Jon Jantz (3:23)

So I've been doing this a long time. When I first started my agency, PR was really seen as almost a separate field, separate channel, almost, if you will. And really with the onset of vigil, a lot of that kind of waned. I mean, media relations kind of went by the wayside. It's like, oh no, we're all on Twitter now, all blogging and people are finding us directly. I certainly sense that in with the change of AI and SEO, that PR is actually going to, I think, make a real comeback because the emphasis on authority and on expertise and on citations, that, that really are just the natural part of a pr. So maybe talk a little bit about that idea of PR kind of making a rebound and then also how it relates to today's SEO.

John Metz (4:10)

Yeah, so if you're a business and you sell products, you sell software to other businesses, no matter what you're doing, you need your potential customers to buy from you. You need them to be, to trust your brand, to really feel like you are the best option for them. And so obviously you can go on your website and tell amazing stories about how you're the greatest at this certain thing or you know how to do this really well. And that's really important. And so I'm not going to take anything away from content Marketing, writing a blog, social media, all those things are super important. But at the same time, you experience this for sure. I'm sure as a consumer and a buyer yourself, you are out there thinking like, okay, well, how do I trust them? How can I make sure that I feel really good about it? So other sources commenting on including them in their research and their findings always really helps. And so you're right. PR is not just about, you know, getting your face on the COVID of Forbes magazine or getting your quote in the New York Times, like, yeah, that's amazing. But today PR is getting a local, like micro influencer to, to feature you. It's about getting into really targeted blogs where maybe they only have 50 readers, but those 50 readers are your exact target audience. Like, that's PR too. Getting into YouTube channels, going on to podcasts. These are all different ways to be doing public relations for your brand, making the brand out there and trusted and aware from other sources the same time, you know, like again, telling your own story in the way you want to tell it. And that's, I think, the most authentic way this goes. We've had customers that have been very successful and customers that haven't been. I can tell you the ones that are successful are the ones that, because they tell an authentic story, they feel real. They feel authentic. It feels like they really know they have the passion coming through the screen or the prints, whatever it might be. Like, that is really important. So like I said, this is all about the human element. AI helps enable that, and AI kind of helps make this PR process even easier. And again, it's not just who you know. At the Wall Street Journal newsroom, it's all about kind of finding your path to find your customers and find the people that really care about the, the media you want to put out.

Jon Jantz (5:48)

So tell. Talk a little bit about the relationship though between PR today and you know, a lot of people are having different names for it, but, you know, AI driven SEO, you know, for answering what's the relationship between PR and the new SEO, if you will.

John Metz (6:05)

Yeah, it's funny. I'll just give you the quick origin story of what led us to eventually build ChatRank, but it was last summer. We as just reach out as our, as a software business. Like we obviously eat our own dog food, we do our own SEO. We are a number one blue link in many of our core categories. We pay for Google Ads. We obviously do a combo of things to bring customers in the door. And last summer Google just stopped spending my money. It wasn't Spending my money, my ad money. And Google loves spending my money. Don't get me wrong. They really do. And so we were kind of shocked to what was going on. Went into our core search terms and realized that the AI overview had you surf the page. They completely taken over our core search page, and we were like, oh, wow. Like, this is really important because, well, at the time, you couldn't buy your way into the AI overview. Like, you needed to make sure that was only authentically, like, given to the right type of companies. So that kind of set us on this journey of how can we use what we know about pr, getting your brand out there and kind of writing good content, all the things that we know work really well for traditional SEO, PR backlinks, et cetera, and apply that to the new, like, answer engines that are out there. And so that kind of, again, was the genesis of Chat Rank, what we're building today to kind of help other clients do the same thing. But the idea there is that we built it for ourselves. So we are out there, like, understanding what works. How do you actually get your brand featured in ChatGPT Answers? Get your brand visible out there for AI overviews, whether it's perplexity or others. And so our system can really easily help you understand kind of what's out there, what your competitors are doing, what seems to be winning for these types of ideas and helping you step by step guide you to kind of winning it and growing in that area. So it really does tie really nicely because, like you mentioned before, your own content's really important. And then having other people write about you is also important too. So that's like. Like, kind of the outreach and media PR is kind of getting other people to validate you and sometimes, like, kind of producing your own content for the AI models and answer engine, it's really effective as well. So it's a combination of both. And like, I'd say 90% of our customers that use ChatRank also use just reach out because they are so complimentary.

