Jordan Buckner (00:00)
Working with PR for CPG brands is a lot of work, knowing who to reach out to, knowing editors, following up, and so it's always something that gets left to the back burner. There's a lot of different ways that you can build this for your brand, from working with PR agencies to a couple software tools out there, but it's really about finding the right fit for the stage of your company, what your goals are, and what you really hope to achieve. And one thing that I'm really excited about is this new software.

that is launching called Signal Raptor, which is designed to help growing brands access PR in a way that's more affordable and more effective. And so I invited on Heather and Austin, who are the co-founders of Signal Raptor and Publicity for Good to really talk through where the PR landscape is now and how emerging brands can really take advantage of the tools out there to grow their businesses. So Heather and Austin, welcome to the show today.

Heather Holmes/ Austin Holmes (00:54)
Thank for having us on. Yes, we're excited to be here.

Jordan Buckner (00:57)
So Heather, you've been on the podcast a couple of times before and helping CPG brands kind of understand where things are in the industry. I'd love to get an update on what PR looks like in today's world and kind of where things, the kind of state of PR industry for the CPG industry.

Heather Holmes/ Austin Holmes (01:17)
So PR is not dead. So we'll start there. And it's actually getting more exciting now with AI, meaning that if a consumer goes to ChatGPT and types in, what's the best kombucha brand to buy for myself? Right? What ChatGPT and AI tools is doing is pulling in citations from different features and mentions over time.

So these are all new things you need to be thinking about. Before AI, getting in the media was social currency. It was driving referral traffic to your website. It was giving you backlinks. It was when people did a high level Google search or an investor Googled you, you were in the media. But now there's AI. So that's a new addition that you really can't forget. And there's all these other independent companies.

newsletters, influencers, YouTubers who do a lot of reviews and product placements. So PR has evolved. And to me, it's really getting your product in the hands of key consumers, key advocates, whether it's a mom who's your consumer, or you're really looking at local cities and supporting your retail partners by being at a 5k, having flyers.

you know, in the race bags.

Jordan Buckner (02:34)
You know, I think this is so interesting because I love the history of PR because you take it back even not that long ago, a couple of decades, like most companies were not communicating with the larger public, right? And so PR came from that environment of like, all right, we're going to be the public face of the company to tell people what we're doing. And as content and media has drifted down to where like any individual person can be a spokesperson, the founder can talk to their customers every single day.

is kind of shifted what interacting with the public means. And so I love that you mentioned of how do you talk to moms, how do you talk to different audiences, how do you get in front of lots of different people in these ways that are not explicitly paid for. I'm kind of curious, is that where you see the main differentiator now between marketing from and working with content of unpaid organic reach through these influencers versus

paid work or kind of where you see that line.

Heather Holmes/ Austin Holmes (03:36)
So I think getting earned media as a CPG company, if you have a good product and story, sometimes I think it's more accessible to get earned media. When I've worked with bigger brands, a hundred million plus, more well known, because they're more well known, I actually find influencers or media companies asking for money. So there is value still being the little guy and

As long as you have a good story, you have a good product. There is such an opportunity for you to get featured in the media, advocate for your cause, whether it's plant-based, there's so much, you know, so many brands are passionate about no seed oils or all the red dye, right? There's such an opportunity for founders to like lean into their values and why they started their company from just like a high level.

consumer awareness perspective to the there's also a movement across a bunch of different different industries at this point of customization. It's it's no longer the mass market and like what everybody loves. It's hey, how do we customize this product story, whichever side you're coming from? How do we customize this to every single person? And you know, paid media is doing that as well. But

there are now many times more outlets if we want to continue using that term, because every podcast is an outlet. Every blog is an outlet. There's new networks being created in the media space by some of these independents coming together and realizing, yeah, you know, CNN was built this way.

Fox was built this way, ABC, NBC, CBS, they were all started as like local deals. And now we don't necessarily have the geographic limitation, but now it's by idea and people are coming together and forming these little groups of just what is your interest? know, and some of them are locally based, but it's the customized media market is being built.

