PR 终极指南 | Emilie Gerber(Six Eastern 创始人)
PR 终极指南 | Emilie Gerber(Six Eastern 创始人)
访谈实录
Emilie Gerber: 在公共关系领域,从来没有人会讲得这么实操。市面上有太多理论性的讨论和对重大失误案例的剖析,但说到底,如果你是一家创业公司,想为自己的公司争取媒体报道,你需要知道具体的操作步骤。
Lenny: 你提到了一些你合作过的非常了不起的公司,Ramp、Perplexity。大多数产品不会有这么有趣的故事可讲。你是怎么帮助它们找到一个亮点的?
Emilie Gerber: 人们在打磨自己的信息时很容易陷入细节——想要搭建一个宏大的问题陈述,想要把它包装成一个巨大的趋势故事。但如果你直截了当,做好模式匹配,通常反而会更有效。
Lenny: 所以我让你带一些优秀的 pitch 案例,以及一些可以做得更好的 pitch 案例。
Emilie Gerber: 我想给你读一个,然后看看你能不能说出这家公司是做什么的。
Lenny: 成交。
嘉宾介绍
Lenny: 今天的嘉宾是 Emilie Gerber。Emilie 是 Six Eastern 的创始人兼 CEO,这是一家公共关系机构,已经与超过 100 家科技公司合作过,从隐身创业公司到上市公司,帮助它们获得媒体报道、建立品牌认知、提升公共关系和传播策略。在创立自己的公司之前,她在 Uber 工作,负责业务发展团队和 B2B 项目的公共关系。在此之前,她在 Box 负责产品传播,专注于产品发布和合作伙伴公告。在我们的对话中,Emilie 分享了太多关于如何获得媒体报道的宝贵建议,多到我数不清。
我们还讨论了根据你的市场和故事应该瞄准哪些媒体、如何打磨你的 pitch 和对记者的沟通方式、如何真正联系到记者,以及如何塑造你的产品故事让人们关注你在做的事情、为什么对记者的暖引荐(warm introduction)其实没那么重要、如何找到可以 pitch 的播客和新闻简报——这些可能比传统媒体更有效、聘请公共关系机构而非自己动手需要花多少钱、如果走机构路线需要提前多久准备。
此外,我们还看了几个真实的媒体沟通案例,既有好的也有不好的,以及我们可以从中学到什么。我们还看了一封 Emilie 发给我的关于一位播客嘉宾的 pitch——那是她的一位客户——这个 pitch 成功了,这位嘉宾将来也会上节目,所以我们会分析这个 pitch 哪些地方做得好,还有更多内容。如果你喜欢这档播客,别忘了在你最喜欢的播客应用或 YouTube 上订阅和关注,这是避免错过后续节目的最好方式,也对播客帮助很大。话不多说,稍作休息后,我为你请出 Emilie Gerber。
公共关系是否值得投入
Lenny: Emilie,非常感谢你来做客,欢迎来到播客。
Emilie Gerber: 谢谢你邀请我。
Lenny: 我们今天要聊的是媒体报道。很多人说,尝试获得媒体报道不值得花时间。它不会带来注册量,不会推动增长。你可以把时间花在其他事情上,效果会好得多。我知道你对媒体报道的次级效应和其他好处有一个非常有趣的观点。所以我很想听听你的看法——对于”公共关系不值得花时间”这种说法,你怎么看?媒体报道能怎么帮到企业?
Emilie Gerber: 对,我们之前邮件里聊到你被报道过的那些文章、你获得的那些媒体关注时,我就在想,在你的情况下,你有多个受众群体。你有你的客户——在某种程度上,就是你的听众和与你的内容互动的人。所以一方面,你是一个 B2C 业务;但另一方面,你也是一个 B2B 业务。显然,你有赞助商,而且你也在努力吸引非常优秀的嘉宾来上节目。所以媒体报道有一个次级效应——它在验证你是一家软件公司愿意赞助的存在。在那些公司内部,他们要做这些决策,不是每个人都可能知道 Lenny 的播客,但他们可以把一篇 CNBC 的文章转发给同事,让大家看到这是非常靠谱的、是人们关心的东西。它传递的就是那种第三方验证,我认为这非常重要。这跟 SaaS 公司的情况是一样的——当客户在做决策时,拥有那种验证和信誉,我觉得会起到非常大的作用。
尤其是对于一家可能处于早期阶段、刚刚融了一点钱的公司,我觉得有时候买家对接触新工具会持怀疑态度,因为他们担心这家公司可能融不到更多钱,或者明天就不在了。所以你越能通过——不仅仅是你自己做的、而是其他人也在做的——事情来验证你的业务,我觉得就越好。所以我认为,这就是从 B2B 角度来看媒体报道的价值。它不一定会直接带来注册量,但当那个 AE(客户经理)在发销售邮件时能附上一篇报道的链接,我觉得这真的很有帮助。还有招聘也是——当一个招聘人员在 LinkedIn 上联系候选人,只有 100 个字符来做他们的推销,附上一篇报道的链接会非常有力量。
B2C 与媒体报道
Emilie Gerber: 以上就是 B2B 方面的一些次级效应。然后在消费者端,情况要复杂得多。有一种联盟营销(affiliate marketing),这是一个付费推广的完整领域,你通过它获得产品评测之类的东西,这并不是我擅长的领域,但我们确实和一些消费者公司合作过,在这些公司里,媒体是增长的主要驱动力。比如 Perplexity,他们基本上在付费营销上投入为零,甚至没有专门的营销人员,但他们确实做公共关系。所以在他们最近一次公告发布后,出现了巨大的增长峰值,注册量、Pro 用户数量都大幅飙升。我觉得在这种情况下,公共关系之所以效果这么好,是因为……
首先,这是一个非常容易理解的东西——Google 的替代品。我知道怎么用 Google,我已经用过无数次了,你直接去 perplexity.com 就行。尝试这个产品的门槛非常低,你可以快速输入一个查询,得到答案,然后看到这个工具的威力。只需要一次就能看到它的威力。所以在那种情况下,我觉得单靠自然媒体报道就足够带来增长。不需要一个漫长的过程来让客户产生兴趣,所以……是的。我说过这要具体情况具体分析,但在这些案例中,效果确实很好。
Lenny: 天哪,我想追踪的线索太多了。这个回答太有意思了。顺便说一句,我很喜欢 Perplexity。有一次我用 Perplexity 查了一个结果,然后就发了条推文,那是他们关于草莓的默认示例问题之一。原来,草莓不是一种水果,草莓是一簇水果的集合,草莓上每一颗红色的小颗粒都是独立的水果,全部捆绑在一起。这完全颠覆了我的认知。我当时就想,“我一定要分享出去”,所以我很好奇他们有多少增长就是来自于这种令人震惊的小发现。
Emilie Gerber: 对,就是那种你妈妈都能试着用、立刻就知道怎么上手的工具。嗯,它很适合回答各种奇怪的问题,就像你刚才分享的那样。这正是它特别派上用场的地方。
Lenny: 你刚才特别自然地接了一句”对,就是各种奇怪的问题”,然后——哇,那个答案确实厉害。好吧,回到 B2B 这边,我觉得这真的很有意思。当人们在盘算”值不值得投入精力去为 B2B 业务争取媒体报道”的时候——这跟我们线下聊的也有关。所以当我在《Fast Company》上获得了报道,在 CNBC 上获得了报道,在《Entrepreneur Magazine》上获得了报道,我跟你说,所有这些报道对我的增长影响为零。你可能会想,“哇”。我在《Entrepreneur Magazine》的纸质版上有一篇报道,据我所知,什么也没带来。
Emilie Gerber: 对。
媒体报道的真实价值:logo 与叙事
Lenny: 而你当时说的那个观点,我一直记到现在——真正的好处不是一阶的增长效应,而是……而且我也一直在这么做——就是当我给潜在嘉宾发邮件时,告诉他们”看看我在这些杂志上的报道或者个人介绍”。仅仅有那些小 logo 就非常有力量,这也是为什么你会在人们的网站上看到那些 logo。所以你在这里的建议是不是基本上是,对于大多数 B2B 企业来说,如果画一个媒体报道影响力的饼图,大部分百分比就是拥有一个顶级出版物的 logo 放在你的网站上、你的外发邮件里,诸如此类?
Emilie Gerber: 对,logo 是其中一部分,另外还有叙事的部分。也许他们不会去读你写的关于自己业务的八个段落,但如果是一篇文章的形式,我觉得他们更可能花时间去读。还有一个方面可以说是内容。比如,记者想写的关于你的文章,不一定是你的播客有多棒——虽然确实很棒——而是更多关于你是如何创建这个业务的。所以更多是从你作为一个创业者、打造了这个媒体帝国这样的角度来写,而这种故事不一定会驱动你的核心受众去注册,所以内容本身也是一个因素。所以我们合作的一些公司,我们帮他们获得了关于公司文化和他们正在做的酷项目的精彩报道,因为记者对那些话题感兴趣。这不一定会帮助销售,但可能对招聘有帮助。所以是的,我觉得需要考虑……这是另一个层面,就是要把内容策略想清楚。
Lenny: 这个观点太好了,因为他们要写你的故事不是”这是你见过的最好的产品”,而是”看看这家创业公司经历了怎样一段有趣的旅程”,这不会说服你的客户,而是吸引其他人来读这篇报道,但事实是这家媒体写了你——这一点本身就非常有价值。然后你是说在 B2C 方面,大部分好处实际上是推动增长,而且你见过很多媒体报道显著推动增长的案例。
Emilie Gerber: 对,我觉得是可以的,而且这个我觉得……嗯,要具体情况具体分析,因为我们有些客户需要大量投入联盟营销,因为他们需要的是产品评测,或者他们想出现在”最佳吸尘器”这类榜单上,不管哪个品类,而大型专题报道对他们来说相对没那么重要。所以 B2C 有不同的做法。但我觉得……嗯,基本上分两个阵营:做联盟营销的,和不做的。
联盟营销
Lenny: 你能具体解释一下这个联盟营销是怎么回事吗?因为我对它其实不太熟。
Emilie Gerber: 可以。不过我们其实不做联盟营销,所以可能有很多其他人能提供更深入的见解,但联盟营销本质上就是你跟一家媒体合作,给他们一个分成比例,从那篇文章带来的所有销售中抽取一定比例。所以如果你看 Business Insider 的”最佳个人理财工具”榜单,它顶部会注明他们获取佣金。他们会追踪链接,确定一个比例,然后基本上从所有进来的销售中拿一个分成。这非常普遍,我会说大多数消费者公司都在做这个。是的,有整个整个的代理公司专门从事这个领域。
Lenny: 哇,我竟然不知道这是这么大的一件事。我听说过联盟营销——就是你推广一个东西然后获得报酬——但我不知道 Business Insider 也把这个作为收入来源。
Emilie Gerber: 对,我不想只点名一家……我是说,我觉得大多数做产品评测的媒体机构,基本上都在做,这是一个非常普遍的做法。
Lenny: 哇。好吧,已经学到不少了。
融资公告与媒体报道
好,我肯定想开始聊聊怎么实际为你的产品争取媒体报道,但先快速问一个关于融资公告的问题。我投资了很多公司,他们经常给我发邮件请教怎么获得媒体报道,大多数时候是一个融资里程碑。什么时候值得投入精力去为融资争取媒体报道?是永远值得尝试,还是很少值得花这个精力?是不是必须是一个非常亮眼的融资时刻才行?你有什么建议?
Emilie Gerber: 我也觉得不是所有公关人都会同意这个观点,但我确实认为,融资轮次,只要你方法得当,总是能找到记者来报道的。我的意思是,我们会专门为融资公告策划项目,从来没有完成不了的情况,也从来没……如果不可能做到,我不会接这种项目。所以我觉得有几个原因会导致有时做不成。不过先退一步说说融资报道这个事,很多创始人会本能地觉得,“我融到资了,TechCrunch 就会来报道。“现实是……有人发了条推文,实际上是另一家机构的,我应该……Propeller PR,他们推文说自己数了一下 TechCrunch 一周内发了多少条融资报道,结果是九条,一周写了九条融资报道。然后他们去查了 Axis Parata 和 Fortune Term Sheet,看那一周实际发生了多少起融资,大概是五十起。
所以看起来……你打开 TechCrunch,会觉得”全是融资报道,我这条也应该是其中之一。“根本不是这么回事。但我确实认为,如果你方法得当,你可以成为那九条之一。我这里专门提 TechCrunch,只是因为现实就是,他们是最有可能写你融资报道的媒体,就是这么运作的。这也不是坏事,他们实际上……没有付费墙,报道质量普遍很高,他们懂这套流程。这是一个运转良好的机器,所以我们知道,如果跟他们合作,基本上会按照你计划的方式推进。所以当你去 pitch 一条融资报道时,我觉得创始人,或者任何代表公司去联系媒体的人,最容易犯的第一个错误就是信息过于复杂。
我们 pitch 融资报道时,会把话说得很清楚:“你好,我们联系你是为了一家创业公司的发布或融资。我们把这个作为独家提供给你,意思是如果你接了这个报道,我们不会再 pitch 给其他任何人。融资金额是多少,所在的领域是……他们所处的行业是这些,投资方是这些。“我觉得你很容易在自己的信息里陷得太深,想铺陈一个宏大的问题陈述,想把它包装成一个巨大的趋势故事。你反而不说清楚你到底想从这次报道中得到什么。但如果你非常直接,并且做好匹配——“这位 TechCrunch 记者负责报道金融科技。我有一个金融科技的融资轮次,以下是我的融资为什么重要的原因。“一般来说这确实会奏效,当然,百分之百需要跟进。
你不是发一封邮件就完事,你要得体地跟进。我跟进的时候,喜欢带一些新的信息,可能是对方过去几天发过的推文,或者他们新写的文章,非常尊重对方。我一般会等三到四天。如果没有任何进展,那就换一个人。这样反复三四次,找最相关的记者。通常来说,我觉得是可行的。我觉得只要你能做到非常简洁、直接,说清楚你想从这段关系中达成什么,这个过程就会相当顺利。当然,TechCrunch 只是一家媒体,但这个方法其实适用于很多媒体。
Lenny: 太棒了。我很高兴我们已经开始进入实际操作层面的建议,讲怎么真正争取到媒体报道。刚才说的基本上是针对融资的,我记的笔记是保持非常简洁——“我们融了多少钱,投资方是谁,一句话说明为什么这很重要。“之后我还想聊聊面向客户的 pitch 跟这个有什么不同,因为面向客户时,我觉得这可能是很多人犯错的地方,我们现在先不展开,但你想描绘的是市场的图景和趋势——“这是市场的走向,为什么这是一个巨大的机会,为什么这是你问题的解决方案”——而不仅仅是”嘭,这个很有意思,原因如下”,就完了。
Emilie Gerber: 没错。
各大媒体的定位与适合的报道类型
Lenny: 好。我想聊聊应该瞄准哪些媒体,以及各自最适合什么类型的报道。你刚才提到 TechCrunch 基本上非常适合融资。我想到的其他媒体有 Axios、The Verge,我不知道他们会不会做这类报道。还有《华尔街日报》、《纽约时报》之类的。所以,创业者应该把哪些媒体列入目标清单?每家媒体在报道类型上各有什么侧重?
Emilie Gerber: 我特别喜欢这个问题。我觉得在公共关系领域,几乎没有人会在这么实操的层面讨论这些。大家总是在做理论层面的对话,或者在分析那些重大翻车事件……都太宏观了。但说到底,如果你是一家创业公司,想为自己的公司争取报道,你需要知道实际应该采取哪些步骤。所以,谢谢这个问题。我来回答,但也要先加一个前提:媒体变化非常快也非常大。比如就在几周前,TechCrunch 决定不再接受专栏文章了,这对我们来说其实是个大消息,因为我们很喜欢在 TechCrunch 上发专栏文章,所以情况一直在变,但我会以目前的状态来谈。是的,TechCrunch,是很多融资公告的首选。也是一些产品新闻的选择,有时也会用。
我觉得他们没有配备专属 beat 记者的领域,我们通常就不会跟他们合作,主要是医疗科技相关的公司,甚至营销科技也是。我们一直很难找到合适的记者来报道这类故事。所以不是所有题材都适合,但一般来说,如果你认真挖掘,是能找到相关的 beat 记者的,或者好几位相关的 beat 记者。而且不仅仅是获取报道这么简单。他们有 TechCrunch Disrupt 大会,你可以申请在大会上演讲,这有时会直接转化为媒体报道。他们有 The Found 播客,专门采访创始人,所以如果你有一个非常引人入胜的创始人故事,或者与时事热点相关的创始人故事,这也是一个非常好的渠道。他们还有 The Equity 播客,是关于投资建议的。所以不要只想着在他们那里发那一条融资报道,跟 TechCrunch 合作还有其他方式。
而且我确实从客户那里听到过非常好的反馈,说 TechCrunch 在公告发布当天能为网站带来流量,尤其是……我还不太能确定这什么时候会发生、什么时候不会。我试图找出其中的规律,但确实有客户在公告发布当天给我发过截图,显示从 TechCrunch 获得了不错的流量增长。我觉得这在很大程度上是因为他们没有付费墙,而且他们的内容传播效果一直很好。所以这是一个很好的起点,尤其是关于你公司的第一篇报道。Axios 在金融科技和医疗领域非常强,他们有一些非常优秀的 beat 记者。关于他们我要说的一点是,他们非常关注交易类新闻,所以百分之百需要有融资。如果你要宣布一个有资金成分的合作伙伴关系,他们会报道。收购他们也会考虑报道,但他们不会……你永远不应该向他们 pitch 产品发布。
Business Insider
Emilie Gerber: 我觉得他们可能直接会烦你。有几个例外,有些记者可能有小专栏会涉及产品相关内容,但那毕竟不是他们的看家本领。另外,Axios 最近推出了地方版,或者说起过去一年左右一直在陆续推出地方版。所以他们确实在向地方新闻方向扩展,如果你有区域性很强的故事,这其实是获得 Axios 报道的一个很好的途径,强烈建议去看看。
我们经常合作的另一个媒体是 Business Insider。如果你在融资故事上很难 pitch 成功,但又确实想让消息发出去,他们非常青睐那种围绕 pitch deck 展开的报道方式。这种做法有点争议,有些创始人会说:“这不是我想要的故事呈现方式,我不想公开我的 pitch deck。”
但如果你属于那种比较开放的心态,而且你可以做脱敏处理——不需要把所有财务数据都放上去,不需要展示增长指标——这其实是一个获得报道的很好的方式。我给客户的解释是,你只是把自己的核心信息以非常直接的方式传递出去。你分享的正是你跟投资人分享的内容,这并不一定是坏事。有时候客户还会加入一些客户案例的幻灯片,这样你就可以把它调整得更接近你想要的效果。所以如果你想要一个融资故事,TechCrunch 拒了,其他媒体也拒了,这是一个不错的选项。
他们也非常喜欢创业历程类的故事,跟你上 CNBC 那篇类似,但他们非常看重数据指标,会一直追问数据——你赚了多少,花了多少。他们就喜欢这类故事,所以不一定非要关于你融了多少钱,而是关于那些真正把业务做起来的人。最后一点关于 Business Insider,他们还会做大量的榜单,比如顶级创业公司、各领域顶级专业人士之类的。我们很喜欢帮客户做这些,通常申请起来很轻松,他们会公开征集提名,五分钟就能搞定,是登上 Business Insider 的一个途径。这种榜单太多了,已经成了我 newsletter 里的一个梗,因为每周都有五个新榜单冒出来,而且类别特别冷门。比如”帮助 TikTok 明星的顶级体育营销专业人士”之类的。我不知道,总是非常小众的征集需求,但确实可以很有价值。
VentureBeat、Fast Company 与 Forbes
再介绍几个。VentureBeat 在 AI 新闻方面非常强势。我们合作的任何客户,只要在构建 AI 能力、推出与 AI 相关的新产品,我们都会向他们 pitch,这是完美的对口媒体。Fast Company 非常适合未来工作方式、人们如何工作这类话题,在设计、媒体方面也非常出色,我觉得只要是属于这些领域的公司都很合适。他们也接受专栏文章,尤其是包含领导力建议的内容。最后,在我们最常合作的媒体名单上,还有 Forbes。特别是在奖项方面,他们有 FinTech 50、AI 50、Forbes Under 30 等等。在发展阶段更早的时候,你很难获得他们核心记者的专题报道,但他们确实有那个很庞大的 contributor 网络,门槛相对低一些。他们更愿意覆盖早期公司,所以也值得关注。这些就是我最推荐的几家,先到这里。
Lenny: 太棒了。这些就是最常被点名、你们也最常去争取的媒体吗?