Jon Jantz (7:48)

Talk a little bit more about this idea. I mean, I think everybody's saying, hey, you have to show up in that AI overview. I don't think anybody debates that. That's a good thing, right? Because I think what people are doing now is instead of saying, okay, I found five links to five websites. I'm gonna go to them all, make some assessments. Now it's like, here's my overview. This one seemed to answer what I was after. I'm gonna go there with high intent. So, I mean, showing up in those AIO reviews. It's the new number one spot, right? I mean, so how does. What are some of the things people need to start doing to give themselves an advantage or the ability to maybe start showing up in some of those? Is it sort of a foregone conclusion like what you did the last five years is why you're showing up there, or is there a way to impact it today?

John Metz (8:34)

Yeah, I'll answer that with a quick example. And so I personally, I'm the kind of person that I love buy when I buy gear, whether it be a backpack or a bad luggage or anything, I buy it for the long haul. I like to have that bag for 10, 20 years. That's my. I don't like to like buy the cheap stuff. It gets thrown out every year. So I hadn't bought a new backpack in probably 15 years and it was been a long time, but I was dearly need of one. And so I was like, all right, I need a new bag. I needed to carry my laptop. I need it to be a commuter bag so I can get to work. I also would love for it to be like, you know, a small travel bag if I'm going on a day trip somewhere. And so I that's not something easily accessible in Google. You can't just Google that idea. You have to search laptops, go into a couple wire cutter guides and site a search around to try to find that answer. So I went to open up Chat GPT and said like I want it to be black, I want it to have this much storage, have a laptop sleeve, maybe space my water bottle and all those kinds of things. Give me three, three possibilities. Give me three possibilities. And I went to each one of those sites and those companies that are kind of getting Featured there in ChatGPT in that example are being hyper specific with exactly what I wanted. And so I think the first thing to answer your question about like what it is that you can do to kind of win in this area is know what you're trying to do and be hyper specific and authoritative on that thing. So if you are a backpack that's really good for both working people and also like commuter bags for like getting on your bike and riding your bike to work as well as for, you know, a day trip out to see a client, like that should be like all over the product page or a blog post or anything else that can really kind of hone in on my exact use case. So again, you might get one of me per month searching for that thing. But I can promise you, if you are really good and specific at writing that post about why that is exactly why your bags are amazing, I promise you, you're gonna get surfaced in ChatGPT and others for doing that. And so I think the first thing I always tell people is don't just write, hi, my brand is amazing, and then just hope chatgpt up hyper specific, hyper authoritative. This is why we're great and this is the reasons why this is what we can do. This is why customers love it. All those kinds of fun things, but a very specific topic. Almost like the idea of the volunteer keywords from Best SEO. But that kind of really wins. So is it going to be hard to like win best CRM for sales organizations? Yeah, that's impossible. Like thing to win in traditional search or AI search, but knowing like your, your niche, knowing what you're trying to go after and writing high specific content for that is a great place to start.

Jon Jantz (10:39)

Yeah. And of course, anybody that, if you show up for that search and anybody clicks, then comes your website because of that search. Probably 50% of them are going to buy. Right? I mean, it's like it's a. They're there now, just make the transaction at that point because they've got other than they need.

John Metz (10:54)

I was given three options. I bought one of the three. I mean, it's just, it's gonna, it's gonna end up that way. And I mean, some of these organizations like, like Google and OpenAI are making easier to actually shop directly or even without that. Like, people are doing the research in these AI models for exactly the reason they describe. You want to ask those kind of questions that are more like a natural language conversation. And that's much easier to do with a, like an answer engine than it is with like traditional search. This is why, I mean, I just listened to Sundar Pichai from Google Talk on a podcast last weekend and he was all about, you know, AI mode is like just going to keep, it's going to be separate, but they're going to keep rolling in features. Like if it's going to test out features and when they feel good about them, just roll them into search slowly over time. So Google search is not going to become AI mode and anytime soon. But I promise you, AM mode is infiltrating Google search day by day. So keep happening.

Jon Jantz (11:36)

Yeah, but there, there are certain types of searches that are not necessarily going, People aren't asking questions, they're not necessarily going to be answered by that. So I'm looking, I kind of laugh at the people saying Google's dead. You know, I, I, I needed a.

John Metz (11:51)

New pair of running shoes recently. I know exactly what running shoes I like. I like Brooks running shoes. I went on Google and said brooks Adrenaline size 12. I'm like, I just know exactly like I, I know what I need for that. That's a Google search. That's not an AI research search. Yeah.

Jon Jantz (12:03)

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Jon Jantz (12:46)

Let's shift back to, to PR. A lot of people familiar with the idea of pitching media. One of the things that AI I think is done and this isn't just the pitching, this is content. Everything is, it's really allowed people to create a lot of garbage. What are some we can get, we can take this with a positive direction or the negative direction. What are the mistakes people make, you know, when trying to pitch the media and you know, how could they really enhance their chances of getting somebody's attention? Micro influencer to Wall Street Journal.

