Learn the secrets behind securing free press coverage for eCommerce brands. Contrary to popular belief, free PR isn’t reserved only for companies that hire expensive PR agencies. Whether you're launching a new product or looking to boost your brand's visibility, this episode is packed with actionable insights that could make all of your other marketing efforts better.
Key topics covered:
- The CPR (Credibility, Point of View, Relevance) method: A foolproof framework for crafting compelling pitches that grab journalists' attention.
- How to approach gift guide pitches and maximize your chances of inclusion in coveted holiday roundups.
- Strategies for leveraging product launches and press releases to create buzz and secure media coverage.
- Tips for building and nurturing relationships with journalists, including how to use email tracking and follow-up techniques.
- Cost-effective tools and resources for managing your own PR efforts, even without prior experience or agency support.
Don't miss this opportunity to learn how you can take control of your brand's narrative and secure valuable media coverage without breaking the bank. Gloria's practical advice and insider tips will empower you to become your brand's best advocate and unlock the untapped potential of PR for your eCommerce brand.
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Chapters:
(00:00) Introduction
(03:29) From Diplomat to PR
(08:00) PR Basics
(13:00) Gift Guides
(16:33) Crafting Your Pitch
(23:11) Building Media Relationships
(24:32) Finding Your Media Outlet
(27:27) Product Launches
(32:13) Founder Stories
(33:16) Case Studies
(34:26) Follow-Up Tips
(36:26) Tools & Resources
(37:30) Conclusion
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Show Notes:
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Connect With Brett:
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/thebrettcurry/
- YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@omgcommerce
- Website: https://www.omgcommerce.com/
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Past guests on eCommerce Evolution include Ezra Firestone, Steve Chou, Drew Sanocki, Jacques Spitzer, Jeremy Horowitz, Ryan Moran, Sean Frank, Andrew Youderian, Ryan McKenzie, Joseph Wilkins, Cody Wittick, Miki Agrawal, Justin Brooke, Nish Samantray, Kurt Elster, John Parkes, Chris Mercer, Rabah Rahil, Bear Handlon, Trevor Crump, Frederick Vallaeys, Preston Rutherford, Anthony Mink, Bill D’Allessandro, Bryan Porter and more
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Transcript:
Gloria:
How can we disrupt that industry? Because here's the thing, if you keep paying an agency, the moment you stop paying them, they walk away with the relationships.
Brett:
Well, hello and welcome to another edition of the E-Commerce Evolution podcast. I'm your host, Brett Curry, CEO of OMG Commerce, and today we're talking about a topic that I don't believe we've ever discussed on the podcast before, but it has tons of potential and I believe it's a missed opportunity for you, and that is pr, getting free press for your brand, for your product launches, and how you can leverage all of that to your benefit. Now, as you know, listening into the pod, I'm a paid ads guy. I love YouTube, I love Google, I love meta, Amazon, all of that works. All that is critical. But the best brands I know, the brands that truly scale and the brands that maintain that growth always have something other than paid ads working for them. It's either organic rankings or it's virality and lots of people just naturally talking about them or it's pr. And so can't wait to dive into this topic I have with me, Gloria Chou from Gloria Chou PR and the host of Small Business PR podcast. She's a wealth of knowledge. She's got a unique story and she's going to show you how to leverage PR for growth for your brand. And so with that, Gloria Chou, ladies and gentlemen, Gloria, how's it going? And welcome to the show.
Gloria:
Hey, thanks for having me. It's good. It's getting cold here in Brooklyn, so the seasons are changing.
Brett:
I love it. I appreciate all seasons now of kind of like, Hey, let's enjoy every aspect of life. Don't like it as much when it's a hundred degrees in the Midwest and humid. Not my F, but dude, when it starts to cool off, I just get fired up. I got more energy, I feel more alive. So yep, I'm here for it. And you're in Brooklyn. One of my favorite spots, I'll actually be there in a few weeks, but what do you love so much about Brooklyn? Are you a long time Brooklyn resident?
Gloria:
So I'm actually from la. I was born and raised in la. I also grew up a little bit in Beijing where my mom lives. So I speak Chinese. I've been in New York now for about 10 years, on and off. Interestingly enough, previously to this, I was a US diplomat, so I worked abroad in Canada and also one year in Washington dc but I love New York. It's my sole home. It's not the highest quality of life, we all know that. But the diversity here is unmatched and I love it. I don't think it's our forever home. My husband's from Italy, so I think eventually we'll move to Europe, but we got a few good years left here.
