Full Transcript for How to Get Featured by Major Media Outlets -- ft. Leonard Scheiner, CEO of Geek Haus (S2:E19)

their practices and, you know, increase the revenue of their firm. And when we're looking at that, they need clients, right? Clients and patients are the lifeblood of their business. Nowadays, you specialize in like PR, getting people promoted, getting them featured in places like Forbes and Bloomberg and doing PR tours. So, do you have any insights as to how to do that sort of thing successfully? I feel like PR maybe isn't talked about as much in like the B2B marketing lens. Yeah, it's almost looked at as like the weird stepchild for marketers, right? We're like PR, okay, but how do we measure its impact? How do we do it? How do we get a system where we can guarantee results? And the truth of the matter is that in PR, doesn't work that way. We're asking them to look at us and say, yes, you're an expert and we wanna use some of what you have to say in our bigger piece, piece, in our bigger article, in our news broadcast. The difference, though, is that with marketing, we're looking at leads coming in, results coming in. In PR, we're looking at authority building. We're looking at credibility building. The PR is what is going to help your sales team close deals with more ease, Because if I've never heard of you, and I've never seen you, do I trust you? I don't know, right? But if I've seen you places, I've heard you places, I've seen your name a lot of places, you must be good at what you do because I see you all over the place, right? The perception is reality. So I said this to an attorney a few weeks ago. I was like, you know, I'm on your website. My website looks great, But I see that you were American Justice Association or top 10 attorneys in Los Angeles or, okay, that's wonderful. But you know what I don't see is things that would relate to your potential client, right? So if I'm a potential client, I'm looking to hire, I can see all these accolades from within the industry and that's fine. But How do I relate with that? Right? Like I don't understand the significance of being part of the, you know, whatever association because I'm I'm as a consumer. I'm not in the know, right? But as a consumer if I go to a website and I see those things, but then I also see Forbes, Bloomberg, ABC, CBS, Fox, right? If I'm looking at those, now there's a different level. Now I know that this person has been interviewed and viewed as an expert by these leading media organizations. So now I can, in my head, think that I trust this person. They're more credible because they have that checkmark validation from these other large organizations. So that's how we're helping them improve their personal brand. Yes, they're professional presence. Really, we're taking them from being someone who was a great professional, and now we're making them a great professional who's known in the media. And that can either be to your point of local, yes, local, but we also want to go national. Okay, that makes sense. So it's really this like authority building tool that helps with customers trust you. It helps make better sales. And so I guess the thing that I'm curious about now is how can marketers get into doing PR? How do you get somebody featured in Forbes or Bloomberg or this national media? Yeah, great question. So if a client thinks that they're going to come and get on Forbes in the next month, it's not going to happen, right? We have to crawl and then stumble and then walk before we can run. And so the progression that we will go through is we either start with podcasts just like this, right? We're getting on podcasts to really work out that message, right? Like tease out, what are you good at talking about? What is easy for you to talk about? So that's part of it. We start with getting media that is local. So we're going to start pitching you and positioning that attorney, assuming the website looks good, assuming they have headshots and photos, right? There's some things that we need to do to get ready for the party, for sure. But Assuming that that all exists, then we can start taking them and saying, "Great. What are the things you want to talk about?" Okay. Point, point, point, point. What are the things that the media is talking about? Point, point, point, point. And then where's the overlap? Imagine this Venn diagram and the overlap between what you want to talk about, what your expertise is, the stories in the media, and that center part of the Venn diagram is what we we go forward with, right? So a great example was the Johnny Depp and Amber Heard. What was that? Davor? I don't even know if it was a divorce. It was whatever that case was, right? That was something that was being played out in the media and everyone had their opinion, right? Even if they weren't a lawyer, they had an opinion about that. And So for geek house, for my agency, our clients who were, we were able to pitch them and get them placements to give their expertise because they were the lawyer. They are the lawyer. And so they can give the legal opinion based on what's happening in the news, right? So what's the story that's already happening? Amber heard Johnny Depp. What do they want to talk about? Their expertise in divorce, right? Maybe domestic issues. Okay, so that is the perfect blending where now we can say our client is the perfect subject matter expert. They've got the opinion. They're qualified. And we want to talk about this thing that you're already talking about in your publication. So we're pitching them based on that and getting them placements for that. But back to my point of we want to walk before we run, I always say we can't shoot a cannon from a canoe, because the blowback will sink you. But you can shoot a cannon from a warship. So we've got to build that warship. And what that looks like is having prior media experience locally, having some podcasts, having great photos, that type of thing. So we make sure that the foundation is there and then we launch our cannon from there. Right. Yeah, that makes sense.