Emilie Gerber: 对,对大多数创业公司来说是最现实的。当然也有像 The Verge 这样的,他们更偏硬件产品方向,跟我们打交道的领域不太一样,但对某些公司来说也可能是好选择。
纽约时报与华尔街日报
Lenny: 明白。我本来想留到后面说的,但显然还有纽约时报和华尔街日报。对追求这两个媒体有什么想法?
Emilie Gerber: 这个问题我们确实一直被问到。我可以说每次跟创始人通话都会出现,“我想每五篇报道里有一篇上这些媒体。“说实话,有时候我会开玩笑说:“你想上这些媒体?搞个危机出来,他们就会写你。“开除你的 CEO,或者进行大规模裁员,再搞出个监管问题。
Lenny: Uber 在上面可是有不少报道。
Emilie Gerber: 对,我可以举一些例子。你看那些在这些媒体上获得报道的早期公司,通常就是这些情况。
假设你再稍微往后走一些,到了 B 轮、C 轮,甚至更往后,想在这些媒体获得报道,他们要写一篇关于你公司的专题,通常有几个硬性条件。第一是你的估值,这需要你愿意公开分享。第二是硬性业务指标,通常是收入,有时候是其他数据。所以很多时候他们跟创始人提了这些要求,创始人立刻就说:“哦,我们不会公开这些。“那我就会说:“好的,那对话基本就到此结束了。“有时候可以以背景信息的方式分享,但通常来说,你被期望公开这类数据。所以很多时候这就直接行不通了。
我完全认为应该跟相关的 beat 记者建立关系,理想情况下争取一次介绍性会面——我说的建立关系,就是指代表客户争取一次初步会面,或者他们也可以自己直接联系这些记者。但他们确实不会专门为你的公司写一篇专题。充其量,你会在他们正在撰写的某个更大的报道中占到一两句话。这就是他们报道性质决定的。
然后再看 CNBC 这样的媒体,他们的目标受众是想了解公开市场的人。如果你不是上市公司,他们有 CNBC Disruptor 50 榜单,关注的是即将达到上市阶段的公司,但早期公司在那里是没有位置的。
如何避免负面报道
Lenny: 我在之前的公司上过 CNBC 的报道,那是一次很奇特的体验——我跟他们聊了半个小时,然后报道就发出来了,我完全不知道他们会写什么。有可能是把我做的所有事情都拆得体无完肤,而你完全无从知晓。你怎么帮助尽量避免出现那种报道?我知道你无法完全控制,记者当然可以写他们想写的东西。对于避免他们写出非常负面的内容,你有什么建议吗?
Emilie Gerber: 一般来说,如果是你提前被briefed的报道,除非是围绕某个负面事件,否则那本来就不是他们的意图,不会发生那种情况。但更大的问题往往是报道的角度或信息传达不是公司想要的。这其中有一部分,我们完全无能为力。记者不是我们的员工,我们没有付钱让他们写这些报道,他们必须维护自己的编辑独立性。
所以我认为我的工作重点是教育与我们合作的创始人和发言人,我们无法改变报道中的任何内容。我们能做的是纠正任何事实性错误,这一点我们一直在做。如果某个事实有误,我们可以要求更正。但如果他们不满意被归入某个自己不认同的软件类别,那就不是我们能解决的问题了。
充分利用 briefing 准备
不过,另一件可以做的事,就是确保发言人在与记者交谈之前,能够精准传达他们想要传递的信息。你能一遍又一遍地强化你希望文章呈现的样子,我认为它就越有可能留在记者的脑海中,确保记者真正理解你们在做什么以及你们的目标是什么。你能做的,就是利用 briefing 和你提供的材料去施加影响,但除此之外,能做的就很有限了。
Lenny: 我们聊了很多媒体刊物,这些都是值得考虑去争取的。你还提到播客和奖项也是人们会去追逐的。关于如何找到对口的播客或奖项,你有没有什么技巧可以分享?比如你怎么找到一份”我们应该去争取这些”的清单?
Emilie Gerber: 我们用的是 Google。基本上就是用搜索引擎来找所有的东西。我们的做法是,首先搞清楚他们的客户是谁、他们处于哪个垂直领域,然后搜索该垂直领域内的播客。
播客的定性筛选
但事情没那么简单,不是说找到搜索结果排在前面的直接联系就行了。下一步是做定性分析。首先,这个播客会邀请厂商的 CEO 或高管上节目吗?假设你的产品是卖给产品经理的,也许他们只请产品经理上节目。那你就不要推 CEO 出去,而是派合适的发言人——
Lenny: 那会是谁呢?你说的可能是哪个播客?
Emilie Gerber: 对,对吧?但这种情况也可能出现在面向 CFO 的场景。假设你卖东西给 CFO,那就不要向那个播客推你的 CEO。找一个 CFO,然后拿你的 CFO 去 pitch 那个播客。我非常支持公司招聘他们销售对象所处岗位的人,这对我们帮助很大。如果你的目标受众是 CFO,你有一个 CFO 就很有帮助。如果你的目标受众是 CMO,你有一个 CMO 就很有帮助。而在你早期阶段通常不具备这个条件,所以 pitch 起来就困难得多。我认为这是定性分析的第二部分。
第三点,播客真的是来来去去的,要确保……听起来很显而易见,但要确保它是一个还在持续更新的播客。你用 Google 搜的时候,一半的播客都已经不再活跃了。然后第三点其实是至少去听一期节目的一部分,确保质量够高,确保是那种你愿意与之关联的内容。然后看看过往嘉宾是谁,那些是你愿意与之并列的同层级人选吗?
还有一件事可以做,就是在和客户交谈时,了解他们在听什么、看什么,了解他们的媒体消费习惯。这不需要做一个发给整个客户群的大规模调查。可以是随口问问。如果你发展到了更后面的阶段,把它变成一个更正式的流程当然很好,但不一定非得如此。
如何联系播客主持人
至于联系方面,我强烈建议先弄清楚主持人是谁,做好功课,搞清楚主持人是谁,然后给他们发一条简短随意的消息。我很推荐在 LinkedIn 上直接联系,说:“嗨,很喜欢你的节目。你接受嘉宾推荐吗?“我甚至都不提客户或任何具体信息,先把门打开。我觉得这比上来就发一大段 pitch 要亲和、友好得多。太多人一开始就发一封很长的邮件介绍自己,或者一上来就深入一大堆细节,其实完全不需要。而且尤其是可能十个里面只有一个会回复,如果你先发个很轻量的消息,也能省下很多时间。
Lenny: 我觉得这个方法确实很有效。我的经验是,如果是一条简单的小消息,我会说,好啊,说说你的想法。虽然 99% 的情况下最后都不合适,但有时候效果非常好。所以我一般会说,行,让我看看你有什么想法。然后通常我的反应就是,“不好意思,不太合适。”
Emilie Gerber: 而且这样你能得到回复。如果你一开始就发一封完整的 pitch,而记者或播客主持人不感兴趣,他们很可能根本不会回复。但如果你先发一个友好的开场,他们回复了,会觉得彼此之间多了一点联系感,所以至少你能得到一个答复。否则,你可能什么答复都得不到。
Lenny: 关于调查这一点,我觉得是个很好的主意。我见过我的一些赞助商这样做,他们问自己的客户,你听什么播客?读什么 newsletter?这个想法这么简单,但我觉得很多人并没有做。仅凭这个你就能搞清楚,好的,这是我们要上的播客,这是我们要争取的 newsletter。
暖引荐是否重要
我想聊聊怎么写好 pitch。但在此之前,我们一直在谈联系谁以及怎么联系,所以这里有几个问题——跟记者有暖引荐到底有多重要?如果没有这种人脉,联系他们的最好方式是什么?是 LinkedIn、Twitter DM、还是别的什么?在我们进入 pitch 结构之前,关于找对 pitch 对象以及如何建立联系,你有什么建议?
Emilie Gerber: “你们的人脉关系是谁”这个问题,在我们跟创始人的通话中也经常出现。我想反问你一下。我们在这之前有交情吗?
Lenny: 没有。
Emilie Gerber: 正是如此。我的看法是,它的重要性没有很多人以为的那么大。我在电话里会这样解释——他们问,“哦,说说你的人脉网络吧,你跟谁有关系?“首先,媒体变化太快了。也许我们最近确实合作过某个记者,但六个月后他们可能负责完全不同的 beat,可能在完全不同的媒体。所以把整个职业生涯建立在跟某些媒体的关系上,是不可持续的。
而且媒体本身也在变化。现在有播客、Substack、newsletter,变化实在太快了。所以我认为,做得好的冷触达同样有效。关系唯一能给你带来的,就是对方会打开你的消息并给你一个回复。而任何好的记者,都不会根据自己的朋友关系来做编辑决策。这不是这个行业的本质,也不应该是。也许关系能帮你约到一杯咖啡,但也就这样了。它不会让你获得报道。他们不会因为存在关系就报道你们的消息。我认为更难也更重要的,是擅长给对的人写出真正用心的消息。
某种程度上,我们现在确实有关系了,而这个关系可以来自一封冷邮件,但现在我向你 pitch 就更容易了,因为你知道我的名字,我们交流过、合作过。对我来说,我很喜欢对记者提供帮助,我倾向于保持专业,向他们 pitch 故事。我不觉得必须去喝酒或经常喝咖啡对建立关系至关重要。很多我经常合作的记者,我从未在线下见过面,这完全没问题。但关系确实在获取回复方面有帮助,我想说,这就是关系能发挥作用的地方。
Emilie Gerber: 当然,一旦你和某位记者合作过一篇报道,他们确实更有可能在做相关选题时回过头来找你,把你作为消息源,在相关文章中引用你的话。所以一旦有了这个基础,当然很好,完全可以好好维护——但这绝不仅仅是”卖人情”那么简单。
如何触达记者
Lenny: 太好了。那具体到触达记者的方式,你觉得哪种最有效?
Emilie Gerber: 我是全平台策略的支持者。有时候记者会在推特上说自己在做某个选题,我不会发一封邮件去 pitch,而是直接回复,“十句话说清楚为什么这个人是你该采访的对象”,然后附上一篇关于他们的文章链接,这就是我的全部 pitch。说实话,这有时候比我花三十分钟写一封精心构思的邮件还管用。所以我挺喜欢这种方式。我也喜欢私信,简短、精炼、直接的私信。有时候也会用 LinkedIn,不过不知道为什么,我觉得它在播客那边的效果更好,找主持人的时候更适用。
当然还有邮件,我们完全也会用邮件。当我给记者发邮件时,我喜欢让标题尽可能清晰地表明目的和发信原因。比如说,如果他有一个固定专栏,我就会把专栏名称和我觉得应该被推荐的人直接放在标题里。对记者来说,一看就知道——哦,这人真的了解我的栏目,而且在为这个栏目推荐嘉宾。非常直接,非常清楚。
我的建议是,一上来就亮明你的意图。你是想要一个 Q&A?还是想推动一篇报道?还是想做一篇融资报道,像我之前说的那样——这非常关键。然后保持简短。我敢说,我最成功的 pitch 就是三句话。有些时候确实需要更长,但通常一旦超过三句,我就觉得 pitch 的力度会因此变弱。注意力是很稀缺的,所以越精炼越好。有时候我会先从一个平台开始,先发邮件,没回复的话再换一个渠道。但我会尽量保持人情味和尊重。比如用这样的措辞:“嘿,我知道你的收件箱可能已经爆了,抱歉打扰,再试一次。”
还有一个其实很管用的方法是指出他们报道中的空白,谈论他们应该关注但没有覆盖到的角度。比如,“我的客户注意到了这个趋势,我知道你从某个角度报道过,但还没有人从另一个角度切入。“这样做会很有帮助,因为它表明你确实在关注他们写的东西,而且你不是在泛泛而谈——你展现了自己有独立思考,而不是公关人员惯用的套路,“我很喜欢你那篇关于 X 的文章”,然后马上跳到自己的 pitch。所以,再多花一点心思,指出报道中的空白,效果会更好。
最后一点是,尤其当你没有硬新闻可以 pitch 的时候,准备一些有争议性的观点会很有帮助。我们合作了很多 AI 公司。如果其中九家对行业内的某件事持一个立场,只有一家持相反立场,那很可能这家持相反立场的才是记者想采访的对象。因为这个选题他们已经收到了太多 pitch,但他们想写一篇平衡的报道,需要那个反对的声音。所以我们非常推动客户去说出独特、不同、大胆的观点。当然,这必须是企业的战略决策。如果你们的定位并不想参与某个监管话题的讨论,就不应该随便发言。但我确实认为,在某些情况下,说一些稍微大胆、有争议的话,是非常明智的。
制造争议性 pitch 的案例
Lenny: 最后这点很有意思。你能不能想到一个具体的例子,一个有争议性的、反主流的 pitch?
Emilie Gerber: 可以。我们合作了一家叫 Clockwise 的公司,它 basically 帮你管理日历,在工作日中留出专注时间,会自动帮你调整日程。几个月前,Shopify 因为取消了所有定期会议而获得了大量正面报道,所有人都对这个策略很感兴趣。媒体的报道总体上相当正面。所以我们就知道,如果我们只是再写一篇文章说”哦,这太棒了”,没人会愿意发表。这种话已经被说了一百万遍了。于是我们更批判性地审视了这个话题——好吧,仅仅这样做真的足以改变企业内部的会议文化吗?我们识别出了一系列其他我们认为必须发生的事情,才能真正以可持续的、长期的方式改变文化,而不是一刀切地删除日历上的会议。
最终我们把这个做成了一篇专栏文章,和客户一起撰写,然后 pitch 给了一家媒体。标题是《Shopify 的会议成本计算器并未解决时间浪费的问题》。这并不一定是在说这个主意很糟糕,而是对其提出了更审慎的视角。Fast Company 对这个想法很感兴趣,发表了由 CEO Matt Martin 署名的这篇文章。这对我们来说是一个很好的评论机会。所以,你不一定非要站出来反对某件事,只需要围绕这个话题提出一些更有深度的观点就好。
Lenny: 听你这么一说,感觉这是件非常理所当然的事情。记者本质上就是在找一个有趣的故事来写。如果你能告诉他们一些有趣的东西让他们可以发表出来,这对所有人都是双赢。完全说得通。让我试着总结一下你到目前为止分享的建议——比如说你在私信记者的时候,你的建议基本上就是非常直接。直接告诉他们,“嘿,我想找……”举个例子,什么叫直接?是不是就像”我想就这个融资公告做一篇报道”?
Emilie Gerber: 我不会说”我想找”。如果是私信的话,我会说”我是来自 X 公司的,想就他们的融资消息为你提供独家发布的机会,你感兴趣吗?“通常我会要么透露金额和投资方,要么透露公司名称。如果你两个都给了,基本上就是把整个故事拱手送出,他们可以直接发稿。这是一个很重要的区别。所以你可以这样说:“一家营销科技公司刚从 X 投资方那里融了 800 万,他们切入市场的方式很有意思,正在挑战 X 行业巨头。你要不要这个 exclusive?“大概就是这种措辞。
Lenny: 好的,明白了。然后,尽量控制在三句话以内。而且你说有时候写长了反而会适得其反。有时候附一个他们写过的报道链接,或者其他关于这家公司的报道,给他们一些背景信息。是这样吗?
Emilie Gerber: 对。但有一个注意事项——如果竞争对手的媒体刚发了一篇类似的大型深度报道,他们是不会想看到那个链接的。所以这个策略要审慎使用。如果是一段时间以前的、不同主题的文章,但包含大量有用信息,我会附上。但如果附上的东西让人觉得”这个刚被报道过,我为什么还要写”,那我就不会附。
关于定位:别做品类创造者
Lenny: 说得好。你还提到过,要承认记者的收件箱可能已经塞满了,特别是在跟进邮件中可以这样说:“我知道你收件箱邮件很多,只是想再提一下这件事。“然后你还谈到一个思路,就是找出他们报道中的空白,比如说:“看起来你一直在关注生成式 AI,我们注意到有一个趋势,也许值得报道一下。“然后再抛出一个有争议或略带反共识的观点,让他们觉得”这个确实是个好选题”。
Emilie Gerber: 没错。
Lenny: 关于如何吸引记者注意的 pitch 建议,还有其他更广泛的要点吗?我知道这是你毕生的经验积累,很难一下子全部总结出来,但还有什么想补充的吗?
Emilie Gerber: 有一个话题,也许别处也会涉及,但我觉得值得提一下,就是谈论公司正在挑战的现有巨头。很多公司想把自己定位成品类创造者,其实我非常反感这个做法。它没有用,在媒体那里行不通,而且大多数时候也不完全属实。所以相反,如果你能说你们在做的事情和某个家喻户晓的品牌一样,但因为某些原因做得更好,这实际上效果非常好。我会把这个写进邮件标题里,比如”某公司以 X 方式挑战 Salesforce”。这个策略非常成功,因为它立刻给记者一个参照框架——哦,我知道 Salesforce 是做什么的,那我就能理解这个解决方案好在哪里。很多公司真的很想把自己定位成某个领域中第一个做任何事的人,他们热衷于品类创造,编造各种用于新品类的营销术语。如果这对销售端有效,那也没问题,但在公共关系方面,我绝不会把这种说法写进 pitch 里。
Lenny: 这算是一个元评论——这个播客上最有争议的两个话题,就是品类创造的力量和”待办任务”(Jobs to Be Done),两边都有很强烈的观点。
Emilie Gerber: 真的吗?
Lenny: 两边都很有热情。
Emilie Gerber: 我是说,你当然可以举出几家把品类创造做得很好的公司,但那也就是两家,总共几千家里面的两家?
Lenny: 我喜欢。我会继续捅这个马蜂窝。那你是说,根据你的经验,在 pitch 记者的时候这个做法是行不通的?
