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Being A Better PR Agency Teammate: 3 Lessons I Learned Riding My Peloton Bike

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Not too long ago, I was sitting in on our company’s bi-weekly Zoom meeting. As a fully remote PR company, I look forward to these meetings because it gives us a chance to unplug from work and really get to know each other beyond media pitches and byline writing.

My colleague Marcia Rhodes likes to open these meetings with ice breakers that force us to reveal more personal details about ourselves. This particular week we were discussing silver linings of the pandemic. Whether it was taking up a new hobby, a more flexible work schedule, or even washing our hands more, it was amazing to hear that we all could find positives in the pandemic’s difficult times.

I took a moment to share my journey with fitness, which led me to reflect on how it has impacted my professional life. In August of 2020, I found myself—like millions of others in the height of the COVID-19 pandemic – prioritizing my mental and physical wellbeing. Enter Peloton.

Over 1,000 rides, 200 bootcamps, 250 strength classes, and 60 yoga classes later, the bike that goes nowhere has helped me prioritize my health during a time that felt so uncertain. Through the process of working on myself, here are the three lessons I have implemented as a teammate in the fast-paced world of public relations:

  • The importance of goal setting: I purchased my bike because I wanted to get stronger, improve my cardiovascular health, and perhaps shed a few quarantine pounds. By setting concrete goals, both big and small, such as exercising five times a week and executing 10 push-ups by December 2021, I have been motivated to strive for greater success.

Teamwork lesson learned: Set clear goals. In agency life, it is easy to find yourself overwhelmed trying to manage client expectations – which is why setting goals with your teammates to meet those expectations is important. My colleague Tara Stultz recently recommended setting goals for media placements and interviews when pitching media.

For example, my pitching goal might be to secure “one podcast interview with X trade publication for X client on how value-based care is addressing health inequities.” Having defined goals keeps the whole team accountable, motivated, and committed to crushing results for clients.

Wondering what goals to set this year as a PR or marketing professional? Check out this Amendola blog on resolutions for PR and marketing professionals. It’s never too late!

  • Remember that everyone is rooting for you: One of my favorite things about Peloton are the mantras the coaches have ingrained in my head. They not only get me through my morning workout, but I find myself using them in my personal life and in the workplace.

Here are some of my favorites:

“Your mind is your strongest muscle.” — Tunde Oyeneyin

“How do you do anything is how you do everything.” – Jess Sims

“You’ve made it through 100% of your bad days.” – Robin Arzón

“Allow yourself the opportunity to get uncomfortable.” –Alex Toussaint

Teamwork lesson learned: Our teammates want us to succeed! We all want to deliver the best press release, byline, pitch, but we can’t do it alone. I know my Peloton coach wants me to do my best, as do my coworkers. Get comfortable leaning on your team for help. As a team we all bring unique talents to the table, which is why I never hesitate to reach out to other team members when a pitch needs tweaking or a blog needs wordsmithing.

  • Be present: When I hop on my bike at 7:00 am I often find it difficult to focus on my task at hand—exercising. My mind has a way of thinking about everything else but. Did I send out the agenda for that call at 9:00? Do I have time to each lunch between editing that byline and jumping on a call at 12:00? Did I feed the dogs’ their breakfast? Did I fix that typo in the release that went out this morning?

Being present is one of the most difficult challenges for me to overcome. It is so easy to think about all the other things going on – and taking the time to be present with the task at hand takes PRACTICE. If I am not paying attention to my coach, I will miss an adjustment or a correction that could help me improve my form. The same applies with my team.

Teamwork lesson learned: Focusing on the moment matters. If I am trying to do ten different things while on a call with my team, chances are I might miss something. It’s not fair to my team or myself if I am not offering my full attention.

For example, if we only have 30 minutes to huddle on strategy for announcing a new product for our client, everyone needs to show up and be ready to rock and roll. And that takes some advanced planning, which is why it’s important to structure time with your team intentionally so that nobody’s time is being wasted—which goes back to goal setting! Focused attention and intentional listening go a long way in my workouts, as well as with my work with my teammates.

 We can learn so much about ourselves through our hobbies. Whether it’s reading, gardening, exercising, maybe even underwater basket weaving, the lessons learned doing the things we do to unplug from work are making us better workers, teammates, and leaders and I challenge you to reflect on those connections.

Oh! And find me next time on the Peloton leaderboard at @Maddi3ATX.

The Science of Marketing and Public Relations

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You got approval for a $3 Million marketing budget from the C-suite.

While that may sound small to some and exorbitant to others the one guarantee is the marketing team will be required to “prove their value” after the money is spent.

Unlike some other departments who can say we bought 100 widgets at $1 instead of $2 saving the company $100 as marketing has grown more complex over the years, it has also become more difficult to show the return on investment at the end of the day.

But, we all know that saying “it’s difficult to measure” or even worse “we don’t know what value we got from that byline or advertisement” is not an acceptable response to leadership. The C-Suite, rightly so, wants to understand what they are getting for their money. Likewise, we wouldn’t pay thousands of dollars on a car without expecting it to work every day and last for several years. We want to know we got our money’s worth.

Marketers and public relations experts must learn the data and science of the profession. So, how do you measure a byline, a press release, an email campaign, social media, or an advertisement?

