Alex Nigmatulin 00:03
If you sell something popular, you just create a PPC campaign and you target the people who will buy and hope that your bets will play better than the bets of the competitors.
Narrator 00:14
Welcome to the E comm Show podcast. I'm your host. Andrew Maff, owner and founder of BlueTusker, from groundbreaking industry updates to success stories and strategies. Get to know the ins and outs of the E Commerce Industry from top leaders in the space. Let's get into it!
Andrew Maff 00:29
Hello everyone. Welcome to another episode of the E comm show as usual. I am your host, Andrew Maff, and today I am joined by the Amazing Alex Nigmatulin, who is the co founder and cmo over at Prnews.io, Alex, how you doing, buddy? Ready for good show.
Alex Nigmatulin 00:43
Good happy to have to come to your show and happy to meet you finally. Andrew!
Andrew Maff 00:50
Thank you. I'm very excited to talk to you. I've actually, in the past, like several months, we've started kind of evaluating some different things from a PR perspective, and obviously how it's affecting different llms and all the fun AI and all that fun stuff. So having you on the show is fantastic timing. Really appreciate it. I always like to kind of start these off relatively stereotypically, just kind of set the tone. I like to give you the floor. Tell everyone a little bit about your background, how you got started with PR news.io, and we'll take it from there.
Alex Nigmatulin 01:18
Yeah. We are in this PR business for a long time, and from day one, we wanted to implement something new, and we started as peer newswire service back in Ukraine and Europe, but then we understood that most of our clients don't need just a chance to get published somewhere. So they wanted guaranteed placements in exact medias. So we discovered the world of sponsored content and editorials and decided to disrupt this market and create a marketplace for that. That's why we are in E commerce, too, and we treat ourselves as any other e-commerce project like Amazon or other other online shops, it is a place where you can where providers, the owners of the media, provide their services as placements on their platforms. And we help people, we help clients to choose the right one and to conduct this procedure as smooth as possible.
Andrew Maff 02:27
Beautiful, let's, um, let's, let's kind of start, I guess, a little bit a step back, and just kind of look at it from the pros and cons of the PR side, right from an E commerce perspective, obviously, I know a majority of the people that listen to our podcast are e commerce sellers, and in an E commerce space, and I find that most of them severely underutilized. PR, I think it's an amazing tool to be able to get into different publications. It helps a lot. From an SEO perspective, it can obviously help a lot now that llms are getting involved and things like that, because it's a little bit less biased. But from an E commerce perspective, like, what do you see a lot of brands doing in terms of how they leverage PR like, is it mostly from product launch strategies? Is it around events that they're doing? Like, what? What constitutes them wanting to do a press release.
Alex Nigmatulin 03:23
I understand that, yeah, press release is a decent way to communicate with with the society, through contacting with journalists, with providing their confirmed information from your company. But under PR, we understand much other things. It's not only press releases. It's all kind of content, all kind of text content. In our case, it is one thing when you have an auditorium who are interested in your product in and your idea is just to present your product to these people. So yeah, if you sell something popular, you just create a PPC campaign, and you target the people who will buy, and hope that your bets will pay better than the bets of the competitors, but it will be a problem if it is completely new product and PR and marketing. Content marketing is a way of how you can teach other people about that this product exists, that it helps to solve problem it solves and to help them understand that they, in the beginning, they have this problem, because not everyone understands that. And in this case, PR will help you definitely. Also PR is important when you are looking for partners, or you are looking for investment or any other kind, because people will look your company on Google, and now they will look your company on chatgpt, or any other LLM. That's why you need to control what will be shown a on these platforms and PR will help you. So a lot of articles about all aspects of your company, about your founders, about the key people, about the products you produce, about your providers. It is really important, and you have to communicate this through press.
Andrew Maff 02:45
So, just kind of reference. So you and I mentioned we met at MDS, and the conversation with you, I loved every minute of it, just because, like, you're one of very few people that will just be like, so, so straightforward, and just, you know, stick it to whoever thinks they're doing things correctly or incorrectly. And just no bullshit. I know you've also got your own newsletter and stuff that's kind of got that same.
Charles Chakkalo 03:10
I shoot for it. Listen, it's the person I am. I mean, entrepreneurs by definition, in my opinion, are people who don't follow the book, the rule, the orthodoxy and and because I don't have an agency, I don't have a bottom line, and I like to think that I have a mouth on me. I'm not afraid to use it. And I just I saw this huge movement in Orthodoxy, in the Amazon ecom space, of you have to have your own brand. You have to have your own brand story, your own unique value proposition, your own private label. You have to sell off using some sort of M and A firm, and and and multiples, is what you live in, live and breathe by. And it's just not necessarily the case. I mean, if that's how you function, all the power to you, but it's not a necessary condition of being in this industry. That's, that's, that's a big part of what I think stuck with you.
