EP129 – Why Most MSPs get PR wrong with Rahme Mehmet

Hello, and welcome back to It's a Numbers Game. I'm Adam Morris, joined by my co-host

Daniel Welling, and today we are talking about Public Relations, which is one of those

areas that if I'm brutally honest, I've always found very difficult to get my head around,

particularly where the line sits between PR and marketing. They're clearly overlap, but

they're not quite the same thing, and understanding the nuance between the two can be tricky.

So, to help us unpack this, we are joined by Rami Mehmet, found off tech comms, a specialist

technology PR agency working with vendors and MSPs across the IT and MSP space. Rami spends

a time helping technology businesses build their reputation, communicate their message to the market,

and develop relationships with journalists and industry influences. So today we're going to

explore what PR actually is, how it differs from marketing and how MSP should be thinking about

it as part of their growth strategy.

Rami, welcome to the episode. Thank you for having me, Daniel.

We've of course subject to when we release this. We've just made an announcement

about how we are working together in 2026. So really excited to find out how that trans

fires during the year and what we can achieve together. But in us talking about PR for ourselves,

Adam and I have become increasingly educated and hopefully becoming more mature in our

approach to the PR topic. But this is something that MSPs, and I think vendors as well,

really struggle with in terms of understanding the role of PR, what to expect,

when PR is good, when PR is not the right tactic to employ. So we really wanted to get into that

today with you if we can. Perhaps, perhaps you could actually tell us, how do we define PR to start

with? How to define PR? Let's break this down so it's a simple for everyone to understand.

Ultimately, PR, it represents the word public relations. So it's about building relationships

ultimately or communicating to the public being, current MSP, it would be their end-users

for a vendor serving the MSPs. It would be their end-users would be their MSPs themselves. So

ultimately, when we think about PR, the best way to describe it is communications

to the audience that you're trying to influence. There's multiple layers to public relations,

it's not just about communications, it's about what you communicate, how you communicate,

it's also about helping build a reputation for the company that you're communicating on the

whole for. There's also an element of building relationships with relevant influences that will

impact your end customers. It's about helping the company themselves, the MSPs, build their

brand awareness, whether there's an element or building your brand, which falls into the marketing

arena, if you were to look at the whole marketing mix. So public relations is one element within

the marketing mix and within marketing you would have some may have sales within that section

because sales and marketing work very closely together about separate function. They work closely

together but within marketing you would have your brand, your lead gen, your demand gen,

you would have all the glossy content that you would put out there, which may not necessarily

influence the audience, the PR audience that you're trying to reach but they all fall within the

mix of trying to build a brand's recognition in a market. So I guess I've gone about it a long

way in explaining but I was trying to simplify it so people can really understand that it's not just

one thing but ultimately as a PR consultants or professionals we have to look at what the objective

is for the company that we're representing and how we go about helping grow their brand

presence, help them grow their sales. It could be that we're helping them change a perception

for example that people may have have about a company. So there's various levels to this really

that that people need to consider when they think about what is PR and how to restuse it.

So PR is a subset of marketing, is that correct? That's how I think people will see it as a part

of the marketing mix PR. But it is in itself discipline in itself. But some marketing professionals

might do PR within that within their sets of services under marketing. Likewise a PR professional

might do marketing within PR. That's right. So sometimes we have end customers that are marketing

head. Sometimes we have a dedicated PR professional. It really depends on the scale of the company that

we're working with because the larger the firm we tend to find that they have set people that will

own that particular. So just to help me out here what's definitely PR and what's definitely

marketing and what's what are things which are somewhere in the middle and are very confusing and

some people may see them as PR and some people may see them as marketing. If there are anything's

like that. I think content would be a good example of this. For example, a company may have

created a white paper. The white paper might educate their end customers about particular

topic for example. Now that white paper would be distributed and shared as a lead generation

piece of content that will help people want to engage with the company, read what they've

got to share on the white paper through maybe an email campaign that comes through to them. Whereas

