Most SMBs are invisible to the media — and now to AI. Patrick McCaully shows you how to fix that fast.
GROWTH PILLAR: Marketing & Branding
WHO THIS IS FOR: SMB owners / Solopreneurs / Corporate escapees / Leaders building systems
WHAT THEY'LL GAIN: Actionable PR strategies, a low-cost tactic to boost AI search citations, and a clear framework for getting earned media coverage that builds real credibility.
Most small businesses never get media coverage. Not because they aren't interesting. Because they don't know what the media is actually looking for.
Patrick McCaully has been on both sides of that desk. Twenty-five years as a PR strategist. Before that, a broadcast journalist fielding pitches from people who had no idea what made a story worth telling. He knows exactly why most SMBs get ignored — and what to do about it.
In this East Trade Winds session, Patrick breaks down the shift that's quietly reshaping visibility for every business owner. AI search tools now pull 94% of their citations from non-paid sources. Of that, 82% is earned media. If you're not showing up in earned coverage, you're not showing up at all.
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Patrick (00:06)
By the way, this is Claudia Jean, the Duchess, who insists on being on my lap for this whole thing.
Okay, so a little bit about Point Man. We've been around for 25 years, have represented like everyone and everything that you could possibly imagine in that time. Before that, I was a broadcast journalist. So I worked on three of the four Canadian assignment desks and I'm the poor guy who was there getting really bad calls from, you know, big PR agencies with horrible pitches about stuff that wasn't newsworthy. So then I decided to go out on my own and here we are 25 years later.
first thing I want to talk about is the seismic shift in public relations in the world. So everyone is moving from a Google search for products and services and consultants to AI search. And how that ties in with PR is that AI knows the difference between things that you've paid for and things that are earned and things that are rankings and stuff like that.
There's a study that just came out from an organization called Buck Rack. And they said that 94 % of AI citations come from non-paid sources. And of that 82 % is earned media. So online, print, radio, whatever, that is what AI is looking for and scraping when it asks like, who's the best financial planner in Ottawa?
And you need to be in that search or you are invisible now. It's a big opportunity and it's a big challenge. It also looks at things like rankings. It also looks at things like, you know, podcasts, that kind of thing. Things that are easily categorized on websites. So you got to make sure that you list all of your awards and accomplishments on there. So you want to make it as easy as possible for AI to find you so that you can compete with everyone else.
It's also a great opportunity to kick the ass of your competitors if you have a string of earned media things, you're in the media on a regular basis, and you have a lot of things that can be cited. I'm to give you a free, currently available little loophole in that you can write a press release now. And this is really, you'd never do this to try to get media coverage because media is not going to care.
But if you write a press release that basically says, I'm amazing says me and the name of your company, and you kind of go on about how great, and I just did this myself a couple of weeks ago. I was talking about like a award that I won like in January or something like that, and send it out over a wire distribution service, like a news wire is something like $200 US or something. And it'll go to everywhere in Canada and everywhere in the US.
this news release is just like constantly like, I'm amazing. Here's how I'm amazing. I'm the best in the world. Look at me. And that will actually get cited currently by AI. I think it's a loophole that won't last forever. So if you're looking for like an inexpensive way to like actually get your AI citations up like right away and cost effectively, that is a really good way to do it. And I would do that like,
sooner than later because they're going to find out that that's a loophole at some point and close the door on that. a couple of things here. this is what chat GPT thinks you care about as consultants and small business owners. How do you get media coverage when the news cycle is an absolute meat grinder? Totally agree that it's a meat grinder, by the way, without getting political.
Like the world is melting people. So you really, you can't pull punches right now. Anything that you do has to be legitimately newsworthy, legitimately interesting, not incredibly self-serving. And like, you got to go to the mat, you know? I'm literally sending out a press release next week that has Grawlix. I don't know if everyone knows what that is, but that's like when you say the F word and like three of the letters are like stars or pound signs.
That's where we're at, man. You need to grab media attention. You need to scream at them to get it. So it's, won't tell you what the headline is, but yeah, basically I'm using that word in terms of how the challenges of small businesses in Canada right now are playing out. It's from a survey. Things that still work, that still cut through, humor is like, no one does it.
in PR because I think everyone's a little bit afraid of the media because they never set foot in a newsroom. So humor really works and you got a lot of board assignment editors that really wants to see something interesting. So if you can put together a humorous press release about anything, I think you're gonna get pretty good results from that. And then obviously other things that work, negativity unfortunately plays a lot better in the media than anything else.
proprietary information that shows trends and, you know, things that are not obvious to the world. But think about like how it affects the end consumer and humans and like what you really have to talk about that's interesting. And someone asked me, what is the name of the press release you just mentioned? So EIN Newswire is a wire distribution service.
you would write a press release yourself. You'd go to iNewswire and you would send it out over the Newswire. The Newswire exists so that it can send it to news aggregator sites. So like the Globe and Mail has a news aggregator side that just puts press releases up. And it's not really earned media coverage. It's just like verbatim what your press release is. So multiply that by 200 different sites around the world.
