PR, Sales, Marketing: Their Roles in Oil and Gas Success

Welcome to the Oil and Gas Sales and Marketing podcast, where every week your hosts, Mark LaCour and Matt Bertram share proven strategies and real-world tactics to help you connect with customers and close more deals. Let's do this. Hey, welcome back to the Oil and Gas Sales and Marketing podcast.

And Matt and I are joined today by Paige and David. How are you doing, Paige and David? Good. We're good. Thanks for having us on, guys. Of course, what the audience doesn't know is all the hoops we've jumped to for the last two months

trying to get the four of us together. The audience is going to think it was easy. The audience, it was not, but we've managed to pull it off. Paige, I want to jump right into it. PR, a lot of people, myself included, really don't understand the distinction between PR

and marketing and crisis communication. Can we start there? What is PR and why does the oil and gas industry need it? Yeah, so a lot of people lump public relations and with marketing, which there are a lot of gray areas. PR focuses on managing and working

towards a positive perception with your stakeholders. So it's not just customers. It's your employees. It's the communities that you have facilities in or where you work and operate. It's the industry at large.

It's kind of all these spaces and all these audience that have different touch points with your organization. Ultimately, the goal is if something were to go wrong, which hopefully nothing ever, ever goes wrong, that you're viewed in a more favorable light because you've been working on this for the whole time

or think of it as like pushing a social capital. You're building a social capital in the space to draw upon if something goes not perfect. Yeah, you're just always building that credibility. And then touching on the crisis communication aspect, there are specifics that are outside of us,

but we typically lump that in with public relations. Again, we want to be prepared before a chemical spill or an accident or an explosion at a rig site happens. So getting those plans in place, having everyone sort of understanding the plan and the process and knowing what they're doing

so that heaven forbid or God forbid if something happens, we know how to jump into action and there's already a plan in place because what don't want to happen is the local media or the national media to show up and say, hey, what's going on?

And our senior leaders or the boots on the ground have no clue either how to respond or what happened. Yeah, yeah. And I've actually seen that and it could destroy a company overnight. I do want to back you up a little bit

because you just made me think of something probably a year ago on one of our other podcasts, All In Gas This Week. Paige and I talked about this company, a Canadian company called TC Energy and they were building a pipeline

and it went through a local community that was an indigenous tribe and both the local community and the indigenous tribe fought against it and was going to kill this project. And TC Energy did something that I still to this day

can't believe in All In Gas company did. They stopped, they wins that local community, they set up town hall meetings and for six months they met with everybody and when they were finished, not only did everybody support the pipeline project,

they gave ownership to the indigenous tribe and they hired them as employees. So that to me after you just rattle it off, that's PR. It is, it is. So that's more the community relations angle. You're exactly right.

Those types of situations happen. Also think about when you're building a facility and let's use Conrad, Texas as an example, right? Or frankly anything between Houston and Dallas along the 45 corridor, you have really nice communities being built.

I think that's one of the fastest growing areas in America. So if you're buying a $300,000 or $400,000 house and then you find out somebody's going to build a plant behind you and they're going to have test rigs and they're going to be operating 24 hours a day,

seven days a week and it's going to be noisy and all of these things, suddenly you've got a whole bunch of angry constituents that don't want your facility going in. All of that goodwill, the communication, maybe making some changes

or at least being polite enough to listen and take some feedback can really go a long way. Yeah, that's a powerful, because you know our industry is having to deal with this negative public perception, not just here in the United States,

but all over the world. And it's affecting our ability to operate. It's even affecting our ability to hire and retain talent. This is great, thank you. Now I actually think I do understand the difference between PR marketing and the crisis communication part.

People, if you're listening to this, you have to have something in place ahead of time. You can't wait till it happens. I've seen it too many times where a company, even a small company has an incident and just like you said, Paige, the local news shows up.