Jordan Buckner (05:32)
Yeah, I think it's so exciting, right? There's like, even just thinking about groups we have, like we, our family really expanded their garden. There's all these both influencers and media organizations all around like gardening tips, products, teaching you how to do things. And that's like his own little niche. And then, you know, there, we're also parents. So there's all like the mom and father and kind of parent.

influencers, media, blogs, and you could see the similar product kind of across each, but then it's talked about the stories a little different depending on what those interests are. And so I love kind thinking about all the different audiences, their interest groups, and how that plays in. I'm kind of curious in looking, I know Heather, you as well, mentioned the rise of AI kind of affecting the media landscape, how your view is on technology being incorporated with running an agency.

while also now looking at how software can help brands connect with that audience.

Heather Holmes/ Austin Holmes (06:28)
Sure, so I will start and pass it over to Austin who of course, you know is my husband and is running Raptor and you also know we have free under three kids so we're running. We can't say that anymore. yes. Yeah Rose turned three. I made that mistake earlier today. just had a birthday but so I think it's exciting.

Jordan Buckner (06:43)
out.

Heather Holmes/ Austin Holmes (06:48)
Yeah AI will never replace relationships, but

Jordan Buckner (06:49)
⁓ my goodness, then I eat.

Heather Holmes/ Austin Holmes (06:53)
It will allow you to create marketing plans. It will allow you to do competitor analysis, industry trends. It will allow you to kind of think through where you want to go for your brand. We absolutely use it for researching and competitor analysis, but all the pitching we do is all through relationships. It's through text messages. It's through events. It's through being in the CPG space for 13 years, right? Like AI is a tool.

to speed up the process and I think help you reach more people. But...

Like you're still pitching editors, they're still decision makers, they're still producers, all those people who are the gatekeepers. So you still have to have the connection, their relationship, and really have clarity on why your story and product matters. What are your thoughts, Austin? Yeah, I've been thinking about a small little piece of it, of it helps you answer questions that...

might've taken you an hour or a week or 10 conversations to research, you can get the answer to that specific thing that may be data driven in 30 seconds. And so, you know, one example is building compensation plans. Like, hey, what should I do for, what's the industry doing? What's my local area doing? And you know, that research, that conversation, that searching over LinkedIn job postings.

That may have been a couple hours worth of work. Now I can get it in 15 seconds. So it is an accelerator and I think people have no idea how fast it's going. I'm looking at it every day from the technical side. It's so like in two years, you won't need to learn how to use AI because AI will just do it for you.

Jordan Buckner (08:34)
I definitely see that. mean, what also just came to mind, right? Like, I know a lot of people are doing things where they're like, maybe I can use AI to write press releases. But I also see, as you mentioned, relationships are so important. Like a lot of...

are probably inundated with so much more outreach because it's like outreach is cheap and it's just an email. They're probably flooded with all these stories and requests. I know before they could barely keep up so I wonder if they're even going back to rely on those relationships even more to have that human connection versus just getting these like constant waves of email pushes.

Heather Holmes/ Austin Holmes (09:09)
Yeah,

people always forget that the big players can do a lot more than we can. Instagram is doing this. Like for the massive wave of AI content that just happened, it's now being shut down because their systems are better. They're going to drive.

stuff back to organic posts where it's a real human being because that's what actually is more relatable and builds those relationships. And that's what people get excited about more so of, you know, back to that baseline of, Hey, I want to know how my friends are doing. I want to know what this person I have a relationship with is accomplishing. And so

their tools are going to absolutely crush all the AI content creators because it's not what's better for them.

Jordan Buckner (09:54)
So tell me about the transition of running the agency and then with the launch of Signal Raptor, what inspired that move and tell me a little bit more about what the new platform is.