Maybe you got an associated press, you get on like local television shows, websites in like Louisiana, know, Fox News, Louisiana, that kind of thing. And it's a fairly good way of getting your name out there. And with AI search, it's a big deal. So hopefully that answers that question.
Why do so many SMBs get ignored by media even when their business is generally interesting? Well, because that's subjective. The reason that people hire me is that I'm a very direct person and I will honestly tell you if something is newsworthy or not. Like spoiler alert, 99.9 % of the time it isn't. So it's important to you. You think it's the most amazing thing ever. You're very close to your business and
you're emotional about it. And I understand that. And I care about my business a lot too. But like you got a new product or service, you got the best of breed in your opinion and technology. That is not newsworthy. That's your opinion, right? So you have to think about serving the media and serving the end user, the people that are going to be watching a segment or reading it. And I think that's where most people fail.
to really understand what the media is looking for. you you need to be objective or as objective as you possibly can be about your own news. And I swear to God, 99.9 % of the time, you're not objective about it and it's not newsworthy. And I have to be brutally honest with people because I'm not interested in doing stuff that doesn't get media coverage. So we have to create something. So anecdotally, I had a guy who was a investment advisor.
And he came to me and he said, Hey, I have a book, a self published book that I'm writing about being an investment advisor for 30 years. This is a great media thing. said, Hey man, that's great. No one cares because no one does. Media doesn't care. And it's self-serving. You think you're the greatest investment executive in the world, but that's your opinion. So what you have to do is something that's different and interesting and maybe humorous. So what we ended up doing instead,
was we did a survey to a thousand Canadians about fake investment terms. So things that sound like they exist, but don't. So, hey man, do you have DSP 2016 and forward yield disbursement funds and white chip stocks? And like 43 % of Canadians said that they did. Things that don't exist, they have them in their portfolio. So it's funny, it's serving a message that we don't ask enough questions to financial advisors.
It's an interesting story. It's different than whatever one else was doing. And we ended up on the front page of the Globe and Mail business section with that and probably about another hundred hits. So, you know, think outside the box, do something different. Don't just say, hey man, I got this self-published book and I'm the greatest in the world because no one cares. Right?
Yeah, so when I say media, I'm talking about classic earned media. So television, radio, print, online, all of that. I don't really get into podcasts per se, although a lot of the time, everything is everything. So if you get onto a TV station, like take Global News, for example, they have radio stations that they'll probably use that clip in. They'll use it online.
They'll use it in their podcast. If you're on like a morning show or something like that, they'll package that clip so that it's online. So you end up getting a lot of hits out of one hit and it can be spread across the entire global news network. So you're in Alberta, Ottawa, Winnipeg, Quebec, because they have a lack of content. the most content is being generated by the least number of journalists in history.
So they're repurposing a lot of content. They really need content. And it's brutal out there. They need you to come to them with interesting ideas. ideally, you want to gain and sustain coverage. So the maximum you'd ever want to send out a press release is like once every four weeks. More than that, and you're just
barraging the media with too much stuff. And your quality is not going to be there. Realistically, think I probably, with clients that are on a retainer kind of situation, get something out between every six and eight weeks a pitch. And that's a really good way of just keeping relevant, not overcrowding the media with too much information, and still having your brand get a lot of recent earned media coverage, which is hugely important.
to those AI rankings that I mentioned earlier. Do you speak up about your expertise if the subject is in the current news? Yeah. I mean, so that's called news jacking. it's valid, but I feel personally like it's ambulance chasing because then you're competing with everyone else in the world, right? So breaking news comes out about the insurance industry didn't pay out on something. Every insurance company in the country
is gonna wanna do that story and they'll have their PR team trying to reach a newsroom. It's gonna come down to who reached out first. I know that PR is sold on relationships. No one does stories because they like you. They do the story because you're the first or they do the story because you have the best story. It's like the last meritocracy in the world. So, not about connections, it's about being first. I would always rather put
PR energy into something that's my own story for a client. And if you do your own, if you're using your own statistics, your own proprietary information or your own survey, you can put it out whenever you want at the time that maximizes coverage for you. And in the world, the way it is right now, like, you know, you've got a great story, but then like they, they bomb the strain of her moves or whatever. That's not the time has ended up. You, need to react quickly and not.