Emilie Gerber: 对公共关系来说是这样的。仅就公共关系而言。至于业务的其他领域我不好评论,但在公共关系方面,这确实不是一个有用的策略。
案例分析:好的 pitch 长什么样
Lenny: 好的。我之前请你带一些优秀的 pitch 范例,还有一些可以改进的 pitch 范例,我知道……对,好的,太好了。谢谢你做了这个功课。我们拿出来看看,我很想让大家看看你觉得哪些做法非常有效,哪些地方可以做得更好,任何你想分享的内容都行。
Emilie Gerber: 好的,没问题。既然我们正在聊品类创造这个话题,我就先举一个与之非常相关的例子。我们曾在 RAMP 早期与他们合作,我们一起做的最早的产品发布之一就是他们的账单支付功能上线。当时他们大约是一家 30 亿美元估值的公司,规模不小,但还没到今天的程度。产品新闻很难获得大幅报道,尤其是对于 B2B 公司的账单支付功能来说更是如此。
所以我们包装这个故事的方式,是讲 RAMP 现在有能力挑战 Bill.com——当时 Bill.com 可能现在也是,是最成功的金融科技 IPO 之一,这家上市公司在整个市场中其实也只占了 2% 的份额。通过把它定位为一家正在挑战一家广受关注的巨头,我们竟然成功让 CNBC 报道了这个产品的发布。通常他们甚至不会考虑产品类故事,但他们很喜欢这个角度——一个挑战者有可能从巨头那里抢走市场份额。
第二天实际上还有另一篇报道,说 Bill.com 的股价下跌了,那篇文章中也提到了 RAMP 的消息。所以这种叙事方式确实非常有力量。
如果换一种方式来 pitch,可能就是说”RAMP 推出了简单、无缝、高效的供应商支付能力和全新金融产品,业界首创”——这些说法也许适合放在给客户的邮件里,但如果我用这种方式 pitch,大概率不会有任何报道。如果我们把它包装成创造一个”一体化软件”的新品类,虽然也可以这么说,但 CNBC 不会感兴趣。
案例二:Column Tax
Emilie Gerber: 好,再举一个例子。我们合作了一家叫 Column Tax 的公司,它是嵌入式报税软件。基本上他们与其他金融科技公司合作,让人们可以在已经在使用的工具里直接报税。去年他们与一家叫 Propel 的公司合作,Propel 提供 SNAP 福利,也就是为低收入家庭提供政府福利,他们合作直接在 App 内提供报税功能。
这只是他们众多客户中的一个项目,他们有很多不同的线索可以挖掘,但我们决定把传播策略完全聚焦在这一个举措上,因为这样我们就能讲一个宏观故事:TurboTax 因为各种被认为是欺诈的行为被罚了很多款,他们声称免费但实际上并不是真的免费;IRS 正在建设一个免费报税系统,但还处于非常早期的阶段。
所以 Column Tax 正在提供这样一个服务来支持大量低收入家庭,而且我相信通过 Column 报税的人中有 40% 上一年没有报过税,因此也没有拿到退税。关键就是找到故事中最有趣的那一块,然后集中发力。所以我们成功拿到了 Fast Company 的一篇很好的报道,而不是去 pitch 什么宏观的”以下是 Column Tax 的最新增长指标,他们正在宣布与 Propel 的合作”之类的。所以说,关键在于怎么把你的故事和人们真正关心的事情联系起来,而不仅仅是公司的自我宣传——我觉得这就是我们的工作。
Gamma 的融资传播案例
Lenny: 太棒了,还有其他例子吗?不然我就来分享一下你是怎么 pitch 我请人上我的播客的,以及其中哪些部分奏效了。
Emilie Gerber: 我确实还想再分享一个,因为这是我最喜欢的。我想分享一个我做过的最喜欢的融资故事。我其实要把它找出来,因为这个案例在展示产品方面非常有画面感。我们合作了一家叫 Gamma 的公司,它本质上是在把 PowerPoint 变成一个更现代、更交互、更好用的东西。所以在做他们发布的时候,他们还是种子阶段的公司,我们就在如何展示和介绍这家公司上尽量发挥创意。于是我们没有做那种标准的公司博客文章,而是做了一个 Gamma 演示文稿,里面加了很多有趣的元素,让记者们觉得很有意思。首先,这是一个视觉平台,所以我们创建了……其实我不想抢功劳,这个很棒的视觉设计是 Gamma 团队做的。
我们在内容上非常直接了当。每年有五亿人在 Google Slides 和 PowerPoint 里创建演示文稿。我们没有使用营销语言,而是用非常直白的方式在讲,同时配上有趣的视觉素材。我们讲了 Gamma 的使命,很简短,不是那种长篇大论解释公司为什么存在。然后加了一些用户的好评——因为他们还处于早期阶段,所以我们并没有什么特别想分享的增长指标。所以我们尽量让内容更个人化一些,聚焦在真实用户和他们说的话上,同时也在展示产品的能力。关于投资人,我们没有为每位投资人写一大段介绍,而是直接用要点列出来他们是谁,非常简洁,方便记者直接引用。
然后我最喜欢的部分,是我们请领投方拍了一段视频讲她为什么投资,而不是放一段投资人引语。这和你通常看到的有一点不一样。他们的视频很有趣,因为有各种交互元素。然后还有团队合照,让内容更有人情味。差不多就是这些了。总之这是一个非常成功的案例,我记得我们拿到的 TechCrunch 文章标题是”Gamma Brings PowerPoint into the 21st Century”。没错,这正好就是我们在讲的——也许他们是在创造一个新品类,但当时我们没在谈这个,我们谈的是它如何比现有方案更好。所以这里的建议是,尽管放手去做一些有趣有创意的东西,不要只是遵循那种传统的发新闻稿的模式。
Lenny: 这个我们可以放个链接让大家看看吗?是在他们网站上吗?
Emilie Gerber: 可以的。
Lenny: 好的,太棒了。
Emilie Gerber: 对,我之前还特意花了一些功夫才找到。但现在我有了,可以发给你。
Lenny: 好的。那你们的使用方式是,在给记者发邮件或私信的时候附上这个链接?
Emilie Gerber: 是在对方表示可能感兴趣之后才发,因为同样,如果我一开始就分享出去,那记者完全可以自己直接发布或者公开分享。这里有一个重要的提醒,就是你在邮件里对记者说的一切都是公开的、可被引用的,所以我才强调不要一开始就把整个故事和盘托出。
pitch 的实用建议
Lenny: 明白了。很多公司做不到这一点——他们不是做演示文稿产品的,所以没法做类似的东西。但对其他人来说,这里的启示就是:语言上要很人性化,投资人部分就用要点列出来,让它有趣,加一些视觉元素,不要全是大段大段的文字和段落。
Emilie Gerber: 对。记者们每天都在收到千篇一律的东西,所以这个案例显然因为形式而效果很好。但我们其实一直都在想,这次能不能做一些稍微不一样的?怎么能更有趣一点?不过有一个例外——如果你的产品非常技术化,你的受众也非常技术化,你要合作的记者也偏技术方向,那完全可以用技术语言跟你的受众沟通,不需要为了让所有人都能懂而故意简化。但这不意味着……我的意思是,你可以在使用清晰简洁语言的同时做到这一点。
成功 pitch 播客的案例分析
Lenny: 好,那我来分享一下你发给我的那份 pitch 里打动我的部分,就是那份说服我请这位嘉宾来的 pitch。这位嘉宾是 NewBank 的首席产品官。在此之前我对 NewBank 几乎一无所知。你在邮件里基本上就列了两个要点,你写的是:“关于 NewBank 的两个有趣事实:他们的增长有 80% 到 90% 是自然增长,因为他们致力于让用户对产品变得狂热。“我看到这个就觉得,“哇,这很少见,80%、90% 的增长都是自然增长。“对我来说,这就是一个有故事的东西。然后另一个小点是,“NewBank 比 Coinbase、Robinhood、Affirm、SoFi 和 Lemonade 加起来还要大。真的,比美国这边人们意识到的要大得多。“这一点我确实完全不知道。所以这两条对我来说就是,“好,这是一个值得讲的故事,我觉得人们会非常好奇这样一家公司是怎么运作的。“所以现在我估计会收到各种邮件,都是这种两三个要点的。
Emilie Gerber: 他们会把一堆公司加在一起,然后看自己比谁大。
Lenny: 对,或者用 AI 来帮忙算。但我觉得你在这里准确捕捉到了让我兴奋的点。关于你在这里做的这些,有没有什么建议可以让其他人借鉴?
Emilie Gerber: 有。我觉得在给你 pitch 的时候,核心在于理解你的受众——你并不总是想要最知名的 CEO,你不只是在找最大的公司和最有名的人。你找的是他们能讲出来的东西,以及这些东西和你的听众有什么关联。第一个要点就是围绕这一点来的。第二个要点更多是在说,“嘿,你可能不了解这家公司。“这个做法有点特殊,我不一定每次都会加这个。但对我来说第一个要点才是真正关键的,因为它不仅仅是说这是一家大公司,而是说他们以一种独特的方式在增长,而我知道这正是你感兴趣的那类话题。
Lenny: 那你是怎么判断出来的?是通过我们之前的邮件往来?还是听了播客?你是怎么得出这些判断的?
Emilie Gerber: 听播客肯定有帮助。但我觉得关键在于……哪怕你只是把你做过的所有节目标题浏览一遍,也很容易看出一个规律。你的节目不聊产品发布,不聊创业历程,你聊的是实操性的经验教训。所以基于这些去给人 pitch 的话,我觉得大部分情况下你甚至不需要听很多期节目,偶尔你可能想在联系之前确认一下某个点。但真的,你只要做一点点研究就能看出很多。
另外我们之间确实有过一些来回沟通,因为我要承认,我曾经确实尝试给你 pitch 过一位 CEO,而我知道你一般不请 CEO 做嘉宾。
Lenny: 偶尔会有,但非常少。
Emilie Gerber: 对,偶尔确实有例外。但我当时了解你想要的话题方向,却没有注意到你从没请过 CEO 这个规律。所以我觉得我的 pitch 其实还行,只是发言人不是你会想要的那类人。所以可能你没法百分之百命中,但只要做一些搜索就能看出很多信息。
Lenny: 很多时候我就直接回复,“这是我的政策。“然后对方说,“好的,了解了。“差不多就是这样。之前有个问题想问你——你提到了一些可以联系的媒体,以及怎么去 pitch。你描述的这种方式显然需要花不少时间。你每次为了争取一篇报道,通常会邮件或私信联系多少人?因为听起来数量不是很多,所以你才有时间做这种定制化的 pitch。还是说实际数量比听起来大得多?
Emilie Gerber: 我觉得如果是硬新闻、融资、创业公司发布这类事情,数量会少一些,而且我会尽量错开来联系,因为我们会提供独家,我也强烈建议提供独家。最糟糕的情况就是两位记者都回复了,都感兴趣,然后你不得不回头跟其中一位说,“不好意思,算了。“不过有时候也没关系,如果对方一直没回复你,过了一周什么的,他们会理解的。所以没收到回复就继续往下联系,这完全没问题。所以我觉得,做融资报道的话,平均大概一到六位记者,有时候会更多。如果是一般性的拓展、建立关系、争取上播客这类事情,那就是个数量游戏了,你真的需要在质量和数量之间做好平衡。
这也是为什么我喜欢先发第一条简短的备注,不用说太多,就问一句,“你好,接受嘉宾推荐吗?“因为这让你可以联系更多人。我宁可这样做,也不愿发一个糟糕的、没有针对目标受众的 pitch。这算是一种在追求数量的同时仍然保持尊重的方式。不过说实话,有些客户可能我们发出二三十条才能争取到一个机会。所以我们尽量不……我们不做媒体群发,不是把同一个 pitch 发给一个长长的名单。而是要想清楚,哪些值得我真正重点投入,因为它们是最完美的目标?你会持续尝试,做到高度定制化——哪些值得写一封更用心一点的邮件,哪些发个私信就行——然后据此制定你的策略。
案例分析:如何改进模糊的产品描述
Lenny: 好的。你有没有一些 pitch 或公告的例子,效果不如预期,然后可以建议怎么改进的?
Emilie Gerber: 有,我从一些新闻稿里摘了几段,我觉得有改进空间。Lenny,我给你念一段,然后看你能不能说出这家公司是做什么的。好了,“今天 X 公司宣布推出其工作流自动化产品,该产品结合了 AI 辅助、人机协同以及强大的多人体验,帮助团队节省时间。”
Lenny: 完全不知道在说什么。
Emilie Gerber: 你大概能从”工作流自动化”里获得一些信息,但之后就是,“等等,什么?”
Lenny: 就是一堆词堆在一起。
Emilie Gerber: 好的,现在我给你念一段 TechCrunch 文章的摘录,这是 TechCrunch 的定位方式——“一家新的自动化创业公司正着手抢走 Zapier 的午餐。它帮助人们处理枯燥重复的任务,并且超越了 Zapier 等类似平台所推广的触发器和操作模式。“对我来说,嗯,它就是一个更好的 Zapier,不只是在做触发器和操作,而是有更多实质内容和深度。如果你知道 Zapier 是什么,基本上就能通过这个类比大致理解他们是做什么的。
Lenny: 对,这就回到了你之前说的那个观点——通过提及现有巨头来帮助别人理解你到底在说什么。
Emilie Gerber: 而且你不一定非得在新闻稿里这样做,但我认为他们本可以说得更清楚,不要用那些词……因为像”强大的多人体验”这种说法,听起来像个游戏。我们说的是不是就是多个用户协作?“人机协同”——协作不都是人与人之间的吗,我们不都在其中吗?“AI 辅助”,那只是说明他们用了 AI。所以有时候我会推动客户,“好,让我们逐个讨论这些表述到底是什么意思。如果你口头能说明白,那我们就把它改成你刚才口头说明白的那种说法,效果可能会更好。“所以,这是一个很好的方法。还有就是大声念出来,大声念出来看看别人能不能听懂。
Lenny: 听到这里的人可能会想,“怎么可能有人觉得那写得很好?这些糟糕的描述到底是怎么来的?“我知道要写出简短有力的话确实很难,但这些说法到底是从哪来的?
Emilie Gerber: 这就是营销和传播领域的一种文化,觉得就应该这么写。我觉得大多数人都是这么做的,他们觉得听起来很聪明,或者听起来更专业。我觉得就是人们被训练出来的方式。所以即使我们招新人进来,我的工作之一也是帮他们一点点去掉这些东西,让大家……每个人都有能力像正常人一样说话,我们每天都在这么做。但要剥离掉脑子里那个”我应该用一种很营销的方式来写”的开关。因为我觉得至少百分之五十的新闻稿都是这个样子,这不是个小问题。
让表达更清晰的实用技巧
Lenny: 对。我很喜欢你分享的那个建议——试着大声念出来,听听自己的声音,感觉怎么样。你还有没有其他技巧,帮助把内容变成别人能理解和产生共鸣的东西?我知道,再说一次,做好这件事需要花很多时间,而且非常依赖具体情境,但你有没有什么其他窍门,能帮助你说清楚自己到底在提供什么?
Emilie Gerber: 就是把那些基本问题过一遍:这个产品做什么?给谁用的?你的客户是谁?如果你能用一句话分别回答这些问题……我们说的是什么产品发布?如果你能口头把每个问题都回答了,大概率你就离想要的结果不远了。因为当我跟营销人员、创始人、团队交流时,在对话中我完全能听懂他们在说什么。他们口头表达得很清楚,只有在写出来的时候才会变成那个样子。所以其实我觉得这个问题比很多人以为的要容易解决。还有就是,删减文字也是一门技巧,不要过度解释,你可以让表达更精炼。但最起码,先把所有行话去掉,这是第一步。
Lenny: 说得好。所以可以这样想——就想清楚,它做什么?给谁用?客户是谁?你刚才分享的还有没有类似的,可以列成要点的?
Emilie Gerber: 嗯,如果你要谈的是,这家公司有什么有趣之处?为什么人们应该关注?但不要在这方面过度侧重。我觉得这只是整个故事的一部分——人们为什么要关注这家公司。然后就是,有什么新东西?是增长数据?是客户方面的内容?还是产品?是什么让这件事在此刻具有时效性和相关性?
关于标语优化的资源
Lenny: 好的,太棒了。实际上几天前 Twitter 上有一条很棒的帖子,Product Hunt 的 CEO 发了一个帖子,让大家”分享你们的标语,我会给你们一个更好的版本”。他在这方面真的很厉害。我会在节目备注里附上链接,你们可以看到从差到好的例子是什么样的。
Emilie Gerber: 我太喜欢这个了。这也正是我想做的事,因为既有趣又简单。
Lenny: 如果你擅长的话确实简单,但大多数人并不太行。你刚才的例子中提到了新闻稿,你对新闻稿的价值、传统新闻稿与非传统新闻稿的区别分享了一些看法。
新闻稿的式微与博客的兴起
Emilie Gerber: 新闻稿的出现,是因为记者们以前会通过查看新闻专线来寻找想写的报道素材。现在已经没有记者这么做了,或者说只有极小比例的人还在这么做,我认识的记者里没有一个还在这样做的。所以现在变成了这样一种操作:你去找一家 PR 分发服务商,付给他们 300 到 2000 美元不等——就是字面上的价格——然后他们把你的稿子发到新闻专线上。对于更贵的服务,它确实会被同步转载到一些商业网站的新闻稿板块。但在我看来,没有人会去那里看新闻。我个人从未读过一篇雅虎财经上的文章是新闻稿同步转载的。所以从这个意义上说,它们对吸引眼球没有帮助。而且它们还要求……回到那种更偏向营销的写作风格,它们要求你用那种方式来写。
标准的新闻稿格式非常模式化,我认为它实际上在鼓励更多的营销话术。好处是,你把所有新闻要素都集中在一个地方了,对记者来说确实方便。然而,你完全可以用一篇博客文章来做同样的事。博客文章可以是第一人称的内容,由创始人、产品负责人或任何高管来写,在风格上有大得多的灵活性。你可以按照自己想要的方式来写,同样可以包含所有相同的新闻要素。而且在社交媒体上更容易分享——你不会在 Twitter 或 LinkedIn 上分享一个新闻稿的链接,但博客文章,绝对会。你还可以加上自己的配图,非常好。
而且你也是在引导人们去访问你网站上的内容,而不是一个黑洞般的新闻通讯。我应该公平地说,我认为人们说他们仍然做新闻稿的理由是,它有助于 SEO。不过我读过几篇文章说,Google 已经不再在 SEO 中优先对待新闻稿了,所以我不知道这个说法还有多大说服力。还有人说它向市场传递了这家公司更加严肃的信号,这是一种认知层面的东西。我个人认为博客实际上比新闻稿更能传递出一家现代、有格调的公司的形象。但在增长的某个阶段,上市公司会为了发布财报而发新闻稿,这百分之百合理。确实有一些规定要求公司必须发布新闻稿,所以新闻稿仍然有它的用武之地,我只是认为普通的中早期创业公司不需要它们。
Lenny: 你提到博客,这正是我接下来想聊的,刚好自然过渡了。但在此之前,关于不那么理想的产品 pitch 方式,你还有没有其他想分享的例子?
如何合理地呈现增长数据
Emilie Gerber: 我在新闻稿中发现一句话,很多公司都想加进去,但我总是试图删掉……好吧,我给你这个句子:“自五月份走出隐身状态以来,我们使用产品的组织数量增长了 700%。” 你说的是从隐身创业公司到现在的 700% 增长,所以你可能原来只有一个客户,现在有七个了。每家刚起步的公司都想放这种百分比增长数据,但我从没见过有记者在报道中引用这类数据。
所以确实有一些方法可以传递你增长有多快的信号,而不至于显得那么不诚实。一种类似的表达方式可以是:“我们的收入在去年年底达到了六位数,此后每个季度大约增长 30%,其中 40% 的采用来自企业级客户。” 这样你是在给增长添加色彩,你可以灵活调整,不必完全照搬。但如果你能让它更具体一些,我不是反对使用百分比,但我认为可以把百分比和一些看起来更现实的数据搭配起来。
Lenny: 或者说,“我们在 X 个月内从零做到了六位数的 ARR。”
Emilie Gerber: 对,完全同意。而且不需要很大的数字,尤其是如果你在做第一个报道,他们不会期望你一定有巨额收入。我觉得创始人有时会担心数字看起来不够大、不够有分量,但根据我跟大量公司合作的经验,大家普遍都是这种情况。
小公司如何找到值得报道的角度
Lenny: 你提到了很多了不起的公司,你合作过 Ramp、Perplexity,还有其他几家。人们可能会觉得,当然你能拿到媒体报道,那些公司本身就很厉害。Ramp 两年内 ARR 增长到了一亿美元,Perplexity 是一个超强的 AI 产品,所有人都在谈论 AI。大多数产品并不是这样,它们没有那么有趣的故事可讲。你能不能分享一个例子,一家没有特别精彩故事的公司,你却帮它创造出了有趣的故事?或者对于如何找到一个能让人兴奋的亮点,你有什么建议?
Emilie Gerber: 我之前举的一些例子中,Clockwise 和 Column Tax 就没有我提到的其他品牌那么大。实际上那才是我们业务的主体,我会说我们 80% 的客户都处于还没有达到那种大众认知度的阶段。
我们合作的另一家非常棒的公司是 Entropy。本质上他们做的是交易数据,是一个 API。这是一个非常技术性的工具,不是每个记者都能立刻理解的东西。但对他们来说,我们实际上非常侧重于创始人故事。她是一位非常了不起的女性,搬到了美国,实际上在申请第一套公寓时就遇到了阻碍——原因是我们的信用评分体系的运作方式。而她正在构建的产品的一个使用场景,恰恰直接关系到我们未来的信用体系可能如何改变,所以我们一直在重点挖掘这个角度。她的个人故事非常有力量。所以也许有时候产品本身不会是你能轻易 pitch 的东西,但你可以找到其他的个人角度,或者拉扯出某些线索。
Lenny: 这也就回到了前面说的——找到关注这类个人故事的媒体,因为 TechCrunch 大概不会发这种内容。
Emilie Gerber: 对。但她去 Money20/20 做了演讲,所以这个角度对于申请演讲也很有用。实际上当时她是在一个 panel 上和 Column Tax 一起,我们安排他们一起上了 Money20/20。
Lenny: 真是大赢。
Emilie Gerber: 是的,我们特别喜欢做这种事,当你有多家公司可以把它们连接起来的时候,真的很有趣。实际上这也是一个很好的宏观层面的建议——不一定总是只讲你自己。如果你有一个会议议题的想法,可以联系你在其他公司合作过的同事、同行,那些在做不同事情、可能不构成竞争但在相似领域的人,把它打包成:“嘿,这可以是一个非常强的 panel。” 这比你单独 pitch 自己要成功得多。
新闻简报、播客与传统媒体
Lenny: 太好了。你之前几次提到了新闻简报和播客的兴起。这里其实有两类问题。一类是去争取这些非传统媒体平台,另一类是建立自己的粉丝基础,比如在 Twitter 上积累关注。我知道你跟 Vox 的 CEO 合作很紧密,他在这方面做得非常好,基本上不需要媒体了。Elon 在这方面也很厉害,也许这就是他收购 Twitter 的原因——他拥有了一个巨大的平台来谈论各种事情。先说第一类,当你决定是去追求传统媒体——Vox、VentureBeat、Axios 这些——还是去争取新闻简报的时候,怎么选?举个例子,Ramp 从 Not Boring 那份新闻简报中获益匪浅,Packy 一直在写他们,非常喜欢。其中有赞助帖子,也有自然发布的。所以我想问的就是,你怎么看待去争取播客、新闻简报、Twitter、LinkedIn、那些影响者类平台人物,对比传统媒体?