content can also be used by a PR professional that will review what that content is and what it's

actually telling an audience. It could be presented to influencers. In this case, it would be

the reporters as a content that the company is issuing that will be able to that actually

solve issues in the market and on the back of that it encourages we help encourage some

thought leadership ideas that potentially a leader within that company can talk to using that

piece of content as an anchor to open up a discussion. In that way, we use that piece of content

in a different capacity. Marketing might use that content in a different capacity. Sometimes it's

this we as PRs would want to have access to that content first. So we issue that to our reporters

a head of time offer the executives to talk around the topics that are in the white paper

potentially selling. I say selling because it is almost a sales job in a way where you

sell in an idea around that particular content and some thought leadership around this

that the publications or the editors might be interested to hear about and then we help create

the content to have some placements or thought leadership articles within publications.

And then the marketers might take that similar content and distribute it to their customers

or prospects to try and get them to want to engage. They may conduct a webinar and present the

white paper content in the webinar to prospects. So that's how one piece of content will be used

into different formats and in different ways to help. One will be amplifying the brand,

rebuilding brand awareness and thought leadership content with reporters that may write about

this particular topic or interview the leader or take a place got that article and that

is then read in a earned capacity by your prospects and your customers for example. Whereas in

the other format marketing is very much sharing that content, trying to draw people in a and help

educate them in a dignity. Is part of this the objective behind what you're looking to achieve

as to whether it's PR or whether it's marketing. So it's marketing looking for more of a direct

correlation around lead gen and opportunities and PR isn't in quite the same way and I know we're

going to go on and talk about how you might measure the outcome of PR. But is there a component

of that around the two disciplines or am I overthinking this? Well objectives, I guess the

objectives with marketing can be very a lot clearer in certain respects because for example the

content for this white paper they could potentially put out this webinar with their prospects

with the intent for their prospects to sign up and they may have a certain number of prospects

join a webinar discussion and on the back of that have a certain number that may be potentially

sign up. So it's very clear you've had this particular type of outreach and you've gained some

think that's tangible. Whereas on the PR side the tangible gain is through your exposure. So it could

be through the exposure of the publication. How many people actually read that publication?

Is that publication shared across social channels where it increases the reach?

Or is it if it's the nowadays everything is online? If it's online, how has that particular piece

of content impacted your search optimisation on your website and pushed your rankings higher

on on search? We also have now people using obviously AI enabled tools. So that's another way in

which people are measuring to see if particular content that's out there is being captured by

these AI search software that are out there now. So there's various ways in which success is

measures on PR and success is measured on marketing. However, where there's a bit of a gray area

is how do you tie back the value that the PR has given to the business without actually tying

that, tying it back to a sale? Unless you actually are someone who made you want to engage with

this company, I think you have to look at PR in the much broader sense than with marketing.

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and start thriving. Which, of course, is the conundrum, I think, for so many

new to the experience in Southamarkasin, the perennial challenge series. I've done

cally and I've had digital, I've had social media, I've had PR, I've been doing events,

which one of those actually meant the client booked a meeting or bought from us and, of course,

the answer probably is, it's all of them mixed together and therefore, in fact, I'm sure there's

a famous quote where someone said, I know half of my marketing spend is delivering a return,

I just don't know which half. And I guess this sort of falls into that conundrum?

Yeah, it's hard to measure, isn't it? People do, and this is one of the things that we do

up front when we work with clients is we try to understand how they value PR,

where do they see us as a successful PR campaign? What is the return they're looking for?