I'm curious, like, what the typical timeline actually is for, let's say you have some local professional or somebody you're promoting, and they're good at what they do, but kind of unknown to the point where you're getting them all the way up the chain into, like, national media placements. Like, what does timeline typically look like? Well, I explain it like there's a ramp -up period and then they're going to come in kind of peppered, right, because they're opportunities. So the ramp -up period is really where we're figuring out what is that Venn diagram look like, right? We need to talk and parse out the details of your story that are going to be most relevant and interesting. interesting. Timeline -wise, it's usually about a month or two where we're working with the client to understand who they are. We're pitching. We're listening to what's coming back. Maybe a journalist is like, "Well, maybe can they talk on this angle of your topic versus the topic itself?" It is really a content or topic dance that we're doing to find the sweet spot and so that process usually takes about one to two months, like 45 days. At that point is usually where we start seeing the placements come in and it's probably not Forbes and that's perfectly okay, but they're going to be local placements. They're going to be maybe even like a local ABC station, right? They can be good placements, but they're going to be at a smaller scale. Once we've got a handful of those together, then it makes sense for us to really go out and look at those larger publications, because again, we've built that foundation. So I can't really put a time on that, but I would just say probably one to two months to get that ramp up done, and then we're starting to slot them in. and then maybe at about six months to a year, we would be able to get in one of those larger publications. I mean, I've had it happen before where the client hires us, and then in two weeks, they're in a large publication. It's happened. But as far as predictability, as far as really setting what should be expected, there's a little bit more time involved. Because again, We're asking other people to validate us to work it into their editorial schedule and then actually make it happen. And some pieces die on the editor's computer, right? They're just like, nope, we don't have space for it and we don't want it. And it's already been interviewed or written and all these things. And you've been working on it for six weeks and then an editor will kill it. It's okay. It's part of the game. So we just got to make sure that work consistent and dedicated to the strategy. This is why I'll tell clients that it's not a quick thing. PR is not quick, right? I can turn ads on today and get leads coming in tomorrow with ads. PR is a very different category. Okay. And so how much time is the professional themselves dedicating to this process? less than one hour per placement. That's what I'm saying, because that is what should be true, right? And that's kind of the consistent across all of our clients. So we are spending much more time than that, obviously. We've got to get the commentary. We've got to get the quote from our client. But whether you're doing an interview and Sometimes they're casual interviews, like done over Zoom, where it's the journalist and the client, and they're doing an interview, and then they go back and they write their piece, or sometimes the client's on TV, right? So we prep the client, we do a media training, and then they're doing the actual interview spot. So even with the training, even with the spot, all of it kind of combined should be about an hour of time for the client per placement. It's pretty reasonable. I've not had any complaints about the time that a client has to spend. Yeah. Let's look at the reverse of that from the marketer side. From the marketer's perspective, say I wanted to do this today, how would I get started with this process of being able to submit to media publications and being able to get this expert, whether it's myself or the CEO of my company, prepared and ready for this media process. On the media side, I would say if there is either a B2B marketer or the expert themselves who's looking for getting placement, one of the best places to go is featured .com. Anyone can sign up for that. You know, you create your profile as an expert, and then you're looking at opportunities that already exist, which is one of the key things that I train on, is that sometimes we want to go out, we want to create the opportunity, right? We want to pitch on this story, on this angle, and we want to pitch it, right? We want to create the opportunity for us, but Why make it complicated when we're just starting out? Let's not do that. Let's look at the opportunities that already exist and then see how we can fit into that conversation Right kind of takes the model and turns it on its head to be really approachable So featured comm is just one of the many platforms and resources that you can use and What's cool is that journalists will go there, they'll post their question, right? Like, have you ever blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, right? Or why do blah, blah, blah, blah, right? And you can respond to that in a short paragraph or two and then get your feet wet, right? This is by no means a complete strategy. This is like one stick of our many matchsticks that we do for clients, clients, but it's a great way for someone who's starting out or looking to self -serve. It's a great way for them to do that, Featured .com. Okay. If I today decided I want to be featured in Forbes two years from now, and I don't have any name recognition, whatever, like me personally, like, okay, so step one, get some headshots. Step two, go to Featured .com, Like fill in the rest of the blanks until I get to like Forbes and Bloomberg. Every PR campaign that is successful is based off of a good brand, like a good personal brand. So, you know, before we start

