Lauren Harris says even MrBeast probably watches his own videos and thinks, “I should’ve gotten more views.”

It’s a small, funny moment in our conversation, but it points at something bigger: most of us are chasing the wrong numbers in our marketing, and it’s keeping us stuck. Lauren is a marketing strategist and co-founder of Reliable PR and Marketing, and in this episode she walks through what separates a business that’s simply “doing” marketing from one that’s actually strategic about it.

Lauren co-founded Reliable PR and Marketing after building it from a fake business she dreamed up for her master’s degree in marketing at Northeastern. Since then, she’s grown it into a full-service agency handling launches, PR, and marketing strategy for businesses across a range of industries. Her focus is helping business owners move past random tactics and build a strategy — target audiences, content pillars, and the analytics to match — that actually compounds.

We Also Talked About

• How Lauren went from a graduate school class project to co-founding a full-service PR and marketing agency.
• The difference between “doing” marketing tasks and marketing with real strategic intention.
• Why copying a competitor’s tactics can backfire when your audience isn’t the same as theirs.
• How Reliable PR builds a marketing strategy from the ground up: business basics, competitor analysis, target audience psychographics, and content pillars.
• Why each of your five content pillars should tie back to a specific audience and a specific goal.
• How to get past the fear of analytics by matching the right metric to the right goal, instead of only watching likes and followers.
• The real difference between a marketing strategy and a marketing plan.
• How to think more strategically by stepping out of your own preferences and into your audience’s.
• Lauren’s “60/40 rule” for balancing what your audience wants to see with staying true to your brand.
• Why the generations aren’t as different as you’d think when it comes to doing their due diligence before they buy.
• How to start making short-form video even if you never want to be on camera.
• Why PR matters for small businesses, and how to pitch your own story to journalists and local media.

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Resources Mentioned

• Reliable PR and Marketing — https://reliablepr.net/ (free guides and checklists for business owners)
• Reliable PR and Marketing on Instagram — https://www.instagram.com/reliable.pr/

My newsletter is for people who want to build a real income from home — practical, doable ideas each week for creating a better life for you and your family, without the overwhelm: https://onlinebusinessliftoff.com/newsletter