They start asking the frontline workers who are not prepared. The frontline workers are trying to help and explain what's going on, but it ends up getting twisted, headlines get pulled out of it

and all of a sudden this incident turns into this major deal that literally can destroy a company overnight economically. So if you're listening to this and you don't have a crisis communication plan in place, you need one. David, all right, so Paige just explained everything

from that point of view, but from your point of view, you've been operating in Houston for a long time. You kind of fill in some of those gray areas that are in between the three little pillars we just talked about, marketing PR and crisis communication. One of the things I love about what you do

is your ability to tell great stories, not boring stories. And I kind of want you to get into that because the audience is going, what the hell is Mark talking about great stories versus boring stories?

Yeah, totally. First of all, the whole time you all were talking about crisis comms, all I could picture is Dwight Schruten as underwear. Do y'all remember that episode? Yes.

Oh my gosh, that was one of the best Jim Pranks. Anyway, yeah, man, I appreciate the question. It's interesting because I've been focused on creative storytelling, branding, like creative campaign development for, I mean, 16 years, something like that.

And being based in Houston, you're kind of constantly in these conversations with folks in the industry that whether culturally feel like, hey, we can only push things so far or maybe we're in a conservative industry.

It is what it is, right? There is a level of kind of appropriateness, but what we like to really hone in on and push is that there's a sandbox that we kind of operate in within the energy industry. And most of us, we like to kind of sit

in the middle of that sandbox. We don't want to take big risks. We want to be sure everything we're putting out there is true, but the opportunity to kind of push to the edges of that sandbox is where there's kind of an opportunity to differentiate.

I know that's not a stretch on the surface to say it benefits us or it benefits our clients to differentiate, but here's kind of the data-driven reason why. The LinkedIn B2B Institute and System One, really reputable research firm did a study,

I don't know, maybe four or five years ago. They basically assessed all the B2B ads that were running on LinkedIn's platform. The output of that study was that of those ads, 75% of those ads that were assessed for overall effectiveness scored a one star or less

on a scale of one to five stars in terms of overall effectiveness. So what they were seeing was, hey, in B2B, there's a crisis of creativity. There's an opportunity to stand out and folks just aren't stepping into it.

And why does that matter? Well, the reason it matters is that in B2B buying cycles, on average, we use the term in-market and out-market, 95% of your target audience. So let's say you need to get in front of 100 people.

You've got a hundred decision makers that you're selling your product or service into. At any point in time, on average, the study shows us is that only five of those hundred are in any sort of buying cycle, which means they're ready to receive your message,

they're ready to listen to you. And maybe, and we'll talk about this later, I'm sure, but maybe they're not even ready to listen to you yet, but they're at least in the early stages of consideration. And so what that means is 95 of those folks, you're not even on their radar.

The problem with not investing in pushing to the edges of that sandbox and being more memorable in the way you produce your content and campaigns is that you're wasting, I mean, if you spent $100, you're wasting 95% of that investment because those folks aren't gonna transition in-market

for another six months or nine months or 12 months. What that means is we're more so than being in the marketing industry or the oil and gas sales or account management or whatever it may be, we're in the business of memory. If we're not investing in creating content

that is creative and memorable and yes, true, then we're wasting an opportunity to sow into those folks that haven't transitioned in-market yet. That's why we're big believers that, man, when you have an opportunity to push the boundaries a little bit, to differentiate,

to be a little bit more creative and deep thinking in how you tell your story that it's gonna pay off in the long run. David, I think that's so true. I've seen this like similar data with Super Bowl ads, right? People invest so much money in these Super Bowl ads

of the production and delivery of it. They might even remember the ad, but they don't remember the brand associated with the ad so that it doesn't have that retention and if people are not in that buying cycle, then all that money went to waste.

And so I definitely resonate with what you're saying. Can I add, if I can jump in, I hope this is suitable for the show, but obviously this is such a long-standing industry. There are massive companies and I think obviously this pertains to oil and gas,

traditional oil and gas. There is a mindset and I know it is still there and I mean, the theme is just don't eff it up. That's almost the saying is like, we're here, people know we're here, we have a reputation, people hire us because we've been here for the longest

and we've got the credibility and there's no incentive for whether it's the CMO or the executive team or whoever it is to take any sort of risk. It's almost like we're very comfortable in our space and we know we're not very good at everything, but it's served us well enough for the long haul.

