862 Candice Smith: PR, Impact, and the Power of Visibility

Coming up on Wings of Inspired Business:

Candice Smith:

Remember that PR is really bringing folks. I liken it to like a horse coming to water. Your marketing is going to be like, hey, this is a really good pond, this looks great. Another horse is like, go and check out this pond. It looks awesome.

So, let’s say the pond smells like salty water, like brackish water. The horse may not drink it. So those two things have to be intertwined and consistent.  Just because somebody comes to your website doesn’t mean that they’re going to buy something from you. So, you have to be tracking those different types of metrics and see how those two pieces really interlock. It’s more complex.

Melinda Wittstock:

Marketing is the story that you tell the world about yourself, and PR is the story that others tell the world about you, says PR maven and entrepreneur Candice Smith, and today we talk about the Importance of Visibility in Marketing, and why you need to understand how marketing metrics integrate with PR reputation building. Think about it as a machine, and today Candice is going to share how to build it.

Hi, I’m Melinda Wittstock and welcome to Wings of Inspired Business, where we share the inspiring entrepreneurial journeys, epiphanies, and practical advice from successful female founders … so you have everything you need at your fingertips to build the business and life of your dreams. I’m a five-time serial entrepreneur and I’m all about paying it forward, so this podcast is all about catalyzing an ecosystem where women entrepreneurs mentor, promote, buy from, and invest in each other …Because together we’re stronger, and we all soar higher when we fly together.

Today we meet an inspiring entrepreneur whose journey began in a classroom where educational inequalities inspired her to join Teach for America before she turned her passion for education into a venture that stood against the very structural obstacles she once fought within the classroom. Along the way as a bootstrapped serial entrepreneur Candice Smith became an expert in all things PR for any business wanting to make a big impact in areas like social justice and environmental sustainability.

Candice is the founder of French Press PR, and today she guides us through the nuances of PR and marketing, sharing her insights on the stories we tell about ourselves and the narratives shaped by others. You’ll learn why consistent relationship-building, rather than quick and aggressive tactics, are the key to success, plus the importance of integrating marketing metrics with PR to truly measure success.

Candice will be here in a moment, and first:

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Melinda Wittstock:

What would your customers say about your business? It might be very different from the story you tell in your marketing, and today we talk about how to integrate PR and marketing for a cohesive strategy and game-changing success – even if you’re on a shoestring budget.

Candice Smith isn’t just any PR expert; she’s a serial entrepreneur who has bootstrapped many businesses and she’s a passionate advocate for businesses making a real difference in the world of ESG, that is, Environmental, Social Justice, or Governance. With her company, French Press PR, she’s guiding founders in fintech, sustainable food, fashion, and social justice to not only find their stories but to deliver them where they’ll reverberate the most.

Today we dig deep into the art of storytelling in marketing and PR, and why blending the two into a visibility strategy is a gamechanger. We also talk about the importance of metrics in marketing and PR, and what mistakes most founders make and how to avoid them. You’ll also get the inside skinny on Candice’s Visibility Paths Framework plus a quick free quiz that can help you plot out your unique PR plan based on your business type, stage, and goals. We also get into how to tailor your authentic message to rise above the noise.

You’ll also be inspired by Candice’s entrepreneurial journey of turning challenges into triumphs, from shadow bans and demonetization hindrances to securing over 100 top publication features for her bootstrapped businesses.

Let’s put on our wings with the inspiring Candice Smith and be sure to download the podcast app Podopolo so we can keep the conversation going after the episode.

INTERVIEW

Melinda Wittstock:

Candice, welcome to Wings.

Candice Smith (0:00:08):

Thank you so much for having me, Melinda. So glad to be here.

Melinda Wittstock (0:00:11):

I love that you came to PR in sort of a different path than most people. I mean, you’re a serial entrepreneur. You bootstrapped all these businesses. You had to do your own PR, and you learned so much. And so here you are now with, with French Press. Tell me about what that was like on that journey. I think for all the founders listening to this, that struggle with their PR, not knowing what to do, what was the secret? What were you doing in your own businesses that led you here?

