PR, Coaches & Consultants, Media Strategy

Stop Falling for the “We'll Feature You” Scam: Build PR That Actually Pays You Back

If you’re a coach or consultant, you’ve probably seen it in your DMs: “Hey, I can get you featured in Forbes / Entrepreneur / Yahoo Finance this week for only $X.” It sounds like a golden shortcut to authority. It’s not. It’s a trap that drains your wallet, dilutes your credibility, and distracts you from real, profitable PR.

The Paid “Forbes Feature” Pitch Is Not a Shortcut — It’s a Scam

Let’s call this out clearly: those DMs promising a guaranteed “Forbes feature” for a fee are not real editorial PR. They are pay-to-play placements disguised as prestige. You’re not being featured; you’re being sold a glorified advertorial on a partner site, a contributor’s side column, or a random “brand voice” section that readers skip and real journalists ignore.

These offers prey on one thing: your desire to look credible fast. But fake shortcuts create fake authority. When your “as seen in Forbes” badge is rooted in a backdoor payment, you’re not building a brand — you’re buying a costume. And savvy clients, experienced PR pros, and serious media can smell it a mile away.

⚠️ Warning: If someone guarantees a top-tier media outlet in days for a fixed fee, you’re not buying PR. You’re buying placement. That’s advertising with a fake press pass.

What Real PR Looks Like for Coaches and Consultants

Real PR is not about vanity logos; it’s about strategic visibility. That means being seen by the right people, in the right places, with the right message — so that trust turns into leads and leads turn into clients. It’s slower than a DM scam, but it’s 100 times more powerful and infinitely more sustainable.

Effective PR strategies start with clarity: Who do you serve? What transformation do you create? What stories, frameworks, and proof do you have that show you’re not just another coach, but a category of one? Once you own those answers, media visibility stops being random and starts becoming a deliberate growth engine.

Media Visibility Is Only Powerful When It Builds Trust

Visibility alone is overrated. You don’t need everyone to know your name; you need the right people to trust you enough to invest. A random “feature” that reads like a paid bio does nothing to move a skeptical, high-level client closer to a yes. In fact, when they realize it’s pay-to-play, it can backfire and erode trust.

True media visibility positions you as a trusted authority, not a desperate self-promoter. That looks like expert commentary on timely topics, deep-dive interviews about your method, case studies that showcase client wins, and contributed articles that actually teach something. Every appearance should answer one question for your audience: “Can I trust this person to help me solve my problem?”

💡 Pro Tip: If a media opportunity doesn’t help your ideal client understand your value more clearly, it’s noise, not strategy.

When Paid Media Makes Sense: It Should Pay You Back, Not Just Stroke Your Ego

Not all paid media is bad. Ads, sponsored content, and paid placements can be powerful — if they are transparent, strategic, and measurable. The problem isn’t paying; the problem is paying blindly for vanity. If you can’t trace a line from the dollars you spend to the dollars you earn, you’re not investing — you’re donating to someone else’s business model.

Paid media should be treated like any other business asset. You need a clear target audience, a strong message, a compelling offer, and a follow-up system that captures leads and nurtures them. When done right, paid media amplifies your existing credibility and content. When done wrong, it’s an expensive screenshot for Instagram and nothing more.

Lilian Sue’s Renegade Approach: PR That Protects You and Pays Off

Publicity strategist Lilian Sue, known as the Renegade Media Matchmaker, has seen too many entrepreneurs get burned by hype-heavy, results-light publicity promises. Her stance is unapologetically bold: PR should never leave you feeling used, confused, or broke. It should leave you with stronger positioning, clearer messaging, and more of the right people knocking on your door.

Lilian pushes coaches and consultants to stop chasing exposure for exposure’s sake and start demanding strategic alignment. That means asking hard questions before you say yes to any publicity: Who is the audience? How does this outlet align with my brand and my values? How will we repurpose this appearance into content, social proof, and nurture assets? What’s the plan to turn this into leads and clients, not just a fleeting spike in likes?

📌 Key Takeaway from Lilian Sue: If a PR or media opportunity doesn’t come with a strategy for trust, lead generation, and client conversion, it’s incomplete — no matter how flashy the logo.

Use PR to Create Trust, Leads, and Clients — Not Just Exposure

As a coach or consultant, your most valuable asset is trust. PR is one of the fastest ways to build it — if you use it intentionally. That means choosing platforms where your ideal clients actually spend time, crafting messages that speak to their real fears and desires, and showing up consistently as a grounded expert, not a fame-chaser.