And David, you can probably speak to this a lot more than me. We've talked over the last 10 years, all of us, about the great crew change and just the generational shift, but it feels like now more than any years in the past, it's like as marketers and communicators, we've got to start taking a look at stuff

and either changing the way we communicate, being a little bit more assertive or bold and how we're presenting ourselves. And David, I know you probably got the data, but do you wanna talk any about the age or how people are consuming or receiving information now?

Okay, so this is the truth. I'm a creative guy, so I'm actually not super into the data, but over time I've had to kind of build into my understanding of why I care so much about creative with the support of data. I'm gonna sound really data-driven in the next 20 seconds,

but just know that that's not really who I am at my core. Two answers to this. One's gonna be data, one's gonna be common sense. It is not a stretch for any of us to think about our parents and then to think about our kids or even maybe just folks a little bit younger than us or even our age.

If we're buying a new flat screen TV for our living room, we have no interest in sitting down with a Samsung rep and a Vizio rep and hearing them go to battle. We're just gonna do our research online and we're probably gonna make a decision and just go in and buy it.

So it's not a stretch to say as our buyers get not younger, but I mean, we think about millennials as young. Millennials are 70% of B2B buyers now or millennials are younger. It's common sense to understand that millennials are gonna buy and make decisions differently than our parents would have.

Think 2000 to 2025. 2000, people were willing to sit down with a sales rep and just be introduced to their brand. Whether you believe in the sales funnel and marketing funnel, believe that it's still relevant or not. Let's just use those terms.

They're in a phase of awareness. They're willing 25 years ago to sit down with a salesperson just to be introduced to their brand. Just to go, hey, I'm glad to know that you're here. I'm glad to know what your pitch is, what your value prop is.

We'll consider it in the future. Now, 25 years later, this is where the data comes in. A study from Sixth Sense said that of current B2B buyers in 2025, those buyers want to work their way 70% of the way down the funnel on their own

before they're even willing to engage with sales. So that means they're going through awareness, consideration, comparison. They're probably already getting to the point where they kind of already know who they want to go with before they even engage with sales.

Or at best, maybe they have a top three, but they've already got a value perception of you and they already kind of understand where they expect you to come in when you get into cost and scoping and all that kind of stuff.

If that's the case, if 70% of that traditional funnel no longer are sales really able to affect it, I like to use the analogy. It's like 25 years ago, if you were calling on your biggest prospect, would you send out your most horribly communicating,

unshaven salesperson with their shirt tail untucked, stumbling into this sales meeting to call on your biggest prospect? Of course not. So now 25 years later, if your website sucks, if your content's untrue and out of date

and everything you're equipping these buyers with to work their way 70% of the way down the funnel is crap. And you're just kind of going, hey, we got to cinch up on all that and we're just gonna sell, sell, sell, sell, sell, sell. Marketing is sales now.

That's the big change that I sit with a lot of leaders, especially in services companies that I hear the same thing over and over again. Two things, one, we're a sales driven organization and two, we're struggling to connect with decision makers as they get younger and younger.

And that's why. So man, this is right in our sweet spot. So Matt and I, the reason we have this podcast is we believe in now and in the future that sales and marketing should be joined at the hip. They should not be two separate organizations.

And everything you just rattled off, I lived through. So when I started selling enterprise in the late 80s, early 90s, literally companies want me to visit them to educate them. Exactly what you said.

This is what we offer. This is how we do it. This is our pricing, but there was no internet. So there was no way for them to have that education unless you brought that data to their office, which is what a sales call was.

That's the reason we talked about OTC a little bit before we turned the mics on. That's why the past OTC was so valuable is BP could show up and talk to every pipe manufacturer in the world and they would do deals on the showroom floor. But there was no internet.

Now BP is not at OTC because it doesn't need to go there to talk to every vendor. And then Paige, you brought up a perfect thing. Regardless of the age of the buyers, because you're right now, the oldest millennials in their 40s and their mid-level management,

what's going on is our industry, especially the public company. So the Exxons, the BP is the Chevron's Halliburton's. If they say or do anything wrong from a marketing point of view, it will hurt their shareholder value. Everybody knows who they are.

