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- [00:00]
Podcast Announcer
The Martech Podcast is a proud member of the iHear Everything Podcast Network. Looking to launch or scale your podcast, iHear everything delivers podcast production, growth and monetization solutions that transform your words into profit. Ready to give your brand a voice? Then visit iheareverything.com.
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Benjamin Shapiro
From advertising to software as a service to data, across all of our programs and clients, we've seen a 55 to 65% open rate.
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Jerry Towsley
Getting brands authentically integrated into content performs better than TV advertising.
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Benjamin Shapiro
Typical lifespan of an article is about 24 to 36 hours. If we're reaching out to the right person with the right message and a clear call to action, then it's just a matter of timing.
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Podcast Announcer
Welcome to the Martech Podcast, a member of the I Hear Everything Podcast network. In this podcast, you'll hear the stories of world class marketers that use technology to drive business results and achieve career success. Here's a host of the Martech Podcast. Benjamin Shapiro.
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Benjamin Shapiro
Welcome to the Martech Podcast. I'm your host, Benjamin Shapiro and today we're going to discuss the evolution of pr. Joining me is Jerry Towsley, who is the head of marketing at BusinessWire, which is a global leader in press release, distribution and regulatory disclosure, providing secure and accurate distribution of market moving news. And today Jerry and I are going to discuss PR's role in marketing. But before we get to today's interview, I want to tell you about what I'm listening to. Ever wanted to sit down to a candid conversation with marketing leaders from the world's biggest brands? The Current podcast is your chance. On the Current podcast you'll find exclusive interviews with the experts and trendsetters who are on the front lines of digital advertising and they always leave the ad tech jargon at the door. So subscribe to the current@ww, the current.com or anywhere you get your podcasts today. All right, here's my conversation with Jerry Towsley, the head of Marketing at BusinessWire. Jerry, welcome to the Martech Podcast.
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Jerry Towsley
Thanks Ben. Pleasure to be here. Thanks for having me.
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Benjamin Shapiro
Very excited to have you on the show. Let's start off with a little elevator pitch here. We're both in San Francisco today. Let's say that we're heading up the Salesforce tower, easily the most phallic building on the West Coast. And you've got a couple seconds to tell me who you are and what you do. Press the button. Let's go.
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Jerry Towsley
Hi, I work for BusinessWire and we distribute your news to the people you need to reach. And we do that with over six Decades of experience. So you can trust our delivery of the news that's important to your organization. Have confidence that it's going to extend your brand the way you want it to and to reach your goals. And ding. Now we're at our floor.
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Benjamin Shapiro
Gotcha. Business Wire. Before you get out of the elevator, that's the press release people, right? That's. I've used Business Wire. We've all used Business Wire here or there, haven't we?
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Jerry Towsley
Absolutely. When you see a story online and it says according to Business Wire, that's us.
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Benjamin Shapiro
All right, so a familiar tool. And we're excited to talk to you a little bit about your area of expertise. You're the head of marketing at Business Wire, which does a lot of PR and is used by marketers, PR reps, investors, all sorts of different people. I want to talk a little bit about the role of PR and marketing. Let's start off with a segment we call what's the Word? Here you go. What's the word that describes PR's role in marketing today?
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Jerry Towsley
There's lots of words, but the word I always come back to when it comes to public relations. And by the way, as a marketer, I use a public relations agency for Business Wire. And what I want our public relations to be and to represent is the human side of marketing. So that word for me, Ben, is human. You know, you want all your marketing to be humanized and approachable and be personable. But it's hard to do that sometimes with other channels, with digital marketing, sometimes even your website. But with public relations, we can put a face on our brand. We can put a name to our brand and have it come from a human versus working so hard to make advertising and marketing that comes from a company sound human. We actually make it come from a person that speaks for Business Wire. So human's my word. Ben.
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Benjamin Shapiro
I actually didn't really expect human to be the word. I thought it would be distribution, credibility. Like, I think of Business Wire, and maybe I'm thinking of Business Wire specifically, not just pr, but generally the role of PR is to get your message broadcast through earned media channels, not owned media channels. That's how I think of it. And to me, that's a lot of, like, credibility. The placement matters the most. How do you keep that sort of human touch but also get that? I don't know. My instinct is like credibility building. Forbes Post. Look at me, I'm on the New York Times. Like, that's what I think of pr. How do you make that human?
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Jerry Towsley
It has to come from someone with deep experience in your business. The first thing I did when we hired a PR agency for Business Wire is I tap people on the shoulder within the company that have deep experience in the business of newswire, and they can speak to the results, the how you differentiate yourself through a newswire and distribution, but it's coming from them. You know, I could sit here and Talk about what BusinessWire does and give you elevator pitches, but when it comes from someone who does it with clients and helps them achieve their results, it's more impactful. And everyone uses the term thought leadership, but to me, it's really about a story that comes from a person and not a company. I do know that our editors at BusinessWire work hard with our clients to make their news sound more personal, because a lot of them sound like wire announcements. So not everything can come from a person. But it can still sound more human in how it's presented and how it sounds to people, because PR has a sound to it. It's not just words on a page. People hear what they're reading. So human to me is what all marketing should be. But in pr, I think there's a more natur natural way to do it.
