Does PR 𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘭𝘭𝘺 make a difference when customers are making buying decisions? 🤔
Surveys tell us that customers need to see a company in the news more than FIVE times before they take them seriously in their category.
Data also shows that consistently appearing in earned media placements helps buyers take a brand more seriously.
Of course, visibility helps a business stay top of mind, so when a customer IS ready to buy, they’ll think of them.
Sunny Hunt, founder of Hunt Interaction, is my guest. We’re talking all about how PR fits into the customer’s buying journey.
Show summary:
In this episode of PR Explored, host Michelle Garrett, a public relations consultant, author and writer, interviews Sunny Hunt, CEO of Hunt Interaction, about the intersection of public relations (PR) and the customer buying journey.
Sunny discusses the importance of integrating PR with sales and customer success teams to better understand and meet customer needs, ultimately driving revenue and shortening sales cycles. She emphasizes the need for customer-driven PR strategies, the value of customer testimonials, and the impact of consistent messaging.
The episode also highlights the significance of understanding where customers get their information and how to measure PR’s impact on business outcomes effectively.
Sunny also addresses the challenges of cutting through the noise in today’s market and offers actionable advice on using customer insights to craft effective PR campaigns.
00:00 Welcome to PR Explored
00:26 Meet Our Guest: Sunny Hunt
00:44 Introduction to the Customer Buying Journey
00:53 Sunny Hunt’s Professional Background
02:43 Marketing Fridays: A Free Webinar Series
03:59 The Importance of Content Repurposing
05:06 Customer Growth and Retention Strategies
11:01 Aligning PR with Sales and Marketing
15:54 The Value of Customer Insights
23:49 Measuring PR Success Beyond Impressions
27:39 Combating the Status Quo in PR
31:37 The Role of Trade Media in PR
32:14 Voice of Customer Data
32:56 Integrating Sales and PR Efforts
33:30 Leveraging Customer Success Teams
34:36 Breaking Down Silos
35:17 Engaging with Sales Teams
36:41 Understanding Customer Behavior
37:54 Gathering Customer Insights
39:17 Effective Customer Surveys
40:51 Adapting to Market Changes
41:55 Challenges in PR and Marketing
47:37 The Importance of Consistent Messaging
48:44 The Shift in B2B Sales Dynamics
51:17 The Role of PR in Market Expansion
54:00 Cutting Through the Noise
57:02 The Value of PR in Tight Budgets
58:33 Actionable PR Advice
59:26 Conclusion and Final Thoughts
Show notes:
Join Sunny Hunt for Free Marketing Fridays: https://www.huntinteraction.com/free-marketing-fridays/
Hunt Interaction: https://www.huntinteraction.com/
Follow Sunny Hunt on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sunnyhunt/
Full transcript:
How PR Fits Into Customer Buying Decisions
Michelle: [00:00:00] Hello everyone and welcome to another episode of PR Explored. I’m so happy to be here today. PR Explored is a video podcast where we delve into trends and topics related to public relations. I’m your host, Michelle Garrett. I’m a public relations consultant, author and writer, and I have a, guest with me today that I’m really excited to have.
Sunny Hunt is here today. Hi, Sunny. Hi. Thanks for having me today. Yay. I would, I could read your bio, but I really love for you to tell us a little bit about, you and your work and really just anything that you wanna share. And then we will, we will talk about our topic today, which is, the customer buying journey and how PR fits into that.
Sunny: Cool. my name’s Sunny Hunt in case no one out there is at me yet. I am the [00:01:00] CEO and Chief Customer Nerd at Hunt Interaction, which is a consulting firm that specializes in helping recurring revenue companies, basically grow their base of customers in smart and efficient ways. My work tends to live at the intersection between, customer research, strategic customer growth and revenue acceleration.
And I’ve been working generally in the customer experience, customer retention space for over 20 years. that dates me in a really specific way, but, I will be able to drop any kind of Gen X reference and movie quotes in any conversation. So
Michelle: that’s me. Yeah. No, I’m so glad to have you here and, I’ve, admired your work and followed your work for a while and I don’t even know how we met, but of course, we, have some, connections in [00:02:00] common.
And, so I’m really excited to have you here. And I feel like, a lot of times we are, the reason, we are really, one of the reasons we’re doing PR is to reach new customers and connect with our current customers. But I don’t always know if clients are making those connections as far as what we can do and how we can do a better job and does it really make a difference.
So we’re gonna talk about all those things and I’m gonna share, a link to your, your, free marketing Fridays. and I know that’s something that, you offer, and again, it is free. and, maybe you could talk for a minute about that.
Sunny: Yeah, so I’ve been doing a, it’s a 20 minute webinar series on Fridays at 11 central, noon Eastern, and I was thinking to myself, what are the things that really bother me about webinars that I attend?
Let’s not do that with this [00:03:00] series. So the really short, it’s 20 minutes in and out, there’s a 10 minute q and a for live attendees. you can always watch the replays on YouTube or my website and really focusing on that 20 minutes being actionable advice that you can pick up and use today without hustle, bro content, without being super fluffy.
And not selling anything, like there’s no pitch policy. So I’m not gonna try to sell you on a paid community or sell you on a paid course or anything like that. It’s just 20 minutes helping you work smarter and not necessarily harder. About a wide range of topics. So like last week it was talking about unclonable content.
So how do you create a content framework that makes your content that you create unique to you and your company and that your com your competitors can’t just copy and paste. So what are those differentiators that you can bake into that to make your content really stand out and stand apart? this week or this [00:04:00] Friday, we’re gonna be talking about content atomization and repurposing.
So how can you take all of that stuff that’s sitting dusty in your Google Drive folder and resurrect it, give it new life so that you’re not stuck in content calendar hell.
Michelle: So really it’s just 20 minutes. That’s it. I love that topic. that could be a full-time job for someone. just, it is.