working with a client or before you started doing it for yourself, of course, you need to have a website. You need to have a home place where everything's coming back to, right? We want to have a website. We want to have good headshots. We want to have a good bio. The things that people, when they Google us, do we look like we do what we say we do, right? Because we've all had the person who said, you know, I'm a realtor. I'm the best realtor in, you know, Kansas. I don't know why I'm picking on Kansas today, but I'm the best realtor in Kansas. And then you go look at them online and there's like one result for the person. And then maybe a second result of like their social media. Okay, that's not the best realtor in Kansas because if I Googled the best realtor in Kansas, I don't know who that is, but if I Googled their name, I'm gonna come up with many pages. First page of Google, second page of Google, third page. I'm gonna see all their results, results, different articles that they've been in, different interviews that they've done, different events that they were at. We want to start building that personal brand. The key component of that is having your great website, having headshots, having a bio that is attractive, having the components that you need to actually start pitching. Then it's about going into a platform just like featured, and I would probably go in once a week, and I would sweep through there and look at anything that was relevant, right? We wanna take your core message and then draw the tentacles off of it, right? Draw like six to eight tentacles. So for example, if I do, you know, if I do law, if I'm doing personal injury law, then one of the tentacles might be personal injury car accidents, right? But it might also be like concert halls, right? Premises liability, like slip and fall type stuff, right? So, car accidents, slip and falls, we could also talk about whatever else, right? I'm going to draw my tentacles off of my core topic because now when I'm looking for communities. I'm not just looking for the core topic. I'm looking for anything that's coming off. For me, as marketers, if we were looking to do this ourselves, then marketing is what we do. Okay, but we can also do advertising. We could do sales. I could do PR. We could do ads. We can do videos. We could do all the things that off of marketing. And when we do that, now we have many different irons in the fire, right? We've got all of our different topics that something could spark off of. So it's really about committing and being diligent at going into a platform every week. And guess what? You're not going to land everything that you pitch. It's just unreasonable to think that, right? So, maybe you pitch 10 or 20 things and two or three of them land. Great. That's successful. There is work that you do that is never seen. It's those things that you wrote your commentary for and then you pitched them and it never happened. But being able to show that there's consistency, maybe every month or two, you're getting placements if you're doing it by yourself? Guess what? Like to your question, after two years, now you've got 24 placements, right? You've really solidified yourself as an expert. So when someone googles your name, all of that comes up. And so if I am a journalist or an editor at Forbes and I type in your name, guess what? Now I see that you're a proven expert. Right. Okay, that makes sense. So basically, it's about just the consistency, having these branching topics that you can talk on, getting good at refining your message by doing these placements, like whether it's on podcasts or whatever media, local media or whatever you can get placed in, and then over time, those stack up to increase your authority, and then you're more and more likely to get better and better >> Exactly. It's like what they say about the overnight success that took 10 years. >> Right. Right. Are there any pitfalls that marketers or professionals might fall into? As you're trying to get featured, are there any challenges that you might encounter or obstacles? >> There are. Something that is really rampant in the PR is like pay to play placements, right? Where you're paying to get featured. And, you know, I don't wanna knock anyone else's dance vibe, you know, like if that's the way that you dance to the music, then groovy for you. But to other PR professionals, it's very clear who's paid and who's not, right? Like the layman person probably couldn't tell a paid placement from someone who's not, but you can usually tell. And that's one caution that I would give is that if you're a good expert and they want to feature you, there shouldn't be an exchange of money for that, right? I'm not saying that it's wrong because everyone has their own business models, right? And certain publications