Emilie Gerber: 实际上我把新闻简报和播客归入同一个阵营——如果我们正在 pitch 传统媒体,那我们百分之百也会 pitch 它们。社交媒体则是另一回事,但我不会把新闻简报和播客排除在任何核心公共关系策略之外。对我来说,它现在已经是任何公共关系项目的一部分,因为它现在就是媒体的一部分。而且对我来说,它是媒体中非常重要的一部分。至于社交媒体,我觉得要做好社交媒体非常难。你提到了 Vox 的 Aaron 作为例子,那百分之百全是他自己的功劳。我觉得我只帮过一次,发了一条关于我们和微软合作的推文,我激动坏了。
Lenny: 效果怎么样?
Emilie Gerber: 其实非常好。一家媒体看到那条推文后,专门写了一篇关于微软和 Vox 合作的报道。是的,挺好玩的。但总体来说,这不是你通过雇一家机构就能轻松开启的事情。我见过很多公司尝试这样做,但未必能达到他们期望的成功程度。所以如果创始人天生擅长这些东西,就尽可能全力投入,放手去做。如果不擅长,想外包出去,也可以取得一定成效。但我并不认为这只是每周发三次相关话题帖子那么简单,还需要更多的东西。如果你想要打造公众形象的那位发言人或高管愿意——回到我之前说的——在一定程度上突破自己的边界,敢于表达大胆的、有争议的观点,那可能就值得投入。我确实见过这样的成功案例:记者看到了那些帖子,然后在文章中引用了其中的内容,所以它可以和传统媒体策略产生一些关联,不一定是完全割裂的。但我想说,如果你考虑在社交媒体上投入,却只做企业官方账号而不考虑高管个人,那你真的会损失很多。企业官方账号很难积累粉丝。
让别人关注一个品牌、在乎一个品牌,你必须能带来真正有价值的东西,因为他们不想看你的最新博客文章,也不想看你的社交媒体运营人员随手发出来的相关文章。而当你有一个高管在发声时,人们关注的是一个人格、一个真实的人,理想情况下语气上有更大的灵活性,诸如此类。所以我认为要从人的角度来考虑这件事,而不仅仅是品牌的角度。
企业账号还是高管个人
Lenny: 所以明确一下,CEO 或者某些高管应该是那个发推文、发 LinkedIn 的人,而不是公司作为一个品牌来发?
Emilie Gerber: 对。不过我觉得这也可能因行业而异,在某些行业投资企业官方账号是有意义的。你当然也可以做那种事情。但我觉得如果你要做的话,同时也应该有一位高管尝试社交媒体策略,不要只做单纯的企业官方账号。
Lenny: 想到一个在这方面做得非常好的品牌,就是 Duolingo。他们在社交媒体上真的又搞笑又离谱。我不知道关键是不是就是要走搞笑路线,这样你才能获得关注,但他们的视频确实非常有创意又好笑,尤其是在 TikTok 上。
Emilie Gerber: 不过有意思的是,现在已经到了一个阶段,连品牌在社交媒体上展现个性这件事本身都成了一个梗了。大家都在嘲笑那些快餐品牌全都变成了 Gen Z 风格的 TikTok——
Lenny: 而且它们还在 Twitter 的帖子下面互相回复。
Emilie Gerber: 对。所以事情变化很快。是的,那曾经是一个好策略,但你必须持续跟上变化。
社交媒体值得尝试
Lenny: 你说到如果这对创始人来说很自然,那就去做。我猜对大多数人来说并不自然。你觉得如果一个人就是想”我知道这很重要,我需要经常发推文、分享东西”,这样做能奏效吗?还是说大概率不会有什么好效果?
Emilie Gerber: 我觉得在一定程度上是可以的。也许你不一定会火,也不一定会有成千上万的粉丝。但就我个人而言,我会逼自己至少每个月在 LinkedIn 上发一次帖子,因为每次我发帖,至少会有一家客户主动找上门来,可能还会有一位候选人。所以如果你测试一下并看到了价值,就算不自然也要逼自己去做。我想这也是社交媒体的好处——它很容易测试。你可以试一试,发一段时间,哪怕一两个月,看看效果如何,然后相应地调整策略。
不过,是的,我觉得我们合作过的很多高管确实觉得这件事很难,会想太多,要确保发的内容万无一失。你很容易陷入自我纠结中,我完全理解,因为我也有同感。所以如果它占用了你太多的时间和精力,光是思考社交媒体策略就耗费大量心力,那你确实可以权衡一下是否值得。但我认为逼自己去尝试一下是个好主意。
从 Aaron 身上学到的
Lenny: 那具体说到 Aaron,他在这方面非常厉害,你有没有从他的发推方式中学到什么?我不确定他是否使用其他平台。但 Twitter 对他来说效果非常好。
Emilie Gerber: 我觉得我学到了非常多的东西。那是我的第一份内部工作,之前我一直在 agency 工作,没有在公司内部工作过。我觉得从他身上学到了很多传播方面的最佳实践,不仅仅局限于社交媒体。他特别擅长就新闻事件发表评论,拿捏恰到好处的立场——既让记者觉得有趣,又不会对企业构成威胁——而且善于抓住所有这些时机。我就是看着他是怎么操作的,心想:“好的公共关系就应该是这样。“他们所在的领域不一定是记者们都在报道的,但他能够非常巧妙地把自己嵌入那些对话中。而且至少在我当时在那里的时期,他非常重视媒体,愿意花时间做 briefing。
所以能够反复听他讲话,对我帮助很大。至于 Twitter,我觉得他确实是天赋使然,所以他并不需要……就像我之前说的,有些高管会花大量时间反复斟酌推文,以至于影响到其他工作。我觉得他不是这种情况。如果说什么的话,发推只会对业务有帮助。而且实际上,他在 Twitter 上的存在感也是一个很好的例子——就像我提到的那篇微软的文章一样——他的内容会被纳入媒体报道中。所以这也助力了公共关系策略。
Lenny: 太棒了。我们会在节目备注里附上他的 Twitter 账号。顺便说一下,这是 Aaron,Box 的 CEO。我想我在开头提到过,后来我们就一直聊 Aaron 了。另外我意识到,他有时候会在推文里提到这件事——他实际上从 Twitter 上赚钱。现在 Twitter 会根据浏览量向你付费,分享广告收入,他现在从 X 上也能赚几千美元,顺便说一下,不是 Twitter。
Emilie Gerber: 太有意思了。
Lenny: 是的,确实挺离谱的。我想我已经问完所有准备的问题了。我很好奇,你还有什么觉得可能对听众有帮助、值得分享或补充的吗?
一个实用的媒体机会
Emilie Gerber: 我可以分享一个非常实操的媒体机会,这是我最喜欢的之一。
Lenny: 太好了。
Emilie Gerber: 好,来了。这是一个相对容易获得 Morning Brew 报道的方式。他们有一个系列叫 Morning Brew Coworking 系列,Emerging Tech Brew 有,HR Brew 有,他们所有的垂直领域都有。我记得还有一个面向 CFO 的、一个面向营销的。基本上,如果你找到那个 Coworking 系列页面,在顶部或底部会有类似”如果你想被报道,点击这个链接填写表格”的入口,大概 10 个问题。如果你的回答有趣、好玩、不过于自我推销,我们让高管成功入选的概率大约在 50%。你要做的只是通过 Google 表单提交。这是我目前最喜欢的媒体机会之一。不一定是 CEO,实际上很多情况下可能不应该是 CEO。它的本意是帮助读者了解某些岗位的日常工作是什么样的,稍微了解一下从事这些工作的人。所以我就是想把这个分享出来——你可以今天就花十多分钟完成,就有可能获得一篇报道。不过,也许在你发布这期节目之后就不一定了,我们看看他们会不会收到大量涌入的申请。
Lenny: 我们要把 Mailbrew 的服务器搞崩溃了。有意思的是,他们今天在 Morning Brew 上发了一篇对 Zuck 的访谈,所以你有可能和 Zuck 并排出现。
Emilie Gerber: 那挺好,是的。
如何选择公共关系 agency
Lenny: 也许在进入我们非常精彩的快问快答环节之前,可以聊聊如何选择公共关系 agency。显然你自己就经营一家。当人们在决定和谁合作时,以及什么时候该找 agency 而不是自己做,你有什么建议可以分享吗?
Emilie Gerber: 我觉得有一种假设是,更大、更有名的 agency 会做得更好。但实际上,很多大型知名 agency 习惯了与家喻户晓的品牌合作,所以他们的策略往往非常被动,侧重于信息管控,可能需要拒绝很多机会,控制人们说什么。这在我看来与做创业公司公共关系截然相反。创业公司公共关系,你需要实验,需要尝试新东西,需要精打细算,需要快速反应。我们个人其实非常喜欢直接投入 pitch,而不是花几个月时间打磨信息,而是立刻在市场上测试。所以不要仅仅因为他们有那些大客户 logo 就……就像你说的,“哦,你们和 Perplexity 合作过,那是不是意味着你们知道怎么和所有小公司合作?“这不一定是一件好事,所以不要只冲着大 logo 去买。我想这是我的第一条建议。
第二条建议是,搞清楚和他们合作第一个月会是什么样子。如果第一个月他们只是在做 intake 沟通、了解公司,而你是一家还在精打细算每一分钱的创业公司,你未必会想和一家需要三个月 ramp up 周期的 agency 合作。所以要非常具体地了解前几个月会是什么样子。我注意到很多 agency 在真正动手做事之前会拖很长一段时间。
第三条建议是,看他们最近的写作样本。就像我之前分享的那些新闻稿摘录一样——看看他们写出来的东西,是不是那个风格?如果是的话,也许他们不是合适的 agency。直接问他们要。这太简单了,真的太简单了。就问他们要几篇最近的博客或新闻稿,不管他们通常用哪种形式,然后自己读一读。当然,也要看他们的成果——你想知道他们能拿到什么样的报道,但这比较显而易见。很多人已经讨论过这一点了,所以我只简单提一下:一定要见到你实际合作的团队,而不只是 agency 的创始人。问问”我们日常对接的人是谁?能不能简单聊一下?”
还有一件事我建议不要做,就是搞一个冗长的 RFP(Request for Proposal)流程。实际上作为 agency 我们不参与 RFP。仅有的两次参与经历,我都后悔了,因为投入的工作量与回报完全不成比例。而且你是在要求一个团队为你做大量免费工作,一般来说最优秀的玩家不会愿意做这种事,所以如果你要求他们做大量前期免费工作,你反而会把一些最优秀的玩家筛掉。以上这几点就是我的建议。
启动时间与预算
Lenny: 很好。然后我还有两个问题,因为我想人们在考虑是否应该找人合作时,会关心这些:一是如果有大事要发生,应该提前多久开始找人?二是预算方面应该有什么预期?最低是多少或者一个区间范围,你觉得怎样能帮助大家了解大概需要投入多少钱?
Emilie Gerber: 启动时间因 agency 而异。我觉得我们可以在客户需要我们的那一周就开始工作,所以也许我不是最适合回答这个问题的人。但我会说,在一次公告发布之前,你大概需要提前六周启动。因为当我们和一家公司开始合作时,我们要撰写博客、做媒体培训、做媒体触达、从投资者那里获取引言、协调各方,还要确保图片素材正在制作中——所以不仅仅是 pitch 和争取报道。所以要为 pitch 预留足够的时间,确保记者真的能够报道你的故事。六周是比较理想的。另外我还想强调一点,我非常不建议设定一个你认为必须发布消息的固定日期,更好的做法是根据记者什么时候能报道你的故事来决定发布时机。
我们有很多客户找到我们时脑子里已经有一个固定的日期,但通常并没有什么真正的理由。他们围绕那个日期在做计划,觉得那天还有其他传播内容要发布,但如果你能优先考虑记者的时间安排而不是你自己的时间节点,效果会好得多。因为争取到你首选的记者,比提前四天发布公告对你的业务价值大得多。所以给 agency 留一点灵活性是很关键的。我甚至见过一些公司在发布重大新闻时发了新闻稿却没有获得任何报道,就是因为他们死守某个特定的日期,非常僵化,结果一篇报道都没拿到。所以我觉得一个好的 agency 会建议客户保持灵活性。
六周的话我觉得是理想的时间。然后关于预算,我想说最低端大概是一个月一万美金左右找 agency。你也可以找顾问,最好的顾问至少也得每月八千美金,但小型精品 agency 的起步价是一万。我就直说了,我对我们的定价非常透明,我们的 retainer 起步价是每月一万五千美金,实际上这通常是 A 轮阶段的公司所处的价位。然后我想说,除非你是一家全球化企业,需要为不同产品线配备不同的团队——那种像微软级别的公司,那就是另一回事了。但如果你只是一家备受关注的 C 轮创业公司,我大概不会超过每月三万美金。确实有不少 agency 的月费会到五万、六万,但那就是完全不同的世界了,那个领域我不是专家。
Lenny: 太棒了,谢谢你分享这些。如果只是想做一次性的合作,就帮我搞定一篇报道,那预算应该在什么范围?
Emilie Gerber: 我想大概在一万到两万之间。你也可能找到愿意八千就做的顾问。
Lenny: 太好了,非常有帮助。Emilie,在我们进入非常精彩的快问快答环节之前,还有什么想分享的吗?
Emilie Gerber: 没有了,我准备好了。
快问快答
Lenny: 欢迎来到我们非常精彩的快问快答环节。我有六个问题,准备好了吗?
Emilie Gerber: 准备好了。
Lenny: 第一个问题,你最常推荐给别人的是哪两三本书?
Emilie Gerber: 有一本我现在印象特别深,是 Michael Pollan 的《How to Change Your Mind》。实际上我今晚就要出发去参加一个为期一周的裸盖菇素 retreat。
Lenny: 我们应该之前就做这期……(听不清)
Emilie Gerber: 我知道,说不定我会变得更哲学一些。
Lenny: 哇。
Emilie Gerber: 非常期待,我要去牙买加。
Lenny: 太厉害了。
Emilie Gerber: 自从研究那个领域以来,重塑神经通路这个概念让我非常着迷。打开思维、转换视角,我觉得这其实对我经营公司、做一个更好的领导者都很有帮助。我们现在的增长阶段正在大量招聘,压力很大,我只想确保自己每天都能展现出最好的状态。所以我真的很期待这次体验。
Lenny: 这个回答太棒了。这次访谈会成为你 set and setting 的一部分,不过希望你之后能不去想它。
Emilie Gerber: 完全不会。我其实有点紧张,但我觉得”先做这个访谈其实挺好的,做完之后我就可以彻底断联了”。所以我觉得时机其实很合适。
Lenny: 我很期待听你回来后怎么样。
Emilie Gerber: 我其实不太推荐书。我有 ADHD,读完一整本书对我来说非常困难,所以我就只推荐这一本吧。偶尔在海滩度假时能集中精力读一本轻松的,但阅读不是我主要的内容消费方式。
Lenny: 很好,这个回答很棒,一本就够了。你有最近特别喜欢的电影或电视剧吗?
Emilie Gerber: 我最喜欢的类型是后末日、世界末日的生存题材。我必须提一下我史上最爱的剧,不然就说不过去了。《行尸走肉》是我的下饭剧,晚上睡前都能看的那种。但我最近最喜欢的是《黄蜂》,你看过吗?
Lenny: 我在电视上看到过海报,但没看过。
Emilie Gerber: 我发现得有点晚。第二季已经播完了,他们正在做第三季。里面有飞机坠毁,还有一个接一个令人震惊的情节——食人,各种非常诡异的东西。而且这是那种会留在你脑子里的剧,看完之后你还会一直想着它,有点瘆人。
Lenny: 哇,我以为你会说《最后生还者》,但我现在必须去看这部剧了。
Emilie Gerber: 不是,《最后生还者》我看了,但我觉得它没有足够的生存元素。它更像是那个环境下的叙事,但并不是我想要的那种真正的后末日生存剧。
Lenny: 够硬核的。你有最喜欢的面试题吗?这个可以从任何角度来回答。
Emilie Gerber: 有的,我有一个新题。我们最近刚重新设计了面试流程,想让它更有挑战性。我现在最喜欢的问题是:如果一个客户来找你,坚信自己有值得报道的内容——比如某个公告,他们觉得应该上《华尔街日报》之类的——而你非常确定这根本不值得报道,你会怎么做?接下来你会采取什么步骤?我喜欢这个问题,因为它可以从两个层面来考察:一是从客户关系的角度,当客户提出这种要求时你如何与他们沟通;二是它也是一个批判性思维和创造力的问题——你如何把一个”不行”变成”行”?你如何把客户给你的素材变成真正有趣的东西?我喜欢深挖这个,他们也可以用真实的例子来说明。但我觉得我们工作中很大一部分其实就是以一种方式回推客户,所以这也能看出他们是否有能力、是否愿意对客户说不。
Lenny: 我真好奇人们会怎么回答这个问题。你有最近发现并特别喜欢的产品吗?
Emilie Gerber: 我一开始对 Apple Vision Pro 非常怀疑,还嘲笑过它。但第一次试用之后我完全改变了看法,我现在非常着迷,准备下单买一台,而且我特别期待把它用在工作上。我觉得它可能非常适合我的日常工作场景。试用之后的第二天,我就给一批我觉得可能有相关应用的客户发了消息,问:“我们有 Apple Vision Pro 策略吗?我们有准备对外谈论它的计划吗?“因为有时候这可以和 PR 的话题联系起来——我非常喜欢那些愿意在正在开发或计划做的事情上突破边界的客户,提前布局这些对话。所以这现在是我在进行的很多对话——试图说服客户去谈论这个话题。
Lenny: 所以你已经有了 Apple Vision Pro 策略,太厉害了。
Emilie Gerber: 我另一个要说的产品有点夹带私货,因为他们是客户,但我确实每天都在用——就是 Perplexity。我觉得它太好用了,哪怕只是在做一些小事,比如我在写一个奖项申报材料,忘了某个客户融了多少钱,直接问它就行了,不用打开五个不同的 Google 链接去找答案,获取快速信息方面真的非常强大。或者给一位高管写简介,快速了解他们过往经历的概要——对 PR 的使用场景来说真的非常好用。我实际上认为营销和 PR 会成为他们最核心的工作应用场景之一。
Lenny: 我也分享过我有多喜欢 Perplexity,我装了 Chrome 扩展,大概每天至少用一次,主要是做播客采访准备,还有各种其他事情。所以这个客户找得好,我觉得他们会做得非常出色。真希望我是投资人。
Emilie Gerber: 我就是那个开心的投资人。我很少做天使投资,然后我……
Lenny: 以后 Emilie 请客喝酒。
Emilie Gerber: 没问题。
Lenny: 太棒了,干得好。
Emilie Gerber: 谢谢。
人生座右铭
Lenny: 好,还有两个问题。你有没有一个经常回想起来的、会分享给朋友或家人的人生座右铭,不管是在工作中还是生活中?
Emilie Gerber: “坚定地持有观点,但 loosely held(不固执己见)“。我是一个很有主见、相信直觉的人,但这不意味着我不愿意改变想法、不承认自己错了。我最早是从一个网红那里听到这句话的,然后去搜了一下,发现……是谁来着?Jeff Bezos 也说过类似的话,所以我也不知道这句话的原始出处,但我觉得这是一条很好的座右铭。你可以在生活中非常有自己的主张,但这不代表你永远都是对的。
尾声
Lenny: Emilie,这次访谈完全达到了我的期望。我觉得这期节目会帮助很多人获得超棒的媒体报道。再次非常感谢你来参加。最后两个问题:大家在哪里可以找到你、联系你,如果想了解更多或合作的话?另外,听众怎样能帮到你?