Brett:
That's great. Yeah, the energy, the cultural diversity, the restaurants, the views, so many cool things that New York has going for it. So let's just quickly make the New York LA comparison. You prefer New York over la and if so, why
Gloria:
A hundred percent? Well, first of all, I don't like driving at all, so that's a no-no for me, I love biking and walking, so just from that perspective, New York all the way.
Brett:
Perfect. So we're going to dive into PR and you've got some very practical tips and advice for retail brands, e-commerce brands, omnichannel brands on how to leverage. Super excited about that. But I'm curious, how does one go from US diplomat to PR rockstar? How do you make that transition?
Gloria:
It's a very untraditional thing. So I actually never worked a day in my life in any PR or marketing agency, and that's very unheard of. And so when I was in government, I always wanted to switch into communications. I was writing speeches for the ambassador, and I just love to see my friends win. I always say that in my previous life I was like that hip hop mc like hyping everyone up. I just love hyping my friends up. And so I applied for I kid you not a thousand jobs in PR firms. And they all said, your experience is interesting, but we're really looking for someone with that traditional agency background. And so immediately
Brett:
Nobody saw the ability to make that leap. It was not computing for the hiring managers. And I
Gloria:
Realized, wow, this is an industry that is so not narrow-minded, but very gate kept, very traditional, very kind of insiders, like cool kids club. You're either in the club or you're not. And so as someone who was never in the club, I had to literally, I got my first client and he's like, we're a small FinTech. I had no idea what that was. I didn't study finance. And he's like, if you can get us on CNBC and New York Times and Wall Street Journal, we'll pay you a couple hundred bucks. And first of all, no PR person would do guaranteed features, but I had to start somewhere. So I paid my dues. And so I literally sat with the engineers looking at just data, and I'm not a numbers person, I'm an agent that's bad at math, trying to figure out what is the best story that I can pitch. And then I didn't have any contact, so I didn't have journalists and I'm like, Hey buddy. And so I kid you not dial zero from the operator by googling New York time newsroom.
And with my shaky hands and my sweaty palms, I had to practice cold pitching from the operator and to get them to stay on the phone with me until the producer or the editor. And I think through doing that thousands of times and just emails that cold pitching made me see patterns on what worked and what I ended up getting my clients featured on everything New York Times for as Wall Street Journal, CNBC. And then I turned it into a framework. And so now my whole thing is, you know what, yes, the industry is gate kept, but there absolutely is a way to cold pitch and journalists want to hear from the founder directly. So how can we implement that as a system? And so that's what I teach now in my program.
Brett:
I love that so much because I really believe doing things like that where you're pitching on the phone live, you're getting rejected, you're battling that, you're trying to keep people on the phone. I think that's a master's degree or more in PR because a lot of people that got the PR degrees never did that and they never learned it. My son is selling door to door, he's selling solar, residential solar, and I told him, I'm like, Hey, this is a grind and maybe it's an untraditional path or nontraditional path, but you will learn sales in a far different way than somebody who's just had formal training. And so a big believer in just getting out there doing it.
Gloria:
Yeah, a hundred percent.
Brett:
So very cool. I do have just one question that I'm kind of curious about. So you're a speech writer for the ambassador. What's that? Are you listening and you're like, man, you totally butchered that line. That is not the inflection I meant for that piece. Or you were like, we just stick to the script because what I wrote is beautiful. Well, what's that hearing someone deliver your speech?
Gloria:
So it's very, in the bureaucracy, there's many different layers. So I didn't write all of his speeches. It depended on the event, and I was given an opportunity to write a few of those speeches. Now, obviously because it's very bureaucratic, there were many different people involved all the time, and it moved very slowly. So it wasn't like what I wrote was what was delivered, right? There was so many other layers to it, but it was probably one of the more fun parts of my job doing the external communications. And that's really what I love and is my natural habitat. I just didn't get to do a lot of it because when you start, you have to stay in your lane. And I realized very quickly that I'm just not made to be a bureaucrat. I'm more of a creative entrepreneur. And so that's why I gave up my pension and a 25 year career that would've pretty much set me up for life to pursue something else. I moved back home, got on unemployment and kind of restarted everything after killing my ego.