Heather Holmes/ Austin Holmes (10:05)
Sure. So from being in the CPG space for 13 years, getting to work with incredible brands and nut pods. I still use her coffee creamer every day. flying embers, my favorite hard come food, Dr. Shar, they are a global number one, gluten free brand, right? Most brands, don't have a budget for marketing, let alone PR, right? Like hiring.

agency is anywhere from 5k to 10k a month then sometimes they'll do add-on costs and then most agencies think in billable hours meaning okay Jordan like you're paying 3k a month that's 20 hours that we can serve your account but what happens if we don't get any results right like and we talk have talked to hundreds of brands we've served over 400 brands and we realized that we have seen so many brands

scale from telling their story and getting in the media, right? Hundreds of orders from doing a local TV show. Brands getting confidence from being in the media. Industry press, learning about a brand and then that brand getting more retailers. And we realized that literally a brand, if they have a good product and brand story,

Like all they need is their story to get in the media. And we realized there was nothing in the market to make communications and PR accessible. Yeah. And we've been through every software out there and tried to find something that helps us run the agency. So on the internal side, it's solving our own problem, but then providing that solution.

to every brand out there. And part of it for us personally is democratizing communications and allowing everybody to build that brand easy, have the right tools, have the right training in order to do their messaging. Cause that's where it all starts is with the message and building out, you know, how, what you're going to communicate. And then, all right, how are we going to communicate? This is where we come in.

Jordan Buckner (12:01)
So tell me more about then, like, what are the differences between the agency approach and with Signal Raptor? Like, if a brand's like, hey, that sounds good, I love the idea of having this more accessible, what does that mean for me, like, if I was to sign up and start using it?

Heather Holmes/ Austin Holmes (12:17)
Yeah, and you know, this is the sacrifice that's made is the relationship. We're leveraging technology to get a lot of the same results as you would get with a traditional agency. And like the next stage of Raptor is actually to make those results better. And Uber did this. They said, all right, taxis are great. And they get you around. How do we make the experience better? And you know, how do we make it so

you can get it anywhere, anytime easily. So that's the blueprint that we wanna follow with PR is to make it easier, make it more accessible.

I would say how I describe it is on the agency side, PFG.

Publicity for good like we are detailing your car. We are your trio leaders We're talking to you weekly daily in the trenches like your team with you Like every step of the way getting you in the media No nonsense Weekly media interests right like weekly live links all those things Not everyone needs that or wants that some people say my gosh if I had that much traffic if I did three to four interviews every

every

single month, like that's not like, that's too much, right? So Raptor, we created a service with the software to give people literally 80 % of the benefits for only 10 % of the cost. And literally, you know, it's service first with the software. So we still have publicists pitching you every week to the media.

Jordan Buckner (13:33)
Hello.

Heather Holmes/ Austin Holmes (13:40)
We're still, you we write an article every single month. If you have a product, we can reach out to an influencer for you. We are getting these brands in Raptor in the media, right? It's just we're not doing strategy calls. We're not doing one-on-one calls, but we have a community and we have group calls. So for a lot of brands who want to start out slow,

want to start getting in the media and especially for brands that don't have national distribution, it's honestly the perfect opportunity. like literally right now it's $750 a month. And yeah.

Jordan Buckner (14:13)
Yeah, so much more affordable than the

typical agency approach, which I think is good. What, I mean, it sounds like it's probably a good fit for someone who's maybe not even just starting off as a business, but starting off with PR to like start coming into it and see the benefits. What would you say are those benefits of working with Raptor Program? Like if someone's coming in, what should their expectation be on what's possible for them in the first couple of months?

Heather Holmes/ Austin Holmes (14:37)
I would even say the first couple weeks, all of our systems are kind of designed around delivering results every single week.

the first thing that we do is clarity on that messaging. We go into documenting it in a couple ways, generate an article because that's the fastest thing for us to do is to go ahead and get somebody's brand out there, start building backlinks, start building their SEO presence because when we pitch the media, we want the media to see their company come up. And like if you're Googling your company or using AI to like find, hey, who's my best roofer around here?

and you don't come up like you're losing already. So we start by building that presence. Another part of kind of the content generation piece is the news release. Super common in the world of PR and that's what, sorry, not publicist, that's what journalists wanna see.

is this AP formatted document that tells them exactly what's going on with your company. So that's also part of the offering. And then we start to work pitching. We pitch every single subscriber every week and once a month we make that super targeted pitch to their dream media, which, you know, we're going in depth in that one targeting this individual or at least this company, this outlet. it, because that

greatly improves our odds of getting that specific media. So if somebody wants to be in Forbes, like we have multiple ways to attack that and that's what we do with that extra pitch. There's a plethora of creatives that we also have people select a couple options from that. And then the community aspect. We thought of it almost as an afterthought to have the community aspect.

but it's been probably one of the greatest sources of value of people coming in, just hearing from other people what's working and what's not working, avoiding mistakes, making connections, because we work with a lot of individuals and we work with lot of brands and those two pair beautifully. So if you're an influencer, you get to meet 10 brands and if you're a brand, you get to meet 10 influencers. And so there's been a lot of connections come out of our community aspect.