They have an established brand, so it's a risk to do something that's more creative than boring, which is the whole reason I'm hand it David. What's the difference between boring content and non-boring content, right? However, the salesperson is still super valuable,

but they just don't educate anymore. The salesperson now needs to be a problem solver and proactively reach out to clients that have a problem and say, look, not only do you have this problem and not only can I solve it, here's the financial impact to your company,

here's the reputation impact to your company. So now a salesperson needs to be much more of a marketer and for a marketing person to be effective. Now it's no longer doing print ads and conferences. Now you have to do the research and have account-based marketing

and understand what the problems are that those potential buyers are dealing with so you can help support the sales team with the collateral and the content. But in order to do that, you have to have what's in the salesperson's head,

which traditionally was separate from your organization. So y'all are all spot on and I'm literally living this right now. So with what's going on in the industry in 2025, we're having companies wanting to spend more money on marketing to all the gas companies,

especially the service companies. And so in order to do that, they're realizing that what worked in the past didn't work now, but then they have to be brave enough to do something that's different from the past,

which is what we're all kind of really talking about right now is that are you afraid to do something different than what you used to do? And the answer, if you want to be competitive is you don't have a choice. Yeah, so I want to build on where this conversation is going

because I think we're dead on. I want to circle back to what Paige, what you said. What I'm seeing is like that slogan. It was a marketing campaign actually, it was something like, no one ever got fired for hiring IBM,

or something like that. Yeah. And there's kind of- It wasn't quite that nice. Right? And I think that that's how I see a lot of executives operate.

And there's also kind of the safe harbor. I don't want to do anything different. And I think what I'm seeing more than anything else and to speak back to what David was saying is, there's so many companies that are still eaten off their brand. They established this long brand.

And I mean, the salespeople, when they're walking in the door, they got the big logo, they go to a small company. It's a different story. The doors don't open anymore. Okay?

Marketing's job, PR's job is to get the attention, to get those doors open so people are familiar with the brand. But before you start doing it, and I think that the big companies, like Mark said, absolutely, they don't want to mess it up. Just don't mess it up, don't get fired.

But all these other companies that no one's ever heard of, okay? And all the people that are trying to reach these bigger companies have to do what David's talking about. They have to push the limit. Like your website is your digital storefront.

I think everything's been accelerated, or it's your booth at OTC. I mean, you can do it online. You can bring somebody in. You can give them an interactive experience. You can showcase what you're doing,

and you can do it from a one-to-many standpoint. And all of the buying has been accelerated through COVID. I was just at a meeting right before this with a VPS sales, and what is it called, like Flight Squad, like where they send people all around the world to meet with people, the experts.

They didn't want to spend that money, and they couldn't spend that money during COVID. Now a call like this, you can reach these people, you can showcase things, and business is moving a lot faster. And like David said, people are moving through that funnel

so fast, okay? And by the time they get to you, I'm seeing this in the data with Google. That's a whole different conversation. But search volume in Google has dropped two websites. So search in Google's gone up,

but two websites has gone down 42%. People are not even leaving Google to figure it out, okay? They're not going to your website anymore. So it's about establishing your brand online, and be memorable like David's saying, so that people find you.

So I'll turn that over to see, I see a lot of heads nodding. I just wanted to add that to the conversation. It's a really great point. And selfishly, I'm gonna just jump back to PR. Just to give y'all a background on the PR side,

we don't have as much measureability. When I first came in the industry, I've been doing this for about 20 years. We used to tie third party or earned media. So if you've got a cover story on the front page of the business section,

the Houston Chronicle Sunday morning, we would cut that out. We would get a ruler, we would measure the size, and then we would go to the ad rates that the Chronicle offered. And we would say, okay, we got an eight by 12 article on Sunday, what would that cost if it were not?

And that was how we valued PR. It was an ad value equivalency. And to be honest, it's the most irrelevant thing ever. Number one, because the internet came on, right? And digital became so important. But number two, if you are being quoted as an expert

in a larger industry story, that's far more valuable than a paid for ad. If you're not going to put a price on a feature story on the Chronicle or if it's in the Wall Street Journal, whatever it is, that lends you far more credibility. So when we talk about all the marketing efforts,

it's the same on PR. What I find the best sort of measurability, and we use like Cision and Meltwater, and they'll give you the media rates or they'll tell you like how valuable the outlet is. What's valuable is when you get a case study published

or you're that expert in an article, someone reads it, or they're listening to a podcast and they're going into their CEO and saying, you need to listen to this guy or hey, did you see this case study? We dealt with this same thing.