Brett:
That is the true entrepreneurial vibe and spirit there. Just cutting that loose. Who cares if I lose the pension on other things? I got to chart my own course and do my own thing, so that's fantastic. Well, as we dive in here, what are some things about PR that brands need to know that they probably don't? Because my perspective is, and we were talking about this before we hit record, I think most brands, most brands in the 10 million to a hundred or a couple hundred million are just forgetting about pr. They're sleeping on it. It's not something they're fully leveraging. So what do we need to know about PR that we don't know right now? And
Gloria:
It's so funny because brands who have made it to that level, it is so easy for them to implement PR more than anything else because they have the traction, they have all of the website assets, and most of what I teach, my founders are way more beginner than that. So if they can do it, so can the other companies. I will say that traditionally we're taught, okay, well if you want an agency, and it's so exorbitantly expensive in New York, it's about five to 10 grand a month for six months, no guarantees and a minimum contract. So I understand that if you do play it that route, if you're a founder, you're looking at the ROI, you're like, maybe I should just pour this into ads 60,
Brett:
60 grand. Maybe it works, maybe it doesn't. I don't know
Gloria:
When I know I totally, and so what I'm doing here is how can we disrupt that industry? Because here's the thing, if you keep paying an agency, the moment you stop paying them, they walk away with the relationships. How can we break that mold and take it? I think we're not really taught that as founders because again, it's been very gate kept. Very few people are learning how to take it, but obviously after listening to this episode, it will have some actionable tips. But PR is the only activity for me that out of all of your marketing, it checks all of the boxes. So it checks the boxes of traffic, it checks the boxes of SEO because you get those powerful backlinks from a high domain authority website. And then it also gives you that trust, which all three things, it's very hard to get with social media or ads alone. And my favorite thing is I always say it's not about one or the other. It's about how can you leverage your time? Because if you can get onto one gift guide, then you can repost it onto your social media. You can repurpose that for an ad as seen in, and that's to me a way more powerful way to do your content.
Brett:
Just to piggyback on that last part really quickly, it's something we've done for years and years and it's nothing new, but a few of our clients, one that's an automotive client and one that was a skincare client, we would take clips for when they were on A, B, C or Fox News or something. Take those clips and now you can run those in paid ads. You can put those on product detail pages. You can really lean into some of those press releases in a major way. And yeah, another one of my favorite definitions for marketing is marketing is really the transfer of confidence or the transfer of trust As the brand, I have total confidence in my product, but as the shopper, as the prospect don't have confidence. So marketing is just that transfer of confidence. And I think you could argue that the few things that do that faster or better than pr.
And so yeah, I just think it's a missed opportunity and something that we all need to lean into. I think one of the misconceptions I had years ago was, well, if you want pr, yeah, you either talk to massive agency and pay through the nose and hope or you just wait, just wait and hope somebody reaches out to you, right? Hope that a reporter reaches out to you. But really the news cycle is 24 7 now it has been that way for quite some time. So news outlets are kind of desperate for stories. They're looking for angles, they're looking for content. And so if you package this correctly and you approach the right people, it's probably not that hard, right?
Gloria:
No, it's really not. I mean, we have hundreds of founders who are literally solopreneurs doing this. And so imagine if you had the scale and the resources of your audience, how much further they can go. So I will say that because the industry, the PR industry has gate kept, it made it seem like, well, we cannot do our own pr. When in reality, journalists want to interview indie brands. They want to interview not just the Unilevers of the world, because put it this way, if they were only featuring Fortune 1000 companies, they would lose their credibility very quickly. They need to feature new brands. That's how they maintain their journalism integrity. So you're actually doing them a favor. And I will say that with the new cycle ramping up more ferociously than ever, they are churning out these stories like no other. I actually have a lot of journalists who write gift guides coming into my program to teach my students, and they all say Q4, we are working overtime.
I am tasked with writing one gift guide per day. And that's one journalist. And if one gift guide has 10 products, you can just do the math on that. So there's no better way, especially in Q4, to capitalize on the fact that they are monitoring their inboxes like a hawk. And it's your time to put your name in the hat. You just need to know what to say and who to say it to. And so my whole ethos is like, yes, PR is painted as this complex thing that you need privilege and access to pay for, but how do I make it accessible? I make it accessible by really making it simple. And PR is really at its core, writing a good pitch and sending it to the right person. That's it. And if you can put the tune two together, you can repeat it as a system in your business where you monitor the inbox, where you are sending it from your inbox, and that way you don't need to depend on someone else because then you own the relationships.