Candice Smith (0:00:45):

What a great question. I think that when I started out, so just a quick, high-level background, I was the first person in my family to go to college, and my cousin is actually the second person. So proud of her. She actually also works at French Press, which is very exciting, keeping it in the family. But as the first person in my family to go to and through college and graduate, I wanted to go into education initially, and I saw so many disparities, educational disparities. And I ended up going into teach for America. And throughout that, that was a learning process in and of itself, to learn how hard it is to be a teacher, facing those economic disparities, being one person against an entire system, it feels like. And so that was where I started my first business. Right? So, I identified when I was in the classroom the difficulty that I had with reaching all of my students, right. Because there was such a spectrum of learning needs and ability and skill sets, and there was also such a large spectrum of skill gaps. So I was teaching 9th grade English, and I realized that I wanted to create a business that brought more teachers into the classroom digitally. Now, this was 2013, not 2020, so I thought it would be fantastic if there was some sort of way to bring an intervention to students. And so I started with an idea, and I started with ideals rather than starting with thorough research and confirming product market fit. I started before I even understood whether or not there would be demand.

Melinda Wittstock (0:02:42)

Right.

Candice Smith (0:02:43)

So, I didn’t know what I was doing. I just got started.

Melinda Wittstock (0:02:48)

That’s most founder stories. I mean, we leap into it. How hard could this be, right?

Candice Smith (0:02:55)

Yes, exactly. I’m sitting there at a brunch with some of my friends afterwards who they all went, and they got high paying jobs. They were in consulting, they were in banking, they were in finance, they were in law. And I’m having brunch with them, and I felt like that one meme, Kristen Whig in bridesmaids where she’s like, ‘help me, I’m poor’. I’m like, you guys don’t understand. They’re like, but you can make your own schedule. And I’m like, yeah, I can sit all day and think about how I don’t have, you know, there were hard times for, you know, we did end up getting in that first business because I had the background with Teach for America, because I had the networks at that time that I was able to tap into. I did cobble together, and it did come together very beautifully. We ended up having around twelve teachers that worked with us, and we were working with different school districts in the Phoenix area, which is where I taught. And I kept on with that for a few years, thought that was going to go farther, and then ended up running into some difficulties when the entire state of Arizona went on a teacher strike. I believe it was 2016 or 2017, because they weren’t getting paid enough, and so all budgets were cut, were slashed, especially when it came to external interventions. And so, my startup was one of the first to be cut from those budgets. So, I was at a place where I needed to nurse my wounds a little bit, and I realized that it just wasn’t sustainable for me to continue doing all of the things fell into, and literally fell into. I said I was going to take a break and start looking for jobs and fell into another business. And this time it was a sexual wellness subscription box. Stories way too roundabout and very long in detail to get into, but that ended up being very difficult. And it was another type of learning because I was bootstrapping a product that not only was a subscription service, but it was a very overhead heavy model. And so I quickly found that I used up almost all of my savings and over the course of about three years. And this kind of got me into PR in the first place, because I discovered how difficult it was to market when you’re being shadow banned, when you can’t pay for Google Ads, because even though you have no type of pornography, no type like this was for couples, right, adult date nights in a box. But it was being treated as though it was inappropriate. And so, everything got demonetized, everything got shadow banned. And so, I turned to PR. I thought, let me make connections with folks in the media because they’re clearly posting about, I could go on cosmopolitan, maybe, and see if there is some way, because they’re posting left and right and they’re not getting demonetized. And so, I tried to figure out what skill sets could I lean into, and I realized I was a pretty good storyteller, and that was where I discovered PR. And within the first year and a half, I was able to secure over 100 different features, speaking opportunities, podcasts in tier one publications as well. I got into Forbes, I got into Oprah. I got into NBC News and CBS News. I was quoted in Bustle and Cosmo.

Melinda Wittstock (0:07:08)

Okay, so that’s incredible. And so what was your secret? How did you get their attention? How did you figure this out?

Candice Smith (0:07:16)

Yeah, so the way that I started was I leaned into my expertise, right? I went and studied, actually, women, gender, and sexuality studies when I was in college, which is how I even came into that field in the first place. I wanted to bring my academic learnings to a product and see if I could make something gamified and fun for couples, but also encourage consent and open communication. And so, I actually started it with my partner, who’s now my fiancé at the time. And when I reached out, I told the background story of what I was trying to build. Or sometimes I would just start by answering questions.

Melinda Wittstock (0:08:04)

Right.

Candice Smith (0:08:05)

Folks would have questions about different types of relationship issues that folks were having, and based on my learnings or things that I had been studying, and I would just say, I’m not a therapist, but I am an educator, and I do know how to share some advice. And that was how I started getting examples of quotes in the press.