And we've had various different responses. So I just want as many pieces of coverage as possible

whether the coverage is valuable or not, we're not saying coverage hits, but following that

reach, we've achieved coverage in a publication for them. That's one piece of coverage, but

not every piece of coverage is of value. There's different ways in which we would measure a valuable

piece of coverage, whereas some, depending on who you're working with, there will, everyone will

have a different way in which they see value from the PR. Some will want their company name to

be in the headline, for example, spokesperson people being referenced, customers being referenced,

certain publications which have got, we tear publications, it could be tiered based on

reach and reputation. It could be on regional location, depending on whether the company wants to

have coverage in various countries. Yes, it's hard, but we try to define what success looks

like for them in terms of PR exposure, but more often than not. Now, an area that I'm exploring

is more to do with the messaging pull through and what the core messages are for the company,

because ultimately, we have to align to how the company wants to be represented and positioned,

and if the coverage is, it has to not only be seen in the right places, but what's been

communicated about the company has to be representative of what the message is that the company wants to

relate to the wider audience. That is an area that I think is very important when you're looking at

PR. I guess the question on my mind is, who should be buying PR versus who should be buying

SEO, making phone calls? Is there, and I'm sure there isn't, that some sort of guide, perhaps some

extremes that, when we can work our way back to the middle? Yeah, I think that an integration

of all is important, because if I think a lot, who should be buying, if a company has a

representative who's covering marketing, then they would be thinking about PR, whether they want

to think about it in the sense that they use an agency to support their PR, totally the different

ask. I think initially there need to be the marketing and the communications would need to work

together, because you need to communicate the right messages on your marketing lateral. So

marketing, I think even a small MSP would need to have a brochure, a website to represent who they

are. That in itself is the basics of marketing. Then you look at, what am I saying about myself

as a MSP? Is it a family one MSP? Do we have a nice diverse team or are we a team that's

customer first in terms of our messaging? Everyone who is running a business will have

some way of wanting to represent themselves to their customers, and the website would be the

brochure and how they can do that. And then the PR element of that would be the words you use to

describe yourself on that website. To when anyone comes onto your website and leads about us in

your services and maybe looks at your social handles, because at the bare minimum any company would

have, have these tools in place. Are they aligned with what the company wants to see themselves

as and wants to represent themselves as? Now, as the company grows and becomes bigger and wants to

potentially look at maybe launching new products or discussing what they do with customers,

they may then look to create some content that could be used both on the PR and on the marketing

site. And a good example of that would be the custom case study or customs test and

testimonial. You might find that an MSP is growing, they're getting more customers in a certain

vertical and they've just decided that actually they're getting more customers that are falling within

a particular vertical market and they want to now attract more. So how they're going to do that,

they might then have a few of their customers talk to what they're doing, it could be that they're

doing more with the restaurant or retail space. So therefore they might speak to their customers,

have them agree to a customer case study and then potentially go to the media if we want to take

it to the level where we're going to position them as an expert in that particular vertical,

they may go to publications in that vertical and ask to be part of a technology feature,

for example, in a retail publication that's sold to in the B2B space to raise awareness of what

they're doing within particular retail verticals and how they're bringing value proposition to

that particular market and then they're then moving into a different form of PR where they're

using PR to attract more customers, build their reputation and be able to be seen as an MSP

that's serving that particular space, for example. And that's probably exactly where my mind

immediately goes when I think of PR, I think of I'm looking at a magazine and there's either

a one-page advertisement for the MSP, all there's all there's an article which features a topic

that the MSP helps with which would in my mind have a higher value than seeing a paid for bought

adverse as it works and then I think this is a valid term, is it an advertorial where you effectively

have mash up of the two, but ideally you want to be unpaid or the perception that it's unpaid

and of course to get to that point you've had to put money behind it because you've had to have

back activity to promote to the journalists to have that article included.

That's great, yeah that's exactly right and I think that's where us as an agency we can come in

and do some of that work or we work in collaboration with our clients who may have someone in-house

that can potentially create some of that content and then we help revise it and ensure that

a standard that an editor would be interested to take that particular content.

However, there's a tricky one because I do think sometimes if the content is a bit too self-serving

it does fall into that advertorial side where an editor will look at it and think this is not

poor leadership, this is not something that is adding value, it's more self-serving and that's when

we have to look at how we can provide some visionary content and weave in some examples of case

studies where there's been success in certain verticals and that comes with art of art.