work off of a business model that includes that. But if we're looking at reputable media outlets, ABC, Forbes, Bloom, like they're not accepting the payment to, it's not a pay to play way, right? Maybe even had that before is like, you know, well, can't we just pay to have this published? It's like, you can, but it's going to be in like dog cheese magazine, right? Like it's not something that you actually want. So the ones that you want, it has to be earned media. You know, when we look at kind of a matrix, there's earned media, there's own media. And anyways, that's a different conversation, but we want to be earning the media. One of the other pitfalls that I see is that some people, some clients will not have a strong opinion. And that is something that is difficult to package as expert advice. And here's what I mean. Like, what if you went to the doctor and you were like, you know, my elbow hurts and they were like, well, we could give you a pill or you could do physical therapy, or we could cut your arm off, or, and all of these other options, right? There's no strong opinion. You're like, well, I'm not the expert here. Like you

tell me, doc, right? Like in your opinion, and that is what we say, right? Well, in your opinion, what would you do, right? When they present us with options, and then they'll, they'll share with you, right? Well, I would do this because of this, and I would probably not do that because of this, blah, blah, blah. So when we can have that kind of dialogue, then what we're doing with our clients is really filtering out the commentary that doesn't hit. If it's just like vanilla, it's not worthy for the news organization to feature that. So instead of just being vanilla with what talking about, we want to have an opinion. And it doesn't have to be a political opinion. It doesn't have to be a negative. It just has to be an opinion. And we have to be cemented in that. And most people are cemented in their opinions if we just press on it a little bit. And that's what we help our clients do is like, you know, you have this opinion, you have this thought, okay, why? Okay, those details. why. And when we keep asking the question of why, we drill down and we get to the core of what they're mentioning, right? So, that's kind of another pitfall, is that we want to have solid opinions versus someone who is, you know, kind of just parroting what's already out there, the opinions from others. Yeah. Right. Yeah. I feel like that's really easy to do, especially like either if you're new to a space or not an expert, or if you're uncomfortable talking in public speaking, you end up like just copy pasting almost what everybody else is saying. And you have to like lean into your like comfort as as an expert in the topic before you can really say something that goes like not necessarily like against the grain, but like that's a little bit unique or a little bit different to what everybody else is saying because it's coming from your own thought process. So true. You have to add to the conversation, right? The journalist is coming to you because you're an expert and they want, they want details, right? They want information. And if you're just kind of saying Vanilla, what's already out there, it's like, well, that's nothing new, right? And And I've had that before happen where a client would do that, and then guess what? The journalist chooses not to use that source, that person, as a source for their article because they didn't give anything valuable, right? And so that's definitely part of the process is that we want to make sure that we're giving valuable information to. Yeah, you are the subject matter expert. Be it. Okay, makes sense. And I was just curious about some of the results that your clients have gotten in general. So you've mentioned previously that getting these media placements of increasing notoriety is helpful to the customer side. As they're looking you up, they believe you. When you say you're an expert in the subject, and then that leads to better sales conversations, more sales conversations, I was just curious, do you have any numbers or percentages or anything on before and after a client works with you? How many sales are they getting? Or any other notable positive outcomes from a result of that media featuring? Yeah. Let's talk about two results. One in the media and then another one monetarily. We had a client who came to us and she was not your quintessential expert. She was a realtor. I think she'd only been licensed for a year, maybe So, she wasn't the 20 -year realtor that we always talk about. She's someone who's really new to the industry. We started working with her and we got her placed in HGTV in two weeks of working with her. So, that is something that we were surprised by. We weren't expecting to land an internationally publication that quickly, right? That's not typical. Those are not typical results, right? But it's happened, right? We've landed Bloomberg in six weeks or so after starting working with a client. So that does happen, right? Well, we're getting great placements, but it can happen in two weeks getting on a national platform. It's the right time It's the right commentary. It's the right hook, the right story, and then like the perfect storm, it happens, right? On the other side of things with, what are the monetary results? So usually PR is something where we're