Melinda Wittstock (0:08:37)

I think a lot of people just don’t know where to start, and it can be kind of daunting, for sure. But I like how you leveraged your expertise, like your personal expertise around your product. And that gets into this whole tension between a business where you need your personal brand, I guess, as the CEO, as the founder, sure. And the company brand. And that can be tricky. Let’s go into that a little bit, because all founders, and usually female founders have lived experience domain expertise, and they’ve overcome a problem that they can solve for other people. So, it’s something where they can really leverage a personal brand. So how does that fit with the business brand?

Candice Smith (0:09:46)

So, the way that I think about it, high level, when we’re talking about, I’m going to go into pr and marketing and how I define them first, and then we can go into personal versus professional brand or business brand. So, from high level perspective, I like to say that marketing is the story that you tell the world about yourself, and pr is the story that others tell the world about you. So, when you combine those two things together, it makes for what I call your visibility plan. So, visibility is how can you tell your story in such a way that it gets people excited to tell others about you? When we think about marketing and pr and ways to start telling your story in a way that gets people excited, you need to think about how you can provide value for others. It’s not pick me; it’s not talk about me. It’s not my story deserves to be told. It’s how can I help you, what can I give you that will help solve a problem that maybe I had in the past or that I know how to address? So If you can do those things and you can come to storytelling, to visibility, to pr and marketing, with this perspective of I am bringing something new, I’m building something new in the world that is here to help people in some way, shape or form, come from the perspective of providing value, and you’ll find that you have something to say.

Melinda Wittstock (0:11:34)

So when you started to approach folks with your expertise back in the day, so you’re a founder, you’ve got this whole product going, what was the secret to your approach? How did you get the editor’s attention? How did you even know who to talk to? How did you figure all that out?

Candice Smith (0:11:54)

I started with some of the free tools that I think have become very popular these days. Haro, H-A-R-O. Help a reporter out was actually one of the primary ways that I started just getting a sense of what journalists were even looking for. It comes in your inbox as a daily digest. You can determine how many times you want it a day, and there will be requests from journalists to help them out. So I started reading through those every day, and as I saw that, I was getting pretty positive response rates and high success rates. I started reading it three times a day and looking to see where I could insert my voice. And I wasn’t always successful, but I was successful enough that I started to develop relationships with some of the same folks who would ask questions time and time again. Now, over time, I did realize, and this is something to note for any of your listeners right now, I do think that Haro is a little bit oversaturated. Right now. It does feel like there are diminishing returns in terms of the quality of the types of leads that you can get there these days. Doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t use it, but it may be something to delegate to an assistant or someone on your team if you don’t have much time. There are other resources out there these days that are very helpful. I prefer quoted. On Quoted I find that the quality of requests are much higher tier and I just like the platform, so I would recommend that one these days. Besides that, what I went into was something that I like to call a media landscape research. Tthis is where I started to develop my own process as I was beginning to work with other folks and people were asking me, how did you get into these different places? So media landscape research is what it sounds like, right? You’re researching your industry to try to get a sense of what stories are being told right now about your niche, right? So it’s as easy as going to Google News and typing in different search phrases either around your niche, search for competitors, see where they’re getting featured, who they’re talking to. Look from the perspective of your ideal client or customer.

Melinda Wittstock (0:14:42)

Right?

Candice Smith (0:14:43)

What is a pain point that they’re dealing with? So best tips to solve? Those are great ways to get a list of different publications and outlets that are actively publishing stories about your industry. And you can also see over time, what kind of patterns are there in terms of the types of stories, right? So what I mean by that is in the holiday season, you might see a lot of gift guide roundups right? Around certain times of the year. You might see more questions. Right now, I would say you’re going to see a lot of new year, new you, New year’s resolutions, things like that, right? So think through some of those patterns and how you can adapt your story to provide timely value. And that’s where I started to shift my approach and found even more success.

Melinda Wittstock (0:15:35)

Honestly, that’s amazing. So fast forward, you’re learning all this on the fly. You’re bootstrapping, you got to do your own PR. It’s growing your businesses. And when was the moment where you said, oh my goodness, this should be my business?