And that's where the oil-filled service groups or whomever can really make a name for themselves because the larger operators are not going to have their name published. They don't want to take that risk. But that doesn't mean that there's not value

in the case study or whatever the challenge and the success was. And that's what opens doors. And the best thing I can hear on the outside for clients is when they get the comment like, man, we're seeing you everywhere.

We read this, we heard you here because that lends that credibility to say, these guys know what they're talking about. We need to be talking to them to solve our problem. And you're right about everything else in terms of the Google study and the websites.

That's why getting published in other places besides just your website is so important as for the third-party links or the backlink channels. Because what happens, you guys know better than I do, that's for sure. People publish a website

and think that is the end of the road. And we just did our website and it's great. Are you using it? Or did you just put a new skin on there and call it a day? David, you can say the same thing about videos, right? People make the video and then they have the video

and they're like, you got to do something with the video after you have it. Oh, it's the Field of Dreams building, hope they come. Yeah, it's funny, Matt. When you were talking, I was thinking about even how much search has changed,

where I think like 25 or 30% of searches now give us that AI result up top. We all even experientially can validate. Most of the time I'm not even getting to paid search ads. I'm certainly not getting to websites. I'm reading whatever AI is feeding me

and I'm basing my next action off of that. It's so dangerous to page this point to just go, hey, I'm gonna update my website and we're all gonna high-five and call it a day. And the data is gonna show us all this, but folks aren't gonna get there

until they're already like pretty convinced that you need to be considered as an option. But one other thing I point to is like a farming analogy. I think time is coming up right now a lot and maybe more so with services companies than EMPs. I'm hearing a lot right now.

Hey, I've got to generate this type of result on this product launch this year. Okay, great. What everybody's looking for is the marketing silver bullet, which all of us on this call know doesn't exist. But on top of that, what folks are really looking to do

is they're looking to reap having never sowed. And what I mean by that is it's like a farmer that forgot to plant seeds earlier in the year, saying, hey, go run out and shove it on the floor. Harvest this demand, grab all the demand but there's nothing to harvest.

Totally. I tend to look at investing in brand, investing in your digital real estate and footprint as sowing. And it's hard, especially when the market is down or things feel uncertain to invest in that because you're really investing in a result

three years from now, four years from now. And most of us, even in EMPs, a lot of the folks I talked to, the reality is or a service companies are selling into EMPs, they're going, hey, total cost of ownership doesn't matter to these guys,

they just need to show to their bosses that they saved as much money right now as possible. That pressure is very real. The question just becomes, when you expect to be able to launch a product three years from now and reap heavily

and you did not sow and your competitors did, you will lose. It's a scary part of what we do, especially in this industry, when folks want marketing to generate results like immediately.

I have a lot to out of this, but I want to ping Mark in here. Mark, what are your thoughts of what you're hearing? I'm actually sitting here taking notes guys, which is rare, seriously. This is the marking heavy side of the conversation

and I'm learning so much from all three of y'all. I run OGGN and we have a small marketing team, Matt's actually our CMO, but Matt and I rarely get a chance to talk because we're both so busy. So I'm literally taking notes

because this is gold. And for the sales leaders that are listening to, this is the type of stuff that you need to go walk over across the hallway, go to your marketing counterpart, pull them in and go, what does this mean?

How do we do this? Because all of you are exactly right and the world in oil and gas has changed. If you're a company trying to sell to the super majors, two things. First thing, know that it's gonna be the hardest,

lowest margin deal you'll ever do in your entire life. I know you want that logo, but maybe reconsider that because it's much easier to generate sales from the mid-sized companies than it is the big ones. They start treating you like a partner, not a vendor.