I guess it's experienced and an understanding of what is required to be able to get earned coverage

versus paid coverage but I do think there needs to be a combination of all. You have to your

own coverage is your website, your blogs, your socials and then you've obviously got the paid

side where you might pay to have advertisement or advertorials, you've got the earned side where

you work with the influencers like the editors or in some cases the industry analysts if you are

influencing a technology analyst, if you're influencing like a technology analyst as part of

your communications program or of course in the devices an influencer could be also one of the

the people that you need to influence, it doesn't necessarily have to be a publication anymore

as well. So there's various layers to this, it's not as simple as it seems, I think sometimes

that's the best way to describe it. I'll pick up on the definition which really resonated for me,

paid and earned. I see PR as the earned part of it and I think that's really useful and of course

we're trying to simplify, condense down what is an incredibly complex topic and discipline

into something more sort of bite size for us to understand and there'll be limitations to that.

But that said to put you on the spot maybe to leave our listeners with some some solid actions,

activities topics to think about to get them started on an earned journey for example as part

of their overall marketing and communications mix, some tips and tricks to get started.

I think the most important thing is understanding, you know who you are, it's really you have to

go back to the basics, what does your company represent, what is it that you offer the market,

who is it that you offer this to because you need to have clear a clear idea or the

how you will describe your business and how and what services you provide and

what value it brings to your customers and once you've defined those areas within your business

it's good to then go back and look at what you own the earned part of your the mix of content

that you put out there externally and check to see you know what you've got on your website

and your social handles does represent the overall objectives of who you are, what you offer,

what value it brings because if you haven't got that particular section correct then

to be able to then go out and speak to reporters about where the market's going and what you're

doing then change that market, you almost be your foundations may not be right before you can

externally go out and speak to anyone and influence them on what value you're really offering

the market you're in. I think that's very important but I guess if you're a company that has

everything in hand and you've got all of that in place, I think the most important thing is

having a look at what you're planning each quarter in terms of in terms of your communications plans

in and linking that back to your business objectives for the year. So if your business objective

for the year is to have the larger new product that you're looking to have your existing customers maybe

once you move to you need to then look at what communications you're going to put in place to show

the value of that moves, the benefit of that move, examples of people that have made that move

but it really depends on what stage you are in your business but making sure the foundations are

right is very important. And of course a sentiment that had a banana echo in our conversations

with our clients around business planning and really getting back to what do you really want to

be and achieve and if you can get that bit right then the rest of it really flows. And I guess

from perhaps the third thing that I would see in terms of the sort of PR, the PR activation

would be to perhaps start to see if you can develop those journalistic and analyst relationships

and maybe that's where someone like yourself could help in terms of providing perhaps if not

a sort of fully outsourced maybe it's almost like a sort of coaching educational type service

to help a marketee become a communicator. Yeah definitely I think you touched upon that the

relationships are very important. We spend a lot of time getting to know people that we work with

in terms of the editors, the writers, what their interests are, what they would like to hear

about, what they're writing about and also I guess the relationships are important and

they put anyone working in-house for them to be able to get in front of the right report

because it's ensuring that what you offer in them is the right information to actually even

make them interested in wanting to engage. That's something that we definitely have helped clients

with, you also help clients with how to engage and speak to a reporter, what the do's and don't

so we help with the message that they may want to relay how to really be able to communicate that

message in a way in which it will be received well. I guess the reputational management side of

things is another area that we help clients with. There's a lot of things that can happen in the

business that can derail a business so we do also help them with planning for any types of

crisis and it doesn't always have to be a major crisis to be prepared to communicate but we do

also help with different scenarios where they might need to have some pre-prepared content

to go out to their customers to go out to the reporters that will be writing about their particular

crisis. So there's so many layers to what we offer and that I think is an area we'd love to get

into maybe on a future podcast around, I mean, from an IT perspective, there's plenty of

opportunities to have crises that need to be, that need to be carefully managed and I don't think

anyone in the IT world is outside of that risk so that would perhaps be a good starting point

for our next conversation. Absolutely, I'm happy to do that. Brilliant, somehow we've nearly run

out of time but just before we summarize adding your report. I wanted to ask a question actually

because no podcast is complete now without a question about AI so I'm interested Rami to know

what extent is it a threat and to what extent is it an opportunity in your particular market?