Candice Smith (0:15:53)

Well, it was February 2020, and I had just had my most successful month yet of sales in the business and I had $6.70 something cents in my bank account because I had overdrawn everything to try and purchase product. I was sitting on the floor surrounded by boxes all the way up to the ceiling as I was trying to package and ship all of these custom handmade with love boxes. And I didn’t know how I was going to pay rent, and I didn’t know if my car was going to be repossessed. I just had my second notice that I’d better pay, and it was really affecting my credit. And so I had this moment where it really felt like rock bottom because I knew that it wasn’t sustainable anymore and people didn’t understand that. But people who were in my network, in my sphere, they saw all these pr wins, and they’re like, how could you not be successful? You’re riding high. Like, this is amazing. And people were writing to me telling me, how could you do this? And I’m like, I don’t know, but I can’t do this anymore. And so I decided right then and there, I was talking to my partner, and he offered to help me out through the next month. And I talked to family, and thank God, I’m very blessed and grateful to have had the support that I did because I could have filed for bankruptcy, but I didn’t have to. And I decided that I was going to focus on my skill sets. And because people were asking me for help and for advice, I was talking to a mentor. I said, can I just offer an hour, an office hour or something within our community? Is that okay? And she said, go for it. Absolutely. I signed my first client the very next week. Yes.

Melinda Wittstock (0:18:12)

So fast forward. It’s so funny. The pandemic led to pivots, new businesses, innovation. I mean, it forced people to really think outside the box because they were dealt a card that they couldn’t control. And in entrepreneurship, it all comes down to, in the end, what do you do with what you’re given?

Candice Smith (0:18:33)

Yeah, absolutely. It’s so true.

Melinda Wittstock:

And at the time, it was probably terrifying, but now it’s like, well, this was a blessing.

Candice Smith (0:18:42)

It was. Because I actually was supposed to. I was speaking with a venture capitalist who was very interested. She focused on vice niche industry, right? So sexual wellness, vice industry. And she could. You could raise, like, come to New York and we’ll help you with. With a safe round. And I was like, I just don’t know if I have it in me anymore. But I was supposed to go up around March 15, and I didn’t, which was, of course, when New York shut down and then all the supply chains were disrupted anyways. So even though I was keeping the business alive on a lifeline because I had all that product, it petered out because by July, everything, the global supply chain was so disrupted, there was no way that I was going to be able to keep buying product anyway. So, it ended up being a blessing in disguise.

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Melinda Wittstock:

And we’re back with Candice Smith, founder of the PR company French Press.

Interview Continues

Melinda Wittstock:

Right? So, tell me a little bit about the mistakes that you see most founders making with their PR, right? Because it’s not easy to get this right. So, let’s go through some of those. What are the biggest ones?

Candice Smith:

Yeah, I’m treating it like a sprint instead of a marathon. Right. Everybody knows that marketing is supposed to be done consistently, but I hear all too frequently that PR is just, hey, can I put out a press release and get some wins? I need them by next week. And what’s incorrect about that idea and that assumption? Right. We’ve seen in popular culture especially, and maybe in the heyday of PR, I would say you would have folks like Samantha Jones from Sex in the City and you see this aggressive and wonderful and inspiring, but she was excelling in a male dominated field at the time and she took no shit and she was able to just get ahead. And I think some of that perspective of, you have to get in, you have to get out. PR is something where you just get some quick wins or you have to act a certain way in order to get those features. It’s not true. You don’t have to. You can approach it from this perspective of providing value and building relationships and do it consistently alongside your marketing. I think a lot of folks don’t realize just how integrated those two things truly are because you do need to tell your story in marketing and you need to tell it in a way that is going to get people excited to tell the world about you. So you have to think about what are the ways that you could consistently be trying to build those relationships and expand your network. The other thing I see people doing very frequently is focusing on big wins only and not realizing the importance of some of the other types of verticals or visibility opportunities there are. Right? So someone might come to me and say, oh my gosh, I need to get into Forbes. What can I do? And I’m like, well, you could pay. There’s one way. But do you know what the ROI is for you of getting into Forbes? Have you seen it for yourself or is this a vanity logo? Which is totally fine, right? Maybe your investors want to see it as a proof of traction or to build trust, but why do you want it? What do you think that one particular publication or outlet is going to do for you? Right? A lot of folks believe in this idea of the Oprah effect, just because. Sure, maybe getting into Oprah’s favorite things might cause your product to sell out, but it doesn’t last forever, right? And especially in this burn and churn overload of information that we have, especially with AI, right? Because now information is coming out faster and faster and news stories get buried. And so you have to be consistently thinking about ways that you can be expanding your visibility opportunities. You can’t treat it as, I need to just get into this one pie in the sky publication. You have to be thinking about consistency.

Melinda Wittstock:

Yeah, It feels like we live in a society of “Infobesity” …

Candice Smith (0:24:01)

I like that.