’cause a lot of times we create content and it does to sit there, it gets used one time in one platform or whatever. Exactly. And that’s it,
Sunny: Yeah. Gen Z is calling it, Clippers. So they’ll take video content and clip it up into small pieces. Yeah. But really it’s the same thing. It’s just like you’re just calling it something different, but it’s taking what you’ve already put a lot of time and effort into creating.
Yeah. And making it small and more bite-sized. Think of the Costco, samples That you get as you’re walking up and down the aisles. Yeah. That’s what you’re doing to your co your bigger pieces of content.
Michelle: Yeah. No, I love that. I think everybody [00:05:00] should sign up and attend.
So I put the link, in the comments, so hopefully people will see Friday. We’ll see that. I know I. so with that, I would like to set the stage a little bit here just because, let’s talk about customer growth. What does that really mean? How did you find yourself focusing on that in your work?
Sunny: In both my personal and my professional life, I’ve always been a customer advocate. Standing up for customers, making sure that they’re treated fairly. It’s led me into a path of not only customer acquisition
But customer retention. what do we need to be doing differently in order to keep the customers we’ve already paid to acquire?
And moving into customer experience, but strategic customer growth is all about not just acquiring new customers, but making sure that the customers you have [00:06:00] are happy, satisfied, and either increase their investment. In whatever product that they have. So they may buy a different tier of your software or they may renew their contract, but not only that, but being so happy with their service that they’re willing to refer you to their colleagues, friends, family, As an unpaid sales force. So that has always been my journey doing, working with different aspects of customers. And landing on strategic customer growth is something that is applicable to so many companies right now. primarily because they think that growth hacking is a way to acquire new customers.
You may acquire like short term customers, but your customers are probably going to churn out pretty fast if you are. Taking shortcuts and putting duct tape all over everything and presenting yourself and your solution is something that it doesn’t actually deliver on. And if you’re not aligning what your product does [00:07:00] with what your customers value most.
So really making that connection and creating that alignment between what your customers need to make their lives and their jobs better and what you’re offering. So that’s really the intersection where I’m playing right now.
Michelle: it’s so much more cost effective to keep your customers right than to get, absolutely.
And win and, get new customers on board. So that’s what I think, that’s why I think people really ought to be, companies ought to be paying attention and,
Sunny: customer acquisition costs are skyrocketing. it takes deal size is, or sorry, the length, of time it takes in order to close a deal is getting so much longer.
If you’re in B2B and. Budgets are being stretched really thin right now. So making sure that you’re really aligned with what your customers want, need and desire from a product or solution like yours is critically important [00:08:00] and you’re never, and keeping your customers and keeping your existing customers that you’ve already paid to acquire is so much more efficient.
And a lot of companies they miss out on this because they feel like the acquisition part and the chase of the customers and turning prospects into customers. Yeah. Is the sexy part of any type of go-to-market strategy when in fact it’s the backend of that’s actually the most profitable.
Michelle: yeah. No, I, love what you’re saying. I think it’s so true and I, I just, I feel like in a way it’s common sense, but it just still isn’t really, I don’t know if it’s like commonly, followed advice. So I, think it’s important to keep, talking about it ’cause. I think it’s true.
It works. let’s talk a little bit about, the gap between what companies, think is driving their growth versus, what’s really driving their growth.
Sunny: First thing [00:09:00] that comes to mind when I talk about like that gap is they think that they know what their customers want and need.
They think that they know their customers better than anybody else, but they’ve never done any research into verifying that they don’t know the specific decision making criteria that their customers use in order to say, we’re gonna pick you and not you. That’s the first thing that comes to mind. The second thing is that they tend to optimize a lot of their go-to-market strategy based around vanity metrics.
So things like, oh, we have a million social media followers. Okay. you have an audience size, but how many of them are actually paying you and helping keep your lights on? Probably it’s not a million, I guarantee that. so optimizing for things that don’t really matter and that aren’t necessarily leading indicators of success and specifically customer retention and in fact are lagging [00:10:00] indicators of things that already worked in the past that may not work in the future.
And I think that probably the third thing is that they tend to assume that all of the customers, all of their customers are the same. They come from the same background, they have the same values, they work the same way. They went about the buying pro process the same way, or that they stay the same and the company doesn’t have to change anything and they don’t have to evolve and adapt as their customers evolve and adapt and become more sophisticated.
Michelle: Yeah. No, I think it, they obviously are not, I don’t, I guess I feel like sometimes people are just, companies are just fumbling in the dark almost. there’s so much that they could tap into, but they’re just either set in their ways or they’re just, head down doing their work and they’re not really thinking, backing up and looking at the bigger picture, Yeah. Yeah. [00:11:00] so we have to make, let’s make the connection to PR here. of course we’re, a lot of people that watch our n PR and comms and, we want to talk about a, how, what, should PR people be paying attention to ver, if you’re just looking at coverage, like how many pieces of coverage you got and, what really, what, should they be doing instead or what’s your advice?
Sunny: As far as PR goes, typically how PR is measured as, to whether or not suc a success is. what is the reach, what are the number of impressions? How many articles did you get published? And those tend to be fairly surface level because they’re easy to grasp. You can say, oh, we, we were published in four different publications this month, and with the reach of 1.2 million people, that’s our potential reach for this article that we were able to get published.[00:12:00]
But a little bit, something that requires a little bit more legwork and a little bit more buy, honestly, buy-in from leadership is empowering PR in the sales process. And what I mean by that is. When PR is aligned with publishing stories that align with the customer journey and the problems and the objections that they’re trying to overcome, and having those insights that they can use in order to inform what they are doing.
They can directly impact the sales pipeline. They can help drive more qualified leads, they can have more productive sales conversations that are shorter and have more pre-qualified leads that come into the pipeline. And when PR is really successful and empowered to actually put these measurements into place, you can see and tie PR efforts into shortening a sales pipeline.
And this doesn’t happen [00:13:00] overnight. This happens over a course of month and quarters. But when you start publishing and working with sales teams and marketing teams and customer success teams in order to drive those. Content topics that feed the right types of customers and push them into the pipeline, you can help make them pre-qualified, have empower your sales teams to have a lot more productive conversations and really shorten that sales cycle.