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Benjamin Shapiro
Yeah, it's interesting. And maybe the words that I was thinking of would have been credibility, distribution, prominence. That's, I think, what most brands want when they do PR is they want bigger publications to be talking about them, to make them seem big and getting that inferred credibility. Maybe the other word would also be relationships where to be effective. At pr, it's all about knowing who's writing the post or, you know, whatever type of medium. If you're in podcast, maybe it's recording the podcast, understanding what they want to talk about, and then building relationships so they include you in their work. Are there other words that you think other than human that are relevant to describe the role of PR in marketing?
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Jerry Towsley
First of all, all those words you mentioned are excellent words. And if you read our marketing material, you'll find all of them at some point in our marketing. But to me, human is the how. But another word that comes to play in how I work with PR professionals is collaboration. Because all marketing, there's a collaborative element to it. I always say marketing is a team sport. But in pr, there's a give and take in that brand story and that narrative that comes out. And we have PR professionals that help us reach who we want to reach. But there is a different level of collaboration in PR that I found that I really enjoyed. I'm a Writer by trade. So I really enjoy working with other writers who know how to craft a message that sounds human, that speaks to the results. You want the distribution and the reach and the credibility, the things that you were mentioning, Ben, but really that collaboration is the genesis for all of that. So collaboration or collaborative is another word that comes to mind when I think of that secret word or what's the word?
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Benjamin Shapiro
Yeah, collaborative. And to me the question was, what's the role PR plays in marketing? And I understand human and collaborative. It also needs to be something related to distribution. Maybe that's also the role of PR is to get your message out there, there's the way to do it. And then what's the output that you want? Let's do this. I want to move on to a different segment we call marketing. Mythbusters. Okay, so bust this myth for me. Or don't. Is PR only for branding?
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Jerry Towsley
No, absolutely not. I'm a brand first marketer. I lead with brand all the time. So it all points to and supports the development and the presentation of your brand. But what PR creates to me are the stories and the narratives that support your brand. And ultimately, you mentioned a word a minute ago, Ben, credibility. But to me, it goes beyond credibility to trust. People want to be able to trust a brand, and you do that by sharing stories and developing consistent narratives, things that portray trust and results that lead to that credibility and trust. And it shows that you know your stuff. You're not just talking about it, you're actually showing how you create trust through the work that you provide. And so PR lets you go deeper and bring out parts of your brand that aren't just the brand, but they're really deeper elements and kind of the essence of your brand. So, yes, it's all about the brand, but true brand development and PR are parallel past the converge, if that makes sense.
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Benjamin Shapiro
There's a collection of marketers that are listening to this who are sitting there scratching their head saying, this is the Martech podcast and it's technology driven marketing podcast. And you guys are sitting here talking about getting websites to write about your brand. Why is this related to marketing and why is it related to me? Because I'm in marketing ops. Not the entire audience, but some of it. The reason why I wanted to have this part of the conversation was I think of PR as mostly a top of funnel activity. And when you are in marketing, whether you're an operator, a strategist, an executive, you need to think about not only what's going to build the brand and get People that awareness and credibility and trust that you talk about. But then there's the notion of harvesting that and refining it down, panning for your gold and filtering out what's at the bottom, which is your demand gen. So let's do a little role play here. Let's pretend that you are the head of marketing and comms for a Fortune 500 company. Probably not a huge stretch. What role does PR play in your marketing mix and how do you play nice in the sandbox with the rest.
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Jerry Towsley
Of the team for this role play? Let's talk about how PR plays the role in extending your brand footprint. And there's analytics and there's technology that goes into that. There's a whole tech stack of pr, just like there's a tech stack for Legion and all types of digital marketing, et cetera. So you're extending your brand footprint. That can involve press releases, owned media, social media channels, and you mentioned it earlier, Ben, earned media. To me, the magic of public relations evolves around earned media. I was thinking of this the other night. I don't know if you're a sports fan, but I'm a hockey fan and I was watching a hockey game and it went into overtime and the announcer said, are you ready for some free hockey? Which is like bonus hockey. And so I was thinking about that this morning. That that's kind of like earned media. This is like your bonus brand footprint coverage, extending your brand in unexpected ways. So the part of the marketing mix that PR plays for me is to reach those unexpected places that you can't pay for, that you can't even necessarily put into your marketing plan. But when you get them, you can go deeper and drive traction and build relationships. There's another word you mentioned earlier, relationships with the media. Because that's really what PR is in the marketing mix. When it boils down, it's your relationship with the media themselves. And you can't get that through the other channels. So it is a very distinct part of the marketing mix.