Melinda Wittstock:

There’s just so much information overload and our brains literally can’t handle it all. And after a while there’s this kind of false equivalency thing. I don’t know, you start to kind of lose, everything seems the same. It’s so hard to stand out in that. It seems like it’s getting harder. And in that kind of environment, I don’t know, it almost feels like people are jaded. Like everybody’s seen it all already. And so, I don’t know. And for Gen Z and all these folks, I mean, it’s kind of like, oh, yeah, sure, yeah. That person’s promoting their thing, right?

Candice Smith:

Oh, absolutely.

Melinda Wittstock:

How do you get past that?

Candice Smith:

Yeah, I mean, I think this is something that’s still evolving, right? You need to pick your battles. You need to pick your verticals where you appear. Start by. Actually, this is so interesting because I just had a conversation with a client yesterday, and they were talking about how important it was for them in their particular industry on the marketing side, to be everywhere, right? You have to be everywhere. You have to try all the new things. There’s a new discord channel, you got to join it. There’s a new social media platform. You have to join it. She likened it to the waterfall effect. And while I appreciate that, when I, when I think of public relations and I think of building trust with, and building relationships with your ideal avatar, your ideal audience or client or journalist, what have you, I think of that authenticity. And when we have, for example, hang on, let me say that again. I think one of my top platforms that I recommend for building authenticity and building a brand these days is not the carefully polished galleries of Instagram or even Facebook. I mean, Facebook groups. You can find your niche there, right? You’re literally creating a niche that folks can find but I’ve actually been a big fan of using LinkedIn these days for myself and for my clients personal branding because it’s not oversaturated yet, right? And I don’t know the exact metrics right now, but I heard something about a year ago and I think it’s since increased. But at one point, very recently, only the top 1% of folks on the platform were creating like 80 or 90%, again, not correct metrics, but 80 or 90% of the content on the platform. Most people are lurking, right? So, there’s still a big opportunity there. I think it since switched to 3%, but that’s still huge, right? There’s so much opportunity to capture your own niche and your own audience if you’re willing to create your own content. And I think the other issue that we’re seeing is with AI, I think that there’s much more content that can be created, but it’s not necessarily better.

Melinda Wittstock:

This is the thing, easier. Like I’m just going to automate all this stuff, I’m just going to push it all out there. And where does the authenticity, can people tell? This is the other thing too? It’s going to get harder and harder and harder to distinguish, right? What’s, what’s not? But I don’t know, is it really authentic? Is it really going to resonate in the same way? It’s hard to know.

Candice Smith:

So as a copywriter, because I do a lot of copywriting for my clients, we’re not just doing the traditional pr, but we’re writing branding and voice and tone and making sure that things look and appear news ready before we start shipping it out. As a copywriter, I’ve played significantly for months now with some of the top tools to see how good can it get, right? What are the things that you could produce and see whether or not you can fool someone. And absolutely, I would say as a copywriter and as an English teacher, you can get some decent quality, like b grade generic writing, right. If you are a good prompt engineer and you know how to give enough context, ask questions, give the bot feedback, you can train it so that it can give you an even better sense. It can emulate tone, it can emulate certain types of voice, but it lacks creativity, it lacks lived experience. And so what I recommend for folks that have value that they want to offer, but maybe don’t have the time, they have writer’s block, they don’t like to write, they feel nervous about writing is either have it help you ideate what the posts are going to be about what your topics are going to be about and edit it or use it as a thought partner. Just use it as a thought partner or use it as an editor. Don’t ever use a bot to produce a final version of something. Right. It can help streamline your workflows. Do not let it take over your workflows because it is not your lived experience. So, think about when you’re telling stories. Again, going back to this idea of giving people value, what are those moments? Maybe those sensory moments, right. The five senses. What are those sensory moments that you could bring into a story when you’re sharing something, what are the raw, real emotions of the pain point? What are your particular experiences with helping someone or having them help you, or sharing about what your product does or your service. Think about how you can express those things and tell a story, not just create content for the sake of noise, right?

Melinda Wittstock:

100%. It’s so overwhelming to create content, especially on your, there’s so many things that you’re doing and how do you know if it’s working? What kind of metrics are you looking at? All that kind of stuff. I think there’s lot know. We’re all measured kind of by metrics. Do we know our metrics? Okay. When we know our know, how do we know it’s working? And to your story about like, I want to be in Forbes, why do you want to be in Forbes? What’s Forbes going to get you? Right. How do you advise founders on the, from the point of knowing what it is and what kind of return is actually success? Because if you’re spending a lot of money on PR or content creation or whatever, how do you know if you’re succeeding?