rely on news jacking, in my opinion. I just don't do it. Is it print audio or video content? It's all of those things. So you can have a pitch that you're putting out and it can have all kinds of different components to it. And in fact, the more media that you have with your media pitch, the better it's gonna be. if you really wanna be on online sites, have something interesting that the media
can point people to. So same guy, financial planner. did, financial advisor breakup cards. So it was like, I actually have it here. we did these like hallmark like cards. So the idea was it was a humor play about how we don't ask enough. we're, too Canadian about our investments and we just were probably inherited our parents financial planner, but we need to break up cause they're not giving us good advice. So it had like a funny kind of, is a
It's not me, it's you. And then there's like a poem inside. And the whole idea is you'd go to the site to download the card to give to your financial advisor so that you can actually break up with them. And that provides a reason for the media to guide the media to guide people to your site, put a link in, and there's something active and interesting there. you you can think of ways to bring, you know, stuff like a digital card or like an overlay map.
or whatever to try to make it more of a compelling pitch to the media. If no one knows your brand, can you still win press? Absolutely. I would always rather be like the second or third or 10th person in the field because you got nothing to lose. The guy who's number one could do a really bold press pitch. And potentially there's downside to that.
You've got nothing to lose. You can be scrappy. You can do something that's really different and you have to in order to get to get noticed. So all the time I have clients that you've never heard of that we get major national coverage just because the idea is so interesting and good. Is there a timing schedule for releases? So widely debated. I still like to send out a press release on a Monday like 9 a.m.
Monday, Eastern time, because I want to have as much time to pitch it before it seems like it's an old story. So if you send it out on a Friday, then it's going to seem like an old story by Monday of the next week. If you send it on on a Thursday, then you got one day to do that. So my preference is always to send something out on a Monday and have that entire time to pitch things, just to maximize.
the potential amount of coverage. Story that actually captured the imagination of, some print press or some, some TV time or whatever.
Bernie (14:05)
If you had a, if you had a
How are, what are the types of.
Patrick (14:15)
things
that you would do to actually continue to ride that wave after the initial hit. that you can start, what are some of the things that your clients do? Yeah. So, I mean, leveraging the coverage, you know, obviously over social media, it's huge to be able to point to that. People will put like a, as seen on breakfast television logo on their website. I think you get a lot of use out of an online or a broadcast.
Bernie (14:22)
Stay current.
Patrick (14:45)
You can put it in your newsletters. You can make it part of your pitches to people. I have somebody that I just did something with. they're probably going to get acquired by Deloitte because they had so much media coverage. They said, we can't ignore you anymore. You have so much media coverage out there because it was such a bold thing that so many people saw. You just want to amplify through all of your potential ways to do it.
people seeing that story. like put a little money into LinkedIn boosting of posts and shamelessly self promote, rinse and repeat basically.
Bernie (15:18)
Are you saying then that becomes the more media coverage you get, the more valuable you become? The shiny object? is it temporary or is it set in stone?
Patrick (15:29)
It depends on what your goal is, right? But I mean, you wanna be part of the conversation everywhere. whether it's just to drive AI results now, I think that's on its own is a compelling reason for PR, but also just staying ahead of your competitors, reminding people that you're around, reminding people what your product is and that it's available.
being a name that people trust. It's all about that third party credibility. So whether you have an enormous amount of confidence in the media or not, it's a third party endorsement of you and your product that you're legit and not a scammer. So, you know, the failure that I see with most clients that they don't, you know, do, not that most clients don't do it, but when it is a failure, what they do.
is that they don't post it all on their website. They don't have a newsroom. They don't push it out on their social. Like every single piece of coverage that you get, throw it out there so that everyone can see it you're building credibility and you're continuing to be part of a conversation.
Noemi (16:29)
Thank you for this Patrick, because it was so interesting. I, when I started my first business in the online world.
like back in the early 2000s, I remember we used to do so many online press releases and it was part of our marketing strategy. It's like we pushed them out and it really worked for SEO as well. It was amazing. And somehow it just like completely forgot about that. And thank you for bringing that back. Now I think about it differently again, so we can totally use that in, in 2026. So thank you for that.
Bernie (16:57)
So Patrick, another question, if company experiences an adverse event, so here, you know, the Canadian blood supply had an adverse event that transpired maybe decade, two decades ago, maybe even longer ago. My memory is fresh, but the time has gone by. Is this a means to control the narrative, not control it as the mistakes happened and acknowledging it, but is there a recipe for
for a good messaging for company that's not, know, stuff happens and it's being corrected, but at the same time, the reputation's tarnished.
Patrick (17:31)
Yeah, I mean, I guess the answer is it depends. I don't think there's any, know, every case is different. And I mean, interestingly, nine times out of 10, it's probably smarter not to comment on something. You're not going to win in social media or people's comments ever for something negative. You know, even if you correct the problem, like I used to represent Flight Network, which was an online travel site. Somebody would always be like, I'm to go to the media because I didn't get my refund on this and blah, blah.