So they, those are the things that need to be measured. And again, it’s, harder to do. And you just can’t pull it down off of a dashboard and just say, Hey look, here’s what PR did. It takes a little bit of time and it does take buy-in from the leadership teams because it does take patience.
It’s not gonna be something that just happens overnight. It’s an investment, but PR is an investment that should be made. It’s not just a function with a lever that you pull and you’re like, congratulations, we’ve done [00:14:00] pr. It’s no, this is a valuable sales tool when it’s used correctly. But a lot of companies don’t have the patience for it.
They don’t have the guidance to do it properly. They don’t have the insights in order to feed the topics correctly, and they don’t have the customer information in order to understand which channels to be in, which publications their customers are reading. what types of buying committee members are reading those publications and how to get in front of them and empower those members of the buying committee with the information and the tools that they need to take back To those discussion conversations about which solution we should actually buy.
Michelle: Yeah.
Sunny: So it’s not so much as how much should you focus on reach or how many publications. That’s, that’s important on the surface level, but there’s a lot more opportunity if you dig in a little bit deeper. So many things, especially, there’s so much justification right now.
Everybody is focused on ROI, right? What’s the ROI of [00:15:00] pr? What’s our investment? What are we getting out of this? If you can measure that and tie your PR efforts into increased revenue or shortened sales cycle, that makes PR infinitely more valuable than just saying, oh, we were published in five publications this month.
Michelle: Yeah, no, so many things you said. I, PR is not an overnight, type of tactic or, approach. it does take time and patience, and I think that’s another thing a lot of times, companies aren’t really willing to, SEO
Sunny: takes time and patience as well, right? That Even like generative ai, SEO takes time and patience as well, but for some reason PR isn’t deported.
That same level of patience. It seems like a disconnect.
Michelle: Yeah, no, you’re absolutely right. And then the other thing I that, I was thinking about so many things as you were talking, ’cause I’m like, bing. But the, but another thing is that often companies do not know what their customers are looking at going, which [00:16:00] sources are they going to?
And they think, being in the Wall Street Journal is the thing where it really is, they’re probably looking at a trade publication, more likely than not to find, to research, vendors or look at products and solutions. And being in B2B I try to really. Hit home on the importance of trade media, because of course, people that are writing stories for the Wall Street Journal are also looking at the trade publications in the space if they cover that industry or whatever.
So that can also lead to something there, but you don’t wanna solely focus, and put that as the measure of success, because honestly, like we, I don’t think that’s, always the thing.
Sunny: and let’s be real, getting the Wall Street Journal, that’s a badge of honor, right? You’re like, Ooh, look at that.
that’s something that you can hang your reputation hat on, but it doesn’t really drive a lot of revenue, or it may not drive as much revenue is as [00:17:00] if you knew that the person who is doing all the legwork for the decision making is looking at this one particular trade magazine or this trade publication and is pulling all this information and is actively calling.
Or talking to the people who are featured in those case studies for recommendations and for referrals. So yeah. And let’s be clear, there’s a difference between getting this information and getting those channel insights from your paying customers versus doing audience research. Okay.
Audience research makes you like make it you in the ballpark. oh, we need to be looking at trade publications instead of mass media publications. Okay, that’s great. But when you talk to your customers and you pull out those specific insights from them, you could say. Where did you hear about us?
Where did you find out about our competitors? How did you discover it? What was your buying process like? What was your discovery process like? And where did you go for [00:18:00] that information? Once you pull those insights from your customers, that’s so much more valuable than audience.
Audience research, and don’t get me wrong, I love audience research, but when you need to be really specific and you need that research to be able to support better, confident decisions that you make in the business. You need to go to your paying customers because your paying customers have a vested interest in your company.
They’re paying to keep the lights on and keep your people paid. Your audience, they haven’t put a ring on it. They’re not invested in the, seriously, why would you go to your audience, why would you buy a house with a boyfriend who still play in the field? Why would you put all of your eggs in that audience basket when you have a whole bunch of paying customers?
Who love to talk about their experiences and you can tap into them and say, Hey, what, how did you find us? What were you doing? And get that to really specific information [00:19:00] and guarantee. There’s a gold line of information there if you know how to pull those out and quantify them.
Michelle: You
Sunny: need to know what specifically, what channels your buying committee is looking at and the content that they’re consuming in order to get in front of them with messages that resonate.
Michelle: Wow. I’m gonna be taking notes and listening to this myself when we’re done, so I Can you give be a soapbox? I’m gonna go. No, it’s, you’re just, you’re dropping a lot of gems and here we have a comment from Ali Jameson. let’s look at that for a second. I’ll put it, I’ll put it on the screen.
Screen. I will read it. Completely agree with all of this. One of the things I’m also focused on is customer advocacy and pushing reviews. So when new leads come in with the source listed as review sites, it’s incredibly rewarding, especially when I track those deals and they close. Then you can tie your efforts to ROI.
What do you think about Don’t
Sunny: sleep on customer success stories. Yeah. Those customer success stories are really, valuable. [00:20:00]
Michelle: I know, and I love it. I work a lot with manufacturing, clients and they sometimes, if we are able to, we can capture video in the customer’s, facility. And then of course we have the still images and we package it all up with a nice written, customer success story. And that is great for, trade. They love that. ’cause you just package it up and send it and often they just run it and don’t, no questions asked. to me it’s a slam dunk, often with these customer stories.
Sunny: one way that’s really easy to get a lot of amazing testimonials is when you’re doing a customer survey instead of doing an NPS survey, which I have a whole like rant about NPS and it’s just hot garbage. instead of doing NPS surveys, you could say, and in your customer survey, have you referred us to a friend, colleague, family member?