John Metz (13:16)

Yeah, I'm going to take the positive approach because I really do think there's an opportunity here. It's easy, it's actually easier to take the negative approach here by just saying it's easy to spam. It really is. It's never been easier in the world, history of the world to spam people. And frankly, these journalists that write these large publications, they're getting so much of this, they're getting pretty good and their spam filters are getting pretty good at reading it out. So in order to win, you need to really stand out somehow. And so we always tell all of our customers here the same thing. They like, they always say, am I going to get pressed? Is this going to work? And it's telling the same answer. Do you have a good story to tell? And if you do, you're going to get pressed. If you don't, you're not. So really, how do you pit that story and how do you hone that story down into a maximum 200 word pitch, usually preferably 100 to 150 word pitch to a journalist. So they really care about what you have. You're seeing, you're passionate about learning more and they want to help you out with that. So that's not simple. It's not going to work on day one. So. But whether you're pitching to a micro influencer or you're pitching to the Wall Street Journal, obviously there's going to be nuances to like, what the audience will care about. So we always say, know who you're pitching to and know who their audience is. Because even if they think the story is great, if their audience isn't going to appreciate it, they're not going to tell it either. So always think about that as a first step. Once you're there and you kind of understand who you're pitching to, it's really about authenticity and pitching them a story they're going to care about. So like I said, our customers that do not do well with our system are the ones that say, hi, I'm John, I'm amazing. Right. About me not going to work. It's like, hi, my product does this, it features this, it is sustainable for this reason. It has this amazing story attached to it. Whatever it's going to do to kind of promote like a weight reason for that journalist to care about your story, that's amazing. Tying it to current events, tying it to something in the news, tying it to whatever you can to make it really like tangible for the readers is amazing. And I have tons of examples of this, but it really is kind of like the way to win in your pitching for pr. It's just tell a story that they care about and the audience will care about, not just what you care about.

Jon Jantz (14:56)

Yeah. And one of the things I hear you telling that or saying that, you know, some people are not going to like hear is that there's a lot of personalization that too. Not a matter of like write a press release, get a list and bomb the same, you know, 200 press releases out. I mean, you really have. The journalist has to feel like you get them, you get their audience and that this is a story that maybe you've only said to them.

John Metz (15:20)

Yeah. Is that what we actually, we see that, like I said, I mentioned this before, but you could still write a press release and send it out on a news wire. I mean, those can work. I'm not going to sit there and say that they don't. But you can't do that on a platform. We don't know how it, it's just, that's not how it works. You download, you kind of bring in the 10, 20, 50, whatever the number is. Journalists that are really hyper targeted because, you know, according to our system, you've done the research, they've actually written about your topic or talks about your competitors or they know your space really well. We feel really confident those people are going to open the email at a minimum because they care about the space. And then the second they reach you a pitch and they say, okay, this is good or not, but like you're going to do that 20 times, really targeted and I promise you, you're going to get better response rates and better like traffic traction, spending 20 highly targeted emails and sending 2,000 spam emails. So it's just, it's just over and over again we've seen this in the course of the last 10 years.

Jon Jantz (16:05)

So how, how much does you know? Like in a, an ad or even in an email, subject, phone and it's like that headline that grab them because they're going to give you about two seconds before they make the decision to go further or go on. So how much, how important is a, you know, you might call a hook that you know is so compelling that it grabs somebody's attention in one or two seconds? Yeah.

John Metz (16:27)

So the reality of the news cycle today is that people need that help. They need the reason to click. Every journalist, reporter, podcaster, whoever is looking for that click, they're looking for like, why should people care about this story? And so we always tell our customers data, interesting information, or anything that's proprietary to you that only you can uniquely tell, that's what the journalist wants. So whether it's like information or data about your customers or your industry, whether it's just like stories that only you can tell because only you have them, whatever, it seems unique to you. That's your best way to kind of get across to the journalist that hook is that, hey, you have to talk to me. This is a great story. But yeah, you can't talk to everybody else over there. You have to talk to me because I have the information you need and nobody else does. That makes you really valuable. And by the way, that also builds relationships over time so that they write the story about that topic today, they quote you or they feature your information or that whatever it might be, and then six months from now they want to do a follow up on the story. They're not going to bother like waiting to be pitched together. They're just going to call you and So a lot of our customers get repeat business from their, from the journalists and the people they reach out to because again, they're now seen as the experts on this topic. And again, not to say journalists are lazy, but they know people have good information. They're going to go back to the well over and over again. Not going to constantly search for new information when they know they have a reliable source there.

