Episode Transcript
Key Takeaways
- Public relations should be viewed as a funnel, starting broad and narrowing down to specific expertise.
- Storytelling is a powerful tool in public relations, creating memorable and retellable narratives.
- The only bad press is no press; even negative exposure can lead to increased business.
- Public relations is about legitimizing and endorsing expertise, not just self-promotion.
- Consistent, long-term PR efforts yield the best results, enhancing notoriety and media coverage.
Introduction to Public Relations
You kind of have to think about PR as a funnel, right? Initially, you want to make sure that A, your name is getting out there as much as possible in the right way. And so you start off with a really big opening of the funnel, but then over time, you can distill that down into what your particular area of expertise is. All right. Welcome back to another episode of the Practice Perfect podcast.
Today, we’ve got a very special episode. We’re going to start talking about public relations. Now, public relations is an area that I haven’t focused on personally. In our business, we primarily do public relations for SEO value or to try to leverage it for other assets.
Bretton Holmes’ Background
So I’m very excited today to have with us Bretton Holmes. This is his 20-year anniversary from starting Holmes World Media. And we’ve decided to do this podcast to really shed some light on public relations and how it can be used. And just like you guys listening today, I’m also going to be learning today because this is an area that fascinates me.
And like I said, I don’t particularly touch it myself, but I know it has tremendous value. It’s added tremendous value in the past when we’ve worked with other firms, with our clients as well. And Bretton has a wealth of experience. So very quickly about Bretton, he has, like I said, been doing this for 20 years.
He started his practice in the down and dirty business of Beverly Hills Plastic Surgery Marketing. So he’s going to have some stories for us, I’m sure. Bretton’s also a former Marine in the United States Army. And while I’m not in the US, being in Canada, if anything should ever happen with a world power, we will come crying and screaming to the American military.
The Power of Storytelling
My philosophy is the only bad press is no press, right?
Now, you said that you studied playwriting and storytelling, and I think your take on public relations is a little bit different than a lot of people’s. It’s usually typically very schmoozy and just trying to get you in front of people. And what caught my eye in speaking with you was really this whole aspect of story. So can you define for us what public relations means for you?
And then I want to jump into the story aspect, but just how do you define public relations? What is it for a doctor? So it’s the way to reach out to your what I call your potential patient base. That is people that are out there who need what it is that you can do for them, but aren’t aware that you exist.
Crafting and Pitching Stories
So one example I would say is he, Alter is a great example because he’s got a great name for a plastic surgeon, and I think initially when we started working together, and I was still sort of in my PR infancy, but I was learning as quick as I possibly could, you know, my philosophy is the only bad press is no press, right? And a lot of doctors may hear that and say, oh my gosh, what does that mean? Well, I think for his case, in particular, he had a procedure that was not really prime time material, I would say, in terms of being able to do a story on it, right?
The Impact of Media Exposure
An advertisement will tell somebody how to find you, but a piece of press will tell them why they should.
Yes, and one of the aspects of that that a lot of people in my industry kind of know but isn’t, I would say, common knowledge among the public is that if you’ve got a doctor who is trying to become an advocate, right? This happened a couple years ago. I had a doc who, his whole thing was wanting to be an advocate for patients, which is altruistic and great, and it’s definitely needed, but he went a little too far with it, got sued, and what ended up happening was the company that sued him got absolutely more patients than he did because they figured that the reason that he was doing it was just trying to ride on the coattails of the story that had been done five, six, seven other times, and he ended up losing patients as a result of trying to go after the other practice that had had a similar incident.
Building Relationships with the Press
So on the back of that, Bretton, talk about the third party endorsement because there’s a lot of psychology that happens when somebody refers another person or, you know, even if they come up in a Google search or they’re on a news outlet, it’s a different type of psychology than if somebody gets a piece of advertisement in the mail or they come across an ad that’s clearly an advertisement on TV or in newspaper or whatever, versus a news story. So what is the difference for you in PR and how does that work differently? So it’s pretty straightforward. I mean, the answer is that you’re either promoting yourself or somebody else is promoting you.
The Long-Term Investment in PR
Well, in my past 20 years of doing this, my experience has been the longer you’re in it, the more it increases your notoriety, your media coverage exponentially. What I find is a lot of times, and I think you said this, I usually say it shouldn’t be a shot in the arm. It can be. You can get a huge momentum shift very early in depending on a lot of factors that are not in anybody’s control.
Conclusion and Contact Information
Bretton, I like to try to keep these podcasts to a digestible length and we’re kind of starting to hit that mark. So I’m going to start winding it up a little bit. So I’ve got maybe two or three additional questions I want to ask you on behalf of the audience and myself. The first one is, again, this is not because I’m trying to plug Bretton or anything, but I really want to get a feel for what the financial investment is for a doctor so that they can start budgeting it out. What are you looking at typically to get this kind of help?
So, you can take a look at the website. It’s just www.holmesworldmedia.com, and it’s Holmes like Sherlock. So, it’s H-O-L-M-E-S and worldmedia.com. And you can fill out the little contact form. It’ll shoot me an email.