And even when they stepped up and refunded something that they didn't need to refund because someone like missed their flight because they were sleeping, it's not like they take that down. So you don't really get a benefit there. A lot of the time, the smart thing to do is not comment, which is very hard to do because that someone's like extorting you online. And it's very hard after the fact to prove that you did the right thing. So it's a very murky, murky waters.
There are times when you have to absolutely have to respond. If someone is seriously injured, if somebody dies, that's not gonna go away. You need to respond or you're get people showing up to your business with cameras like filming you going to your car and running away and locking the front door and you're gonna look guilty as hell. So I think that there's definitely times where you have to respond.
I don't think there's any rule. I think everything is up for debate other than if there's a serious injury or somebody dies, you absolutely have to respond.
You know, the best example that I think I've ever seen is like years ago, maple leaf foods had that listeriosis thing happen. And they did this video Video is incredibly useful. And they actually, they underproduced it. So it was like, it was like the president of maple leaf foods looked like he hadn't slept for a week, bags under his eyes looked like crap. And he said like, look, we're really sorry.
They underproduced it. was badly lit. It was shaky. And it just really provided this. And that was completely orchestrated, by the way. That wasn't an accident. It provided this kind of visceral feeling that like we're legitimately sorry and we screwed up and like we're suffering with you. That is brilliant media relations.
They're boxing the story into where they can contain it. Right. Yeah. That's that's that's all you want to do. And get the box small enough that, you know, you can contain it. Yeah. And they and they controlled that narrative. And then like in contrast, the guy that was cheating on his wife at the concert and got, you know.
Bernie (19:37)
the negative story is tri-
Patrick (19:52)
And then their response was like firing the person that booked the tickets and like just pretending that nothing happened.
speaker-6 (19:58)
I want you to address framing because a lot of people, they only give a certain amount of information. And what happens is they don't give enough information, which allows people to put in their own narrative. And that's a perfect example of what you talked about. The guy who was at an event and his life got ruined because he was with one of his coworkers, blah, blah, blah. So I think it's important that people
really put the details in. Because if you don't, people put in their own details and that's where the trouble begins.
Patrick (20:34)
I think that's a fair point. That's a point. Without getting, I could talk about this all day, but as a former journalist, I can tell you that the editorial standards of the world have really gone down in the last 25 years. And you're lucky if the media gets the name of the company right throughout the article. mean, I'd have all the time.
speaker-6 (20:36)
Get into that a little bit.
Patrick (20:54)
Come on, spell check people, you know? So yeah, you want to, you don't want to give more information than you need to give away, but yes, you have to have enough information that it tells the complete story. It's a balancing act, because you don't want to create further questions, but you want to give enough information that people can do the story properly with your point of view. And it's the vetted information that you're comfortable with.
speaker-6 (21:21)
Thank you. Great. Great job, by the way. Yeah. About your EN, EIN Newswire distribution. What are you paying for that? Because I went online just now and there's all different prices.
Patrick (21:35)
Yeah, I think I got one of six distribution packages. And I actually split it with someone. So you can always do that too. You can split it with someone So I think I paid like 300, 400 US or something. Which is by contrast, Canada Newswire or PR Newswire in the US, which is the only distribution service that the media actually looks at or cares about.
can be like $2,000 for one press release depending on how many words it is. So I is cheap.
speaker-6 (22:01)
Wow.
And how do you compare, because I do videos, I love videos. How do you compare the attention span on what really translates into business, print to video? Do you have the statistics there?
Patrick (22:21)
I don't. I can tell you that there's ways to leverage things. I always recommend. So I did this. I did this pitch years ago for hip camp, which is like the the Airbnb of outdoor stays they were launching in Canada. We did Canada's best summer job contest, like a national contest thing. I think we got three hundred and fifty media hits and
We took all of that print content, all that video content, all that radio content. And I did like a super cut of the video that was just every time that they mentioned Hip Camp, where they said something interesting. Like one guy said like, hey, if you haven't heard of Hip Camp, now you're going to hear about Hip Camp. You know, put it in there with some music behind it. And I used all those different forms of media coverage to put into a video so that I could, you know, post it on YouTube and...
you know, have something really engaging for people. So I think there's a lot of different ways to leverage even static things like online or radio coverage or whatever so that you are constantly getting it out there. But definitely, I think video for me anyway, I mean, I have a broadcast background so it's you know, biased opinion, but for me, video is the most compelling thing. And you should definitely be trying to- Yes!
speaker-6 (23:28)
Yes. Thank you.