Whereas the super majors most probably will treat you like a vendor. Number two, if you don't get ahead of the marketing game, your sales are gonna suffer people. And I see it all the time. David, you brought this up very early in the conversation,

but years ago, it was the brand recognition, right? If I was looking for through tubing services, a wire line off the top of my head, Halliburton, Slammerjay, Baker Hughes, right? And maybe Weatherford. Now they have hundreds of competitors

that do stuff really cool, better, faster, safer, but you may not even know about them. However, if you're one of the big service companies, I just rattled off, and you're not getting ahead of your marketing game, these younger, more nimble companies,

not only are they gonna pass you up, they're gonna eat your lunch from a sales point of view. Don't think that just because you're big red or big blue, that's gonna protect you, it's not. And if you look at the financials from the last quarter from those big service companies,

they're all suffering right now. Part of it's the market, but part of it is smaller, more nimble companies are nipping at their heels, and they're not taking much market share away yet. However, all of us remember these companies

that nobody had heard of before, Amazon, Facebook, Metta, right? At some point, they were the underdogs, and they came out of nowhere, and they own the market now, and it's the same way in the awful service of space.

If you're one of the big companies, and you're not getting your messaging out there in a way that your audience wants to consume it, and if you're not educating, you're hurting your future sales efforts, which is gonna hurt your financial performance,

and allow your competitors to catch up and pass you. One of the things, guys, that I'm seeing, like when I was at OTC, I was talking to a number of CMOs, and I was like, what are you doing to target AI overviews, or what are you, oh, I have a data science team for that.

Speaking to the millennials, like you said, David, and like how people buy, it rolls up to the executive brief of, here's what I think we should do, and they're picking one or two things, and how millennials are looking out online,

and even if you think about it, like if you're using ChatGBT to help you with the research, there's maybe six links, Max, okay? And you have to build a brand. What Paige is saying, you've gotta be seen on multiple different platforms.

I think a 7.11.4 is a framework that we use. So seven hours of content consumption, David, right, the best way to get that is through videos. We've only seen video ads work. Static ads almost don't work anymore, from what I'm seeing.

11 times on four different channels, okay? You need to get that third-party data in when people are trying to consume this, and you gotta reach who those B2B buyers are that are gonna roll up, and you need to reach them where they are.

And these bigger brands that have this logo as a theme of what we're talking about, the younger buyers don't know that brand anymore, or what it stands for, okay? I've even seen this with nonprofits. I've even seen this,

I'm on the marketing committee for the Better Business Bureau. The Better Business Bureau doesn't mean what it used to mean, and it doesn't mean the same thing to the new buyers that are coming in that are doing all this research

that are rolling up to the right people. What Mark said is absolutely dead on. The market's moving in a direction, and if you're staying still, you're getting left behind. And if you're not investing in a down market, you're gonna be in trouble when everything pops up,

and that business comes in because you haven't planted all those seeds. You have nothing to reap. There was a study that Ford Motor Company did, and I know it's not oil and gas, but I do a lot of stuff outside of oil and gas as well.

But Ford Motor Company advertised, remember when all the car companies were just absolutely tanking, and there's the death of Detroit and everything like that? Ford decided we're gonna market through this thing, okay? They were the only one that didn't take a corporate bailout.

They repositioned themselves as a leader, and now, okay, we got Ford companies coming in, we got Tesla, this is way before that, okay? But the study still stands on you have to invest in marketing. Now is the best time. Now is the best time to grow businesses,

to take market share, to become the market leader. You'll not only grow through it because you're talking about PPC or something, right? Like it's a pay-per-click, it's a bid system. So if other people are not advertising, and you are. Now, if you wanna trim it and go,

I'm gonna advertise towards the end of the month, not at the beginning of the month, there's strategies you can do to stretch your dollar. You have to be marketing, you have to be spending, you have to be getting placements. The PR component is so critically important to these LLMs

and how these agents work. They pull from the top new sources, okay? They're lazy. Some industry journal is different because it's specific, but get that big PR and get those impressions at the top are so important.

And as Mark and I have talked about a lot, there's about 3,000 people that listen to this podcast, okay? Okay, if we're on a CPM rate from a bid, right Paige? Oh, that's not that valuable if I'm like looking to reach a lot of people. But when you realize they're all oil and gas marketing

professionals, the value of that CPM is through the roof, right? You gotta take all these things into consideration and know that the market is moving and how people are consuming data is through video, period. In the story, what David's doing,

the storytelling is the remembrance and then also the PR companies that you wanna get that additional uplift, right Paige? Those stories, you gotta give them a story that they wanna share. You gotta give them assets they wanna share.