Turn every media appearance into a funnel: invite listeners to download a powerful resource, join a workshop, or book a consult. Follow up with emails that expand on what you shared and demonstrate your depth. Share case studies, frameworks, and behind-the-scenes insights that prove you’re not just visible — you’re valuable. That’s how PR stops being a vanity metric and becomes a predictable pipeline.

The Bottom Line: Ditch Fake Fame and Demand Strategic PR

You don’t need to buy your way into a fake “Forbes feature” to be taken seriously. You need a bold, honest PR strategy that respects your expertise and your audience’s intelligence. Follow the renegade path: reject scams, question shortcuts, and insist that every piece of visibility you pursue is designed to build trust, attract qualified leads, and convert into real, paying clients.

Your work is too important to hide behind vanity placements. Step out with strategic, integrity-driven PR — and let your results, not your purchased logos, do the talking.

How to Use PR Without Getting Burned: What Most Entrepreneurs Miss

Meta Description:PR expert Lilian Sue joins Amanda Kaufman to reveal why entrepreneurs get burned by publicity and how to turn interviews into trust, leads, and clients.

Most business owners know the message. It lands in the LinkedIn inbox or the DMs and promises a feature in Forbes, the Wall Street Journal, or another big-name publication, for a price. And because every owner learns early that nobody can hire you if nobody knows you exist, the offer is tempting. The trouble is that a lot of what gets pitched this way is visibility that goes nowhere, and it can cost tens of thousands of dollars to find that out the hard way.

In this episode of The Amanda Kaufman Show, Amanda sits down with Lilian Sue, a PR expert with 20 years of experience who works with authors, coaches, and consultants to connect their stories with the right media opportunities. Lilian came to Amanda not through a cold pitch but through a trusted recommendation from her own network, which turns out to be a fitting start for a conversation about who to trust in publicity. Together they unpack why so many entrepreneurs get burned by PR, and the specific habits that turn interviews into credibility, leads, and clients.

Why Entrepreneurs Get Burned by “Pay to Be Featured” Offers

Lilian hears the same story from entrepreneurs, authors, and clients all the time: someone approached them offering a feature in a major publication for a fee.

How It Matters:The appeal is obvious. A big-name logo feels like instant credibility for the business. But a feature nobody in your ideal audience will ever see is money spent on a line for your bio, not on growth. That gap between the name and the outcome is exactly where people get burned.

How to Do It:Before paying anything, Lilian says to ask two questions. First, is my ideal audience even going to be looking for me in this particular publication or platform? Second, what am I actually going to get out of it beyond saying I was on a list? If the answers are vague, the price does not matter.

Common Mistake:Stopping the evaluation at “ooh, big name publication” and “it fits my budget.” Affordable is not the same as worthwhile, and most owners never go deeper than those first two reactions.

Visibility Alone Does Not Build Trust

Twenty years into the internet age, everyone is talking about visibility. Lilian’s take is refreshingly blunt: visibility is surface level, and by itself it does not build trust or credibility.

How It Matters:Lilian once ran a live Q&A with entrepreneurs from all over the world and asked how many had ever gotten leads from podcast interviews, meaning a listener booked a call or downloaded a resource afterward. The answer was no. What they had instead was “a great relationship with the host,” which Lilian calls the bare minimum, not a strategy.

How to Do It:Treat interviews as part of a larger plan. Lilian works with clients to dissect their podcast interview strategy, find where the positioning is going wrong, and set a 90-day goal they can work backwards from. Every appearance should have a job to do inside that plan.

Common Mistake:Confusing pleasant conversations and mutual admiration with results. Getting along with the host matters, but it is the floor, not the finish line.

Vet Every Podcast Like a Business Partnership

One of Lilian’s clients, an award-winning author, publisher, and podcaster, kept landing on shows that were the wrong fit. Lilian’s fix was a short vetting conversation most guests never have.

How It Matters:Time on the wrong show is not neutral. It costs preparation, energy, and the chance to be in front of the right audience instead. Knowing whether a podcaster treats the show like a business tells you whether your effort will be matched.

How to Do It:Ask the host two questions before you commit. One, do they know their most popular or most downloaded episode and how the audience responded to it? Two, do they have a plan to work in partnership with their guests to promote the conversation? Audience alignment alone is not enough; you are looking for a two-way partnership.

Common Mistake:Assuming that a similar audience is all the due diligence required. Most wrong-fit appearances looked aligned on paper.