Give them an option of saying, yes, [00:21:00] I have no, not yet, but I will, or no I haven’t. And then a follow-up, open-ended field question that says, what did you tell ’em about us? And when you say, what did you tell ’em about us? And you put this question like at the end of the survey, it gives you the opportunity to not only get the surface level insights of what they value most about your company or their top objections to why they didn’t buy or didn’t refer you like what the big problems are.
But it gives them an opportunity to say in their own words what it is that’s amazing about your company, what it is that they love about your product, how your product makes their lives better, easier, faster, whatever that is. And they will usually frame it in the form of a testimonial. So you could actually take that, spruce it up a little bit, and then go back and ask the customer, I really loved what you said.
Can we use this as a testimonial? And normally if you give them [00:22:00] something that’s already prewritten, 90% of the time they’re gonna be like, oh, sure. Yeah, no problem. So you have a pre-written testimonial that they’ve actually made for you and you get amazing customer insights. Yeah. So it’s like a free win.
Awesome.
Michelle: I know in, in, in the PR world, a lot of times they can’t get legal, approval To talk to us or share anything. And so sometimes that slows us down. I do prefer it when clients are asking the customer beforehand as opposed to afterward, while we’re there, while you’re there taking pictures and getting video, can, you make sure that we are allowed to use this, for media and PR purposes so they at least have
Sunny: compliance is an issue.
Yeah. Yeah. And we,
Michelle: you never wanna do it without their permission. ’cause that can also be a real big no.
Sunny: So for instance, I work with a healthcare company that has an amazing testimonial, but I can’t attach that person’s name, [00:23:00] the SVPs name to that testimonial.
Publicly, Although I can use it in my sales process.
Okay. Because that’s what the legal compliance allows
Michelle: in the PR realm. Sometimes we’ll just, we’ll use it as a, a major, a manufacturing, giant or whatever, something, but, we don’t real, I don’t really like to do that, but sometimes, we have to just allude to who it might be and let them draw the, connect the dots.
But
a major manufacturer.
Thank you, Allie for that, that comment. I don’t, it, I could, I won’t really say it was a question, but I appreciate the, the input and it definitely, I think, that’s, it’s a great point. so when you’re digging into how customers are making the buying decisions, where does earned media show up in the process?
And we have a kind of a follow up [00:24:00] question, I think, too, about how many times people have to see a company in the news. So I wanna ask that next, but let’s do this first. Yeah. Okay.
Sunny: let’s start with that one. How many times do people have to see something before they start believing it? the industry standard used to be five times, right?
Okay. But that was before COVID, before massive social media. All kinds of noise comes in. I think I saw something from Forrester, and this is outdated, because it’s two years old. I think Forrester came out with something that said that you need to be able to see a company mention or a company social proof or something along those lines.
In the neighborhood of like 13 to 20 times now. So it’s exponentially more than just five times just because there’s so much noise and you have to be able to cut through that noise with [00:25:00] messages that connect with the specific people you’re trying to talk to. okay. Wow. You said, what’d you say?
15? 15 to 20, I think it was Forester. Don’t quote me on this. I wanted to say it was like between 14 and 20 times. I know. It was significantly more than five, Wow. And it thought that when you think about.
Michelle: I thought you were gonna poo that statistic with the five jobs. I’m like, oh no. Okay. Quote, it’s other way.
A lot of times I’ll use that. It’s for sure when I do presentations. ’cause I think, people don’t understand that they really need to see you out there consistently, repeatedly, it not only helps, for like name recognition and visibility, but also with the ai, generated AI driven, search, whatever we’re calling it.
it’s, it also, you also need to be saying the same thing consistently over and over again.
Sunny: yes. one of the things that I tell my clients is [00:26:00] you need to repeat yourself over and over again when you are sick of hearing yourself say the same things over and over again because you feel like you’re being a broken record.
You feel like you’re being redundant. That’s when your audience starts to hear you. So when you can’t stand yourself anymore, that’s your signal to keep going. And it feels really counterintuitive, but everybody isn’t going to see everything that you put out there because everything is so noisy and because there’s so many channel variety.
Or so many varieties of different channels. Yeah. So yeah, once you’re sick of hearing it, keep talking. and that’s something I have to remind myself of, as well, because. I always feel like, oh God, I can’t talk about that again. It’s no, you, absolutely can, and you should.
Michelle: we’re so close to what we’re doing, So it, to us it sounds like, not again, but I know not everybody is paying attention to every single thing that we share all the time. that’s not possible. I, yeah, [00:27:00] it’s, a good, reminder. And I think, before we, we started today we were talking about Christopher Penn’s advice about repeating, the same description of yourself in every single thing you do.
And I was just talking to a client about that yesterday. because like with press releases, of course we have the boilerplate, we have the, a company that is, a leading provider of blah, blah, blah. I know everybody used to think that was like, whatever. But now I think we’re seeing it’s really important.
So
Sunny: Yeah, I, it is. Yeah. Just keep repeating yourself for sure. Back to like your original question, which was like, missed opportunities. Yes. So PR typically supports the way we traditionally think about pr. It traditionally it, supports the awareness phase of kind of the buying cycle. So this is a new solution.
This is a solution that meets your problem. So it hits awareness [00:28:00] specifically around solution awareness and product awareness. That’s where PR historically has really shined. But there are also a couple of missed opportunities. So typically when we think about pr, we’re also thinking about trying to sell somebody on the benefits of a specific product.
So that’s features and that’s capacity, and that’s capabilities, those types of things. But we also need to think about PR, helping to combat the status quo. So in that decision making process, sometimes there’s so much friction built into changing from one solution to another. The switching costs, think about when your debit card gets compromised and you have to get a brand new debit card and all the websites that have your debit card information on it or your credit card information and how, what a pain that is to reset all those up.[00:29:00]
That’s switching costs. So one of the things that PR can really focus on is helping combat that switching cost. And really driving home the benefits of moving away from the status quo. Or not choosing anything at all. oh, this decision’s too hard, I’m just gonna stick with what we have.