Candice Smith:

So that’s where I mentioned this concept of visibility. And I know that there very likely is another definition. People might have their own ways of thinking about it, but in my understanding of what visibility truly is, you need to understand the marketing metrics and how they integrate with the PR reputation building. It has to be treated as a machine.

Melinda Wittstock:

Right?

Candice Smith:

The two parts are so well integrated. And so if you’re going to, let’s say you’re a Melinda Wittstock and you’re going around, you’re speaking in front of folks and you’re getting cards afterwards and people come up to you and talk to you afterwards and you’re adding them on LinkedIn, XYZ, your metrics for success might be, let me track the type of conference that I’m going to, the audience that I’m speaking in front of, versus the quality of the leads that I got after I spoke, how many of those converted into a paying client, how many of those hired me to speak to their firm? That might be one of the metrics that you should be looking at for somebody who has a product, they might be looking at their Google Analytics. If they have an e commerce store, you want to look past the first weekend that the feature is live, let’s say, and take a look at your customer acquisition funnel. Are folks coming in and not buying immediately? Do you actually know what your exact number of touch-points your clients need or your customers need in order to come back to you? If it’s more than one? Do you have retargeting ads put up? Do you have a newsletter that you could use to help guide them along the funnel?

Melinda Wittstock (0:34:12)

Right.

Candice Smith:

Remember that PR is really bringing folks. I like to liken it to like a horse coming to water. Your marketing is going to be like, hey, this is a really good pond, this looks great. Your PR is going to say, this looks great. Another horse is like, go and check out this pond. It looks awesome.

Candice Smith:

So, you go up to the pond and then if you’re marketing, let’s say the pond smells like salty water, like brackish water. The horse may not drink it. Right. So those two things have to be intertwined and consistent. So just because somebody comes to your website doesn’t mean that they’re going to buy something from you. So, you have to be tracking those different types of metrics and see how those two pieces really interlock. It’s more complex. Yes. But it’s worth it to figure out what those metrics look like for you.

Melinda Wittstock:

It really depends on the business, too. Yes, because if you have different products that reach different consumer avatars or you have a hybrid model that’s part B2B and part B2C, or it gets kind of complicated there. How do you navigate that? Because it’s one thing if you have one product for one group of people and it’s just very clear.

Candice Smith:

I’m actually really glad that you asked this because over the past year and a half, I’ve been working on a new framework that I call the visibility paths, because I’ve had conversations with hundreds of founders. I do a lot of mentoring, I do office hours, I answer questions about PR, and I have a lot of discovery calls with folks. And what I started to notice from these conversations are the same types of patterns happening over and over for folks, no matter what their industry was, but based on four different variables that indicated what stage their business was at and what type of founder they wanted to be in terms of their visibility. So I took those paths and I actually turned them into a quiz, or those four variables, and I turned them into a quiz. They turned into the 16 visibility paths. So the great thing about these paths is it’s not like Myers Briggs in that that’s your personality, your path is a choice, and you can navigate multiple paths, right? So if you have a business that has a product side and a service side, or if you have an established product and you’re launching a new product, those two things are going to need different visibility plans and strategies in order to be successful. So when you take that quiz, basically what it does is it identifies for this particular part of your venture, are you bootstrapping it? Are you self-funded or are you externally funded? That’s going to determine whether you have folks to answer to or whether you can lead the ship yourself. In terms of the visibility strategy, are you focusing on solving a systemic problem or issue? Or are you focused on solving an issue for an individual or a niche demographic?

Melinda Wittstock:

Right.

Candice Smith:

So if you’re solving for a systemic issue. I was trying to disrupt the educational system. It failed in part because you can’t disrupt a system by yourself. You need to build a movement, you need to build a lot of partnerships, you need to have more folks to be able to make things move and work. So those are some of the high-level ways that we categorize folks. But from there, your path actually determines what type of visibility strategies you should be pursuing and how to best spend your time. So, right now, my path is a connector.

Candice Smith:

I’m self-funded; I have traction. I’m a visible founder, meaning that I’m happy to go on podcasts like this. I share my thoughts, I write, and I’m solving for an individual problem, right? So I’m addressing the needs of different individuals who might need my help. So, as a connector, one of the biggest things that I need to do is continue expanding my network. I need to give value to folks around me and be speaking and doing different things where I can show what I know and build trust in my expertise. So that’s one example of how I’m planning for 2024, is I’m looking at my path as a connector and seeing what ways I can best spend my time and what might need to be delegated.