Brett:
So we're getting close to, we're in Q4. Holiday shopping is about to ramp up as we're recording this. So let's talk gift guides really quickly. You mentioned that now a couple of times. It's a really popular thing for the media to create. It's a great way for them to drive traffic to their platforms. And everybody loves gift guides. We're all looking for ideas. So I'm an e-commerce brand. Let's say that I sell apparel. How should I approach this? And so what am I saying and who am I saying it to try to get my product featured in the gift guide?
Gloria:
Yeah. So I will say with any physical product pitch, you're always going to have your gift guide, which is more product focus, and you have your evergreen angles about larger trends that maybe positions you as a founder. So we have someone who is in our program who makes apparel, and so she got interviewed in Vogue and it's about the future of sustainable fashion. Now she can still take her same company, take one product, and then repurpose the for gift guide. So those two angles simultaneously will always exist, but at the time of recording, like you said, Q4 is really about those product roundups. Get on a list, link it back to your website. So when I think about gift guides, it's really important for you to first figure out, out of all the products that I have, if you have more than one, which one is the best fit for this season?
Here's the thing, you don't want to send an order form to the journalist. You don't want to sell to the journalist. You want to solve a very quick problem for them, which is I'm compiling something for various gift guide categories. How is this going to fit? So for example, the main gift guide categories are gifts for him, gifts for her, gifts for mom, gifts for dad, gifts for kids, gifts for all the ones that you read, right? There's also budget friendly gifts, stalking sufferers, travel gifts. I could go on and on and on. And so knowing that there's so many different buckets, it's your job to first figure out which of my products fits in that bucket? Is it a luxury item? Is it a stocking sufferer? Is it good for travel? Do you have any winter bundles for skincare? If you make apparels, what's really good for this cold weather season? So pitching with the season is the number one key to getting featured because that way you're constantly refreshing your pitch so that you're not pitching sweatpants in the summer. That's the number one thing.
Brett:
Yeah, it's really great. And I love the way you position that because really good marketing and what we're doing, whether it's with our ads, our product detail pages is we're helping someone solve a problem or we're helping them take advantage of an opportunity. It's aspirational. You can look great, feel great in these close, or we're solving this problem you may be facing. Same is true when you're reaching out to a reporter. It's just that the problem you're solving is not the product delivering benefit. They need content, they need good recommendations, they need something they can plug into that gifts for him, gifts for her, gifts for kids, gifts for stalking, stuffers, whatever. And so you've got to kind of package it in that way. So totally makes sense. So I'm selling apparel. I then I guess first begin to think about, okay, who is this a good gift for? And then from that I start to craft my message.
Gloria:
Yeah, so I love what you said about your marketing pitch, which we're so good at as founders is fundamentally different than your pitch to the media. Why? Because the journalist is not ever going to buy from you. So you have to take a different frame of mind. I always say, you got to take off your marketing hat and stop talking about the benefits and features and start talking about the season and who it's good for. So if you can do that, then it becomes so much easier because what we don't want is for you to pitch a journalist with your order form and benefits, and they say, well, we have an entire ads department who will be happy to take your money. Exactly. We don't want that. So how do we repurpose that pitch? And it's not that hard
Brett:
Pitches incorrectly, and you're getting sent to the ad department.
Gloria:
Exactly. They're happy to take your money. So we're not talking about benefits and features. Yes, we will in the pitch, but you're not leading with that. You're leading with the insight, the season, the problem, the trend. For example, remember the show White Lotus on HBO O?
Brett:
I've heard of it. Yeah, I've never seen
Gloria:
It. So any of these pop culture things, right? A great way to pitch. We have a swimwear founder, and it was like the pitch I wrote for her was How to pick the best swimsuit for your white Lotus Italian vacation. And people are going to Taylor Swift concert. So if you make something that would be perfect for that, it's like top 10 accessories for your next Taylor Swift concert. Do you see where I'm getting at? Absolute. It's like you're leading with the trend this season, and so it's still your product. So that's the biggest thing that you need to do. And then I have my CPR framework, which is my own framework that I came up with from pitching and being rejected thousands of times. I picked on up on a pattern. How do I get that person who doesn't know who the hell I am to say yes, tell me more. And the pitch, whether it's written or verbal, usually has these three components. So C stands for credibility, P stands for point of view, R stands for relevance. And when you put that in a pitch, it's really solid. So let's bring it, let's break it down.