Andrew Maff 05:17
Okay, one of the things that I was super excited to get to talk to you about, I literally, I think this was last week, maybe two weeks ago. We did a campaign through PR Newswire, and that was one of the most antiquated, ridiculous platforms I think I've ever used. It was just, it was interesting. So tell me a little bit about the difference, because I know they're kind of like the old school, like the classic one of how that goes through. But obviously yours has more of, like this kind of AI ability to it. Can you explain a little bit about the differentiator between PR news.io, and other companies like that?
Alex Nigmatulin 05:54
Yeah, PR Newswire is a nice company with, I don't know, 100 years history. They distributed press releases, I think, when there was telegraph or something, and yeah, and the approach they have is still from that that times. So the idea of them, they just take your press release and send to the media outlets and hope they will pick it up, and in most times it is not picked up because your news is not so interesting for journalists, that's why they use the chain of partner websites or sections on popular websites where this news will appear, but unfortunately, No one will read this news on these sections. And we know this problem, that's why we disrupted this process. So we take them offers of media outlets, and you can get placed in media one by one, pay on pay as you go. Model, for example, today you want to get your press release published on Reuters. You pay 1000 bucks, or tomorrow you want to get published on Associated Press. It will cost you 100 bucks, for example. Then you want to get published in some niche trade media about, I don't know, portable toilets operator, there is a media outlet for that, yes, and you pay your free, yeah, yeah, you pay this 300 bucks and you get appeared in this media guaranteed on the terms you want to get appeared. Yes, it will be marked as sponsored, but you will definitely hit your audience, and then we'll discover about your product. So we created this e commerce website where you have a lot of filters so you can find media for your product. They are all divided by industries, by the niches media write about they have this additional information about the visits, about the quality of the media, with the help of, I don't know, SEO characteristics of the website. And then the process is simple. You see the nice publication, you pay the price for placement, you provide the text, then someone from the publication will pick it up, publish from the website, and send the link back. That's that's the approach.
Andrew Maff 08:28
So is it? Excuse my ignorance around here, but this is, it sounds similar to like a programmatic like, when you're doing, like content articles and like doing different things, where you get it published on different websites. You're doing more programmatic things. If you create an article and you kind of it blends in, like another article. Is it similar to that? Just more from, like a media perspect
Alex Nigmatulin 08:49
It's not, maybe similar because in this case, like programmatic, yes, there's some companies like tabula or Outbrain, I don't know. Are they connected right now because they wanted to merge, but yeah. But in their model, you will appear on the websites until you pay for this appearance, like you do with PPC approach. You pay for advertising, you are shown to your clients. In our case, in most cases, their placements will be there forever, so it will be a dedicated page on the media outlet about you. It will be in format of interview about you as a founder. It can be a listicle of the most popular products from your platform, from your e commerce website. It can be, I don't know, a history about your company, or any other format, but it will be there forever, until this website will exist.
Andrew Maff 09:44
Yeah. So I imagine, especially now, with AI taking off and all that fun stuff, that's it's probably having a pretty large effect on it, right? Like, I know if, if you use chat GPT, you're searching for something, it's pulling a lot of data, obviously, just from standard Google search results, but now it's also pulling from like Reddit and Quora and all these other publications. So doing these types of articles, this type of PR is that having an effect on all the llms and like the responses, or like, how's that working?
Alex Nigmatulin 10:15
Yes, yes, it has a great effect. After Quora, after Reddit, after Wikipedia and after the website of the company, their articles in media is the next source of information they use to answer the questions. That's why, as you know, young generation tell that they don't read the news. They use Tiktok and ChatgGPT. We tell yes, you don't read the news, but chatgpt does. So all the information it gives backs to you. It was taken from somewhere, and it is your target as a marketer to feed this data to chatgpt, and you can do that through placements in online media also chatgpt and other LAMs. They like structured data. That's why people ask, Can you recommend me something? What is the best solution for this? And that's why one of the approaches which works right now is to get placed in listicles. It is their article which consists of different products in it like, what is the best e commerce for dog food, for example, and your target as a marketer right now, if you want to get to make chatgpt Recommend you, you have to be mentioned in all these listicles, and preferably on the first three places. And this is how it works right now. And from our experience, we see that, unfortunately, chatgpt now doesn't understand was this media? Was this placement paid? Does it have this paid mark, or it was not? They still treat it as a decent source of information. Probably it will change with time. But I think that the core idea is that it will not change because we understand that advertising makes the product better. If people will want to invest money in advertising, in advertising of their product, if they invest in placements, in listicles, they definitely need more clients. They definitely want to make to serve their clients in the best way. Yeah, that's why I think still advertising exists. And yeah, it is. It is an engine that drives the product forward.
