puzzle-creator. It succinctly encapsulates that latest newsworthy breakthrough, before it’s become news, and spoon-feeds it to that hungry reporter. It provides all the basic facts, the angle, supporting photos and video as appropriate, and direct contact info for a straight-from-the-horse’s-mouth interview. The dilemma Why, then have we spent more than 600 words on this topic before we mentioned the press release? Why even have an article like this at all, when there are press releases out there, saving the day daily? It’s because they’re not. It may well be that the world’s first press release—or maybe even the first thousand—were a major, earth-shattering success. Can you imagine how excited Lois Lane would be to see a memo “From the desk of Albert Einstein”? But now, it’s not a help. It’s a glut. Rather than spending her day scouring the internet, Modern Lois spends her day, in dread, wading through mountains (“swamps”?) of press releases and packages, sent to her by email, postal mail, social links, FedEx, you name it. It’s disheartening. The problem, aside from the sheer volume, is the sheer volume of, well, crap that she gets each day. “ABC Company, creator of the XYZ Widget, releases XYZ Widget 2.0! It’s fully ten percent more widgety than Version 1!” Uggh. Putting it all together Now that you have a feel for Lois’ life, let’s take it back to your challenge. You want coverage about your company. Lois needs to break news. So help her. Here are some guidelines:
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