And helping overcome a lot of that friction in order to smooth that buying process. So that’s things like proactively identifying objections and countering those objections and really taking what makes your solution different. Not from a features perspective, but based off what your customers say.
Makes your solution different. And repeat that back to your prospects so that you’re basically tapping into your, again, your existing paying customer base. For all of your messaging points. Like what makes this special for you? Oh, we really like this, and this. It helps me do all of these things so much faster and I don’t have to think about it.
Oh my gosh, that’s an amazing [00:30:00] message point that we need to carry over into pr ’cause it helps overcome those switching costs and lower those objections in order to make that sales process a lot better. and then another missed opportunity is, I think traditionally PR tends to focus on select members of the buying committee who may not be paying attention, especially when we’re talking about thought leadership.
So what I mean by that is traditionally PR is gonna be focused, or has focused a lot on the CEO or the person who makes that final decision.
Instead of the people who are having the conversations that, that slice off different options in that decision making process. And really refine their decision making process to two or three different competitors.
If you’re not supporting those individual people in that buying committee along the way, you’re gonna lose them. So it’s a tricky balance [00:31:00] between giving those influencers in that buying committee the information they need to be successful, but then also arming them with the arguments that they take back into their committee decisions.
And supporting the CEO with his questions or their questions or her questions.
So you can’t just focus solely on the CEO, you have to focus on the people who are doing the legwork and make them the hero.
Michelle: So
Sunny: that they can be heroes in their buying committee decision. Once you empower them, it really helps boost your profile in those internal discussions.
Michelle: Yeah, no, that’s, I like that a lot. And, I feel we are, that’s where trade media comes in my mind, somewhat. Because that the people who are actually in the trenches, you’re gonna be using the product or solution, are looking, usually reading those or following some of those.
And again, if you’re popping up there, hopefully you’re gonna come to mind when [00:32:00] they’re actually in the market for, a new solution or, switching or to, to a new solution or whatever it might be.
Sunny: And when you capture the words and phrases that those people use regularly, you can use those.
It’s called voice of Customer Data. You can use the words and phrases that your customers use to describe. Your solution or the benefits that they get from using your solution and use those as messaging points in your PR efforts as well. That’s gonna get heads nodding and that’s gonna get people saying, oh my gosh.
It’s like they were right here. They know exactly what I’m talking about it. They, know what we’re dealing with and how to make this situation so much better. We need to seriously look at these people.
Michelle: Yeah, no, that’s, I think that’s very meaningful versus just, the, comms folks sitting in a room and trying to blindly come up with, what’s gonna move the needle.
’cause honestly, if you’re not out there in the trenches, and that’s why I always [00:33:00] feel like PR should be, tuned in, tapped into what the sales team is hearing when they’re out in the field and things like that. Absolutely. Because I think sometimes we don’t really bring those folks in and honestly they’re really important, to, have that open dialogue with them and, we can help support them, but then also we need them to be feeding us information ’cause they’re the ones out there.
Actually talking to customers day to day and, know what the pain going and all that.
Sunny: don’t overlook your customer success team as well, because your customer success teams are responsible for making sure that your customers stick around. So listening to the objections that they have, those customers have when they’re trying to renew or they’re trying to expand their, contract value.
listening to those people is also really important. So don’t overlook pulling your sales calls transcripts and reading those or your recordings. Gong is amazing tool for this. but also your customer [00:34:00] success teams, so you can’t just completely ignore the people who have already paid you money.
So really tapping into those customer success teams, especially before the point of renewal and what their communication looks like and how they’re actively supporting those customers before they have the opportunity to renew. Those are also really amazing points to pull really juicy tidbits that you can use to support PR efforts.
Michelle: Yeah. I love that. And I, again, I think sometimes all this is there right at our fingertips, but we’re not all connected. We’re not all talking. We’re in our little silos. Our heads are down. Yeah. So I think it’s just having more of that, awareness that we’re all working together toward, a common goal and how can we help each other and support each other.
I know that sounds very kinda woo, but I, just feel like it’s No, it’s not, it’s often overlooked. Yeah. and it’s, And
Sunny: sometimes leadership unintentionally reinforces a lot of those [00:35:00] silos. And OPR, this is your place. But if we offer value to other members of Yeah. That those teams, and understand what motivates them as individuals, we can help break down those silos, especially when we’re helping to support their work.
So if you’re feeling some resistance from talking to the sales team. The way you would position yourself is, Hey, I’m really interested in how PR can help shorten your sales cycle. Yeah. Do you have a couple minutes to talk to me? what is the one thing that your sales team really wants, and how is PR connected to helping them get that?
So use that as the carrot to start conversations. Once you have conversations, you have an open door and you can communicate back and forth and bring them into the loop. Treat them, treat your sales team like they were a customer group.
Michelle: So
Sunny: communicate with them regularly and give them updates.
[00:36:00] Ask for their feedback. You don’t have to take all their feedback, Because obviously we all have jobs to do, but influencing your job with the feedback that they’re getting in real time. So if you wanna break down those silos, find a clever way to do it. Especially if your leadership’s not Hey, we need to break down our silos.
there’s clever ways to get around a lot of those different barriers that you’re running into.
Michelle: Yeah. And again, I just think a lot of times it’s just, everyone is so busy and they’re just going about Trying to manage their inbox and go to meetings and nobody’s really, I feel integrating and like talking to each other.
so yeah,
Sunny: because sometimes it seems like more time than it’s worth. But if you get, think about it this way, if you have two sales, two conversations with sales, with your sales team, and they give you an insight into how your customers or your prospects are changing their behavior and you’re able to adapt to meet or [00:37:00] even help prevent negative behavior in the pipeline, that’s gonna make your life a lot easier.