looking at brand awareness, right? It's not a direct response, it's brand awareness. So we're adding to the brand. But in one instance, I had a client who leveraged the media that we secured for him and put it on his LinkedIn and promoted it. And I always say, after the publication, that's 50 % of the work. Now we got to do the promotion part, which is another 50, right? Getting it out there, putting it on the website, getting it in your email signature, doing that type of thing so that people know you are the expert. And so this client, he shared his placement, he did what he was supposed to, you got the word out, And he added an additional $80 ,000 to his monthly revenue. Like that's a significant amount of increase to his monthly revenue, right? So when we're looking at additional $80 ,000 a month, that's all coming from the press that he was able to secure and then monetize, right? And I'm not making an income claim. I can't make income claims, But those are the results that we're looking at when we're taking the media and using that as our credibility factor. Because now instead of the people who he's competing with just having good school, good track record, a good online brand. Now what this client brings to the table for his clients is that he's been featured as an expert in the media, and it makes him look so much more credible, so much more well -postured for the clients that he's serving. And what are some tips or some places that you would, after you get this media coverage, where all should you promote it for having your customers see that. Great question. Everywhere. So, in your email signature, on your website, be a bar with all your media logos, just have a press page. When

you're doing any type of talk, if you're giving out a handout, there's usually a bio in there. We want to make sure that we are mentioning so -and -so has been featured in blank, blank, blank, blank, blank, right? We really want to capitalize on the media that we've got and pull that back into marketing, right? Those logos, those placements of the media organization, we want to use that in marketing because now our message, our marketing message, is received so much better, whether that's an email or a pamphlet or a PMBAP. Yeah. Yeah, because it's showing that other people have like picked up on you and and validated your expertise. So it's showing you as the authority. Definitely. It's it's being able to package you in a way where you're you're flying off the shelf, right? We've all done that. We've been in a grocery store and we're we're going down and there's pasta in this box and then there's pasta in that box. And sometimes you buy the pasta based on how the box looks, right? You're like, well, that looks like a better product. How? It's pasta, right? Assuming it's all the same, right? It's the same pasta. It's just in a different package. But the reality is that as humans, our brains are trying to keep us safe and make decisions quickly. So one way that we can instantly make someone feel more comfortable with us or that we have the credibility is leveraging the press that we've been able to achieve. Is there ever a concern about people, what do you call it, when somebody is just posturing or something along those lines? It's all smoke and mirrors. They don't really have anything valuable to say. They're not actually better than the competition in any meaningful way. But they've just like, because they've been picked out by one publication, the other publications think that there's something and they're not actually validating anything. And then the customers are like, "Ah, everybody's validated you. You must be great." That kind of smoke and mirrors, have you ever given any like thought to that or is that like an issue or you have any thoughts on how it might help? Like from being a PR media industry insider, do you have any thoughts or opinions or concerns on that like potential issue? Well, there is a natural barrier to that issue. And the barrier is that we have to first convince a journalist that this attorney is an expert. And if the attorney is, "I put my pants on in the morning, I go to my office, I sit there for nine hours and then they go home, you know, that is not an expert, right? So we're going to suss that out very quickly. And furthermore, the journalist is going to suss that out, right? Because it's just kind of like a wet mop, you know, it's like there's nothing interesting about it. And so, you know, is there ever a time when someone is getting the publication and getting that posturing when maybe they Worthy of it. Yeah, I mean there there's always those people, right? There's always people who who get things that they don't deserve But here's what I would say for for long term with that that if you're not a subject matter expert And you're touting yourself as one at some point you're gonna get caught up, right? Like you're either gonna learn the subject matter Or you're gonna get caught up is you can't answer the questions and you're gonna look like a buffoon. And we don't want people to look like that. So that's why not so much like in interviews that are not like just an interview with a journalist, like, you know, a client can do that, but if the client's gonna be on TV, we prep them because we know that they're going to be on their toes, on their feet answering these questions, right? And there's not often on