Brett:
And you lead with credibility, I guess. Well, I don't want to get ahead of you, but why do you lead with credibility?
Gloria:
So I actually don't lead with credibility. That's just the way to remember it phonetically,
Brett:
But
Gloria:
I actually do it reverse. So I actually start with the relevance. Why? Because you want to grab their attention at the get go. And what is news if it's not relevant? Totally. So the beginning of your pitch should say something like, as your readers are looking for cold weather skin solutions this December, do you see how that's relevant?
Brett:
Totally, totally.
Gloria:
Or as busy moms are looking for back to school pencil cases. So that's the relevance piece. And then you go, so the point of view in CPR is usually three bullet points. Why? Because it makes the email look better and it doesn't turn them off with a bunch of texts. So it's usually three insights, three do's and don'ts, three ways that your product solves that problem better than anyone else. Three unique points. And then you conclude with very simple credibility, which is like, I am a mom and I figured this out, and now we've scaled our business and customers love us because of X, Y, Z, or we've been featured and you don't have to be featured, but it's really the least important part. And then you conclude with, I'm happy to send over some more high res photos. What I like to do is include A URL.
Instead of putting high resolution photos, it's going to cost spam. I say, put one normal photo, but then have the rest be a URL that links to other things how they can find out more. If you're pitching a gift guide, it's very important, three things, your subject line, your subject line is what gets open or not open. So your subject line needs to read almost like an article title. So instead of saying SO'S brand pitch winter gift guide, that means absolutely nothing. It needs to read why this eco-friendly Australian sheep wool sock is perfect for socking stuffer or whatever that is. And then you go into the CPR method. And so that's kind of the general structure of how it is when you're talking about your product, when you start with the relevance and you introduce why your product is solving that seasonal problem, you always want to put in where it's available. Is it at Marshall's, is it on Amazon? Is it only on your website? And you want to put the price point immediately and then you want to put where it ships to. So all of those things is going to help the journalist decide where and when to put it. So that's like non-negotiable when you're trying to pitch for a gift guide, is having those specifics.
Brett:
Super interesting. And really as I'm listening to this and trying to imagine this email in my mind, if I'm a reporter and you've done this properly, I could almost take exactly what you email me and just run with that. You've essentially done all the hard work for me. Maybe I want to reach out and confirm things or do, but you've done most of the heavy lifting for me.
Gloria:
That's exactly it. Look, this is an unnatural act, so don't feel like, oh, why didn't I, it's like we're not taught this, right? So don't feel bad that you haven't done this. It's just that the industry has gay kept it from us. And so we actually had people use the CPR method to get into Oprah's favorite things, buzzfeed, Vogue, allure, and even use it to get into retailers and wholesalers. So the CPR pitch is a way to have a value driven conversation with someone who has never heard of you, and how do you get them to quickly respond? One thing I will say is that the CPR R pitch is not writing the article for them. So you don't leave that to the journalist. The journalist knows what their editorial calendar is and where to fit your story. So don't think that you're writing this whole article and no, you're just simply offering a point of view that's perfect for this season. And the whole point of the pitch is to get them to respond, yes, I would like more information. No, this is not a good fit for me. And so that takes away the pressure of everything. It just has a very simple, simple goal and just don't overthink it.
Brett:
Got it. And it's really valuable. Yeah, we may be tempted to put on our writer hat, and I got to write the intro to the article and the that's not your job. Your job is to make this very clear, very easy to understand your credibility, your point of view, and the relevancy and working all that in. So totally makes sense. How do you recommend, so we've got our copy for the product on our product detail pages and things like that. How are you modifying that copy to fit bullet points that you're sending in this email?
Gloria:
So the bullet points are a little bit more subjective, so it could be point of view on, so if you make something that's completely unique, so I'll give you an example. We have someone who in Canada works with aboriginal native women tribes and they make beaver for hand warmers. So it's from beaver fur and means that it's, you keep it for life. It's not those ones that you throw away, right? So because it's really unique, the point of view, the three bullet points are like why the beaver first solution is better than the traditional ones that you get at your ski shop, right? One, it's sustainable. Two, it lasts long. That's what I mean by the point of view.
Brett:
That's so great. What can we expect then? So if you craft this email properly, how many of these do we need to send out to hopefully get featured somewhere? What are you seeing in terms of success rate and how much time do we need to put into this to make it work?