It’s gonna make everybody’s life a lot easier, and you’re probably gonna have better success overall. So try it out. It, can’t
Michelle: hurt to try. It can be a hard sell sometimes, though. I know. it can be a hard sell. I used to do customer service a long time ago. Okay. I, you that’s why I think I sometimes I think about those people that are out there, doing that, talking to the customers More often than maybe, other, my clients are thinking about just because I have kinda lived that life and I know, what the value of that is and it’s, yeah. it’s pretty, insightful when you, look at it and really pay attention. yeah. I think we maybe talked about this a little bit, but how can PRTs use what they know about their [00:38:00] customers to figure out where those customers are actually getting their information versus where we might think they’re getting their information?
Sunny: Yeah, you need to ask them. There, there are a couple of different ways and that seems like a really no-brainer response. That’s Not really actionable. ’cause the truth is that a lot of companies feel a lot of resistance when they hear, just talk to your customers. It’s like, where do hell, where in the hell do I even start with that?
what do I do with that? That’s not helpful advice. Just talk to your customers. A couple of clever ways that you can do this. a lot of companies have a lot of resistance internally to doing like a six month long research project. Totally get it. Totally understand. There’s scrappier ways to get this information.
First of all, again, we talked about listening to your sales calls or talking to your sales teams and your customer success teams and using those transcripts. You can [00:39:00] look, at those for specific things. So what channels do they mention? Are there publications that they mention? Are there worries that they mention or objections to purchase that they mention?
keep track of those and keep a tally of what those are so that you can go back and refine them. You can do other things, like you can send out a customer survey, qualitative customer survey. Qualitative takes a little bit more effort to parse through those responses, but the information is so much better.
And what I mean by that is what was your buying decision like? And using more of a jobs to be done type of survey approach with open-ended fields to let your customers talk about it in real time. you might also be able to tag or tag along to a customer success call and be able to ask one question, and just kinda like pop into that conversation with the customer success team.
oh, you know what, we have someone here. Would you mind ask if she has one question for you? Would, it be [00:40:00] okay if she asked you that question? Honestly, if I had that opportunity, I would say, have you been able to refer, have you referred us to somebody? And if so, what did you tell them about us?
And just let them ramble, because that’s like a goldmine of information.
But, really when it comes down to pr, understanding the thing, the key things where they’re getting in their information, but you have to ask them. So again, customer surveys, support tickets, customer success calls, sales calls, those are the places where I would look first.
I would also look at your analytics and see and, really dig into your referrals and your channel information or your channel reports to see where people are coming from. But also that comes with a caveat. You have to understand what the go-to-market strategy is for that company and where they’re proactively participating in channels.
for instance, [00:41:00] if your, your organization has a really strong YouTube presence and you’re pulling out your channels report and you’re like, oh, YouTube is a really great place. We should probably be doing more PR and YouTube, maybe do pre-roll or maybe there’s an influencer type of thing that, that has some weight to it that you need to take into consideration.
So it’s not like an organic discovery process versus a paid kind of intentional, intentionally supported type of discovery process. So understanding what you’re trying to get out of the questions that you’re asking. So when you say, where are our customers actually getting their information? Yeah.
Are they participating in our paid support or our, supported channels, or are they discovering us organically from some other place that we weren’t even aware of? So understanding the difference between those two as well, I think is also really important.
Michelle: I think it can be really hard to get the customer’s time, because everybody [00:42:00] is so strap.
For time. And so I think that’s one challenge that I’ve seen from the PR side of things is that, it’s really important that when we have the time. the questions that we would ask to, to write a customer success story are in there, if you’re Meeting with the customer and hopefully PR is part of the meeting or the call, but that doesn’t always happen.
at least, we have an opportunity to submit questions so that we can get answers and maybe do something with that information, on down the line or whatever. But you really wanna capture everything you need when you have the customer and make it easy for them To support you in that way.
Because I think, sometimes we ask a lot of a customer and, I know customer references are great, for pr, but we can’t always, we don’t always have a whole bunch. We might have one or two and we keep going back to the same one. and I feel like that’s also taking advantage of, that particular customer or two.
So [00:43:00] anyway. I, that’s a challenge. I don’t know if there’s any you have any advice on Yes, that’s something.
Sunny: Anytime you have the opportunity to be in front of a customer or ask them a question or ask them for a survey, be as concise as possible, so spend the time on your side to ask them as little as possible to get the most benefit out of it.
If you already know what their demographics are, don’t ask for that. Again, if you already know how they were referred into your company, you can validate that, but don’t dig into it, right? Be respectful of their time. Don’t be repetitive with information that you already have, and focus on the things that will help you do your job better.
And help that sales process become faster, more efficient. Those insights that you’re asking for are a gift, and you should be respectful and treat that just as a gift.
Michelle: Yeah, no, I know. I, that’s, why it’s so hard, I think sometimes. ’cause I think I used to just assume that clients would have this big list of [00:44:00] customers that they could give us, on the PR side.
And, it’s just not that way. often I think it’s gotten worse because people are really sensitive about, a particular vendor sharing their name or whatever, I think that’s tougher than ever. Now, a lot of times you can get a company that’s maybe smaller, versus a well-known customer, a co company to, help you out because they are also getting something out of it.
They’re also getting some attention from the earned media. that, you hopefully, yeah. Being specific
Sunny: with your ask is also really helpful. we are just gonna use 15 minutes of your time. Or I just need 15 minutes. Here’s what we’re gonna be talking about. I would love, to spend this with you if you’re willing to do that.
Not. I totally understand and I think the thing that surprises a lot of companies when they ask their customers is the customers who are really excited About that company or that vendor or that product
Michelle: Will
Sunny: find the time, [00:45:00] especially when you’re specific with that, ask the comp, the customers who are not so enthusiastic about your product or your company are probably not gonna volunteer their time.
And you’ll probably hear about that later in the customer success calls. But, the people who are very enthusiastic about it, Uhhuh Yeah. They’d love to talk about their experience.
Michelle: and I think you, that’s another thing. Sometimes you’ve been working with a customer, who is really enthusiastic, but then there’s a little snafu or something.
So it’s important for the PR team to know that so that, they can maybe, give that customer a little rest, a little break before we Go back to them again and make sure that they’re, really happy and really enthusiastic. I’ve seen that happen too. This is where using your Salesforce notes really comes into play.
