Listen to the full episode here: Apple, Spotify, and Amazon.
Integrating Your Personal Brand to Build Your Brand with PR
The key to connecting with your most ideal clients and partnerships through PR is through integrating your personal brand that encompasses all of the entrepreneurial activities you’re regularly involved in, especially if you have multiple brands in your business portfolio, alongside habits, values, and beliefs that you share with your ideal clients and partners.
As an entrepreneur of over a decade I’ve run multiple businesses and have just started a few more with my husband. From consulting, coaching, educating, speaking, and writing at The Cheetah Company, I’ve had the opportunity to serve female founders around the world to support them as they build and re-evaluate their brands and businesses.
My husband and I purchased our first home with the intent of it being our first investment property; we’ve been shifting it to be a short-term rental while we head across the United States to be nomadic for a while and enjoy the pleasures of working from anywhere.
My husband recently started an app development company and I’ve had the opportunity to support him.
I share all of these components with our communities: consultant, speaker, writer, short-term rental owner (and designer and project manager/general contractor), and wife to a husband running his own company.
It’d be easy to believe that ALL of that would confuse our clientele as to *what* I actually do on the day-to-day, but through our keen management and regular repeating of my roles within The Cheetah Company we’ve only seen growth in clarity, connection, and interest from our communities.
If you’re interested in sharing more of yourself through your PR presence as a female founder, start with this checklist.
The Process:
- Review your brand’s mission, vision, and longterm plan
- What is your brand’s mission?
- What is your brand’s vision?
- What are your annual goals?
- What are your 3 year goals?
- What are your 10 year goals?
- Who are you as a person, as described by your close friends, partners, team members, and the like?
- Who is the brand, as described by you, team members, clients, partners, and the like?
- How has a referral described your brand?
- Is this how you want your brand to be perceived and described?
- If not, why not?
- How do you want people to feel when they connect with your brand?
- Is your branding in alignment with what you’ve written so far? In terms of design?
- What would feel nightmarish for your brand to be described as?
2. Research brands that influence you and your brand
- Conduct a SWOT analysis (focus on your strengths, weaknesses, threats, and opportunities before executing a SWOT analysis of your competitors to ensure that you’re competing well and executing a cut above your competition). If you haven’t conducted a SWOT analysis before and have questions about it, please send us a message on any of our social media platforms!
3. Research your competitors
- Again, leverage a SWOT analysis to review their brands.
- Consider where they have been featured by Googling them and leveraging tools like Semrush to review backlink analytics to see the websites the competitors have been featured on. This gives us vital information to prep our PR plan. If you’d like support with this, we’d love to help you in longterm consulting.
4. Review your social media accounts page by page as though you are a consumer understanding the brand for the first time every quarter
- This may be a good exercise for 1-3 team members to execute to ensure that we have several opinions, perspectives, and opportunities to see strengths, weaknesses, threats, and opportunities (a standard SWOT analysis)
- If you were to speak on a stage of thousands next week, what are the top 3 subjects/topics you’d be choosing from to develop your speech?
- What do you want to be known for and as?
- Do you notice a consistent pattern of communications on your social media platforms about those three topics?
5. Create your PR desire list
- If you could be on your dream platforms – collaborating, serving, speaking, writing – what are those platforms? Create a long list.
- Narrow down the first 10 you’d like to position yourself for and ensure that they have matching values, interests, goals to your mission, vision, and goals.
- Review the list you received from your competitor research – both organic and through tools like Semrush – to see if the brands on those lists are making your long and short PR list.
6. Utilize a document or a video on Zoom or Loom to go line by line throughout your website looking at/for:
- Market positioning in reference to a SWOT analysis (focus on your strengths, weaknesses, threats, and opportunities before executing a SWOT analysis of your competitors to ensure that you’re competing well and executing a cut above your competition). If you haven’t conducted a SWOT analysis before and have questions about it, please send us a message on any of our social media platforms!
- Full functionality (pathways make sense from page to page, links are working well, photographs and videos are showing up and working correctly, pathways for more information on your social media accounts are easy to navigate and act as a living, breathing landing page for ideal clientele while repelling the rest)
- Compare in a meeting (with your advisor and/or team members after you’ve reviewed all analyses) and discuss changes before creating a plan to divvy the work between appropriate parties
7. Review of what you’re testing for the next quarter
- For example, is there a specific trademark or tagline you’re seeking to test to be repeatable in your messaging? Is it showing up regularly (every week) in some way?
- Other tests may be: pushing traffic to a specific free resource, to a newsletter that’s been refined and elevated to create more value and impression for the consumer, focusing on specific sets of keywords to influence more traffic to be sent to the pages based on SEO, etc.
Researching Industry Leaders to PR Plan as a Small Business Owner
As discussed in the previous section, there are simple ways to find vital information to build your PR plan as a small business owner without constantly turning your wheels.