Gloria:
Yeah, I've had people get a response within 24 hours. I think when you first start, it's really about a volume game. So you might pitch to a wide variety of journalists, but then you always want to highlight your top 15 to 20 outlets that will move the needle for you, whether it's a refinery or a pop sugar or even outdoor sporting goods. So I always say, first you cast a wide net, but then for those 10 to 15 journalists, you really want to build a personal relationship by just personalizing the first line of the email. So it might be something like, I loved your coverage last year in Sporting Good magazine about the best fly fishing gear for dads. Are you doing it for this year? So you see how it chosen that you're actually read their article. And for those 15 journalists, you really want to cultivate relationship by engaging with their content because they're writers too. It's so common on their LinkedIn comment, on their Instagram, use social media and say, I loved your article, right? Stroke their ego a little bit. And so that's going to help you build that relationship kind of like a customer where you increase the touch points and they get familiar with you because they're seeing your name in your brand.
Brett:
How are we finding these contacts? We're building our list of top 10 to 15 media outlets that will move the needle for us. How would you recommend we do that? We may all be tempted to reach out to Fox News or CNN or something like that, but that's probably not the place to start. How do we build that list and then, yeah, walk us through that.
Gloria:
So that's a really good question. So remember I said PR is very simple. It's writing a good pitch and sending it to the right person. So with the CPR method, we talked about how to write a pitch. Now let's move on to who do we send it to. It's not going to be info@buzzfeed.com or Media Forbes. It's going to go into an internet black hole. It's also not going to be the editor in chief of Vogue because they're busy doing their speaking tour. So you want to find out who is that specific writer who writes your beat or industry topic? Is it the health and wellness reporter? Is it the sustainability person? Is it the person that covers tech gadgets? So for a lot of gift guides, you're going to look for someone that covers your industry and also the commerce or shopping writer. Those are the people who are responsible for conglomerating those shopping guides and product lists.
So that's who you want to look for. Now in my program, we have a database of a hundred thousand journalists across every industry, but you can start to do it in your own way and start to compile your own media list. And you can do it very simply by typing into the Google search bar, Google News alert and Google will create an alert where any digital article that's being published will be sent to your inbox and you can click on that article that's about your industry and copy and paste their name and email, which is public information by the way, and start to fill it into an ever expanding Excel spreadsheet. So that's kind of your own way of doing it. You can also sign up for a service called haro, which is bought by another company now. But you can type in HARO, help a reporter out, and every day it pings you with the 200 or 300 inquiries for journalists wanting to interview a specific person.
And if you fit the bill, then use a CPR R method to reply. We had someone just using Harrow and she got onto seven different pieces of media like Wall Street Journal and PopSugar this year alone. And then there's also hashtags you can follow. So on LinkedIn and Instagram, you can follow the hashtag journal request. And so that is when journalists are looking for a specific person to interview. So these are all the grassroots way that you can start to autopopulate that. But you want to have a good size media list. You want to have at least 50 journalists, and then out of those 50, your top 50, that'll really move the needle for you.
Brett:
Yeah, it's really great because it is a numbers game. You can't expect to reach out to two media outlets or two reporters and get the ball rolling. It is a numbers game, and so play accordingly. We talked about gift giving guides, and I love that angle, but you also talked about founder stories. I think that's interesting. I also want to talk about that in a minute. Let's talk about product launches because that's something our bigger brands, they're always launching new products or new lines of products. So I've got my haircare, now I'm launching my sun care, now I'm launching oral care or something like that. So how do you recommend approaching this? I'm sure it's a lot of the same frameworks and stuff, but how do I approach this if it's a new product launch?