Use those pro appropriately, please. I’m, that, that leads right into this next question. ’cause I think we, we’ve talked a lot about, working with the sales team, but is there a question that every PR patient person should be [00:46:00] asking the sales team that they may not be?
Sunny: If I had the opportunity to ask my sales team one question, just like one question, what would that be?
I would ask them, what are you seeing from prospects now that you weren’t seeing last week or last month? What’s changing with them? Do they have different objections? Do they have more people involved in the decision? Do they have more price sensitivity? Do they have, unexpected seasonality that they’re dealing with?
But what is the one thing that you’re seeing from your prospects or your customer conversations now That you weren’t seeing some period of time before now? Yeah. If you’re not staying on top of what’s going on with customers and prospects, you have no hope of getting in front of them with a message that resonates.
Michelle: and I think sometimes again, we rely on what’s worked in the past, but we know things are changing all the [00:47:00] time. And, there’s a lot of change, right now. I know in the B2B world there’s, just a lot of change. So we have to be able to stand on top of that so that we can, we can meet the moment and not just rely on What has always worked. And, also, one thing I notice, again, B2B manufacturing in particular maybe, but buyers are younger and so they are, looking more, doing more research online before they actually make a purchase. Sometimes they’ve already done all the research and made the decision before they ever get in touch with the company.
So I feel like, if we’re not developing content and messages that resonate there, we’re probably missing the Mark A. Little bit.
Sunny: I think it was, and don’t quote me on this because I don’t have the stat right in front of me. And I think it was from Trust Radius, and this was two or three years ago, I believe it was [00:48:00] them, or it was Gartner.
I don’t know. published a stat that said 95% of B2B buyers will have winnowed their consideration sets or the number of companies that they were evaluating. To two or three before even talking to a sales team. So they’ve pretty much made up their mind or they were really close to making up their mind before having a conversation or even taking a demo of anything like 95%.
That’s a lot of places where you have to be with a lot of really great supporting content to help that decision making process before your sales team even hears an objection. That’s, a lot, that’s a lot of big heavy lifting. And traditionally in B2B, it hasn’t been that way. So if you were to go back to B2B 10 years ago, even 15 years ago, before this, it would’ve been sales that did the bulk of the heavy lifting to get this deals done.
But now it’s more marketing and PR and [00:49:00] the front end of that decision making process instead of the final awareness, most aware with high intent to purchase part of that conversion funnel.
And a lot of companies haven’t recognized that yet. They’re still leaning really heavily on their sales teams in order to get those deals done.
When the sales teams are like, look, we’re only talking like 5% of the people out here, like they, the deal, the pipeline’s not as full as it should be, and the, quality’s not as high. So what do we do? And then marketing gets blamed for that and PR gets blamed for that. And then there’s this really terrible dynamic that happens.
So that makes the case for more closely tied integration between those different teams.
Michelle: I really think that would solve so many problems, less siloing and more communicating and integration. I, probably could wish for that all day and, it probably won’t happen. Borrow it. Oh, what did
Sunny: you what?
I have a magic w back here if you wanna borrow it. I know. make it [00:50:00] happen. I wanna keep mine
Michelle: Also, because that’s brilliant. You can wave the magic wand and have it be like, fix all the problems with pr. It’s like we’re putting the bandaid on now. whoa. I, think we have the same magic wand. it used to be my daughters and she was cleaning out her closet as she got ready to go to college.
So I’m like, that’s not going in the goodwill box. I’m, I have
Sunny: a use for this.
Michelle: Anyway.
Sunny: M Eats a magic wand. I might have to wait. Mine at, I got mine a couple years ago at, May Con, which is the marketing AI conference in, Cleveland. I got it from a vendor and I can’t remember what it is. I’m so sorry.
but I saw that, I was like, I, need that. Can I have one of those? And they were like, yeah, sure. And I was like, Yik, you’re coming home with me.
Michelle: I know. I look at it like every day and I’ve been waiting for a [00:51:00] chance to actually, use it. So here we go. We’re using it today on the show anyway. Hi.
Hey. It’s got sparkles on it too, but maybe we need that. Yeah. We all need some sparkles. Help us or not. here’s a question. if a company is trying to switch and go after a different market or different segments of a market or something, what, how do you think PR plays a role in that?
What would you say?
Sunny: PR plays a really critical role in that. So hopefully the company has done enough research. Into customers and their preferences as they move into that new market. Obviously they’re not gonna have a lot of customer information to pull from and customer data to pull from. So some of it’s probably gonna be assumptions, but building off of that and helping PR message as effectively as possible, why that new market is opening up, what the benefits are, why customers should trust them when [00:52:00] they’re either making a pivot or opening up a new market or going up market.
It’s really critical because awareness really needs to be built around that decision and understanding how that decision plays out for the benefit of existing customers as well as new customers. So existing customers are also paying attention to pr. If you’re playing your, if you’re playing your cards right and you’re in the channels where your best fit prospects are spending time, your best fit customers are probably there too.
So they’re also understanding exactly why you’re making the shift and why you’re making this move. They’re also gonna be consuming a lot of the PR content that’s out there. really, again, it’s all comes back to understanding your customers and what they want and how your product, your service, your offer aligns with meeting those particular needs.
And again, it’s not features because anybody can go out and build features. If you have a software development team, you can go out and build a new feature [00:53:00] over, the weekend and launch it. That’s not a competitive differentiator. The competitive differentiators are what your customers value most about your products or service.
And using those in order to help stand apart and build on your existing foundation to move into a new market, to move into a new space, or to make a pivot to serve customers in a different way.
Michelle: Good answer,
Sunny: but if you’re not aware of it, like it’s gonna be a complete and utter surprise and shock to people who are experiencing it.
So obviously you don’t want to just hit somebody upside the head with a business decision. You wanna make sure that they’re well informed, that they’re on board, and that you show that you’re supporting them as you make a transition.