You gotta make their job easy for them. And the best way to do it, the best way to get somebody to consume that information quickly is through a video. I can see how these two components work together incredibly well.

I'm seeing it. I'm just seeing it every day that these big brands are falling behind. They're not pushing the limits. And okay, the DEI stuff probably burnt their hand on some of these major campaigns.

But that's a whole different conversation about how they need to approach it. And Mark said the mid-tier people and the people that are wanna come in this market and the people that have new and innovative technologies to get your name out there, you gotta push the limits.

Hey guys, as much as I hate to do this, we're actually running a little bit over. Sorry, audience. We're gonna need to wind this thing down. However, I can tell already, this is gonna be the first part of a multi-part series

with Dave and Paige, because I think we just scratched the surface. And maybe we can actually finally pull this off in person next time. But we do need to wind this thing down. Couple of things, all of Matt and I's social links

are in the show notes. Paige and Dave, we're gonna put the link to both of your websites and also your LinkedIn profile. If you help with PR, reach out to Paige. If you wanna explore what David's doing, both messaging, reach out to him.

Their links, their LinkedIn profile, if you wanna connect with him directly, be in the show notes as well. Our Insiders group, we're still taking members for that. This is the point where we do our LinkedIn failure tip of the week.

However, before we get to that, we're gonna let our guests do that. If you remember from our laps episode, Matt said and brought up a great idea that we'd have a little Easter egg at the end of the show to see if people are listening to the end.

And that's what I'm getting ready to do right now. So if you've listened all the way to the end to this point, my contact information is in the show notes, the links. Shoot me a note and say you listened to the end of this episode, and I will send you free of charge

at OGG and Gulf of America sticker and temporary tattoo. It was a huge hit at OTC. And happy to share it with our listeners. But remember, you gotta hit me up and tell me you listened to this episode to the end and I'll send it to you free of charge

and all your friends will be jealous. Okay, LinkedIn failure tip of the week, Dave or Paige, when do y'all wanna take a stab at that? Go on, Paige. I have one, but it potentially is to read the news, watch the videos, and typically when you share,

repost, add your thoughts. That typically gets really high engagement. Add your thoughts, your expertise. And then as a one, two step to that, you need to be putting it in the groups that you're a member of,

because like we were talking about industry organizations, the engagement and the people in your groups are probably more interested or more qualified for the post than your network, which probably also has your friends and your real estate agent and everyone else.

And that will increase your profile views and your outreach, I think by at least four times, maybe more, but group engagement is a very good place to post, reposting qualified materials or your own published content, your company's materials. I love it.

It's gotten away from groups over the last couple of years and you made me think about that. So you know what you're right? Those groups all have something in common. It's whatever the theme of the group is. Great tip.

All right guys, we gotta get out of here. So remember. David, you have a tip. Okay, okay. No, sure, I'll be brief. Yeah, man, I would say value,

run it through the value filter. Any marketing touchpoint is an exchange of value. So if you're not offering your LinkedIn network, your audience, any kind of value. And when I say value, it could be laughter. It could be entertainment.

It could be something that makes their job easier. But if you're not offering them any value, then you can't expect their time and attention to be given to you in exchange. So run it through the filter of value. Is it true?

Is it memorable? And then more of it. Because like we said earlier, we're trying to increase our digital real estate. And the more content we put out there, the more real estate we're capturing.

And for everybody listening, this is PagePR and David is with El Creative. We want to just get it out there verbally. It is in the show notes, but for all you listening, L-E-L-L-Creative.com

and then PagePR like it sounds. So everybody go check it out. Thanks for that, Matt. Let's get out here. Remember, make a difference and not a sale. Thanks for listening to OGGN,

the world's largest and most listened to podcast network for the oil and energy industry. If you like this show, leave us a review and then go to OGGN.com to learn about all our other shows. And don't forget to sign up for our weekly newsletter. This show has been a production

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