Emilie Gerber: 我们的网站是 sixeastern.com,邮箱是 hello@sixeastern.com,可以在那里找到我们。另外我还有一个叫 On Background 的 newsletter,发在 Substack 上。它的定位就是帮人们发现这些实操性的机会,里面有媒体人事变动、正在做选题的记者、开放申报的奖项等等——基本上就是 agency 里实习生花一整天去搜集的那些信息,我们把它整理成了 newsletter。它的主要受众是 PR 从业者,但我其实觉得对于那些没有 PR 团队的公司内部人员来说,这也是一个跟进行业动态的很好资源。所以如果想帮忙的话,欢迎订阅。除此之外,我们在招人,所以如果你恰好是一位 PR 从业者,而且听到了这期节目到这里——我们一直在寻找优秀的人加入。
Lenny: 太好了。对于想联系你的人,除了有 PR 经验之外,你们在招人时还有其他具体的要求吗?
Emilie Gerber: 理想情况下希望有一些 B2B 经验。我觉得做 B2B PR 和做消费类 PR 差别很大。如果有与创业公司合作的经验,那是很大的加分项——你知道如何以一种 scrappy(精打细算)的方式快速推进。还有就是喜欢亲自动手做实际工作的人。我们的组织非常扁平,不是一个有很多团队管理的地方,所以它更像一个咨询工作室。
Lenny: 太棒了。Emilie,非常感谢你来。
Emilie Gerber: 嗯,真的很有趣。非常感谢你。
Lenny: 大家再见。非常感谢收听。如果你觉得这期节目有价值,可以在 Apple Podcasts、Spotify 或你喜欢的播客应用上订阅。也请考虑给我们评分或留下评价,这真的能帮助其他听众找到这个播客。你可以在 lennyspodcast.com 找到所有往期节目或了解更多关于这个节目的信息。下期再见。
术语表
| 原文 | 中文 |
|---|---|
| AE (Account Executive) | 客户经理 |
| affiliate marketing | 联盟营销 |
| angel invest | 天使投资 |
| ARR (Annual Recurring Revenue) | ARR(年度经常性收入) |
| beat | beat(负责的报道领域) |
| beat reporter | beat 记者(负责特定领域的记者) |
| briefing | 媒体简报(与记者沟通前的准备会议) |
| category creation | 品类创造 |
| comms | 传播 |
| DM (Direct Message) | 私信 |
| exclusive | 独家 |
| frame of reference | 参照框架 |
| Gen Z | Z 世代 |
| going viral | 出圈走红 |
| inbound | 主动找上门的(指客户或候选人主动联系) |
| incumbent | 现有巨头 |
| MarTech | 营销科技 |
| news wire | 新闻专线 |
| newsletter | newsletter(保留原文,指邮件订阅通讯) |
| on the record | 公开可引用的 |
| op-ed | 专栏文章 |
| organic growth | 自然增长 |
| panel | panel(分论坛讨论) |
| paywall | 付费墙 |
| pitch | pitch(公共关系领域常用术语,保留原文) |
| PR | 公共关系 |
| Q&A | 问答访谈 |
| retainer | 长期服务费(agency 按月收取的固定费用) |
| retreat | retreat(静修活动,保留原文) |
| scrappy | scrappy(精打细算、资源有限但高效运作的方式,保留原文) |
| seed stage | 种子阶段 |
| set and setting | set and setting(迷幻体验中的术语,指心态与环境,保留原文) |
| SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program) | SNAP(补充营养援助计划) |
| stealth startup | 隐身创业公司 |
| syndication | 同步转载 |
| tagline | 标语 |
| underdog | 挑战者 |
| warm introduction | 暖引荐 |
此文档由 AI 分片翻译(translate_long_document)
The ultimate guide to PR | Emilie Gerber (founder of Six Eastern)
Emilie Gerber: No one ever gets this tactical in PR. There’s just so much theoretical conversation and examining the big blunders, but at the end of the day, if you’re a startup that wants to get coverage for your company, you need to know actually the steps to take to do it.
About the Guest
Lenny: You mentioned a bunch of amazing companies you’ve worked with, Ram Perplexity. Most products won’t have this interesting of a story to tell. How do you help find something that is a nugget?
Emilie Gerber: You can get so in the weeds with your own messaging that you want to set up this massive problem statement, you want to make it a huge trend story, but if you’re very straightforward and you’re pattern matching, it’s generally actually going to work.
Is PR Worth the Investment
Lenny: So I asked you to bring some examples of pitches that are great and also examples of pitches that could be better.
B2C and Media Coverage
Emilie Gerber: I want to read one to you and then I want to see if you can tell me what this company does.
Media Coverage Value: Logos vs. Narrative
Lenny: Deal. Today, my guest is Emilie Gerber. Emilie is the founder and CEO of Six Eastern, a PR agency that has worked with over 100 tech companies, from stealth startups to publicly traded companies, helping them get press, build awareness, and level up their PR and comms strategy. Before starting her own firm, she worked at Uber where she led PR for the business development team and B2B programs. Prior to that, she worked at Box on product communications with a focus on product launches and partnership announcements. In our conversation, Emilie shares so many golden nuggets of advice on how to get press that I lost count.
We talk about which publications to target depending on your market and story, how to craft your pitch and your outreach to reporters, how to actually reach reporters, and also how to craft your product story for people to pay attention to what you’re doing, why warm introductions to reporters aren’t actually that important, how to find podcasts and newsletters to pitch that might be even more effective than traditional media, how much it would cost you to work with a PR agency instead of doing it yourself, and how much lead time you need if you do that.
Also, we go through a few real-life examples of press and outreach, both good examples and bad examples, and what we can learn from those. Also, we look at a pitch that Emilie sent to me about a podcast guest that is a client of hers that worked, and this guest is coming out in the future, so we look at what was effective about that pitch, and so much more. If you enjoy this podcast, don’t forget to subscribe and follow on your favorite podcasting app or YouTube, it’s the best way to avoid missing feature episodes and it helps the podcast tremendously. With that, I bring you Emilie Gerber after a short word from our sponsors.
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Emilie Gerber: Yeah, thank you for having me.
Exploring Affiliate Marketing
Lenny: So we’re going to be talking about press. A lot of people say that trying to get press isn’t really worth your time. It doesn’t drive signups, it doesn’t drive growth. You could spend your time on other things and have a lot more impact there, and I know that you have a really interesting perspective on second order effects of press and other benefits. So I’m curious to hear, what’s your perspective on this idea, that press isn’t really worth people’s time and how can press be helpful?
Emilie Gerber: Yeah, when we were emailing about it, talking about some of the articles that you were in, some of the coverage that you got, I was thinking about how, in your case, you have multiple audiences. You have your customers, which in a way, are your listeners and the people that are engaging with your content. So in a way, you’re a B2C business, but in another way, you’re a B2B business. Obviously, you have sponsors and you’re trying to attract really great guests to come on the show, and so there’s a second order piece of the press is validating that you’re something that a software company wants to sponsor. So internally, they’re making those decisions. Not everyone might know Lenny’s podcast, but they could send around a CNBC article and see that this is something very legit and something that people care about. It just signals that third-party validation that I think is really important, and that ties back to, when you look at a SaaS company or something and they’re making decisions, having that validation, I think, and that credibility goes a really long way.
Especially for a company that might be early stage, they’ve raised a little bit of money, I think sometimes the buyers are skeptical of engaging with new tools, because they’re worried they might not raise more funding, or it might go away tomorrow, and so the more that you can validate the business through things that’s not just you doing personally that other people are doing, I think the better. So I think, yeah, that’s the value from the B2B perspective and it’s not necessarily going to directly drive signups, but when that AE is sending their sales emails and they can link to a story, I think that really helps. Also, candidates too, when you’re reaching… If it’s a recruiter reaching out on LinkedIn and they only have 100 characters to make their pitch, linking to that story can be really powerful.
So those are some of the second-order effects for B2B. And then, on the consumer side, it’s a much more complex issue. There’s affiliate marketing, which is this whole world of paid, where you’re getting product reviews and that sort of thing, and that’s not really an area that I’m an expert on, but we do work with some consumer companies where press is a major driver of growth. So for instance, Perplexity, they have invested essentially zero in any paid marketing, they don’t have a marketing person even, but they do do PR. And so essentially, after their most recent announcement, they saw a massive spike in growth, a massive spike in signups, pro users, all of that. And I think, in that case, the reason PR works so well is…
First of all, it’s something that’s very easy to grasp. Google alternative. I know how to use Google, I’ve used Google a million times, you can go to perplexity.com. The barrier to trying the product is very low, you can quickly type in a query, get the answer, and then see the power of the tool. It takes one time to see the power of the tool. So in that case, I think just organic press is enough to generate that. There’s not a long process to get the customers interested, so… Yeah. I mentioned very case to case, but in those instances, it works well,
Funding Announcements and Media Coverage
Lenny: Man, there’s so many threads I want to follow here. That was such an interesting answer. And by the way, I love Perplexity. I once tweeted a result I had when I was using Perplexity, and that was one of their default questions you could ask about strawberries. Apparently, strawberries are not one fruit, strawberries are a bundle of fruits and every little piece of a strawberry, those little red things, are individual fruits all bundled together, which blew my mind. I was like, “I need to share this,” and so I wonder how much of their growth just comes from crazy things like that.
Emilie Gerber: Yeah, it’s like the kind of tool where your mom could try it and instantly know how to use it. Yeah. It’s good for weird questions, like what you just shared. That’s where it comes in really handy.
Major Media Outlets and Coverage Types
Lenny: You did a great job just defaulting, “Here’s weird questions you could ask,” and then, wow, what an answer. Okay, so on the B2B side, I think this is really interesting. When people are thinking about doing the calculus of, “Is it worth investing and trying to get press for a B2B business?” Related to what we were talking about offline. So when I got these stories in Fast company, I got a story in CNBC, I got a story in Entrepreneur Magazine, and I was telling you I’ve seen zero growth impact from all these stories. And you’d think like, “Wow.” I had a story in the magazine, Entrepreneur Magazine, print edition, and nothing comes from it as far as I can tell.
Navigating Business Insider
Emilie Gerber: Yeah.
VentureBeat, Fast Company, and Forbes
Lenny: And your point, which really stuck with me, is the real benefit isn’t that first order growth impact, it’s… And I’ve been doing this, it’s when I’m emailing potential guests telling them, “Hey, check out my work or my profile in these magazines.” And just having those little logos is really powerful, and that’s why you see those logos on people’s websites. So is your advice here, basically, for B2B businesses than most? If the pie chart of impact of press, most of that percentage is just having a logo of an awesome publication on your website and your outbound emails, and things like that?
Emilie Gerber: Yeah, the logo is a piece of it and then also the storytelling part. Maybe they’re not going to read eight paragraphs that you wrote about your business, but if it’s in the format of an article, I think they’re more likely to take the time to do it. One other, I guess, aspect of it is content. So for instance, the articles that people want to write about you are not about necessarily how great your podcast is, which it is, but more about how you created this business. And so it’s more through the lens of you’re an entrepreneur, you have built this media empire, and so that’s not necessarily the kind of story that’s going to drive your core audience to sign up, and so contents is part of it, too. And so we work with companies where we get them great stories about their company culture and cool initiatives that they’re doing, because reporters are interested in that topic. That’s not going to help their sales, but it might help with something like recruiting. And so yeah, I think thinking… That’s the other piece of it, is thinking through the content.
The New York Times and Wall Street Journal
Lenny: That’s such a good point, because the story they’re going to write about you isn’t, “This is the best product you’ve ever seen,” this is, “Look at this interesting journey this startup has gone on,” and that’s not going to convince your customers, it’s going to convince other people just to read this publication, but the fact that they wrote about you is really beneficial. And then you’re saying B2C, most of the benefit is actually driving growth and you’ve seen lots of examples of press driving significant growth.
Emilie Gerber: Yeah, I think it can be and I think this is one where, yeah, it’s a little more case-to-case, because we have some clients where they need to invest heavily in affiliate, because product reviews are what they need or they want to be on lists of the best vacuum cleaner, or whatever category, and it’s less about getting them big features. And so there’s different ways of doing it for B2C. But yeah, I do think it’s like… Yeah, there’s two camps, affiliate or not affiliate.
How to Avoid Negative Press
Lenny: Can you actually explain this affiliate bucket? Because I’m not actually that familiar with it.
Emilie Gerber: I can. However, we actually don’t do affiliate marketing, so there’s probably going to be a lot of people that have a much more insightful perspective on it, but affiliate is essentially when you work with a publication to give them a percentage of any sales that come from the piece of the article. And so if you look at Business Insider’s list of best personal finance tools, it’ll say at the top that they’re getting commission. So they track the links, they figure out a certain percentage, and then they basically get a percentage of all the sales that come in, and it’s very common. I would say most consumer companies are doing this, but yes, there’s entire agencies that are dedicated to that field.
Making the Most of Briefing Preparation
Lenny: Wow, I didn’t actually know that was such a big thing. I’ve heard of affiliate marketing where you get paid for promoting something, I didn’t know Business Insider did this as a revenue.
Emilie Gerber: Yeah, and I don’t want to call out just… I mean, I would say every publication that’s doing product reviews for the most part, I believe, it’s a very common practice.
Qualitative Screening for Podcasts
Lenny: Wow. All right, already learning a lot. Okay, so I definitely want to start talking about how to actually get press for your product, but one quick question about fundraising announcements. So I’m an investor in a lot of companies, very often, they email me and ask for advice how to get press and, most of the time, it’s a fundraising milestone. When is it worth investing trying to get press and fundraising? Like always worth trying, rarely worth your effort? Does it have to be some really impressive fundraising moment? What do you suggest?
Emilie Gerber: I also think not all PR people are going to agree with this, but I do think funding rounds, you can always get a reporter to cover if you go about it the right way. I mean, we scope out projects that are just for funding announcements, we’ve never had to not finish that project or we’ve never… I wouldn’t do that if it wasn’t possible, so I think there’s a couple of reasons that it sometimes doesn’t work out. But I guess just to take a step back on funding stories, a lot of founders automatically think that, “I raise money, so TechCrunch will cover this.” The reality is… Someone tweeted, actually someone from another agency, I should… Propeller PR, they tweeted that they counted how many funding stories TechCrunch did in a week, and it was nine, so they had written nine funding stories in one week. And then they counted how many funding rounds actually happened that week by looking at Axis Parata and Fortune Term Sheet, and it was like 50.
So it seems… When you go to TechCrunch, it looks like, “It’s all funding stories, so mine should be one of these.” That’s not the case at all. But I do think, if you go about it the right way, you can be one of those nine. And I’m talking about TechCrunch specifically here only because the reality is they are the publication that’s going to be most likely to write your funding story, that’s just kind of the way it works. And it’s not a bad thing, they’re actually… They don’t have a paywall, they tend to do a very good job, they understand it. It’s a well-oiled machine, and so we know if you’ve done a story with them, it’s going to pretty much go how you want to plan it. So when you go to pitch a funding story, I think the first thing that founders, or whoever is reaching out on behalf of the company, does wrong is they convolute the message.
When we pitch a funding story, we make it very clear, “Hey, we’re reaching out with a startup launch or funding. We’re offering this to you as an exclusive, meaning we’re not going to pitch anyone else if you take the story. Here’s the amount that’s raised, here’s the space that… Here’s the space they’re in and here are the investors.” I think you can get so in the weeds with your own messaging, that you want to set up this massive problem statement, you want to make it a huge trend story. You don’t really say what you’re trying to accomplish from it, but if you’re very straightforward and you’re pattern matching, “Hey, this TechCrunch reporter is the one that covers FinTech. I have a FinTech funding round, here’s the reason my FinTech funding round matters.” It’s generally actually going to work and now it does 100% takes follow up.
You’re not shooting off one email, you are respectfully following up. When I follow up, I like to come in with some new information, whether it’s something they had tweeted in the past couple of days, a new article that they wrote, very respectful. I try to wait three or four days. If it’s not going anywhere, then try someone else. Do that three or four times with the most relevant reporters. Generally, I think it works. Yeah, I think if you can just be really concise and direct and say what you’re looking for out of the relationship, it tends to be a pretty easy process. And yeah, TechCrunch is one publication, but this actually goes for a bunch.
How to Contact Podcast Hosts
Lenny: Amazing. I love that we’re already getting into tactical advice for how to actually get press. So that was essentially for fundraising and the notes I took is keep it really simple, “Here’s how much we raise, here’s our investors. Here’s one line about why this matters.” I want to talk later about how pitching press is different for customers, because with customers, I think this is probably the mistake a lot of people make, and we don’t have to get into this just yet, but you want to paint the picture of the market and trends and, “Here’s where the market’s going and why this is huge and why this is a solution to your problem,” versus, “Bam, this is interesting for this reason,” and that’s it.
Are Warm Introductions Important?
Emilie Gerber: Exactly.
How to Reach Out to Journalists
Lenny: Okay. I want to talk about publications to target and what each one is best suited for. So you’re talking about how TechCrunch is essentially really good for fundraising. When I think about other publications, there’s like Axios and Verge, I don’t know if they do press stories like this. Wall Street Journal, New York Times, things like that. So I guess, what are the different publications people should have on their list of target? And then, what are each of them most aligned to, story-wise?
Emilie Gerber: I really love this question. I feel like no one ever gets this tactical in PR. There’s just so much theoretical conversation and examining the big blunders and… It’s all so high level, but at the end of the day, if you are a startup that wants to get coverage for your company, you need to know actually the steps to take to do it. So yeah, I appreciate that question. I’m going to answer it, but also answer it with the caveat that media changes so much and so fast. For instance, just a couple weeks ago, TechCrunch decided they no longer accept op-eds, which is… It’s actually huge news for us, because we love doing op-eds in TechCrunch, and so things change all the time, but I will talk about it in its current state. So yes, TechCrunch, a go-to for a lot of funding announcements. A go-to for some product news, too, even sometimes.
I would say the areas where they don’t have dedicated beat reporters, where we tend to end up not working with them, are health tech-related companies and even MarTech, too. We’ve struggled to find the right folks to cover those kinds of stories. So not everything, but generally, if you do your digging, you’re able to find a relevant beat reporter or a couple of relevant beat reporters, and it’s not just about getting coverage there. They have TechCrunch Disrupt, you can apply for speaking at that conference, and that sometimes actually directly turns into coverage. They have The Found Podcast, which interviews founders, and so if you have a really compelling founder story or topical founder story, that can be an excellent avenue to go as well. They have The Equity Pod, which is investment advice, so it’s not just thinking about getting that one funding story with them, there are other ways to work with TechCrunch.
And I actually have heard really great feedback from clients on TechCrunch driving website traffic, the day of the announcement, especially… I haven’t really been able to pinpoint when that does or doesn’t happen. I’m trying to figure out if there’s trends among that, but I have… Clients have sent me screenshots from the day of the announcement and they’ve seen a nice pickup from TechCrunch, so I think a lot of that comes down to the fact that they don’t have a paywall, but their stuff tends to do really well. So it’s a great spot, especially for that first piece on your company. Axios is really strong on the FinTech side, on the healthcare side, they have some really great beat reporters. The one thing I’ll say about them is they’re very deals-focused, so 100% would need to either have funding. If you’re announcing a partnership that has a monetary component, that they would cover that. An acquisition they would consider covering, but they’re not going to be… You should never pitch them on a product announcement.
And I think they might just get annoyed. There’s a couple exceptions, a couple of the reporters might have little columns where they feature product-related things, but that’s just not their bread and butter. And actually, Axios recently launched, or I guess has been launching over the past year or so, local editions. So they’re really branching into local news, and so that can actually be a really nice way to get an Axios hit if you have a region-specific story. So I highly recommend checking that out. Another publication that we work with a bunch is Business Insider. If you struggle to pitch your funding story but really want it out in the world, they are big on the pitch deck stories. Those are a little controversial. Some founders, they’re like, “This is not what I want my story to be about, I do not want to share my pitch deck.”
But if you are in the camp of… You’re open to that and you can redact, it does not need to have all the financials, it does not need to have the growth metrics, that can be a really great way to get a piece of coverage on your business. And the way that I explain it to clients is you’re just getting all your core messages out there in a very direct way. You’re sharing exactly what you shared with investors, that’s not necessarily a bad thing. And sometimes clients will put in some customer slides, too, and so you can really make it a little bit more like what you’re looking for. So yes, if you’re looking for a funding story, TechCrunch passed, others passed, that’s a good option. They also are huge on the entrepreneurial journey pieces, similar to the CNBC article that you got, but they really want metrics, they really push for metrics, so how much you’re making, how much you’re spending.