Michelle: Great. Great advice. I have another comment from LinkedIn and I can’t see who made this comment.
Sometimes that’s a stream yard thing, so I apologize. But I would just like to validate the point that Sunny made earlier about cutting through the [00:54:00] noise. I literally posted a poll yesterday asking what was the number one challenge PR pros faced in 2025, and the majority voted for cutting through the noise to reach customers.
Yeah. So there you go.
Sunny: It’s hard. Yeah. Even cutting through the noise on LinkedIn right now is really hard. I post on LinkedIn pretty regularly and, a lot of people have been complaining about this, but like their reach isn’t as big or as strong as it used to be.
Michelle: True.
Sunny: and I don’t know if it’s an algorithm thing, people are blaming the algorithm, people are blaming all kinds of different things, but yeah, honestly, it is so noisy and it’s just hard to cut through.
Yeah. So you have to find your points of differentiation. What makes you stand out, what makes you different? Is it a point of view that’s unique that you have? Is it a, a customer service team that’s uniquely qualified to support your customers? That’s a [00:55:00] really key differentiator, and how can you bubble those things up to the surface so that you can stand apart from your competition.
Yeah, that’s true for me as like an individual, but that’s also true for a B2B company or even a B2C company who’s selling a commoditized product.
Michelle: I just have a belief though, and I do think that the LinkedIn is wonky right now. It, I agree with what you said. I just feel like the people that are, that wanna find you, that are looking for you are probably gonna be the ones that find you, even if you don’t get a million people liking and sharing and commenting on your posts.
I think people get too hung up on that, but it is Just weird to me how it, seems to change, just like other things. As soon as you figure it out, it’s oh, nope, we’re gonna change it up now. just kidding. That’s frustrating. But anyway, the people, hopefully if you’re posting, consistently with, your messages and your differentiators, people, the people that are looking for you will find you.
That’s what, that’s how I look at
Sunny: it. That, but that also speaks to awareness is continuing to show [00:56:00] up Yeah. With a message that’s consistent with a brand that has some type of a reputation associated with it.
Michelle: If you’re
Sunny: not continuing to show up. You’re gonna be lost ’cause there is top of mind awareness is Really important. and it’s not even so much like when you do show up, you have to stand apart. Yeah. But having that reputation and building that reputation for doing x, y, z In a different way That your customers love. Yeah. That goes a really long way. And PR needs to support that and support, continue to support that brand awareness over time.
’cause it does add up even though it’s harder to measure.
Michelle: I think people are throwing at their hands a little bit. So I don’t think that’s a good strategy. some people are just like, oh, I’m not gonna post. No one sees it. I’m not gonna post. I don’t know. I say they see it. Even if they don’t engage, they still see it.
I, yeah, the lurkers, they’re still, the lurkers are still a thing. I have two more [00:57:00] questions. We’re running outta time. I wanna ask you that. Okay. And we’ve talked about this a little bit, but if budgets are tight, what would you tell a leadership team that’s questioning whether PR is worth the investment?
Because I do think PR gets overlooked as part of marketing often. So
Sunny: yeah, they, PR tends to be viewed as optional and nice to have instead of something that’s really essential. And honestly, it’s, become, a self-fulfilling prophecy because PR tends to produce measurements that kind of land in vanity metrics and it’s hard to connect that to revenue.
So that kinda goes back to the conversation we had earlier about really focusing PR on connecting with your sales teams, understanding your customers, using those things in your messaging in order to help shorten that sales pipeline and create pre-qualified leads that hit your sales team so that they can [00:58:00] convert faster.
again, that’s not something that just happens like with the staff of the fingers overnight, and it does take a little bit of time and a little bit of effort to make those connections and to connect those dots. But if you can connect PR efforts to revenue, that makes the argument for keeping and supporting PR in a meaningful way a lot easier.
Michelle: Great. This is the last question. if you have another minute, I wanna ask this question, because we like to give people actionable advice, right? I love it when I can walk away and be like, okay, there was a lot there, but what can I do right now? what’s the first thing if you wanna make your, PR more customer driven that you should do like today?
What’s, the thing?
Sunny: Yeah. If you have one thing that you can do today, either go talk to your sales team or listen to your sales calls, or pull the transcripts and read through a lot of ’em that have happened, like in this [00:59:00] past week or this past two weeks, and notice the commonalities. What are the objections that people have?
What are the common questions that aren’t being answered? And what are the things that people say that they are looking for the most from a solution like yours? And use those as messaging points in your next pitch.
Michelle: That’s great. Yay. You have been phenomenal and I cannot tell you how much I appreciate it.
Sunny and I just wanna thank you so much again for spending this time with us, and I’m gonna put up free Marketing Fridays if you want to. Hey, to see Sunny again on Friday, be sure to sign up and be sure to follow her on LinkedIn. I put her a LinkedIn profile up, I put her website up and, I, just, I really appreciated this conversation, so I hope everybody took as much away as I did.
So
Sunny: [01:00:00] yeah, thanks. Thanks for giving me the, the soapbox to stand up on. I love talking about stuff like this and really making sure that companies understand the power that they already have and the insights that they already have in their existing customers. They just need to. Pull those out and use them.
Michelle: Thank you so much again for being here, Sunny, and, we will be, we’ll be following you and, looking for more of your great advice. Thanks so much. We’ll see everybody again soon. Bye.
About the host: Michelle Garrett is a B2B PR consultant, media relations consultant, and author of B2B PR That Gets Results, an Amazon Best Seller. She helps companies create content, earn media coverage, and position themselves as thought leaders in their industry. Michelle’s articles have been featured by Entrepreneur, Content Marketing Institute, Muck Rack, and Ragan’s PR Daily, among others. She’s a frequent speaker on public relations and content. Michelle has been repeatedly ranked among the top ten most influential PR professionals.
Learn more about Michelle’s freelance PR consulting services here. Book a no-obligation call to talk about your needs here. Buy Michelle’s book here.