8. Create your PR desire list
- If you could be on your dream platforms – collaborating, serving, speaking, writing – what are those platforms? Create a long list.
- Narrow down the first 10 you’d like to position yourself for and ensure that they have matching values, interests, goals to your mission, vision, and goals.
- Review the list you received from your competitor research – both organic and through tools like Semrush – to see if the brands on those lists are making your long and short PR list.
If you’re not interested in using a tool like Semrush to create your PR desire list because it feels a bit out of your comfort zone, consider hiring an advisor to work with you in the future, but start with the actions below first.
Researching Industry Leaders:
- Review your competitor list
- Create an industry leaders list (these lists may have similarities, but industry leaders may be much further ahead of your current brand state)
- Review all of the platforms they’ve been featured on – by using the tools mentioned throughout this blog – or by Googling for the top hits that you can find
- Add those features to the place you’re conducting this research – document or spreadsheet – with the name of the person, the brand, the link, and later, you’ll want to return to review the features one-by-one to evaluate the following:
- What was discussed
- Gaps you see in the conversation
- How you can extend and expand the conversation
Repeat this process based on the PR medium you’re seeking to be featured on – editorials, blogs of partners, podcasts, etc.
Contributing Fresh Insights to Boost Your Brand’s Visibility
Our last point regarding what was discussed, gaps you see in the conversation, and how you can extend and expand the conversation are the most important pieces to evaluate to ensure that you are contributing fresh insights to boost your brand’s visibility.
Your PR plan isn’t meant to be an echo chamber or regurgitation of your competitor’s points.
Your authority, lived experience, and personal/brand perspectives are key to bring to the table as you extend and expand the conversation.
Based on the last point and the information you put together, create a fourth space to add in where your authority, lived experience, and perspectives can be brought to the table from a place of confidence. Many female founders experience feeling like a “fraud” or an “imposter” and this exercise supports founders to release the psychological grip this can have that debilitates action.
Psychology Today shares this in reference to imposter syndrome: “Imposter syndrome was first documented in high-achieving women in the 1970s…” and “Around 25 to 30 percent of high achievers may suffer from imposter syndrome. And around 70 percent of adults may experience impostorism at least once in their lifetime, research suggests.”
Choosing the Right Communication Channels to DIY Your Public Relations as a Small Business Owner
Choosing the right communication channels to DIY your public relations tour as a small business owner is key to ensure that you’re not revving up your word count or how many times you’re landing on the podcast mic to later receive zero inquiries for your services.
I’ve put together a checklist for you that will simplify your process. If you’re interested in understanding more and having someone to work through this process with, we’d love to support you via a 90-minute intensive or longer term consulting if you have multiple brands.
Note, if we were working together long-term within our consulting container or mastermind then we’d be starting from the “grand picture” of your 5-10 year vision/plan. I’d like for you to just get started without being in the weeds of the longterm until we plan that personally together.
Choose Three Quarterly Goals for Your Personal Brand:
- Increase brand awareness
- Create brand reputation
- Manage brand reputation
- Increase traffic to your website
- Improve community engagement
- Boost conversions or sales
- Generate leads
- Deliver customer service
- Gain market insights with social listening
- Gain PR opportunities
Choose three ways you will work on your first chosen goal above. Then repeat for your second and third goal.
Create SMART goals (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-Bound!) based on your chosen goals. I.e If you chose Generate Leads then your SMART goals might be: Generate 12 new leads (could also be retention-focused) by EOQ1 2023 by posting 4x a week consistently on Instagram and Linkedin, engaging for 30 minutes 5x a week with ideal clients, and having 3 PR opportunities in front of qualified audiences to further our mission of working with X style of client.
What is your anchor platform? I.e. If you have a podcast then all of your blogs, emails, and social content may be derived from that “anchor” piece from your podcast. Anchor meaning your largest piece that defines the overall goals of your marketing and sales strategy for Q1, Q2, Q3, or Q4.
Define your cadence. How many times will you post per week per platform?
What tools will you or your team use to implement your goals? I.e. Later.com for social media management, Semrush for keyword search, Google Sheets and Docs for content planning and creation, Canva for graphic creation.
Who will be in charge of each part of the process? Here are the keys to the process.
- Idea generation based on strategic goals:
- Content planning based on idea generation:
- Keyword research based on ideas and content plan:
- Copywriting:
- Designing:
- Editing:
- Scheduling:
- Engaging/outreach with audience:
If your positioning and consistency is an available portfolio to review via your social media channels and anchor marketing piece (like a podcast), then those that you are pitching are able to see the true value of your brand, work, and personal energy to ensure that you’re the right fit for their platform.
Crafting a Compelling Pitch to Pitch Your Small Business
At The Cheetah Company we love crafting compelling pitches alongside our clients. There are so many frameworks, tips and tactics we have to share in this realm, but a key to remember is to personalize your pitches to different audiences.
