Ready to boost your visibility online? Public Relations isn’t just for massive companies. It’s for small businesses like you and me, too. Today, Courtney Love Gavin is teaching us how to use PR to grow our visibility in as little as 10 minutes per day. These strategies are rock solid.
We also dive into things like pitching yourself for podcasts, SEO, press kits, website design, and so much more. It’s a rock solid interview, and I’m also going to be using these strategies she’s teaching alongside all of you!
LISTEN TO THIS EPISODE NOW:
Search for episode 63!
How Who's That Housewife!? got started:
When Courtney Love Gavin, the creator of the game Who’s That Housewife!? decided to become an entrepreneur and dive headfirst into the physical goods world, PR played a huge role in her success. She was able to make her business profitable within just 30 days! Like most people starting out, she didn’t have many fancy tools or connections to help launch her business into success. She tells us in the episode that she didn’t have a current email list or even huge following to build off of.
Courtney tells us that you don’t have to have all of those things to get started to be successful. You just need to know your audience and understand how to present your product or service as something compelling and of value.
As Courtney was putting together all of the pieces to launch her business, she paid attention over time to people who looked like they would be a good fit for her product and made note of who they were. When she got ready to launch, she emailed those people on the list she had accumulated in a way that spoke to them and those emails landed because she knew her audience.
By doing this, she was able to leverage their audience to be a loudspeaker for her brand. And it WORKED!
To hear Courtney talk more about her personal journey launching her own business, tune in to the full episode!
How to have PR success in 10 minutes a day:
Courtney Love Gavin is teaching us some really incredible things here! She talks in the episode about those of us who are already putting out content, PR can EASILY plug into what you are already doing. And it’s going to get you farther than a Facebook ad because the results live forever.
1. Start with your business goals.
Courtney tells us that a great way for everyone to get started is to think about your business goals. A PR opportunity being big and impressive doesn’t make it the right goal for you. Not all PR opportunities are created equal. You want your PR to be a business DRIVER, with you at the steering wheel.
When you look at your business goals for this quarter or the next 6 months, you want to make sure that your PR goals align with those goals! Anything you are doing for PR needs to fuel your bottom line.
Hear Courtney in the full episode talk through some great examples of PR goals that are both good and also goals that won’t serve you well.
2. Find out who influences your audience.
Think about who your audience is and what influences them. Where are they spending their time? Who are they listening to?
If you are having a hard time figuring this out, start asking questions! Join Facebook groups, research forums, email lists, anything. The worst thing that can happen is that you will confirm what you already knew. The best thing that could happen is that you find leads you never would have found otherwise!
Courtney tells us that when she was preparing to launch Who’s That Housewife!?, she started asking questions and someone recommended a podcast to her that ended up bringing tons of money! If she hadn't’ done that then she would have totally missed out on that lead!
Remember that you want to make sure that your PR opportunities are aligned with your goals or are things that will give you credibility.
3. Lightly engage with them.
Once you find out who is influencing your audience, you can start to ‘Nancy Drew” them, in a nice way of course!
In this episode, Courtney gives some great examples of how to do this like following them wherever they are on social media, subscribing to their email list, or reviewing their podcast. You want to start showing up on their radar. Maybe you are listening to their podcast or reading an article and you screenshot it, tag them, and share it on your social media. This is the difference between showing and telling!
You know about STRANGER DANGER! If they recognize your name, it will make it easier when you are pitching your business or product to them later. When they don’t recognize you, they might be more likely to decline or ignore the pitch altogether. You need to start building a genuine relationship to generate your own PR.
4. Engage with them.
Courtney tells us in this episode that the next thing we want to do is figure out how to pitch to people. Now that you have been following along with them, you will be able to get a good idea of what will click best with them and their audience. She tells us not to get stuck questioning if this “is interesting enough.” You want to reframe that to ask “What can I say or provide that is relevant to this audience?”
Think back to the things you have learned about serving your audience and providing value. The same goes for PR, they are just a different audience. Providing value is such a good thing to focus on when you are pitching yourself to someone. Ask yourself “What can I provide for them and their audience that is of value?”
Courtney tells us to craft pitches that get a response every time. Look at your brand from a 1000-foot perspective, and try to imagine a headline that the audience of the outlet or influencer you’re pitching would want to click on. For example, your website launching or an anniversary doesn’t mean much in the big picture. But your brand helping local teen moms get a website up so they can work remotely while getting their degree IS interesting.
What if they say no? That’s ok! Courtney tells us that she looks at feedback from the press or influencers as free advice. So even if they aren’t saying yes to you when you reach out to pitch yourself, use what they are telling you to get clear on your messaging. Ask questions about what you could do or change to make this more interesting to them.
It’s okay if the thing you can provide doesn’t come from your brand, directly. People want to help people that they like. And no one is going to get mad that you tried to help them. Courtney reminds us to think critically about what it is you are offering and how it aligns with the audience you are trying to connect with.
Listen to the full episode to hear Courtney give a great example of this!
5. Make sure you have an aesthetic that matches what you are offering.
Courtney told us in this episode that websites are the new press kits. Press kits do still exist for large companies. But now, your press kit is a living, breathing thing: your website! When people want to know about you and they type your name in Google, they want to see that your website matches the things you are saying and pitching about yourself and your brand. This helps to tell people looking into you that you are a credible person!
TIP: To make your website a magnet for press and media, make it easy for them! Add a link that says “For Press” and includes your email address. There is no need to worry about spammers doing this!
You want to make sure you are serving them in the cleanest, most efficient way possible. You really want to make sure you have an email address somewhere on your website and not just have a contact form and this is a great reason why! Not everyone who comes to your website wants to fill out the form you have waiting for them about booking you. Maybe they want to get in touch with you for a different reason.
Ask yourself these questions about your website:
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- Can the information be found?
- Can the information be found quickly?
- Are there any visuals that go with what you are pitching?
- Are you telling your company story in a way that is digestible to press (not full of buzzwords and marketing jargon)?
How PR can positively impact SEO:
Courtney is teaching us some awesome stuff about how PR can positively impact your SEO. And let me tell ya, it does!
When search engines like Google crawl pages and sites to decide what will be on the front page, they give a higher ranking to things that are considered news or blogs. So when you have backlinks or links that point back to you, it gives you a lot more credibility.
This is why Courtney says that PR is so important, especially compared to advertising. With advertising, once you stop paying for the campaign, those go away. But with PR they don’t! Those links just become more and more valuable over time.
Press is not the only option when it comes to PR, but also third-party credibility that helps you so much! So being featured in a news article or media outlet is awesome but a blogger friend featuring you is also so powerful. Having both just increased your exposure and them both linking back to you helps with SEO power!
You can check out this awesome tool to help analyze your website! Want even more SEO help? Check out this blog post for an intro to SEO!
All About Courtney
Who’s Courtney? Here’s a little bit about our guest today! Courtney Love Gavin is an award-winning PR professional. She worked in the corporate PR world for 17 years before launching her creative business and transitioning to working with female entrepreneurs. Courtney is the creator of Who’s That Housewife?! — a game for Real Housewives and Bravo fans.
Today, Courtney teaches her clients how to rapidly create visibility that builds trusted, sustainable brands. Her PR expertise has been praised by Forbes, Fast Company, BuzzFeed & People. And, she has worked with big brands like Nordstrom, Adobe, Dream Works, Netflix, Google, and HP. to name a few! Courtney lives in Santa Monica, CA with her rescue dog Chandler Bing!