Jon Jantz (17:32)

They can get a big credible quote, you know, with one phone call or an email. How much of a role is social proof? Like I used to tell my clients years ago that, you know, you get more media coverage by getting media coverage. And with the idea being that, you know, you've been written up in a local paper than a regional paper and then you go for the Wall Street Journal, you know, I mean, how important is that? If you'd ultimately like to kind of land some big fish, you need to land a bunch of little fish.

John Metz (17:59)

In general, I'd say that's pretty true. I mean, the idea is if you're not a very well known brand, but you have a really good story, sometimes it's easier to get it out there first to a smaller publication, whether it be a blog, a trade journal, a niche organization. That's usually easier to get your foot in there. Not to say you can't go straight to the Wall Street Journal. It's not that you can't do that, but sometimes it's just easier to get into the other publications because maybe that journalist isn't getting pitched as many times per day and they're going to see your pitch more easily and they're going to, they're going to feature you. So I'd say that it's a good approach, but it doesn't mean you can't stop. You don't have to go for both. We always recommend for our customers. Try both. So you never know the person at the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times or whoever at CNN or Forbes, they actually also need the store. The best stories. If you have the best story, they'll still want to talk to you and feature that. So we had an amazing customer. She was, she had an organization. She personally had ovarian cancer, raised a foundation to support research in the field. And she was going after, you know, smaller places. You know what, she went up to the Today show too, and said, I'm interested in telling my story. And she got picked up. So it really does depend on kind of it's an amazing story. Like obviously not everybody has that, such a story, but at the same Time like you should go for all of it. But like the idea generally would speaking would be the smaller publications are generally easier to get into. It's not that you have to do it to get to the higher publication, but it is generally a way to start and it feels good, you know, to get a win. You get yourself out there and get yourself clicks and everything.

Jon Jantz (19:13)

How much you know, so much of it used to be, you know, everything was in print. Now everything was. Then it went to everything in print and an online version. A lot of publications now are strictly online. Maybe not a lot of viewership on the coverage that, that, you know, especially in the online edition. What are some other elements of, you know, how would you take that and amplify it? Let's say you got that, you know, regional publication to write about you, but it's pretty much on their blog or something that, that maybe not a whole lot of people are going to see. How would the amplified today?

John Metz (19:45)

It used to be all about, you know, print or kind of just getting into the magazine or the newspaper, et cetera. Like you said that those days are long since passed and today what it really is about is amplifying your message to where your audience gets their media. So this is what our always biggest pitch is that if your audience gets their media on podcasts, go pitch podcasts and go do as many podcasts as possible and skip it. Then you the Wall Street Journal and Forbes, because your audience is in, is listening to podcasts. If your audience, if you're a very niche, you know, B2B business, like really your customers are like, you know, a hundred CIOs spread across the country, go pitch that trade journal that's going to feature you there and just like don't worry about the other things. And so we always say figure out just like you're doing sales, figure out where your audience, potential audience is and then really honed in on those type of places. So if it is a regional business and you're a local, you know, pizzeria or franchise, sure, yeah, go for the local organizations and then see if you can leverage that into a larger story. But frankly, like we always tell our customers like a blog with 50 readers, but the 50 correct readers is so much better than an article that reaches 10,000 people that don't really care about your story. So really it's about finding out like how you're going to grow your business, how you're going to grow your sales with where your audience is and then pitch that media. That's generally the approach that our customers take. And so yes, we have customers that are super happy pitching local media and we have customers that are super happy pitching national media. And it all works.

Jon Jantz (20:59)

John, I appreciate you taking a few moments to stop by the Duct Tape Marketing podcast where would you invite people to learn more about your services as well as connect with detail?

John Metz (21:07)

Absolutely. Yeah. So we're at just reach out. IO so J U S T R A C H O U T IO that's for our kind of AI powered PR and digital PR software. Really easy sign up right on our website. We give a free week trial for anybody that wants to try it out. Really great for just getting your brand out there and telling your story to media. And then also check us out at ChatRank AI so it's C H A T R a N K AI that is all about kind of visibility and growing your ranking and visibility in the AI models. Super new, super cool stuff. Our customers there are doing really well. Check out some of our case studies on our website and learn more about that.

Jon Jantz (21:39)

Awesome. Again, appreciate you taking some time. Hopefully one of these days out there on the road.

John Metz (21:43)

Thank you so much.

Jon Jantz (21:49)

Hey small business owners, let me ask you a quick question. Is your marketing actually working for you or just working you over? If you're tired of chasing random tactics and want real clarity, it's time for a strategy first approach. At Duct Tape Marketing, we help you build a marketing system you own, one that fits your business and finally puts you in control. No more chaos, no more guesswork. Just a roadmap you trust powered by smart strategy. And let's face it, a little help from AI today. You ready to shift from overwhelm to confidence? Head over to DTM World/OwnIt. DTM World OwnIt.