They love those kinds of stories, so it’s not necessarily about how much you raise, but for people that have really built a business. And then the last thing for Business Insider, they do a bunch of these lists of top startups, of top professionals in the field. We love doing those, they’re generally a really light list, and they put out a call for submissions. Takes five minutes and it’s a way to get into Business Insider. There’s so many of them, it’s become a joke within my newsletter, because every week, there’s five more and it’s the most obscure different categories. Like top sports marketing professionals helping TikTok stars. I don’t know, it’s always a very niche ask, but those could be really great. Then a couple more.
VentureBeat is huge for AI news. We pitch them all the time for any client that we work with that is building AI capabilities, has a new offering related to AI, perfect publication for that. Fast Company is perfect for anything related to future of work, how people work. Really great for design, media, I would say perfect for any company that fits in those categories. They’re also really open to op-eds, especially with leadership advice in them. And last but not least, on the list of ones that we work with most often, I would say is Forbes. Especially on the award side, they have the FinTech 50, AI 50, Forbes Under 30, all of that. And you’re not going to get a feature with one of their main reporters until you’re a bit further along, but they do have that really strong contributor network, which is much… A lower bar in what they’ll accept, in a way. They’re more open to covering earlier stage companies, so that’s worth checking out, too. So those are my top ones, I’ll stop there.
Case Study: Crafting Controversial Pitches
Lenny: That’s amazing. And those are the most commonly requested and the ones you mostly go after?
Emilie Gerber: Yeah, they’re the most realistic for most startups. There are ones like The Verge, and they’re a little more gadget-focused and just areas that we don’t necessarily touch, but could be good for some companies as well.
Positioning: Don’t Be a Category Creator
Lenny: Got it, and then… I was going to say this for later, but there’s obviously New York Times and The Wall Street Journal. Thoughts on going after those?
Emilie Gerber: Yeah, we do get those questions all the time. I would say it comes up on calls with founders, “I want one out of every five.” And really, when you look at… I make a joke sometimes like, “If you want those, just have a crisis and they’ll write about it.” Fire your CEO or do really intense layoffs and have some regulatory issue.
Playoffs and have some regulatory issue and you’ll get a story there.
Case Study: What a Good Pitch Looks Like
Lenny: Uber got a lot of stories there.
Case Study Two: Column Tax
Emilie Gerber: Yeah, I can show some examples there. When you look at earlier stage companies that are getting coverage in those publications, that’s what’s happening.
Now, let’s say you’re a tiny bit further along and you’re series B, series C, maybe even series C, and you’re looking for coverage in those publications, there’s a couple criteria that they’re always going to want if it’s to write a feature on your company. One is your valuation, so that needs to be something that you’re sharing on the record. Two is your hard business metrics, usually revenue, sometimes something else. And so oftentimes they’ll tell founders that and immediately they’re like, “Oh, well we’re not sharing that.” So I’m like, “Okay, well that’s kind of the end of the conversation.” Sometimes it can be shared on background, but as a general rule, you’re expected to share that sort of thing. So that’s kind of a nonstarter a lot of times.
I totally think it makes sense to build relationships with the relevant beat reporters and ideally shoot for… When I say build relationships, I just mean shoot for an intro meeting on behalf of the clients, or they can reach out directly with those kinds of reporters, but they’re just not going to write a feature on your company. If anything, you are going to be one or two sentences in a larger story of something that they’re writing about. And yeah, that’s just the nature of their coverage.
And then when you look at something like CNBC, they’re targeting people that want to learn about public markets. And so if you’re not a public company, they have their CNBC Disruptor 50 list, which is focused on companies that will soon be at that stage, but it’s not going to be a place for early stage companies.
Case Study: Gamma’s Funding PR
Lenny: When I have these pieces in past company and CNBC, it was such a weird experience where I chat with them for half an hour and then it just comes out, and I have no idea what they’re going to write about. Could be a complete tear down of everything I’m doing and you have no idea. How do you help try to avoid that sort of story? I know you have no control. Obviously reporters can write what they want to write about. Do you have any advice for how to avoid them writing something really negative about you?
Emilie Gerber: Generally, if it’s something that you’re being briefed in advance, unless it is around something negative that’s going on, it’s just not their intention, it’s just not going to happen. But what is a bigger issue is it not being the angle or the messaging that the company wants. And so part of that, there’s absolutely nothing that we can do. Reporters are not our employees. We’re not paying them to write these pieces. They have to maintain their editorial integrity.
And so I consider it my job to educate the founders and spokespeople that we work with that we cannot change anything the story says. What we can do is correct any factual inaccuracies, and we do that all the time. If something is factually wrong, we can get it replaced. But if they don’t like that they were called, put in a category of software that they don’t identify with, that’s not something that we can fix.
Another thing that you can do though to prevent that from happening is just really ensuring that the spokesperson before talking to the reporter is going to nail the messages that they want. The more that you can reiterate over and over again how you want the article to be, I think the more likely that it’ll land in the reporter’s head and make sure that the reporter really understands what you’re building and what your goals are. And all you can do is really use the briefing and the materials that you provide to kind of sway and influence, but there’s not much beyond that.
Practical Pitching Advice
Lenny: So we’ve talked about all these publications. These are ones to consider going after. You also mentioned podcasts and awards as something people go after. Is there a tip you could share of how to find aligned podcasts or awards, like how you find a list of here we should go after these?
Emilie Gerber: We use Google. We just use search engines basically for finding everything. And the way that we go about it is first figuring out who their customers are and what vertical they’re in, and then just doing searches for podcasts that are within that vertical.
But it’s not as easy as just reaching out to the ones that pop up first. The next step is a qualitative analysis. First of all, do they have vendor CEOs or vendor executives on their show? Let’s say your product is sold to product managers. Maybe they only have product managers on the show. So instead you don’t put the CEO forward and you put the right spokesperson-
Case Study: Successfully Pitching Podcasts
Lenny: Who could that be? What podcast might that be referring to?
Emilie Gerber: Yeah, right? But this could be for CFOs. So let’s say you sell into CFOs. Don’t pitch your CEO for that podcast. Get a CFO and then pitch your CFO for that podcast. I’m very for companies hiring folks, or hiring so the roles that they sell into, it helps us a lot. So if your audience is a CFO, it really helps if you have a CFO. If your audience is a CMO, it really helps if you have a CMO, and that actually when your earlier stage isn’t always the case, and so it’s a lot harder to pitch. So I think that’s the second part of the qualitative analysis.
The third is, podcasts really come and go, make sure… It sounds obvious, but make sure it’s one that’s actively producing. When you Google ones, half of them are not going to be active podcasts. And then the third is actually listening to at least part of one episode, making sure the quality is high, making sure it’s the kind of thing you even want to associate yourself with. And then just looking at who the past guests are, is that the kind of peers that you want to associate yourself with?
And then one other thing that you can do is just in conversations with customers, find out what they’re listening to, find out what they’re watching, find out their media diet. And it doesn’t have to be a big crazy survey that you send to your entire customer base. It can be casual. If you’re farther along, it’s great if you can make that a more formal sort of process, but it doesn’t necessarily need to be.
And then in terms of reaching out, I highly recommend figuring out who the host is, just doing the research, figuring out who the host is, and then just sending them a casual note. I’m a big fan of just reaching out on LinkedIn and saying, “Hey, love the show. Are you open to guest ideas?” I don’t even mention the client or anything, just opening the door. I just feel like that’s so much more approachable and friendly than starting with a big pitch. And I think so many people start with this very long email introducing themselves or going really deep and you don’t have to do that. And especially because maybe only one out of every 10 replies, it’ll also save you a lot of time if you just start with something really lightweight.
Case Study: Improving Vague Product Descriptions
Lenny: I think that actually works really well. That’s what I find is if it’s a simple little message, I’m like, yeah, let me know what you got in mind. Even though 99% of the time it doesn’t work out, sometimes it works out great. And so I find, sure, let’s just see what you got. And then usually I’m just like, “Nope, sorry, not a fit.”
Emilie Gerber: And you get the reply that way. If you send the initial pitch and the reporter or podcast host isn’t interested, chances are they won’t reply. But if you just start with something friendly and they reply, they’ll feel like, I guess a little more of a connection there, and so at least you’ll get an answer. Whereas otherwise, you might not get an answer at all.
Practical Tips for Clearer Communication
Lenny: On the survey piece I think that’s a great idea, and I’ve seen a few of my sponsors do this where they ask their customers, what podcast do you listen to? What newsletters do you read? Which is such a simple idea, but I think people don’t do that. And just from that you could figure out, okay, here’s the podcast we got to get on. Here’s the newsletters we want to run after.
I want to talk about how to actually pitch well. But before that, we’ve been talking a bit about who to reach out to and how to do that. So there’s a few questions here. It’s just like how important is it to have a warm connection to a reporter? If you don’t have that, what’s the best way to reach out to them? Is it LinkedIn, is it Twitter DMs, something else? What advice do you have about, just before we get into the structure of the pitch, figuring out who to pitch and then how to get to that advice?
Emilie Gerber: Who are your relationships question comes up on a lot of our calls with founders as well. I’d like to pose the question to you. Did we have a relationship before this?
Resources for Optimizing Taglines
Lenny: Nope.
Press Releases Decline, Blogs Rise
Emilie Gerber: Exactly. I’m of the belief that it does not matter as much as many people think it does. And I explained this on calls where they ask, “Oh, tell me about your Rolodex, or who is your relationships with?” First of all, media’s changing so fast. So sure, maybe there is a reporter that we worked with recently. They might have a completely different beat in six months. They might be at a very different publication. So it’s not sustainable to build an entire career on having relationships with certain publications.
And media is changing too. Now, podcasts and Substack and newsletters, it is just changing too fast. And so I think cold outreach done well is just as effective. The only thing that a relationship will get you is an open and an answer. And so any good reporter is not going to be making their editorial decisions based on who their friends are. That’s just not the nature. It shouldn’t be the nature of the industry, and it’s not. Maybe it’ll get you an intro coffee, but that’s about it. It’s not going to get you coverage. They’re not going to cover your news because there’s a relationship there. I think the much harder and more important part is being good at writing really thoughtful notes to the right people.
And in a way, now we do have a relationship, and so it can come from a cold email, but now it’s easier for me to pitch you because you know my name and we’ve spoken and we’ve worked together. And so for me, I’m a big fan of being helpful to reporters, and I tend to just keep it professional and pitch them on stories. I don’t necessarily feel like going to drinks or having coffee all the time is crucial to building those relationships. A lot of the reporters that I work with regularly, I’ve never met in person, and that’s okay, but it can be great for getting answers I would say. That’s where the relationships can be helpful.
And then once you have worked with a reporter on a story, it’s true that maybe they’ll be more likely to come back when they’re working on something related, use you as a source, quote you in articles that are relevant. So once there’s something there, that’s great and you should totally nurture it, but it’s not all about calling in favors.
Lenny: Awesome. Okay. And then in terms of how to reach reporters, what do you find most effective?
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Emilie Gerber: Yeah, I’m pro all platform approach. So sometimes reporters will tweet that they’re working on a story about something, and rather than me sending them an email with my pitch, I’ll say, “Hey, 10 words on why this person is the person you should talk to,” and then send a link to an article on them and that’s my entire pitch. And honestly, it’s sometimes more effective than when I spend 30 minutes writing a really thoughtful email. So I’m a fan of that. I’m a fan of DMs, short, concise, direct DMs. Sometimes LinkedIn, although for whatever reason I feel like that works better with on the podcast side with hosts.
And then of course email, we totally email. When I email a reporter, I love to make the subject line just as clear as possible as what the goal is and why I’m emailing them. And so let’s say it’s for a recurring column that they have, I’ll put the name of that column and the person that I think should be included in the subject line. And even that for a reporter, it’s like, oh, they actually know. They actually know I write this column and they’re suggesting a guest for this column. It’s so direct, it’s so clear.
I think just saying what your intentions are right away. Are you trying to get a Q&A? Are you trying to get a story? Are you trying to get a funding story, like I mentioned before, is very crucial, and keeping it short. I would say my most successful pitches are three sentences and anytime… Sometimes it needs to be longer than that, and generally I feel like my pitch is weaker for that reason. Attention spans are short, and so the more concise you can make it, the better. And then just sometimes I’ll start with one platform. I’ll start with an email and that doesn’t work, so I’ll go somewhere else. But I try to make it very human and respectful. So using language like, “Hey, I know your inbox is probably slammed. Sorry to annoy. Trying you one more time here.”
Another thing that actually can work really well is pointing out gaps in their coverage too, and talking about things that they should be talking about. Like, Hey, my client’s noticing this trend. I know you’ve covered it from this point of view, but no one’s talking about it from this point of view. That can be really helpful because it shows that you are actually paying attention to what they are writing, but in a way that you’re demonstrating that you have some critical thinking going on, not just, I liked your article on X, which is a common practice that PR people use is I like this, and then jump to your pitch. So yeah, giving it a little more thoughtful, pointing out gaps in coverage.
And then the last piece is, especially if you don’t have hard news that you’re pitching, having something pretty controversial to say.
So we work with a lot of AI companies. If nine of them have one stance on something happening in the field and one has the other stance, chances are that one is going to be the one that a reporter wants to talk to because they are getting so many pitches on this topic, but they want to write a balanced article, they need that opposing view. And so we really push our clients to have something unique and different and bold to say. And it obviously has to be a strategic decision for the business. You don’t want to go commenting on regulatory things if it sounds like you don’t want to necessarily be a part of that conversation, but there are I think instances where it can make a lot of sense to say something that’s a little bit bold and controversial.
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Lenny: That last piece is really interesting. Is there an example that comes to mind where you had a controversial contrarian pitch?
Emilie Gerber: Yeah, so we work with a company called Clockwise, which essentially manages your calendar and allows time for focus time within your workday. They move things around for you. And a couple of months ago, Shopify got tons of positive press for essentially canceling all their recurring meetings, and everyone was very intrigued by this strategy. Press was generally quite positive towards it, and so we knew that if we just wrote another piece saying, “Oh, this is great,” no one would want to publish that. It had been said in a million different ways. So we looked at the topic a little more critically and we’re like, okay, is this actually enough to change meeting culture within a business? And we kind of identified all these other things that we think need to happen in order to really change the culture in a way that’s going to be sustainable and long-term versus just blanket deleting of calendar meetings.
And so we ended up turning this into an op-ed, so something that together we wrote and then pitched a publication. And yeah, the title was “Shopify’s Meeting Cost Calculator Does Not Address the Issue of Wasted Time”. And so it wasn’t necessarily saying it was a horrible idea, but it was putting a little bit more of a critical eye towards it. And Fast Company was interested in the idea and they posted the piece by the CEO, Matt Martin, and it was a great thing for us to comment on. And so yeah, I think it doesn’t necessarily need to be something where you’re coming out against it, but just proposing something that’s a little more thoughtful on the topic.
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Lenny: Just hearing that it sounds like such an obvious thing to do. Basically a reporter is looking for an interesting story to write about. If you tell them something interesting that they could put out, that’s a win-win for everybody. So makes a ton of sense. Let me try to summarize the advice you’ve shared so far when you’re, say DMing a reporter, your advice so far is basically be very direct. Just tell them, “Hey, I’m looking for…” What’s an example of being direct? Is it like I’m looking for a story on this fundraising announcement?
Emilie Gerber: I wouldn’t say I’m looking for. I don’t know, just I would say if it was a DM, I would say, “Reaching out from X company. Would love to offer you the launch story alongside their funding if you’re open to it.” And usually I’d either say the amount and the investors or the company name. If you give them both, you’re kind of just giving them the story and they could run with it right away. That’s actually an important distinction. And so you could either say, “Reaching out with this Martech company that’s raised 8 million from X Investors. Really interesting approach, they’re taking on X incumbent. Do you want the exclusive?” That’s kind of how I would phrase it.
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Lenny: Okay, awesome. Then, try to keep it to three sentences. And you’re saying sometimes when you go longer, you actually end up backfiring each time. Sometimes include a link to a story they’ve written or some other story about the company that might give them some context. Is that right?
Emilie Gerber: Yeah. And a caveat on that is, if a competing publication just wrote a bigger similar feature on that, they’re not going to want to see that. And so I would use that strategically. If it’s a piece from a while ago on a different topic that does share a lot of info, I’ll include it, but I’m not necessarily going to include something that might seem like why would I cover this when this was just written about.
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Lenny: Good point. You also talked about how try to acknowledge their inbox is probably slammed, and this is taking some time maybe in follow-ups, especially like, Hey, I realize your inbox is slammed, just thought I’d come back to this. Then you talk about this idea of identifying gaps in the writing, like, Hey, it seems like you cover Gen AI. There’s this trend that we’ve been noticing that maybe it would be interesting to cover. And then something controversial or something a little contrarian that would get them. Oh yeah, this could be a really interesting story.
Awesome.
Emilie Gerber: Yeah.
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Lenny: Is there anything else broadly in terms of pitch advice to get the attention of a reporter that comes to mind? And I know this is a lifetime of experience and it’s hard to summarize all of it, but anything else?
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Emilie Gerber: Well, one topic, maybe this would be covered elsewhere, but one topic I think is talking about incumbents that this company is taking on. So a lot of companies want to position themselves as category creators, and I actually hate that. It doesn’t work. It doesn’t land with press, and most of the time it’s not totally true.
And so instead, it’s actually really great when you can talk about how you are doing what X household name does, but better for X reasons, and that works so well. I’ll put that in subject lines. I’ll put company taking on whatever Salesforce with X approach. It’s so successful because instantly it gives the reporter a frame of reference. And so it gives the reporter, oh, I know what Salesforce does, so I can understand how this solution would be better. And a lot of companies really want to position themselves as the first to do anything in a certain space. They love the idea of category creating, creating these little marketing phrases that they use for the new category. And that’s fine if perhaps that works on the sales side, but on the PR side, I would never have put that in a pitch.
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Lenny: There’s just going to be a meta comment, but the two topics that are most controversial in this podcast that I have both sides of opinions on is the power of category creation and jobs to be done.
Emilie Gerber: Oh, really?
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Lenny: There’s a lot of passion on both sides.
Emilie Gerber: I mean, sure, you can point to examples of the two companies that have done category creation well, but it’s two out of what, thousands?
Quick Fire Questions
Lenny: I love it. I’m going to keep poking this hornet’s nest. I love it. Okay. But you’re saying in your experience doesn’t work when pitching reporters?
Emilie Gerber: For PR. Yeah, simply for PR. In other areas of the business I can’t comment on, but for PR, it’s just not a useful tactic.
Personal Life Motto
Lenny:
So I asked you to bring some examples of pitches that are great, and also examples of pitches that could be better, and I know… Yeah. Okay, cool. So thank you for doing the homework. Let’s pull them up and then I’d love to just show people what you find has been really effective and works great about these examples and then what somebody could have done better, whatever you want to share about that example.
Emilie Gerber: Sure. Sounds good. I guess since we’re on the topic of category creating versus not category creating, I’ll start with an example that’s very relevant to that. So we worked with RAMP in their very early days, and one of their first product announcements that we did together was the launch of their bill pay offering. And so at the time, I think they were like a three billion dollar company, something along those lines. So big, but not as big as they are today. Product news rarely gets big feature coverage, especially for something along the lines of a bill pay offering for B2B companies.
And so essentially the way that we framed the story was how RAMP was now able to take on Bill.com, which at the time I’m not sure if it still is, was one of the best performing FinTech IPOs public company that really had still only captured two percent of this market overall. And so by positioning it as allowing them to take on this massive incumbent that was getting a lot of press, we actually were able to get a CNBC story on the launch of this product. Generally they won’t even consider product stories, but they really liked the angle of this underdog doing something that could take on a piece of market share from them.
And the next day there was actually another story about how Bill.com stock had gone down and they did make mention of RAMP’s news in that story. So it ended up really just, it was a very powerful way of telling the narrative there.
And another way, if we hadn’t pitched it like that would’ve just been RAMP brings simple, seamless, streamlined ability to do vendor payments and new finance offering, first of its kind. All these things that might be how you would talk in your customer emails, but if I had pitched it that way, probably wouldn’t have been a story. So if we had pitched it as them creating a new category of this all in one software, which I mean, yeah, it could be argued, that’s another way to tell the story. I don’t think CNBC would’ve been interested.