This, I've actually been doing a lot of learning about AI and it has impacted the PR

in the sense that we are expected to move a lot faster, work a lot faster than we used to

and we already work very quickly in PR because obviously there's news about companies and events

happening all the time but I do think that AI tools have enabled PRs to be able to work faster

to use, there is some good tools that enable you to analyse content a lot faster.

We have come across people that and we've had to provide some talks to clients about the risk

involved in using AI for for leadership and creating content with AI because

it does mean that you get a lot of the content that people generate and push out there.

It could actually impact reputation because ultimately it is really obvious when content

is created with AI and there's so many AI checkers now so you would know if something has been

created and with AI so we are having to do more educational talks with clients around the

do's and don't so when you're using AI for communications. I recently spoke to a company around

SEO and there's been this people using AI to be able to do search and therefore there's been

a discussion around is the value of SEO still strong and that the answer is yes it is because

content out there on the web is where the AI is are searching to get to gather this information.

I think it was down to the cons or the communications only sites need to be correct for the AI tools

to be able to extract information and the information they extract you want it to be

accurate and incredible. So yeah the AI is impacting the PR world but I do think then there

is best practice around how to do this and also there is more there's agencies that are using AI

but they also need to be quite transparent with the clients on how it's being used and there's

policies being developed now and how AI should be even used in the creative world. Yeah a lot

happening there there in this well fascinating and it's going to be difficult to

totally predict where it's going looking to ensure that your copywriting isn't obviously AI

right where are we going to be at the point where all copywriting is AI and human writing is the

exception and everyone should accept it and it is what it is because we've moved on.

I don't think that will happen personally because I feel I feel as though we will be very restricted

there would be no there would be no uniqueness in the content if it was all AI because the AI

content that's being generated is being generated with what's available. Now if there's more

if there's restrictions in what's available we're going to be then restricted and what content

is being generated. So I don't think that if I don't think that could happen because then we'll be

very limited as a philosophical area of creativity and the extent to which you get general AI

and full creativity. Sounds like that's a conversation for another day. I think it's fascinating

this whole thing, this whole subject and where it's going and how your job, Ramay will change over

the next few years because it's going to isn't it as is ours of course. So it's going to be

fascinating to see how this all pans out. My own personal view here is that yes we can tell when

something is AI and when it's not but it's getting harder and harder it's moved on massively in the

last two, three years. I'm fairly convinced most copy that goes out nowadays has is AI in

there somewhere if only creating ideas and structure and what have you. Yeah it's an interesting

area. Dan what are your thoughts? This this whole topic of AI being exposed and the PR element

my mind immediately went to Lipsinkers and Millie Vanillie where the PR impacts at them getting

caught out and see so I think I think I wholeheartedly agree with with Ramay in so far as there's

got to be there's got to be some originality in there some actual intelligence at some point

for the artificial to to follow but yeah we certainly shouldn't be Lipsink in our PR and our content

I don't think and on that bombshell Ramay perhaps if anyone likes to carry on the conversation

for the philosophical or PR related to how best to get in touch. How best to get in touch you could

look at our website so that's tech cons of code at UK you could reach out to us the the easiest

way was be via info at tech cons.co.uk or reach out to me directly on LinkedIn I'm very active

on LinkedIn happy to connect there and speak to people directly. Very good thank you ever so much

for joining us and we'll we'll certainly get the next episode but and look forward to working

with you during 2026. Thank you. Looking forward to it. Thank you very much.