Narrator 12:39
Is your E commerce business experiencing falling revenue. Bluetuskr has helped many brands like yours excel. Unlike other marketing partners, BlueTuskr leverages a team of specialists to ensure every strategy is created and executed toward your business growth. As an extension of your marketing team, Bluetusker prides itself on helping to fill in the gaps and develop strong omni channel strategies to diversify your business from the rest. Ready to scale your marketing initiatives.? Visit their website, bluetusker.com, that's B, l, u, e, t, u, s, k, r.com,
Andrew Maff 13:11
So I know this has so this is where it gets kind of muddy, right? Because, like, this is kind of standard SEO to a certain extent. But obviously, because of AI and things like that, brand awareness all that, it kind of muddies the area of how you would qualify or quantify. I guess this type of strategy, a lot of E commerce brands, they love to, you know, make sure that they can paint a picture of an ROI down to like every single penny. So if someone was to do a campaign directly through like, through you guys doing it through PR news.IO like, how am I? Am I able to track how much traffic has gained from that campaign?
Alex Nigmatulin 13:53
This is a tricky thing, but you can do it on your site. You can use the UTM, when you place the links on the media outlets, that's why you can track the number of clicks it came from. And in the case of chatgpt, it is harder in other lms Because they don't use this but in case in chatgpt and lms, it's nice thing that you don't need to think about backlinks anymore, because they understand their mention of your brand, it is more important than a backlink to you. So yeah, it is an easy way. The problem will be is that your brand name can can be not unique. And in this case, you have to think about that. That's why, if you have unique name, unique approach, it is it will be easier for chatgpt to recommend you. This is one, one of the ways, and yeah, some media outlets after the placement, they will provide you, if you ask the data about how many visits or impressions this or that placement get from their point of view. But the best way is to use their UTMs and to track this data through that, because there is no a single solution which is used by everyone, that people just can use that.
Alex Nigmatulin 15:21
Some time ago, we had this Google Analytics and media outlets share the Google Analytics data with us so we can control the information to our clients. Now, with the implementations of GA four, it is harder to do, and we are looking for a best solution for that. It's something we have to implement soon.
Andrew Maff 15:42
Yeah, interesting. So between all this stuff, so that obviously you've got the stuff on the chat GPT side, you've got everything from like a traditional perspective, that's a very good point. I never even really thought about that of like chatgpt, all these different AI models, they're probably more they're probably more interested in how frequently your brand is referenced, as opposed to just backlinks and things like that, since those are easy to get so that that makes it very interesting, from a PR perspective, how that would be pretty beneficial. Do you have like, insight into what you usually see works? Well, I could see a lot of brands being like, Oh, let me just pay for like one or two placements on, like, one or two publications, and then that's it. Like, do you think this is more of a, hey, you've got a you've got to make a big splash and make a lot of noise for it to really do anything. Or is there a way to kind of dip your toe in it and just try it out?
Alex Nigmatulin 16:35
You have to invest time and money in that? Yeah, definitely. You can be lucky and hit the target with some, I don't know, digital PR campaign, and get a lot of mentions with that. You can create something viral, and it will be picked up, and you'll get enough traffic and clients with that. But for most of us who don't put everything on that you have to do a month to month job, you have to buy, you have to get placed in media in any way. You have to create interesting content and pitch them, and then you hope that they will pick it up. Or you can just pay and have this amount of money you are ready to spend and do that, but you have to be aware that your competitors are not waiting. They are doing the easiest way. If they have enough money, they will just buy everything they want and be wherever they want. Yeah, yeah. And you have to think not only about your product, but about the tactics of your competitors.
Alex Nigmatulin 17:44
And in that case, by the way, I can recommend using other tools, like, I don't know, hrefs or SEMrush to analyze, to analyze how your competitors and what the tactics they use. Are they placed in media right now? Do they acquire the backlinks? Do they acquire their are they recommended by chatgpt, because all these instruments now provide some part of this data.
Andrew Maff 18:09
I look, I'm, I'm all for it. I'm an agency.Yeah, where do you think PR is going? I think it's been kind of an interesting play, right? Like years ago, doing a press release, awesome. You could get a big splash. Sometimes journalists and pick it up. Now it's a little bit like, it's almost more. It's almost more to get the awareness in hopes that the AI platforms are going to pick it up because journalists, it's almost like, I guess that's why they say the benefit of working with like a PR agency is that they have those pre existing relationships with journalists and things like that. Where do you think it's headed now that we're starting to see more and more kind of AI come into the picture?
Alex Nigmatulin 18:45
I think that with this AI coming into picture, people want to speak and communicate with people more. That's why this personal branding, personal PR, starts to become more and more interesting every day, because people, yeah, the accounts, even on social media, the accounts of brands are not so popular as the accounts of some of their founders, for example, or presidents.
