Emilie Gerber: evaluation

Transcript context

…So we're going to be talking about press. A lot of people say that trying to get press isn't really worth your time. It doesn't drive signups, it doesn't drive growth. You could spend your time on other things and have a lot more impact there, and I know that you have a really interesting perspective on second order effects of press and other benefits. So I'm curious to hear, what's your perspective on this idea, that press isn't really worth people's time and how can press be helpful? Yeah, when we were emailing about it, talking about some of the articles that you were in, some of the coverage that you got, I was thinking about how, in your case, you have multiple audiences. You have your customers, which in a way, are your listeners and the people that are engaging with your content. So in a way, you're a B2C business, but in another way, you're a B2B business. Obviously, you have sponsors and you're trying to attract really great guests to come on the show, and so there's a second order piece of the press is validating that you're something that a software company wants to sponsor. So internally, they're making those decisions. Not everyone might know Lenny's podcast, but they could send around a CNBC article and see that this is something very legit and something that people care about. It just signals that third-party validation that I think is really important, and that ties back to, when you look at a SaaS company or something and they're making decisions, having that validation, I think, and that credibility goes a really long way. Especially for a company that might be early stage, they've raised a little bit of money, I think sometimes the buyers are skeptical of engaging with new tools, because they're worried they might not raise more funding, or it might go away tomorrow, and so the more that you can validate the business through things that's not just you doing personally that other people are doing, I think the better. So I think, yeah, that's the value from the B2B perspective and it's not necessarily going to directly drive signups, but when that AE is sending their sales emails and they can link to a story, I think that really helps. Also, candidates too, when you're reaching... If it's a recruiter reaching out on LinkedIn and they only have 100 characters to make their pitch, linking to that story can be really powerful. So those are some of the second-order effects for B2B. And then, on the consumer side, it's a much more complex issue. There's affiliate marketing, which is this whole world of paid, where you're getting product reviews and that sort of thing, and that's not really an area that I'm an expert on, but we do work with some consumer companies where press is a major driver of growth. So for instance, Perplexity, they have invested essentially zero in any paid marketing, they don't have a marketing person even, but they do do PR. And so essentially, after their most recent announcement, they saw a massive spike in growth, a massive spike in signups, pro users, all of that. And I think, in that case, the reason PR works so well is... First of all, it's something that's very easy to grasp. Google alternative. I know how to use Google, I've used Google a million times, you can go to perplexity.com. The barrier to trying the product is very low, you can quickly type in a query, get the answer, and then see the power of the tool. It takes one time to see the power of the tool. o to perplexity.com. The barrier to trying the product is very low, you can quickly type in a query, get the answer, and then see the power of the tool. It takes one time to see the power of the tool. So in that case, I think just organic press is enough to generate that. There's not a long process to get the customers interested, so... Yeah. I mentioned very case to case, but in those instances, it works well,…

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