Per Prowly, “Based on research from Fractl, 46.5% of journalists receive at least 11 media pitches per day, while 28.64% receive over 26 pitches per day.”
The Keys To Writing A Compelling Pitch Are:
- An attention grabbing headline
- Ensuring it is newsworthy and relevant to the audience
- Focus on the big W’s always (even in your marketing campaigns): Who, What, When, Where, and Why
- A flattering open-line sentence of the email regarding the latest article on X in relation to your industry or parallel
- An open-line sentence of “if you’re ever interested in diving deeper in X topic, I am an X that works with XYZ with X amount of years of experience (or other relevant authority markers)”
- Information about the topic you’re seeking to pitch
- Three suggestions for them to choose from with a note that you’re open to discussion of topics
- Link out to top features that you’ve shared your thoughts and perspectives through
- Gratitude for time and interest
- Salutation
We support our clients by helping them to craft compelling pitches based on their unique business goals, personal brand, and review the drafts every step of the way via business consulting.
Connecting with Key Decision Makers for PR Outreach as an Entrepreneur
The key to actually seeing your pitch be received and approved is to ensure that you’re reaching out to key decision makers during your PR outreach as a small business owner.
If you’re sending your pitches to a general email address of a news outlet, it’s ideal to use a subject line that clarifies which “beat” or specialization you’re seeking to connect with a journalist about. Individual journalists are focused on a specialization in their writing and general inquiries are sent to them based on those specializations. It’s best to find the journalist that has that specific specialization directly instead of sending your pitch to a general inbox.
If you’re connecting with local businesses, podcast hosts, parallel partners in your industry that have a similar audience style to you with relevant clientele between the both of you without competition getting in the way then your pathway will be different than the above mentioned of traditional media.
There are plenty of others “must-knows” when it comes to PR outreach that you’ll either gain over time or learn by working with an advisor. We’d love to support you with those must-knows through consulting or our mastermind.
Keys to Remember:
- Less is more
- Give the journalist time to read the pitch; follow-up after 7 business days, not before
- Human pitches will win over formalities always; be respectful, but be human
- Narratives will help you land the pitch more than product-features that only truly advance your brand
- Jargon doesn’t always show your expertise; if you can explain in a simple manner it shows true expertise
Sending Pitches and Leveraging Referrals to Build Your Brand with PR
If you are connecting with local businesses, podcast hosts, parallel partners in your industry that have a similar audience style to you with relevant clientele between the both of you without competition getting in the way then your pathway will include leveraging referrals and pitching to those parallel partnerships based on relationships you already have in your network.
If you haven’t reached out to your network to share that you’re putting on your own PR tour, then the time is now to share your media kit and the focuses you’re seeking to bring to the table based on a similar write up to the keys to writing a compelling pitch.
Building Your Brand with PR
Building yoru brand with PR as a small business owner starts first with a clear brand and a clear understanding of where you’d like your brand to go. PR growth strategies for startups can feel like an overwhelming space to delve into when the other departments in your business beg for your attention, but this finding about public relations by Agility PR Solutions as of June 2024 reminds us of how important it truly is: “Small businesses might have the impression that there’s no need to worry about having a PR strategy—if you build it they will come, and all that. But the reality is that this is just as much a part of being profitable whether you’re operating on a local scale or expanding internationally.”
Leveraging third-party endorsements is an authority-building tool in an economy and market that’s begging for proof of your capabilities before they’re interested in a sales conversation or consultation. Third-party endorsements allow you to boost your brand’s visibility while surpassing the boundaries of self-promotion, especially while you’re building user-generated content and social proof in 2024.
Understanding how to utilize the best PR practices as an entrepreneur is key for sustainable growth when social media algorithms, capabilities, and weaknesses are regularly changing alongside consumer behavior. If you’re interested in working with a business advisor that consults you to know how to pitch your brand beyond your network, connect with us here! We’d love to serve you via consulting or our mastermind.
Resources:
Listen to the full episode here: Apple, Spotify, and Amazon.
Bio:
Ashleigh Henry has been in marketing, sales, and leadership positions for the last decade and it was exhilarating for Ashleigh to climb the retail, corporate, higher education, and start-up ladder holding positions such as Marketing Strategist, Copywriter, Social Media Strategist, Manager, Editor, Co-Editor…until it wasn’t. Alongside her degree, Ashleigh decided to bring all of her experience into the freelancing world until it became clear that she didn’t just want to pay the bills – she wanted to create a company that was foundationally built on cheetah print, legacy-minded marketing, and sexy sales structures that could stand the test of trend and time. The Cheetah Company, founded by Ashleigh, does this for female entrepreneurs through their education, coaching, and consulting services. Learn more about Ashleigh here.