Bo Bennett On Building Pitchbud Into A Powerhouse

HOST: It's good to have you back, Bo. Last time we talked about deliverability on AgentOutreach, and that principle of shared platforms. Today I want to dig into PitchBud and this idea that wire services don't work. You mentioned on the site that 25 wire releases over 60 days produced zero serious press inquiries. Walk me through what you tracked with that — were they complete no-responses, or pickups that just never led anywhere? GUEST: They were I can't say complete no responses because I did get some spam from people trying to sell me things. But besides that, that was it. And it's kind of annoying when you pay for a press release whether it be $60, $100, or more. You expect something in return besides just a page on some website. Uh and and that's what I I got basically just a few spams and I realized that okay, this model of press releases maybe once worked, but does not work anymore. So, it needs to be changed. And that's what I set out to do with uh our latest website pitchbud.io. HOST: So to really change that model, the big claim on PitchBud is that it reads each journalist's recent bylines before drafting a pitch. What does that technically look like? Are you pulling in the full article or just pattern-matching on headlines? Because the difference between a personal pitch and one that feels scraped is really subtle. GUEST: Right. Yeah, and that's the issue. Most pitches that are automated are really bad and just completely generic. But with AI, we can actually read the entire article, we could comment on it, and then we could offer why our service deserves a a write-up. Um, pitch an idea, story idea, a line, or whatever. And because AI knows all about our product, and now it knows about the journalist, what they typically wrote about, maybe what they wrote about last, they could uh AI could really synthesize a very specific and uh uh functional pitch that gets things done and and uh and actually leads to results instead of just spam. HOST: You mentioned synthesis, and that's an interesting point. A lot of journalists are speaking out about receiving floods of AI-written pitches that all sound generic, even if they have some personalization. If everyone uses PitchBud, won't that personalization advantage just kinda collapse? How do you prevent those pitches from sounding machine-generated? GUEST: Well, I think the the the real solution is just better AI. And that's something that we do at Archie Boy is we we don't go with the cheap AI that sounds like AI from 2024. We really use the the latest and the best models. And that allows us to create a pitch that sounds not just human, but it sounds like a human who actually is completely familiar with the work of the journalist actually wrote. And that's what we're going for. HOST: Better AI is definitely the goal here. Now, you mentioned deliverability, and we talked about that architectural choice back on Episode 2 with AgentOutreach — that sending from your own inbox is key to avoid shared platform issues. Was that deliberately carried over, or did you independently rediscover that lesson when building PitchBud? GUEST: It was deliberately carried over. It was something that worked extremely well, so we uh we implemented it here. There's no reason not to. HOST: That makes sense. Now, PitchBud also pitches itself as a replacement to services like HARO. And you wrote on the site that getting quoted as an expert source is often higher-leverage than a feature about your launch. For a first-time author who just published with BookBud, why is that true, and when does the calculation flip? GUEST: It depends on what their expertise is. I think everybody, even whether they're a first-time author or if they're an author of 30 books, it really doesn't matter. It depends on what the journalist might be looking for. So, first-time authors can be experts in everything just like uh serial authors can be. So, the important part is what their expertise is, and that's what this system does. It allows you to put in your expertise, sends out the uh and anything that may be um related to your expertise goes in your inbox, and then you respond to it. HOST: Given that focus on expertise, where do you see PitchBud fitting into the broader Archieboy stack? We've traced the line from BookBud writing the book to Promoto running ads. Is this a Day One launch tool, or more valuable six months in when there's some credibility to build a narrative around? GUEST: I see it as a day one launch tool because that's really where press releases typically fall in. People want to know about something new and something shiny and that's that's the beginning of the cycle and that's where that's where this service really shines. HOST: Before we go — for listeners who want to follow up on what we covered, where can they find you and the work you're doing? GUEST: They could find all our websites at archieboy.com and the one we were discussing is pitchbud.io. HOST: Thanks, Bo. Getting a closer look at why wire services don't work and how you're building a personal pitch tool that scales was fascinating. And thank YOU for spending part of your day with us. Let's get you back on soon — there's plenty more we can cover. Until next time — that's a wrap.