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Benjamin Shapiro
If you're at a big company, a Fortune 500 company, I'm assuming you have a large enough budget to do things that don't necessarily have to have direct correlation to the bottom line. And when I think of pr, I think of it as this activity that we know that marketing is an art and a science. So let's not pretend to science everything. And I feel like when you're down market, right when you're mid market, when you're a small, medium sized business, a solopreneur, you sit there and you think about things like PR and you're like, yeah, I want brand and I want credibility, but I don't have tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars to go have somebody go chase around journalists and try to get me on the New York Times. So how does your answer when you're in Roleplay change when you are not a Fortune 500 marketer but you're down market, let's say a mid market head of marketing?
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Jerry Towsley
I think it's the same answer. The opportunities for visibility might be different, but they just have to be relevant. Are they hitting the market you need to reach? Are they hitting the audience? Are you getting the right message out there? BusinessWire is not a Fortune 500 company. We're not even close. But I'm talking on a podcast. We had three articles placed in Very relevant PR media just over the past couple of months. We have some more in play right now. Some of them are very known channels, but some are somewhat unexpected and kind of tangential to PR and that might reach an entirely new segment that we don't reach through our paid channels. So I don't know that my answer would change that much. But it's the type of relevant media that you're reaching versus a Fortune 500 who's going to have exposure through national and international channels for an entirely different scope of audience than what BusinessWire is looking to reach. We're looking for very pinpoint relevant earned media. And that might be the difference is basically what journalists are engaging with us versus those bigger enterprise level companies.
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Benjamin Shapiro
Now the original question is what role does PR play in marketing? I understand the value that it has, but PR can't be the only thing you're relying on for your marketing mix. If you're, let's go back to being a large company, a Fortune 500 company here, and you're like, I know PR is important. I know it's going to help me increase my, my brand footprint. It's going to help me get that credibility, that trust and humanize my marketing efforts. What else do you have to do in conjunction with PR to make all the great benefits from that outreach and those relationships actually turn into the bottom line business results?
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Jerry Towsley
Well, you surround your audience with the same narrative in different formats. When we get earned media, we build that same message and that same content into our account based marketing where we're reaching known accounts, known potential, potential accounts that our sales team is targeting. So we're partnering with our sales team on those to drive revenue in through that channel. We're of course blasting it out in a series of events on social we take that content and we plan a webinar. We update our website, we update our paid search campaigns, we update our organic targets. All of the things that trigger so sometimes PR is triggered by other marketing and sometimes PR is the trigger. It works both ways. So. So that's why it's part of the mix. In no way is it a standalone. It's very unique. But the same thread can be stitched through our other channels, depending on where it started or if PR is, like I said, the trigger event for those other channels.
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Benjamin Shapiro
When I think about marketing tactics like pr, like I've mentioned before, marketing is an art and a science, and this leans more on the art. It's about relationships. It's about finding people that have reach and credibility to have their voice, distribute your message, talk about your brand. And fundamentally, your brand is not something that you can control. It is what your prospects think about you. And if you're in a marketing company like Business Wire, in this case, it's what marketers think about you. But you need to understand that your brand, that increased reach, all of the work you're doing that you can't track, fundamentally lower your cost per acquisition. When people know, like and trust you, they're going to be more responsive to your ads. You're going to have better conversion rates. It'll help get everything through the funnel. And to me, for the demand gen, for everybody else that's listening to this podcast, why are you talking about PR on the Martech podcast? This is one of those things that you need to be able to understand the purpose of it. Because if you shy away and you say something like PR doesn't work, you're missing out on this huge opportunity. Not just for the big brands looking to be in the New York Times, but for the up and comers that are also looking at places like podcasts and newsletters and other relationships. PR doesn't have to only be big. Your brand is not the only thing that you have to focus on. You have to have the relationship between your brand and demand gen to actually have a comprehensive marketing strategy. And that wraps up this episode of the Martech podcast. Thanks to Jerry Towsley, the head of marketing at Business Wire, for joining us. If you'd like to get in touch with Jerry, you can find a link to his LinkedIn profile in our show notes, or you could visit his company's website, which is businesswire.com A special thanks to the current podcast for sponsoring today's interview. If you're looking for candid conversations with marketing leaders from the world's biggest brands. Then give the Current Podcast a listen. On the Current Podcast, you'll find exclusive interviews with experts and trendsetters who are on the front lines of digital advertising, and they always leave the ad tech jargon at the door. So subscribe to The Current at www.thecurrent or anywhere you get your podcasts today. Just one more link in our summary that I'd like to tell you about. If you didn't have a chance to take notes while you were listening to this podcast, head over to martechpod.com where you can both find our episode summaries and also apply to be our next guest. You can also find the martech podcast on YouTube, and if you'd like to contact me, you can find my link to my LinkedIn profile under Benjamin B E N J S H A P. And if you haven't subscribed yet and you want a daily stream of marketing and technology knowledge in your podcast feed, hit the subscribe button in your podcast app and we'll be back in your feed tomorrow morning. All right, that's it for today, but until next time, my advice is to just focus on keeping your customers happy.
- [19:16]
Podcast Announcer
Thanks for listening to the Martech Podcast and Ihear Everything Production Looking to launch or scale a podcast like this one for your brand? Then visit iheareverything.com.