Melinda Wittstock:

And so, when is it right for a business to just say, okay, I declare, I don’t really want to do this myself, I really want it done for you? Like, at what point does a founder say, okay, I need to hire an agency to do this, or French Press or whatever? What is that right point, as opposed to trying to navigate it and do it yourself?

Candice Smith (0:40:06)

So not everyone needs to or is on a path where they should be doing their own pr, and that is where you have some sort of traction. PR works well when there’s some story that you can tell. You should never be approaching PR from ‘this is my last chance’.

You should never be approaching PR from desperation.

Candice Smith:

I need this feature or I’m not going to be able to pay my team. Right? That is not correct. Bill Gates actually said this. It’s one of my favorite quotes from Bill Gates. He said, if I was down to my last dollar, I would spend it on public relations. And that always makes me laugh because that’s great. We don’t have the luxury of being Bill Gates and we’re not household names, so we should be focusing on sales because sales are what’s going to keep our doors open. So if you don’t have traction, if you haven’t brought in external funding, if you don’t have any kind of supporters, and you’re literally just getting started from the ground up, like, don’t pay for someone to do your pr for you, but if you do have that external funding or you’re self-funded or you do have that traction, you’re making sales and you want something more, you want to improve upon, or you want to launch something that is ready to be launched and is ready to go out into the world, that’s when it’s time to think about delegation, right? Because a PR firm or a publicist or an in-house person will be able to support you in a way that takes some of the grind off of your plate. Because PR being consistent with PR, it is a grind. It’s a lot of work. There’s a reason why I have a team and we do it 24/7; it’s ongoing, it’s a lot of work. But if you know that you don’t want to be visible and you’ve got the traction, or you do want to be visible and you need help getting those opportunities, that’s where thinking about outsourcing.

Melinda Wittstock:

This is so true about sales, right? And depending on the type of business model you have. I I’m a technology entrepreneur, where there’s so much cost ahead of in terms of building the product and all this sort of stuff and getting to product market fit, or it makes sense to spend a penny on marketing or PR or any of those things. And if you’re like many companies last year in 2023, where venture funding completely dried up and you had to kind of figure out something. And I mean, in our case, as we waited for our committed funding, I was like, oh my God, we need to keep the lights on. And it forced a pivot to think, well, how can we use what we have right now and literally sell it?

Candice Smith:

And that’s what I love about startups and working with startups in general. Right. It’s the double-edged sword. It’s the blessing and the curse of, you have to get scrappy. You don’t have unlimited budget. What can we do with what you have at your disposal? Because that’s what’s going to be the difference in whether you’re going to survive as a business.

Melinda Wittstock:

Yeah, 100%. And then that’s kind of interesting even from a PR perspective, because in our case, suddenly we have an AI API that’s enterprise. But we also have this podcast listening app, you know, for consumers.

Candice Smith:

Sure.

Melinda Wittstock:

And you think, okay, well, it all kind of works, but which message? Are we confusing the market? How do you avoid confusing the market? Is it like different channels for different places or just figuring out, like, say on TikTok, we’re going to be talking about the podcast we have on the platform or our AI or whatever. But then on LinkedIn, something different. Is that the best way to go about would segment.

Candice Smith:

I would segment your audiences, right. Think about who’s actually coming to you through TikTok, who’s coming to you through LinkedIn, and what sort of messages you want to be sharing. Because the method in which you share those messages is going to be different as well, right? TikTok is not going to, it’s not the platform for long paragraphs, but LinkedIn, you can actually get some really great. You can go viral for long paragraphs. It’s totally different in terms of how you’re going to be reaching folks. And again, as with different visibility paths, keep those things separate until you realize that the numbers that the data is indicating that maybe they need to merge, but maybe they don’t.

Candice Smith:

And let’s say you’re a connector as well, right? A lot of service providers are connectors and podcasters and things like that when it comes to their podcast. The AI API sounds different, right? So that might be something else where you’re trying to disrupt a system or you’re trying to address the need of a, actually, you know what, you might be a trailblazer on that side. Trailblazer is someone who is externally funded, and they are creating a product to address an individual demographic need. And you’re visible, et cetera.

Candice Smith:

So, you might be a trailblazer in one area, and that means that you’re going to want to leverage TikTok and have the product be visible and get more of your AI API into some of the bigger names, because that impresses investors. Investors like to see those big names. But on the other hand, for podcasts as a connector, if you’re self-funding the podcast, let’s say you may want to just continue working on building out your network and sharing more of those stories on LinkedIn. And if there’s a place for it, you can figure out how to weave in the narrative of the AI into a LinkedIn strategy if it happens to help that audience there. But think very carefully about where you’re putting your efforts because you don’t want to confuse your two paths. It will get confused and you will confuse your audience as well.