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Lenny: Awesome.
Emilie Gerber: So, okay, another example, we work with a company called Column Tax, which is embedded tax filing software. So essentially they work with other FinTech’s to allow people to file their taxes within the tools that they already use. And last year they partnered with a company called Propel that offers SNAP benefits. So essentially for low income families to receive the government benefits to offer tax filing directly within the app that they’ve created.
And that was one thing that they were doing amidst many other customers, that they had lots of different threads we could pull on with them, but we decided to really just focus our press strategy on that one initiative because it allowed us to tell macro story about TurboTax had to pay all these fines for practices that many considered unsavory around calling themselves free but not really being free. The IRS is building a free filing system, but it’s in its very early days.
So the fact that they were having this offering that was supporting a lot of low income families, and I believe 40% of the people that filed their taxes with Column hadn’t filed taxes in the previous year, so hadn’t gotten a return. It’s like identifying the piece of the story that’s most interesting and then doubling down on that. So we were able to get a great fast company piece instead of pitching this macro here are Column Tax’s latest growth metrics, and they’re announcing a partnership with Propel. And so it’s like…
Growth metrics, and they’re announcing a partnership with Propeller. And so it’s figuring out how to tie it to these things that people actually care about, and not just the company’s messaging I think is our job.
Lenny: Amazing, is there any other examples? Otherwise, I’ll share your pitch of someone coming on my podcast, and what worked about that.
Emilie Gerber: I do want to share one more, because it’s my favorite. I want to share my favorite funding story that I worked on. And so I’m actually going to pull it up, because this one is very graphic, in terms of how we went about showing the product. So we worked with a company called Gamma, which is essentially bringing a PowerPoint into something that’s much more modern, and interactive, and usable. So when we did their launch, they were a seed stage company, we tried to get really creative with how we could display or talk about the company. And so instead of doing your standard company blog posts, we actually made a Gamma presentation, and we kind of included all these fun elements that made it really interesting to reporters. So firstly, it’s a visual platform. So we created… Or actually I don’t want to take credit for this. The Gamma team created this great visual.
And we kept it very to the point. Every year, half a billion people create presentations in Google Slides and PowerPoint. We’re not using marketing language here, we’re talking in a very direct way, we’re including fund visuals. We talk about Gamma’s mission, pretty short, this is not a long essay on why the company exists. And then we include some customer love, so they’re early stage, so we didn’t really have necessarily growth metrics that we wanted to share. So we tried to make it a little bit more personal, and focus on actual users and what they’re saying, while also showing the product capability here. And then instead of doing a long thing on each investor, we just bulleted who the investors are, which is very to the point, easy for a reporter to repurpose.
And then the fun part that I really loved, is we did a video from the lead investor talking about why she invested, instead of including an investor quote. So it’s a little bit different than what you expect. And their videos are fun, because they have all these interactive elements. And yeah, team photo, make it a little more personal. And that was about it. But anyways, it was a very successful story, and I believe the title of the TechCrunch article that we got as a result was Gamma Brings PowerPoint into the 21st Century. Exactly, that’s exactly what we’re talking. Maybe they are creating a new category, we weren’t talking about it then, we’re talking about how it’s better than the existing solutions. And so yeah, I guess the piece of advice there, is feel free to get kind of fun and creative with it, and don’t just follow the typical issuing press release format.
Lenny: And is that something we could link to for people to check out? Is that just on their site?
Emilie Gerber: Yeah.
Lenny: Okay, amazing.
Emilie Gerber: Yeah, I actually had to for some reason do some digging to get it. But yeah, I have it now, so I can give it to you.
Lenny: Okay, great. And the way that you use that is when you sent emails or DMs to reporters, you included this link?
Emilie Gerber: After they had that they’re potentially interested, because again, if I had shared it right off the bat, it would be their prerogative to just publish it essentially or share it publicly. And I guess one important note, is everything you say to a reporter in an email is on the record, and so that’s why I make the point on not sharing the entire story right off the bat.
Lenny: Got it. So many companies won’t have… They’re not a deck product, so they can’t do something like this. But the takeaways for other folks here, is be just very human in the language, the investors are just bullet points, make it fun, add some visuals, don’t just have blurbs, and paragraphs, and things like that.
Emilie Gerber: Yeah. I think reporters are used to getting the same thing all the time, and so this one obviously worked well for the format. But I think we try to always think of, what can we do that’s slightly different for this one? Or how can we make this a little more fun? I guess the one exception, if the product is very technical, and you have a very technical audience, and you’re probably going to work with a very technical reporter, it’s totally fine to talk to your audience in those cases, and you don’t need to necessarily dumb it down so everyone can understand. But that doesn’t mean… I mean, you can do that while still using clear and concise language.
Lenny: Okay, so let me share the element of the pitch that you sent me, that convinced me to bring this guest on. So this is going to be the chief product officer at NewBank. I barely know anything about NewBank. And so in your email to me, you basically had just two bullet points, and the way you put is, “Two fun facts about NewBank, growth has been 80 to 90% organic because of the way they try to make customers fanatical about the product.” And to me that’s like, “Wow, that’s very rare, is 80, 90% of your growth being organic.” So to me is like, “That’s an interesting story.” And then the other tidbit is, “NewBank is bigger than Coinbase, Robinhood, Affirm, SoFi, and Lemonade combined. Seriously, so much bigger than people in the US realize.” Which I 100% did not realize. So to me both were just like, “Okay, this is an interesting story to tell, I think people would be very curious to hear how a company like this operates.” So now I’m going to start getting all these emails from people, all these couple bullet points.
Emilie Gerber: They’re going to combine a bunch of companies, and see which they’re bigger than.
Lenny: Yeah, or use AI to help them figure this out. But I think what you identified here is just what I get excited about. Is there any advice there of just what you did there that other people can learn from?
Emilie Gerber: Yeah. I mean, I think with pitching you, speaking to the audience, it’s not just about having… You don’t want the most well-known CEOs all the time, you’re not looking just for the biggest companies and the most well-known people. You’re looking for the things that they can talk about, and how the things that they can talk about are relevant to your audience. And with the first bullet, it was indexing on that. The second bullet was more so like, “Hey, you might not know about this company.” And it’s a little bit of a unique one, I wouldn’t necessarily always include that. But to me the first bullet was really what mattered, because it wasn’t just about the fact that they were a huge company, it’s that they grew in a unique way, and I knew that was the kind of thing that you’d be interested in.
Lenny: And how did you figure that out? Is it from emails we were exchanging ahead of that? Is it listening to some podcasts? How did you get to those conclusions?
Emilie Gerber: Yeah, listening certainly helps. But I do think just figuring out… If you even just scrolled the names of all the episodes that you’ve done, it would be pretty easy to spot a trend there. And so you’re not talking about product launches, you are not talking about entrepreneurial journeys, you’re talking about tactical lessons. And so pitching people based on those sort of things, I don’t even think you necessarily need to listen to a whole bunch of episodes most of the time, maybe occasionally you want to gut check something before you reach out. But yeah, you can tell a lot just by doing a little bit of research.
And then we did have a little back and forth, because I will take responsibility, I did try pitching you on a CEO at one point, which I know you don’t have on as guests.
Lenny: Once in a while, very rarely.
Emilie Gerber: Yeah, actually, there’s obviously some exceptions. But I had known the subject matter you were looking for, but I did not spot the trend that you’ve never had CEOs on. So I think my pitch was actually okay, but the spokesperson was not the kind of person that you would want on. So maybe you won’t get it right 100% of the time, but you can tell a lot just by doing some searches.
Lenny: And oftentimes I just reply, “Here’s my policy.” And then, “Okay, good to know.” Kind of along these lines, something I wanted to ask earlier, you mentioned a few publications to go after, and then how to pitch people. Obviously the way that you’re describing takes a bunch of time. How many people are you often emailing, DMing per attempt to get a story? Because it sounds like it’s not a ton, and so you have time to do these sorts of custom pitches. Or is it a lot higher than it sounds?
Emilie Gerber: I would say for hard news, funding, the startup launch, those sort of things, less, and I try to really stagger it because we’re offering exclusives, and I highly recommend offering exclusives. So the worst thing that can happen is two reporters reply, and are both interested, and you have to go back to one and say, “Nevermind.” And sometimes that’s okay if they left you, if it’s been a week or something, they hadn’t gotten back, and they’ll understand. So it’s fine to move on without getting an answer. So I would say, yeah, with the funding story, it could be anywhere from one to six reporters on average, sometimes more. With stuff like general just outreach, relationship building, trying to get on podcasts, it kind of is a numbers game, and you really have to balance quality and quantity.
And that’s why I love starting with the first note and not saying much, and just saying, “Hey, you open to guest ideas?” Because it allows you to do more. I’d rather do that than send a bad pitch, and not have it be targeted to the right sort of audience. And so that’s kind of a way to play the numbers game while still being respectful. But yeah, I mean, with some clients maybe they get one opportunity for every 20 or 30 things that we send. And so yeah, we try not to do… We don’t do blasting media, it’s not about sending the same pitch to a single list of people. It’s figuring out, which ones do I want to really double down on because they’re the perfect target? And you’ll keep trying, you’ll be really custom, which deserve maybe a slightly higher level note, which deserve a DM, and just figuring out your strategy from that.
Lenny: Awesome, okay. Do you have examples of pitches, announcements that were not as effective as they could have been, and advice for how they could have been better?
Emilie Gerber: Yeah, I have some excerpts that I pulled from press releases where I think there’s room for improvement. So Lenny, I want to read one to you, and then I want to see if you can tell me what this company does. Okay, “Today X announced their workflow automation product, which combines AI assistance, human in the loop collaboration, and a robust multiplayer experience to help teams save time.”
Lenny: Absolutely no idea what’s going on.
Emilie Gerber: You kind of gained something from workflow automation, and then after that it’s like, “Wait, what?”
Lenny: Just a bunch of things.
Emilie Gerber: Okay, now let me read to an excerpt from the TechCrunch article, and this is how TechCrunch positioned it, “A new automation startup is setting out to eat Zapier’s lunch. It helps people tackle mundane and repetitive tasks, and goes beyond the triggers and actions popularized by similar platforms like Zapier.” So to me, yeah, it’s a better version of Zapier, where they aren’t just doing triggers and actions, and there’s a little more substance and depth to it. If you know what Zapier is, you can kind of start to figure out what they do based on that.
Lenny: Yeah, it comes back to your point about referencing incumbent to help you understand what the heck you’re talking about
Emilie Gerber: And you wouldn’t necessarily need to do that in your press release, but I think they could have been a lot clearer, and not use… Because terms like robust multiplayer experience, that makes it sound like a game. Are we talking about just collaborative multiple users? Human in the loop collaboration, isn’t all collaboration between humans, and we’re all in the loop? AI assistance, that just means they use AI. So yeah, sometimes I push my clients to like, “Okay, let’s talk through what each of these phrases actually means. And if you can’t articulate it, then let’s change it to the way that you just articulated it, and it might be more successful.” So yeah, that’s a good way to do it. And just read it out loud, read it out loud and see if someone understands it.
Lenny: Someone hearing this is like, “How could possibly anybody think that was great? How did these come about, these really bad descriptions?” I know it’s hard to come up with something really short and pithy, but where do these come from?
Emilie Gerber: It’s just a culture within marketing and comms, of this is how we’re supposed to write. And I just think that’s a majority of how people do it, and they think it sounds smart, or they think it sounds more professional. I just think it’s just how people are trained. And so even when we bring on someone new, part of my job is stripping away at a lot of that, and getting people… Everyone’s capable of talking like a human being, we do it every day. But it’s stripping away that thing that goes off in your head that you’re supposed to be writing in a very marketingy way. Because I would say at least 50% of releases are like that, it’s not a small problem.
Lenny: Right. I love the advice you shared of just trying to say it out loud, hearing yourself, what does it sound like? Do you have any other tips for trying to make it something people get and connect to? I know that, again, it takes a lot of time to really do well and it’s very context specific, but is there any other tricks that you find help you communicate what you’re actually offering?
Emilie Gerber: It’s talking through the basic questions, what does this product do? Who is it for? Who are your customers? If you can answer each of those in one sentence… What product launch are we talking about here? If you can just answer each of those verbally, chances are you’re not going to be far away from what you’re looking for. Because when I talk to marketers, and founders, and teams, generally in the conversations I have no trouble understanding what they’re talking about. They can articulate it just fine, it’s only in the writing that it gets that way. So actually I think it’s kind of easier to solve than many might realize. And then also I think there is some skill involved in removing words, not over explaining, you can make things more concise. But at the bare minimum, just strip out all the jargon, that’s the first step.
Lenny: I love it. So one way to think about it is, just think about, what does it do? Who is it for? Who are the customers? Is there something else along those lines that you shared there as a bullet point?
Emilie Gerber: Well, I mean, if you’re talking about what makes this business interesting? Why should people care? And not over indexing on that. I think that’s just one part of the overall story, is why people should care about this business. And then what’s new? Is it growth metrics? Is it the customer piece? Is it product? What makes this timely and relevant right now?
Lenny: Okay, awesome. There’s actually this awesome Twitter thread from a couple of days ago, where the CEO of Product Hunt did this thread where he asked people, “Share your tagline, and I will give you a much better version of the tagline.” And he’s really good at this. So I’m going to link to it in the show notes, where he can give you an example of what it looks like from bad to good.
Emilie Gerber: I love that. That’s exactly the kind of thing I would love to do too, because it’s so fun and so easy.
Lenny: It’s easy if you’re good at it, most people are not great at it. You mentioned press release in this example, you shared thoughts on value of press release, traditional press release versus not.
Emilie Gerber: Press releases came about because reporters would be checking news wires for ideas of what stories they want to write. No reporters do that anymore, or a very small percentage, I don’t know any reporters that do that anymore. So now it’s this thing where you go to one of the PR distribution services, you pay them anywhere between 300 to $2,000, that’s literally what it costs, and they put it on the wire. And for the more expensive services, it does get syndicated to this press release section of some business websites. No one, in my opinion, goes there for their news. I’ve personally never read an article, like a Yahoo Finance article, that was a press release syndication. So in that sense, they are not helpful for getting eyeballs. They also require… Going back to that more marketing form of writing, they require that you write like that.
The standard press release format, it’s so formulaic, and I think it actually encourages that more marketing speak. The benefit is that you’re getting all the news details in one place, so it’s relevant for a reporter. However, you can do the exact same thing in a blog post. And the blog post can be this first person piece of content that’s written by either the founder, or the product lead, or whatever executive, that has a lot more flexibility in the style. You can kind of write it however you want, it can still include all the same news elements. And it’s much more shareable on social, you’re not going to share a link to a press release on your Twitter or on your LinkedIn, but a blog, for sure. You can add your own graphics, it’s great.
And you’re also encouraging people to go to something that lives on your website versus this black hole of a newsletter. I should be fair, so I think that the reason that people say that they still do them, is that it helps with SEO. However, I’ve read a few articles that have said that Google no longer does prioritize press releases in SEO, so I don’t know how much that holds up. And that it signals to the market that the company is more serious, so that’s a perception thing. I personally think that blogs actually signal a more modern, kind of cool company than a press release. But at a certain stage in your growth, public companies, they do press releases for earnings, makes 100% sense. There are certain rules around when companies do need to issue press releases, so there’s still a use case for them, I just think your average early to mid-stage startup doesn’t need them.
Lenny: This mention of blogs is where I wanted to go next actually, so it’s a good segue. But before we do that, is there any other examples that you wanted to share of less than ideal ways of pitching a product?
Emilie Gerber: One sentence I found in a press release that a lot of companies want to include that I always try to remove is… Well here, I’ll give you the sentence, “Since exiting stealth in May, we’ve witnessed a 700% increase in organizations using our product.” You’re saying that since you were in stealth to now you saw a 700% increase, so you could have had one customer, now you have seven. And it’s every company wants to do these percentage growth stats when they just launched, and I’ve never seen reporters include that in their stories.
And so there are ways to give signals of how fast you’re growing without being that kind of disingenuous. One way that you could put something similar is, “Our revenue hit six figures at the end of last year, and has been growing about 30% each quarter, with 40% of adoption coming from the enterprise sector.” So you’re giving color to the growth, and you can kind of play with that, it doesn’t need to be exactly something like that. But if you can make it a little more specific, I’m not against doing percentages, but I think there’s a way to balance that with something that seems a little more realistic.
Lenny: Or, “We went from zero to six figures in ARR in X months.”
Emilie Gerber: Yeah, no, totally. And it doesn’t need to be huge, especially if you’re doing your first story, they’re not expecting that you’re necessarily going to have massive revenue. And so I think founders might sometimes be concerned that it’s not going to seem big enough or significant enough, whereas from working with a lot of companies, it’s kind of the case across the board.
Lenny: You mentioned a bunch of amazing companies, you’ve worked with Ramp, Perplexity, a few others. And people may feel like, of course you’re getting pressed, those are amazing. Ramp grew to a 100 million AR in two years, Perplexity is this killer AI product, everyone’s talking about AI. Most products are not that, they don’t have as interesting of a story to tell. Is there either an example you could share of a company that didn’t have an amazing story to tell, that you created an interesting story out of? Or just any advice for, how do you help find something that is a nugget that gets people excited?
Emilie Gerber: So some of the examples I gave, so Clockwise and Column Tax aren’t as big as some of the other brands I mentioned. So that’s certainly actually the bulk of our business, I would say 80% of the companies we work with are at a stage where they haven’t reached that kind of mass awareness yet.
Another really great company that we work with is Entropy. And so essentially they work with transaction data, they’re an API. It’s a very technical tool, it’s not something that necessarily every reporter is going to instantly understand. But for them, we’ve actually really leaned into the founder story. She’s this incredible woman who moved to the US, and actually struggled with getting her first apartment here because of the way that our credit scoring system is set up. And one of the use cases for what she’s building actually directly relates to how our credit system could change in the future, and so we’ve been really leaning into that angle. And her personal story is really powerful. And so maybe sometimes the product isn’t going to be something that you can easily pitch, but you can kind of find those other personal angles in or pull on certain threads.
Lenny: And there it connects back to find the publication that cares about these sorts of personal stories, because TechCrunch probably won’t.
Emilie Gerber: Yeah. But she spoke at Money20/20, so it’s useful for speaking abstracts too. Actually it was on a panel with Column Tax, we got them on together at Money20/20.
Lenny: What a win.
Emilie Gerber: No, and we love doing that, it’s so fun when you do have multiple companies that you can connect. Actually, that’s kind of a good macro point as well. It doesn’t always need to just be about you, if you have an idea for a conference session, reaching out to colleagues that you’ve worked with at other companies, peers, people that are building other things that maybe don’t compete better in a similar space, and packaging that up as like, “Hey, this could be a really strong panel.” It’s actually way more successful than just pitching yourself.
Lenny: Awesome, okay. So you’ve mentioned a couple of times the rise of newsletters and podcasts. So there’s kind of two buckets of questions here. One is going after these kind of non-traditional media platforms, and then the other is building your own following, and building a following on Twitter, for example. I know you worked closely with the CEO of Vox who’s really good at this, and basically doesn’t need press. Elon is amazing at this, maybe that’s why he bought Twitter, he has this huge platform to talk about all the stuff. So maybe in the first bucket, talking about when you’re trying to decide, should I go after traditional media, Vox, and VentureBeat, and Axios, and all these guys? Versus I’m going to go for newsletters. As an example, Ramp got a lot of benefit from Not Boring, that newsletter with Packy, who wrote about them constantly and loved it. And they’re sponsored posts, and organic posts. So I guess the question there is just, how do you think about going after podcasts, newsletters, Twitter, LinkedIn, influencery platformy people versus traditional press?
Emilie Gerber: I think of newsletters and podcasts actually in the camp of, if we’re pitching traditional press, we’re 100% pitching those. Social is its own ball game, but I would not leave out newsletters and podcasts from any core PR strategy. To me, it’s now just a part of any PR program that we’re going to run, because it’s just part of media now. And to me, it’s just a very important part of media. In terms of social, I think doing social well is very hard. So you gave Aaron from Vox as an example, that was all 100% him. I think I helped with one tweet once about a Microsoft partnership that we did, and I was so excited.
Lenny: How did it do?