Alex Nigmatulin 19:16
And that's why people want to read the news from the founder of some the from the key person. That's why companies need to invest into their people and build this personal brand for them. And this is, I think, where PR is going also. And because, yeah, it is. Now the information is easy to get, but people want to have this vibe of talking, and to get this, this information is approved by a real person. It is not generated because maybe the easiest thing you already can get from ChatGPT. But there's something really important, something really good. It is provided by people.
Andrew Maff 19:58
Yeah, interesting. So are you seeing more successful campaigns when it's more directed as like it's coming from, like the thought leadership, like it's coming from the owner or the founder, more so than if it's just like a general company news kind of thing?
Alex Nigmatulin 20:11
Yeah, yeah. I think that. And we operate in different countries, and also in some Eastern countries, for example, in Turkey and Oh, Tokyo, you have to name it, change the name, and it is like must have. If you approach this market, you have to use the picture, the portrait of your founder, on every, every activities you have, because it is it people trust you more if you if they see the person behind that. And this approach, I think, goes to other, other places. Yes, because now it is easy with the Google video or other tools you can create now the video, and, yeah, it works to check their MVP, to check in MVP way, way of some advertising, or something like that. Or you can create a nice picture of you in, yeah, it's applicable. But if the real people, not the stock photos, not the generated photos, it works better. But no one knows all the instruments improve all the time, and I don't know, maybe in the month, the pictures will be so nice that people will not understand that, are they really generated, or are they really real? Now, which is hard for some people to get that or with nice instruments.
Andrew Maff 21:46
Do you one of the things I was worried about in PR perspective, is like you end up getting either thought leaders or businesses just in general, kind of, I guess, taking advantage of it, where I feel like they're putting out a press release for like, oh, I woke up today, like, here's a press release about it. Like, it's just like, Okay, we don't need a story about that. Do you when you are working with the different businesses and different brands, do you provide any insight into, like, hey? Like, you may not need a press release for this, or, like, Where specifically it should go, or anything along those lines?
Alex Nigmatulin 22:18
Yes, definitely. People wants to, in this case, people likes to read people's stories. That's why you have to put these interviews, or to use this format, I don't know, like one day in life of a person. It is popular for politicians, people just spend the day with pictures, what, what they're doing in everyday life, how they talk with the helpers, or, I don't know, anywhere in this format, yeah, and yeah, definitely press. But also you have to understand that press release, it is a B to B product. It is not a B to C product. People, common people are not supposed to read that. It is information, raw information, for journalists. And journalists have to create a content on the basis of that, if it picks their mind, if they like this. That's why, when you you don't have to read press release until you are a journalist, and not everyone reads all the press releases, we hope that, yeah, they will be filtered out and you see the press releases you're really interested in. And yeah, there is a problem that people just try to promote something which doesn't work to be promoted. But sometimes they use it to get backlinks, I don't know. Sometimes they use it to just to be that just to increase awareness in any way, sometimes they use it to hide something, because there are this, some use in the company, which are hidden for a day when there will be crisis situation, And, yeah, it can be some problems, you started to let people away. Yeah, you start to fire people. But in this case, they don't like to negative news hit the Google or news. That's why they try to push some evergreen content at the same time. And you don't know why it is important right now, but they're hiding something.
Andrew Maff 24:26
Yeah, makes a lot of sense. Alex, this was, this was awesome, very eye opening. I appreciate all the insight here. I'd love to let you wrap up here tell everyone where they can find out more about you, and, of course, more about PRnews.io
Alex Nigmatulin 24:38
Yeah, I'm always happy to connect on LinkedIn, you can find me easy there. I'm Alex Nigmatulin, and also I'll be happy to chat and to show you around the platform, and maybe, I don't know, give you some some ideas or where to start. And yes, and you can always sign up on PR news. It is free. You pay only if you want to get published somewhere.
Andrew Maff 25:07
cool. Alex, really appreciate it, man. Thank you so much for coming on the show. Obviously, everyone that tuned in, yep, make sure you do the usual thing, rate review, subscribe all that fun stuff on whichever podcast platform you prefer, or head over to the ecom show.com to check out all of our previous episodes, but as usual, thank you all for joining us see you next time. Have a good one!
Narrator 25:27
Thank you for tuning in to the E comm show. Head over to E comm show.com to subscribe on your favorite podcast platform or on the BlueTuskr YouTube channel. The E comm show is brought to you by BlueTuskr, a full service digital marketing company specifically for E commerce sellers looking to accelerate their growth, go to bluetuskr.com now for more information, make sure to tune in next week for another amazing episode of the E comm show!