Jordan Buckner (16:28)
Yeah, I love that. mean, in for Francis and like breaking it down to those three steps of building your presence and getting more articles and content out there, issuing press releases and pitching to dream media, I think are super valuable. I know just with my other company, Joyful Co, we went through probably early stage of Raptor and it's been super helpful just in terms of getting content out there every month. know we're like

doing some of our own content but to have you kind of placing that in and creating and placing content in really relevant places to develop faculty is develop more awareness so people can find us is huge. Issuing those press releases and also pitching us I know I got a couple you know podcasts and TV interviews from working with you which were extremely beneficial especially for our gifting business around some of the key holiday times which were amazing so I can kind of personally say firsthand how helpful it was.

Heather Holmes/ Austin Holmes (17:19)
so we're glad we could help.

Jordan Buckner (17:20)
I love that, it's been so

much fun. So I mean, tell me, because I know the next version of Raptor is launching and with that, want to bring in and make it accessible to a lot of rams to try out. And so tell me about what offer you have.

Heather Holmes/ Austin Holmes (17:36)
Yes, so I know everyone who is listening loves being a part of food bevy and because of that we really want to you know pay it forward and bless you and your brand if you're listening and we would love to give you a free month of Raptor. Now I know that there are thousands of people in the community so we can only serve 50

Right now we can only provide 50 free memberships for a month with Raptor, but honestly we're here to serve from being in the CPG space for 13 years. We have seen how small businesses have grown their business, gained funding, gained confidence, gotten backlinks, gotten media logos just from being in the media.

And literally all you need is your story, like the why behind your brand. So.

Jordan Buckner (18:31)
I love that and we're going to put a link in the show notes as well. But you go to signalraptor.com slash boot bevy then you can get access and apply. And I would recommend everyone jump into that to make sure you're one of the first 50 qualified kind of brands to get on board. That way you can test out Signal Raptor yourself, see how it works for your brand and see how it can help your business. So absolutely recommend that. Take advantage of that now before everyone else does.

to make sure you can you can benefit. And then I love kind of seeing where the future of this is going. So any kind of sneak peeks or previews to what you think the industry might look like in the next couple of years.

Heather Holmes/ Austin Holmes (19:15)
Absolutely, I literally mapped this out last week with our team because you know with this major launch we were looking at we already had versions one through five mapped out from a technical standpoint and we said all right let's take a step back and look at what has happened in the world in the past 18 months while we've been developing this and there is a demand for systems

like I've never seen before. And there is so little out there of,

the service aspect and so we want to make it as easy as possible for somebody to be successful in business. And it's moved completely away from, hey, here's a course on how to do it. Okay, how do we do this for you? So the outcome that you'll see in six months to 12 months with Raptor is that you will be able to get media without thinking about it.

And then six to 12 months after that, you will be able to take somebody through your entire messaging sales ecosystem cycle, nurture them as a lead, have a sales call with them that none of your team are required to go to. And they will become your customer and then refer people without you thinking about it. And pretty much the only thing we think that you'll have to do at that point is sit down and record yourself on video.

everything else will be handled.

Jordan Buckner (20:36)
I love that. That's you said about that. I think ultimately, as you mentioned earlier, it's about working with founders and getting their stories out into the world so that people can discover them. think telling that compelling story can then reach more engaged audiences to bring in customers and build your credibility and value. I'm excited to see how Raptor is making that accessible to help more brands out.

I really appreciate both of you being on. I think that this is really insightful just in terms of understanding how brands can be helped. And so definitely take advantage of this offer and get into the Raptor program. I'm already in, so I want to make sure that you take advantage of it as well. Thanks so much for joining us today.

Heather Holmes/ Austin Holmes (21:17)
Thank you. See you again soon.