TV, there's not the time to sit there and ponder your idea and then respond, right? You know what you're going into, you know the questions, and within a scope, you should be very comfortable talking about that topic, right? Left, right, backwards, forwards, whatever that is. And I always tell clients, like, you know, if you get a question that you don't know the answer to, right? You can either hypothesize and answer it that way, or you can simply say, you know, that that's not something that I'm up to speed on, right? Or I think that that question would be better addressed to someone who blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, right? Like, so you can, you can divert around that, but at the basis of it, we want to make sure that we are positioning the person as as an expert. And do we have the issues where someone is maybe not an expert? Yeah. If you're doing it on your own, maybe you're not an expert. And you're trying to pepper into all these different ways. And not so much the case when you've got an agency involved because we're filtering that. I guess one of the other pitfalls that I would see too is that we want to be known for one thing, or maybe like one or two things, right? So you never see someone in the media who's doing like four different things. And as entrepreneurs, sometimes that happens, right? They're like, well, I have this business that does this, and then I've got this business that does that. And then I have this business, and like none of them go together, right? Like they're all very different. It's like, well, how do you be the expert on each one of these? The answer is that you're not. So from the public perception, we want to pick a lane or two that you can really be the expert on, right? So if you're like a fitness trainer, right, you might be the expert on weight loss during menopause. Okay, you could also be an expert on weight loss after having a baby. But you see how those are connected, right? It's not like we're being an expert on weight loss. And then I'm also going to tell you about my mortgage business. And then I'm also going to tell you about my nail salon. And then I'm also going to, like, I'm confused. And a confused mind will always say no, right? So the journalists, when we're pitching them out, it goes back to

we're searching on Google, right? Because a journalist is going to search you on Google. If they see that you do 14 different things, you're actually an expert at none. So some clients come to us and they are a lawyer, but then they have this other business. Great. No one needs to know. You're a lawyer, professional. You want to keep it on. Right. That makes sense. Thank you so much, Leonard. And now our time is wrapping up. I just wanted to ask if there's anything that you want to say to promote your business or is there any projects you're working on that you want the audience to know about? Of course. So, if people want to check us out as an agency, you can go to gogeekhouse .com. That's go, geek, G -E -E -K, and then house we spell a little bit differently. It's H -A -U -S. So gogeekhouse .com or I'll also make the invitation if you've been listening today and you're like, "Hmm, I wanna start getting myself in the media." One of the best ways that we can do that and solidify what you're really an expert in is doing podcast interviews just like this, right? Where you can talk about What you do how you do it who you do it for and I like to sometimes use that as as the training ground for Going bigger right going in larger publications. And so I host a semi -regular training on that about how to package your knowledge as an expert and then pitch that to get on podcast shows and so I do that at podcast guest podcastguestintensive .com. Again, it's a semi -regular, it's a live training. I hosted semi -regularly. How do you craft a magnetic media bio? How do you find opportunities that exist? We talked about featured .com for press and media, but what about podcasts? There's lots of different platforms that you can go on and find opportunities that are already existing, right? So how do you pitch those hosts as well, right? So all of this process, we've really tied a bow on it and people can attend for free at podcastguestintensive .com. Okay. That's an excellent call to action. Thank you so much, Leonard. This was an amazing conversation. Thank you so much for having me. It's been a pleasure. So, just to sum up the episode, earned media is a powerful tool for building lasting authority and credibility and it starts with having a clear, compelling personal brand. Developing a strategic process from a strong digital presence and consistent message to leveraging platforms for media opportunities like Featured .com can transform media placements into a reliable growth channel that you can use to augment your marketing strategy. The key is consistency in refining your message, engaging with the right platforms and understanding that while PR might not yield immediately it's like paid ads, it can build trust and credibility that accelerates sales over time. Thank you for tuning in to this episode of Mindful B2B Marketing. If our mission to leverage marketing as a force for positive change resonates with you, I invite you to subscribe to the email newsletter at forwardlaunchdigital .com /podcast. Thanks again, and I'm so excited to have you as part of this journey.