Melinda Wittstock:

So, at this intersection, you’re saying really you need a cohesive PR and marketing strategy. On the marketing side, you can really increasingly with digital marketing, really be on top of your numbers and what’s your conversion rate, what’s going on, whatever that kind of KPI is with PR, that’s much harder. So how do you navigate that? How do you know your PR is working?

Candice Smith:

Yeah, so I like to think of it in different stages.

Candice Smith:

You identify what verticals you’re going after and you identify what opportunities you’re going after as well.

Candice Smith:

So if you’re going to go for the traditional media, let’s say you might be going for TV, you might be going for just online publications or industry niche publications, or you might go for something that’s a little nontraditional, you might try some guerilla marketing PR opportunities where you’re crafting a newsletter of some sort that you’re then trying to get other influencers onto and even bring in journalists or something like that, right? So maybe you’re reaching out to journalists on LinkedIn, which we’ve had work very well for some of our clients and led to features, right? So, think about the different verticals that you’re going after, number one. Number two is to identify what metrics are moving the needle for you in your marketing and see where you can bring in those different tests that you’re doing with the different verticals to see how they line up. Right? So, if you’re going to have an ecommerce business or a business that operates online and you want to see how your features are doing in industry niche publications versus traditional, like say the Forbes and the Business Insider and what have you, or the good housekeeping and better homes and gardens, let’s say, and take a look at what conversions come from those different outlets. You can track those things, it’s not perfect, but you can track those things under acquisition channels in Google Analytics or if you’re working with an affiliate marketing Rev share program. They usually have a solid interface where you can see where those leads are coming from, and which channels are working best for you. So, start with those tests to see where you can actually successfully get publication, where you can get visible, where you can get heard. And from there, track your numbers on the marketing side and see if there’s any shifts. See if you can figure out where you can bring in. You can combine the marketing and the PR funnel with something like TV. It might be a little more difficult, but there are ways as well to use the features that you have. Don’t just let them sit on their own. Keep publicizing them.

Melinda Wittstock:

Right.

Candice Smith:

Use them as your marketing tool and see if that helps with conversions too.

Melinda Wittstock:

Yeah, 100%. So, tell me about the ideal clients that you look for. So, anyone listening to this, that is at the stage where they’re like, oh my goodness, I’m doing a million things. I’m all up in product, I’m all up in this and that and all the things, but please, oh my God, take the PR off my hands. Who’s your ideal client?

Candice Smith:

We offer full-service packages for clients who are looking to increase their visibility. They have some sort of traction already in some way, shape or form.

Melinda Wittstock:

Right.

Candice Smith:

You don’t have to have a published product or a published book or anything like that. But if you have something in the form of external funding or you’ve secured grants or something like that, and you are mission driven in some way, shape or form, a lot of the folks that we work with, we’re pretty industry agnostic in the way that we approach public relations for folks, being that we’ve worked with fintech, we’ve worked with sustainable food systems, we’ve worked with fashion, sustainable fashion, we’ve worked with inclusive dating apps. Right? So we’ve worked with a number of different types of clients. But if you are focusing on making the world a better place through ESG, environmental, social justice or governance, we’re your ladies.

Melinda Wittstock:

So, if you have any kind of impact mission…

Candice Smith:

Exactly. Because very often those founders will be so wrapped up in the intricacies of the systems that they’re trying to dismantle or the problems that they’re trying to solve. And PR is very often one of the last things that they’re thinking about. So we love to help really perfect those stories and connect them with the right folks who are going to be champions of them and share their stories on a wider platform.

Melinda Wittstock:

So, tell me, what’s the best place to find you and find out about working with you? You mentioned you do office hours and consults and such.

Candice Smith:

So, you can find us@frenchpresspr.com right, French Press. Like the, like the coffee maker. You can also find me on LinkedIn at Candice Smith med Master’s in education. That’s my handle on LinkedIn. So please do add me. I always love meeting new folks and chatting about new business ventures or different ideas. You can also, I would highly encourage you to take the 16 paths quiz and discover your visibility path or multiple visibility paths. And I made a bit.ly link for that. That’s bit.ly/16paths. And within five questions, maybe 60 seconds, two minutes, you’ll get a free pdf that gives you some ideas of what to do in 2024.

Melinda Wittstock:

Fantastic. Well, Candice, thank you so much for putting on your wings and flying with us.

Candice Smith:

Thank you again, Melinda.