Emilie Gerber: Actually really good. A publication ended up writing a story on the tweet about Microsoft and Vox partnership because of it. Yeah, so that was fun. But generally it’s not always something that you can just turn on by hiring an agency. And I’ve seen many companies try doing that, and not necessarily see as much success as they’d hoped for. So if a founder is naturally good at that stuff, lean into it as much as humanly possible, go for it. If they’re not, and you’re trying to outsource it, it can be done to some success. But I don’t necessarily think it’s as easy as just posting three times a week on relevant topics, there has to be more going on there. I think that if the spokesperson or the executive that you’re trying to build the presence of is willing to… Going back to what I said earlier, kind of push the limit.
… Presence of is willing to, going back to what I said earlier, push the limit on opinions that they have, be bold, be controversial, then it could be worth potentially investing in. And I have seen it play out where reporters have seen those posts and used and quoted things in their articles as a result, so it can tie to your traditional media strategy a little bit, they’re not necessarily fully siloed, but I would say if you’re considering investing in social to just do corporate channels and not think about executives, you’re really leaving a lot on the table. Corporate channels, it’s very hard to build a following.
To get someone to follow a brand and care about a brand, you have to be bringing something new to the table, because they don’t want to read your latest blog post, they don’t want to read a relevant article that your social person just decided to put out there. When you have an executive, you’re following a personality, you’re following a person, ideally there’s more flexibility with tone, all of that sort of stuff. And so I think it’s important to think about it from the people perspective and not just the brand perspective.
Lenny: So just to make it clear, the CEO or some execs should be the people tweeting and LinkedIn, and not the company as a brand?
Emilie Gerber: Yeah. And I don’t know. I think that it can be a little industry specific as well for where it makes sense to be investing in the corporate channels. And you certainly can do that sort of thing. But I also think if you’re going to do that, have an exec that you’re also trying a social strategy with. Don’t just do the plain corporate channels.
Lenny: When I think of a brand doing this really well, it’s Duolingo. They’re just so hilarious and so ridiculous in there. And I don’t know if the key is just funny is the way to go, and that’s how you get any attention, but they’re so funny and creative in their videos, especially TikTok.
Emilie Gerber: It’s interesting though, we’re getting to the point where even brands having a personality on social is becoming its own meme. People are making fun of how all the fast food brands all are like these Gen Z like TikTok-
Lenny: And they’re all replying to each other on Twitter threads.
Emilie Gerber: Yeah. And so things change quickly. So, yes, that was a good strategy, but you just have to stay on top of it.
Lenny: So you talked about how if this comes naturally to you as a founder, obviously do it. I’m guessing for most people it doesn’t. Do you find that it can work if you’re just like, “I know this is important, I need to tweet often and share things,” have you seen that work or is it just like it’s just probably not going to be something that works great for you?
Emilie Gerber: Yeah, I think it can work to some extent. Maybe you’re not going to necessarily be going viral or getting hundreds or tens of thousands of followers. But for me personally I push myself to post on LinkedIn at least once a month, because every time I post we get at least one client inbound and maybe a candidate inbound. And so if you test it and you start to see value, push yourself to do it even if it doesn’t come naturally. And that’s, I guess, the nice thing about social is it’s easy to test out. You can try doing it, you can post for a while, even for a month or two, see how it’s going, and then adjust your strategy accordingly.
But, yes, I think for a lot of execs that we work with, it does feel like it’s something that’s really hard, there’s a lot of overthinking, making sure it’s right. You can get really in your head about it, and I totally understand that because I feel the same way. And so if it’s taking up so much of your time and bandwidth just thinking about your social strategy, then I guess you can weigh if it makes sense to do that, but I think pushing yourself to try it is a great idea.
Lenny: And then Aaron specifically is very good at this, is there anything that you learned from his approach to tweeting specifically? I don’t know if he uses other platforms. That works really well for him.
Emilie Gerber: I actually think I just learned so much. So it was my first in-house job, so I had worked in an agency, I hadn’t worked internally at a company before, and I think I just learned so much about comms best practices from him in general, just even beyond social. He was so good at figuring out how to comment on things happening in the news, having just the right stance that was both interesting to the reporter but not necessarily threatening to the business, and just capitalizing on all those moments. And I just watched how that worked and I was like, “This is how good PR is.” And it’s like the space that they’re in is not necessarily one that reporters are all writing about, but he was able to insert himself in those conversations really well. And I think also at the time that I was there at least just really valued press and was willing to put the time in and do the briefings.
And so just getting to hear how he speaks over and over again was really helpful. And then on Twitter, I think it clearly just comes naturally to him, and so it wasn’t necessarily something that needed to… Like I mentioned, how some execs will spend all this time thinking through to the point where it could get in the way of other things. I think that’s not the case there. And if anything, it just helped the business. And actually with his Twitter presence, I would say it’s a good example too of stuff getting included in articles, like I mentioned in that Microsoft article. So it helps the PR strategy as well.
Lenny: Amazing. And we’ll link to his Twitter account. This is Aaron, CEO of Box, by the way. I think I mentioned at the beginning and then we just started talking about Aaron. Also, I realize, he tweets about this sometimes, he actually makes money from Twitter, and now the Twitter pays you for views and things and they share ads, he makes thousands of dollars also from X now, by the way, not Twitter.
Emilie Gerber: That’s so funny.
Lenny: Yeah, it’s pretty ridiculous. I think I’ve gone through every question that I had for you. I’m curious if there’s anything else that you think might be helpful to share or cover or leave listeners with.
Emilie Gerber: I can leave with one very tactical media opportunity that I love.
Lenny: Amazing.
Emilie Gerber: Okay, so here it is. It’s a way to get a morning brew feature pretty somewhat easily. So they have this series called Morning Brew Coworking series, and they have it for Emerging Tech Brew, they have it for HR Brew, all their verticals. I think there’s a CFO one, marketing one. And essentially if you go to the series, the coworking series, either at the top or the bottom, there’s something where it’s like, “If you want to be featured, click on this link and fill out this form,” and it’s about 10 questions. If you keep your answers interesting and fun and not too self-promotional, we’ve had, I would say, 50% success rate with getting execs featured that way. And all you have to do is submit through a Google form. And it’s just one of my favorite media opportunities right now. It doesn’t need to be CEO, actually probably shouldn’t be a CEO in a lot of instances, but it’s basically intended to help readers understand what the day-to-day looks in certain jobs and just get a little insight into the people that are in these jobs. And so I guess I just wanted to share that as something that you could do today for over 10 minutes and potentially get a story. Although, maybe not after you post this, so we’ll see if they get an influx.
Lenny: We’re going to take down Mailbrew. Funny enough, they have an interview with Zuck today that they published on Morning Brew, so it could be you alongside Zuck.
Emilie Gerber: There you go, yeah.
Lenny: Maybe before we get to our very exciting lightning round, it might be fun to chat about how to pick a PR agency. Obviously you run one. When people are trying to decide who to work with and also when to decide to pick and work with a PR agency versus doing it themselves, what advice can you share when they’re trying to make that big decision?
Emilie Gerber: I think there’s an assumption that bigger, more well-known agencies are going to do a better job. I think a lot of those bigger, well-known agencies are used to working with a lot of household brands. And so their strategies tend to be very reactive, focus in the messaging, maybe have to turn down a bunch of opportunities, control what people say. That is the polar opposite in my opinion of doing startup PR. Startup PR, you got to experiment, you got to try new things, you got to be scrappy, you got to be fast. We actually personally love diving into pitching right away rather than spending several months on messaging just testing and market right away. And so don’t assume just because they have the huge logos… To your point, you’re like, “Oh, well, you work with [inaudible 01:20:16] Perplexity, does that mean you know how to work with all these tiny companies?”
That’s not necessarily a good thing, so don’t just go buy the big logos. I would say that’s my first piece of advice. My second piece of advice is find out what month one looks like with them. If month one is them just doing intake calls and learning about the company, and you’re a startup that’s still really paying close attention to how much money you’re spending, you’re not going to necessarily want to partner with an agency that needs a three-month ramp up cycle. And so really tactically understand what those first few months look like. I think that’s something that I’ve noticed is a lot of agencies take a while before they get their hands dirty and start doing things. My third piece of advice would be writing recent writing samples. To the point of all those press release excerpts I shared, is that how they write? If it is, maybe they’re not the right agency. So ask them. That’s so easy. That’s so easy to do.
Just ask them for a couple recent blogs or releases, whatever they tend to go for, and read those. And, of course, wins too. You want to see what kind of stories they’re getting, but that’s a little more obvious. A lot of people have already talked about this, so I’ll just mention briefly, it’s important to meet with the actual team you’re working on, not just the founder of the agency. So asking who’s our day-to-day going to be? Can we chat with them really quick? One thing I would say don’t do is an extensive RFP process. We actually as an agency don’t participate in RFPs. The two times I’ve done it, I have regretted it just because of the amount of work going in versus the value that’s there. And it’s you’re asking a team to do a lot of free work for you, and generally I think the best players are not going to do that, so you’re going to weed out some of the best players if you’re asking them to do a lot of free upfront work. So those are a few considerations.
Lenny: Perfect. And then just two more questions, because I imagine this is what people are thinking about when they’re trying to decide should we find somebody is how long ahead of time they should find someone before something big is happening? And then just what’s a budget they should have in mind for something like this? What’s a minimum or a range, whatever you think would be helpful for people to understand here’s how much you’re probably going to be investing here?
Emilie Gerber: Start times can vary from agency to agency. I think we can get started the week that a client needs us to, so maybe I’m not best equipped to answer this, but I would say before an announcement happens, you probably want to kick off six weeks in advance. So when we start with the company, it’s like we’re working on the blog, we’re doing a media training, we’re doing the media outreach, we’re getting quotes from investors, or coordinating with all the parties, making sure images are being created so it’s not just pitching and securing the article. So I would say buffer with time to pitch, make sure that the reporter is actually able to cover it. Six weeks is ideal. I would also note I highly recommend not having a firm date that you think you need to announce something and going instead with when a reporter is able to cover your story.
We get so many clients that come to us and they have this set date in their head, but there’s not usually a real reason for it. It’s like they’re planning around it, it’s like they have other comms they want to go out that day, but if you can optimize for the reporter over the timing, you’re going to see such a better outcome because getting the first choice reporter is going to drive way more for your business than announcing it four days sooner. So leaving a little bit of flexibility for that agency is key. And I’ve even seen companies like issue a press release for big news with no coverage because they had stuck to a certain day and were very rigid about it, and they didn’t get any stories for that reason. And so I think a good agency would counsel to offer that flexibility.
So six weeks I think is the ideal amount of time. And then budget, I would say the lowest end would probably be about 10K a month for an agency. You can find consultants, I think the best ones would be at least 8K a month, but for a small boutique agency starts at 10. I’ll just be transparent, I’m very open about our pricing, our rates start at 15K a month for our retainers, and actually that’s for a series A companies generally what they’re at. And then I would say unless you are a global business that needs basically different teams for different product lines, which happens when you’re a Microsoft of the world, that’s another story. But if you’re just a series C startup that’s getting a lot of attention, I wouldn’t go beyond 30K probably. There are plenty of agencies that go into the 50s and 60s a month, but that’s just a whole nother world, and I’m not an expert on that part.
Lenny: Amazing. Thank you for sharing all that. What if you’re going for just a one-off, just help me get one story, what’s a range there for budget you should expect?
Emilie Gerber: I would say between 10 and 20. And you might be able to find a consultant that’ll do it for eight.
Lenny: Amazing. So helpful. Emilie, is there anything else you want to share before we get to our very exciting lightning round?
Emilie Gerber: No. I’m ready.
Lenny: Well, welcome to our very exciting lightning round. I’ve got six questions. Are you ready?
Emilie Gerber: I am.
Lenny: First question, what are two or three books you’ve recommended most to other people?
Emilie Gerber: I have one that’s very top of mind right now, so it’s How to Change Your Mind by Michael Pollan. Actually, I leave tonight for a week long psilocybin retreat.
Lenny: We should have done this… N [inaudible 01:25:48]
Emilie Gerber: I know. I would be getting much more philosophical maybe.
Lenny: Wow.
Emilie Gerber: So very excited, I’m going to Jamaica.
Lenny: Amazing.
Emilie Gerber: And ever since researching that field, there’s the whole concept of changing your neural pathways is just very fascinating to me. And just opening up and shifting perspectives is something that I think will actually help me a lot just even in running a company, being a better leader, I think we’re at a stage in our growth right now where we’re hiring a lot and there’s a lot of pressure and I just want to make sure I’m bringing my best self forward every day. And so I’m really excited about it.
Lenny: What an amazing answer. This is going to be part of your set and setting this interview, but hopefully you can get it out of your mind.
Emilie Gerber: No, totally. I was nervous. I’m like, “It’s actually really great that this is happening and then I can completely unplug after it. And so I think it’s actually good timing.
Lenny: I’m excited to hear how it goes.
Emilie Gerber: I’m not a big book recommender. I have ADHD and reading full books is very hard for me, and so I’m just going to leave you with that one. I can do the occasional beach read I’ll really focus, but it’s not my main format of content consumption.
Lenny: Amazing. All right, great answer. One’s plenty. Do you have a favorite movie or TV show you’ve really enjoyed?
Emilie Gerber: My favorite genre is post-apocalyptic, end of the world survival. I need to mention my all time favorite show, because it would be bad not to. So Walking Dead is my comfort TV show, I can watch it when I’m going to sleep at night, but my most recent favorite was Yellowjackets. Are you familiar?
Lenny: I’ve seen the poster on my TV, but I’ve not watched it.
Emilie Gerber: Nice. I discovered it a little late. I think the second season finished and they’re working on the third. But it has plane crash, and it has just shocking moment after shocking moment like cannibalism, very weird stuff. And it’s one of those shows that sticks in your mind, which I like where you’re thinking about it afterwards. It’s kind of creepy.
Lenny: Wow. I thought you were going for Last of Us, but I now have to watch this show.
Emilie Gerber: No, I watched Last of Us and I didn’t feel like it had enough survival elements to it. It was like storytelling in that environment, but it wasn’t actually a survival post-apocalyptic show in the way that I was looking for.
Lenny: Hardcore. Do you have a favorite interview question you like to ask? And you could take this in any direction you want.
Emilie Gerber: Yeah. I have a new one. We actually just revamped our interview process, so I wanted to make it harder. So my new favorite question is if a client comes to you and they’re convinced they have something that’s press worthy, like an announcement that they think should be, I don’t know, in the Wall Street Journal or something, and you know for a fact that it isn’t, what steps do you take? What do you do next? And I like that question because they can handle it, one, from the client relations standpoint, how do you communicate with the client when they say something like that, but it’s also a critical thinking and creativity question of how do you take a no and turn it into a yes? How do you take what they’re giving you and make it into something interesting? And so I like to dig into that, and they can use a real example if they want, but I also think a lot of our job is pushing back in a way. And so that also shows if they’re able and willing to push back.
Lenny: I’m so curious to hear people’s answer to that. Do you have a favorite product that you recently discovered that you love?
Emilie Gerber: I was very skeptical of Apple Vision Pro and I was making fun of it at the beginning, and the first time I tried it, I completely changed my tune, I’m so into it, I’m ordering one, and I’m very excited for actually using it for work. I think it could be a really good use case for just my day-to-day at work. After I had tried it, the next day I messaged a bunch of clients that I thought could have relevant applications for it. I’m like, “Do we have an Apple Vision Pro strategy? Are we billing to talk about it publicly yet?” Because sometimes it’s tying back to the PR conversation, I love if you’re willing to push the envelope on stuff that you are building or are going to do and getting ahead of those conversations, so that’s a lot of conversations I’m having right now is trying to convince clients to talk about that.
Lenny: So you have an Apple Vision Pro strategy, amazing.
Emilie Gerber: And then my other one, which is very self-serving, because they are a client, but I do use them every day, is Perplexity. I find it so helpful even just for like I’m working on an award submission, I forgot how much funding a client has raised, asking them that instead of opening five different Google links and trying to find the answer, it’s just huge for quick information. Or writing a bio for an executive, getting just the TLDR of what they’ve done in their past, it’s so good for PR use cases, and I actually think marketing and PR is going to be one of the core work applications for them.
Lenny: I’ve also already shared how much I love Perplexity, I have the Chrome extension installed. I probably use it at least once a day for podcast interview prep along with a bunch of other stuff. So good find for customer. I think they’re going to do great. Wish I was an investor.
Emilie Gerber: I’m the happy investor. I rarely angel invest and I was…
Lenny: Drinks on Emilie someday.
Emilie Gerber: There we go.
Lenny: That’s awesome. Good job.
Emilie Gerber: Thank you.
Lenny: Okay, two more questions. Do you have a favorite life motto that you often come back to, share with friends or family, either in work or in life?
Emilie Gerber: Strong opinions loosely held, I’m a very opinionated trust my gut kind of person, but that doesn’t mean I’m not willing to change my mind on things and be wrong. I first heard it from an influencer [inaudible 01:31:38] and then I Googled it, and apparently… What was it? Jeff Bezos also said it at one point, so I have no idea the origin of the quote, but I think that’s a good one. You can still be really opinionated in life, but that doesn’t mean you always are going to be right.
Lenny: Emilie, this was everything I hoped it would be. I feel like this is going to help so many people get awesome press. Thank you again so much for being here. Two final questions. Where can folks find you and reach out if they want to learn more or work with you? And how can listeners be useful to you?
Emilie Gerber: Our website is sixeastern.com and our email is hello@sixeastern.com, so you can find us there. And actually I have a newsletter called On Background. It’s on Substack. And really what it’s intended to be is a place for people to find these tactical opportunities, so it has media moves, it has reporters that are working on stories, it has awards that are open, all of this stuff that basically an intern in an agency would spend their days researching we put into a newsletter. And so its main audience is PR people, but I actually think it could be a great resource for people within companies that don’t have PR teams to stay on top of stuff. So I guess to be helpful, feel free to subscribe. And then other than that, we’re hiring, so if you happen to be a PR person that got this far in the episode, always looking for great people to bring on.
Lenny: Amazing. Is there anything specific you’re looking for in people you’re hiring for people that may want to reach out other than they’ve been in PR?
Emilie Gerber: Ideally some B2B experience. I think doing B2B PR is very different from doing consumer PR. If you work with startups, that’s a huge plus, you know how to be kind of scrappy and fast. And also people that just love to be really hands-on and doing the actual work. We’re very flat, so we’re not a place where there’s much managing of teams. So it’s really much more like a consultancy than anything else.
Lenny: Amazing. Emilie, thank you so much for being here.
Emilie Gerber: Yeah, it was so fun. Thank you so much.
Lenny: Bye everyone. Thank you so much for listening. If you found this valuable, you can subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app. Also, please consider giving us a rating or leaving a review as that really helps other listeners find the podcast. You can find all past episodes or learn more about the show at lennyspodcast.com. See you in the next episode.
Glossary
| English | 中文 |
|---|---|
| AE (Account Executive) | 客户经理 |
| affiliate marketing | 联盟营销 |
| angel invest | 天使投资 |
| ARR (Annual Recurring Revenue) | ARR(年度经常性收入) |
| beat | beat(负责的报道领域) |
| beat reporter | beat 记者(负责特定领域的记者) |
| briefing | 媒体简报(与记者沟通前的准备会议) |
| category creation | 品类创造 |
| comms | 传播 |
| DM (Direct Message) | 私信 |
| exclusive | 独家 |
| frame of reference | 参照框架 |
| Gen Z | Z 世代 |
| going viral | 出圈走红 |
| inbound | 主动找上门的(指客户或候选人主动联系) |
| incumbent | 现有巨头 |
| MarTech | 营销科技 |
| news wire | 新闻专线 |
| newsletter | newsletter(保留原文,指邮件订阅通讯) |
| on the record | 公开可引用的 |
| op-ed | 专栏文章 |
| organic growth | 自然增长 |
| panel | panel(分论坛讨论) |
| paywall | 付费墙 |
| pitch | pitch(公共关系领域常用术语,保留原文) |
| PR | 公共关系 |
| Q&A | 问答访谈 |
| retainer | 长期服务费(agency 按月收取的固定费用) |
| retreat | retreat(静修活动,保留原文) |
| scrappy | scrappy(精打细算、资源有限但高效运作的方式,保留原文) |
| seed stage | 种子阶段 |
| set and setting | set and setting(迷幻体验中的术语,指心态与环境,保留原文) |
| SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program) | SNAP(补充营养援助计划) |
| stealth startup | 隐身创业公司 |
| syndication | 同步转载 |
| tagline | 标语 |
| underdog | 挑战者 |
| warm introduction | 暖引荐 |
Reformatted by reformat_english.py