Step 1: Know the goals

Do not skip this step! Before embarking on an extensive marketing strategy that the team spent weeks putting together, know your company goals. What are leadership’s short-term and long-term plans? Is it a start-up needing more brand recognition or is it in a growth-stage needing quality lead generation?

Understanding where the company is today and where leadership is heading will help drive your marketing strategy. Share your marketing plans with the leadership team to get buy-in and agree upfront on the metrics that you plan to measure.

Step 2: Set the metrics and know the terminology

Now that you know the goals, it’s time to set your success metrics. How will you know if your plan is successful? Depending upon your strategy, you will use varying measures for different tactics. Below is a subset to consider.

Share of Voice (SOV): Measure the percentage of coverage and mentions of your brand in the media compared to your competitors.
Coverage: Track the number of times your brand is mentioned in the media along with where it is mentioned.
Website traffic: Google Analytics is a very useful tool to monitor unique page views, bounce rates, conversion rates, average session duration, and referral sites.
Domain authority: A term coined by Moz your domain authority ranking will compare your overall website, including SEO and keyword rankings, to give you a number 1-100. The higher the number the great authority your site holds within your industry.
Social Media: Track beginning and ending metrics including followers, likes and shares. Determine which content and messaging provides the greatest engagement with your audience.
Impressions and click-thru rates: With advertisements you will want to view not only the number of people that saw your ad but more importantly, how many clicked on your ad.
Conversion ratios: The percentage or ratio of people that clicked on an email, ad, or social content, etc. that then completed a call-to-action. This includes downloading content, completing a form for a demo, and even registering for a webinar.
Open rates and click-thru rates: When delivering emails or drip campaigns, you can monitor their success based upon the number of people that opened the email and the number of people that then clicked on a link within the email.
Cost-per-lead (CPL): To many in leadership, if you start speaking in terms of CPL you’ll be speaking their language. Calculating the costs of your activity divided by the number of leads you gained will give you the CPL.
Marketing qualified lead (MQL): While this one is probably one of the most important, the definition often varies from company to company. Typically, this is a lead that has a business need, understands what you offer, and has an interest in buying your product or service.

The metrics you choose should align appropriately with the tactics you will produce and the goals of your company. Putting these in place upfront will help avoid confusion at the end of the year.

Step 3: Make sure you have the right tools

While many marketers did not get into marketing to become data analysts, the move toward digital marketing requires a successful marketer to understand and use data wisely. Fortunately, many companies have developed tools to help analyze marketing results and prove value. There are many free or relatively inexpensive tools you can use to monitor your metrics.

Most marketers will start with free tools, and depending on the complexity of their business may purchase additional tools. Due to the overwhelming number of tools on the market, make sure you understand exactly what you are getting and any feature restrictions or limitations. In addition, make sure you use all the benefits of your marketing tools. Often you may purchase an email marketing tool without realizing you can also create landing pages, deliver social strategies and even host your webpages.

The key is not to get overwhelmed. Know what you need to measure and select the tools that are right for you.

Time to Spring Clean Your PR Strategy

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The sun is shining, the birds are chirping, and the flowers and trees are blooming. It’s that time of the year when I think about Spring cleaning, especially living in Atlanta where everything inside and out is covered in pollen. As I was dusting my entire house last weekend trying to rid it of the fine yellow dust covering EVERYTHING (the struggle is real y’all); I started thinking about how to spring clean your PR strategy and what would benefit the most from a little extra attention.

Media Lists

The media landscape is constantly in transition. Journalists change positions, beats, contact information, etc. They might have altered their interest in specific topics. Throughout the year, we try to keep our press lists up-to-date, but spending some extra time going over your media list, updating the notes based on feedback from pitches and researching new media outlets can be a great use of time.

Messaging

This is a great opportunity to review your business’ messaging and assess if it needs updating. Perhaps you’ve announced new products in the last six months, or perhaps the industry has developed a new acronym for your niche, or maybe there is a new piece of healthcare legislation that is key to what your business does that should be mentioned in your messaging. Maybe you’ve learned more throughout the year about what your key audiences want to hear. Now is a great opportunity to take another look at your key messages to make sure they are conveying what you want them to and effectively reaching your target audiences.

PR Coverage

With a fresh look at your media lists and messaging, it would also be timely to review your coverage. Where have you received the most placements? Are any angles played out at this point? What outlets have you not gotten coverage in that you want to be in? What angles do you need to push harder? Are you actually reaching your target audiences with these outlets? A review of all of this will help you spring forward to make your coverage blossom even more.

Events

We PR people like to develop our annual plans generally at the beginning of each year. But so many details for events such as conferences and tradeshows are updated throughout the year. Determining which conferences you plan to attend, submit a speaker application to or want to include in your content strategy is a key component to any PR campaign. Take this time to update your events list with deadlines for speaking and any other promotional activities.

Review and Set New Goals

With a fresh perspective on where you’ve been and what you have to work with, it is also a great time to review the progress you’ve made in achieving your goals and updating them or maybe upgrading them. Utilize the S.M.A.R.T. goal format as a best practice.

Some of these recommendations take some ongoing maintenance but think of this time as a chance to really dust off what you are doing with your PR campaign and apply a fresh strategic approach to it. So, before you grab a vacuum, go grab a pen and review your PR strategy to help your business make the most of its PR activities.