Seed Your Framework Into Every Story

Many of the women Lilian works with tell her the same thing: I ramble, I go off on tangents, I do not know how to answer that question. Her coaching turns storytelling into structure.

How It Matters:A client story told at random, with a random resource tacked on at the end, does not stick with listeners. The stories you tell in interviews are the clearest chance to show how you actually work.

How to Do It:Know where the natural stopping point is in the story you are telling, and seed parts of your framework into the client success stories you share. The more you show how you work with people, the stickier it gets, and when you then mention a free resource, listeners want to download it.

Common Mistake:Treating stories as filler between questions instead of as carriers for your framework. Rambling is usually a structure problem, not a talent problem.

Give Listeners One Clear Next Step

Remember the old habit of answering “where can people find you?” with five social media links? Lilian tells her clients to retire it.

How It Matters:A scattered ask produces scattered action. Listeners who are given five options often take none, and the interview ends without a path into your world.

How to Do It:Give them one thing. A workshop signup, a newsletter subscription, or a free guide, and reinforce it by referring back to the conversation you just had so it feels worthwhile. Amanda adds the direct response lens: when you already have a proven lead magnet that strangers want and that leads to sales, pairing it with your PR appearances becomes natural.

Common Mistake:Showing up to interviews with no lead magnet and no plan beyond the appearance itself. Amanda sees this constantly with applicants to her own show, and it is the difference between exposure and a pipeline.

Know When Paying for Media Is Actually Worth It

Not all paid publicity is a trap. Lilian focuses her clients on earned media, the features you win by building relationships, but paid media has a legitimate place too.

How It Matters:As magazines, radio, and TV shrink, airtime comes at a premium. An in-studio TV interview may come with the expectation that you buy a thirty or forty-five second ad. Knowing this going in is the difference between a strategic buy and a nasty surprise.

How to Do It:Let your goals and timelines set the budget, and plan how you will use the content after it airs so the piece keeps paying you back. Also look at the practitioner side: if an agency usually serves Fortune 500 brands, expect Fortune 500 pricing.

Common Mistake:Treating all paid media as either a scam or a shortcut. The deciding factor is whether there is a plan for the content to generate a return beyond the moment it runs.

Conclusion

PR does not have to be a burn. Ask the two questions before paying for any feature, treat visibility as the starting point rather than the goal, vet every show like a business partnership, seed your framework into the stories you tell, give listeners one clear next step, and only pay for media when there is a plan for it to pay you back. Done this way, publicity stops being an expensive logo collection and becomes what it was always supposed to be: a steady engine for trust, leads, and clients. The payoff, as Lilian’s clients have found, is repeat invitations and an audience that keeps growing between interviews.

To hear the full conversation with Lilian Sue, listen to Episode 346 of The Amanda Kaufman Show on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify.

Frequently Asked Questions

Should I pay to be featured in Forbes or another big publication?

Only after two questions have clear answers: whether your ideal audience is actually looking for you on that platform, and what you concretely get for the money beyond saying you were featured. If the value is just the logo, the feature is unlikely to produce leads or clients. Price alone, high or low, is not the test.

How do I know if a podcast is worth my time as a guest?

Ask the host whether they know their most popular episode and how the audience responded to it, and whether they have a plan to promote the conversation in partnership with their guests. Hosts who treat the show like a business tend to produce results for their guests. Audience alignment matters, but on its own it is not enough.

Can podcast interviews actually generate leads and clients?

Yes, when they are part of a strategy. Doing a great job leads to repeat invitations, which means more touch points with the same audience and deepening trust, and listeners who follow your call to action enter your world where you can nurture the relationship. Lilian has seen people book calls before a live session even ended.

What is the difference between earned media and paid media?

Earned media is coverage you win by building relationships with platforms so your story and expertise get featured. Paid media involves paying for placement or airtime, which is increasingly common in TV, radio, and magazines as those industries shrink. Both can work; paid media simply demands a clear plan for recouping what you spend.

Where can I get Lilian’s free PR guide?

You can download The Get Invited Back Guide: 6 Secrets to Getting Repeat Media Interviews athttps://www.subscribepage.com/getinvitedbackguide, or DM Lilian the word INVITE on Instagram athttps://www.instagram.com/liliansueprcoach. To keep up with what is actually working in Amanda’s own business, you can also subscribe to her newsletter, The Quiet Part, athttps://clairvenu.com/the-quiet-part.