Gloria:
So the way I think about product launches is that it's doing pr, but with a specific time sensitive call to action. So for the journalist, you're saying, I am launching this on this date. And so what you want to do is you want to create a very well-written press release, and you can see all the list of my press releases on gloria Chou pr.com/services. There's a very methodical way of writing it, but you always want to say that you're the first to do something right, because newsworthy, so you might not be the first to do X, y, and Z, but you might be the first to do X, Y, and Z in this way. So see how you can wordsmith it so that it's really punchy at the top. And so for example, I worked with a seven figure electric flosser company, and they're not the first electric flosser, but they're the first to use X, Y, Z materials to guarantee a full mouth clean in under 60 seconds. And you see how that's really the headline and the sub-headline. So I like press releases, but I don't like it when people are just putting out press releases every other week. It's kind of a waste of money. See how you can couple two or three different things? Maybe you have a product launch and then you also have a new board member,
Or maybe you won an award and then you're giving back to charity or whatever that is. And the worst thing I think, and we're not really taught this, is we're just taught, oh, well issue a press release and just hope and pray that someone will respond and it just doesn't work that way. I actually use press releases as an incentive, kind of like a bait, if you will, to get the journalist to respond in X amount of days. So instead of just putting the press release on the wire, you're writing an email using the CPR method and saying, Hey, we know that you cover consumer electronics. We've invented this really cool dental tool, especially as we get into health and wellness season for the whole family to enjoy dental health is linked to heart diseases and brain health. There's growing number of research to say that it's really, that's why we've made it very easy and under 60 seconds for anyone to clean their teeth. We've also made it so that it's good for people who have dexterity issues kind of go into that. We're going live with the press release announcement in two weeks or seven days. So let me know if you'd be interested in learning more. I've attached the draft of the press release below. I'm happy to chat. So do you see how that's a stronger call to action? You're basically using your launch as a conversation starter,
So you want to do that before you just put the press release live onto the Newswire. And so for all of my clients, I do this kind of two step process with them.
Brett:
So that lets them know, hey, this is going to happen. Almost some kind of credibility mixed in there that this is going live in one week or two weeks.
Gloria:
Also, I'm going live with or without you.
Brett:
Yeah, but then this also makes them say, okay, well I'd kind of rather be first, or I want to be early in the game, not picking it up once it hits the wire type
Gloria:
Of thing. Yeah, I got my client Forbes within one week because they just want it to be the first to break it, but you have to make it exciting for them. So that's where the pitch writing comes in. So I think this is one of the things that a lot of people aren't taught. They're just publish a press release, but you are wasting on a very precious opportunity, which is that time sensitive call to action.
Brett:
Super smart. So are you always wrapping multiple things into one press release or sometimes is it just a product launch?
Gloria:
This is a very good question. I would say it's somewhat subjective. It depends on the newsworthiness of the announcement, if you will. If your startup and you secured funding, that's important because every milestone on Google, you want to put it there as a part of your journey for your investors. But if it's something like you have a new board member maybe, and then you're also partnering with a charity, you could couple that into one and there is a way to write it. So I will say if you have multiple things you want to announce, get out a piece of paper and write in the hierarchy of what is the most important, and then see how you can couple it into one press release. Because in the press release, I've written many funding announcements about how they've secured, but then in the body of the press release, we're saying by Q4 of next year, we plan to release X, Y, and Z features. So do you see this kind of a look ahead date to get people excited?
Brett:
Yeah, totally Cool. Totally cool. Now what about if you kind of talked about founder stories, and I know this would apply if it's a new company, you're solving a new problem type of thing, but it's something to be said here, even if you're a little bit established, how can you take that founder story angle and turn that into a press release?
Gloria:
So the founder story is important, and you can put it even in your gift guide pitch, but it needs to be under two sentences. So if you're pitching yes, if you have an interesting founder story, put it in there. If it's one or two sentences now in your press release, I usually put it in about section of the press release on the bottom, how was it founded? Or maybe the last paragraph founded by two research chemists or whatever that is. If you're making a skincare product, I wouldn't say that that is the most important part because your press release is not your autobiography. It's a very time specific snapshot of something that you're announcing. So the purpose of the press release is not to announce your story. So the story will go into the press release, but you're not going to lead with that. The headline of the press release, and I do this on my VIP day, but the headline is the what and the sub-headline is the how. So that's how you can start to figure out what is the framework of what you're trying to say.
Brett:
So good. So I love the example of the oral care product. You talked about the electronic flosser, other examples that you can talk about. I just think as someone here, as an example, kind of triggers additional thoughts.
Gloria:
So for press release, I've run a lot for products that are white labeled. So we have someone who she makes a 24 karat facial massager tool that also is like solar charge, right?
Brett:
It's
Gloria:
Not her proprietary product, but then she white labels and stuff. So in her press release, we couldn't say that she was the first to do this. It's not her invention, but she is the first Filipino owned skincare brand or the first one. So it's like how can you keep wordsmithing that to say that you're the first, and let's be honest, unless it's a groundbreaking invention, you're not going to be the first but
Brett:
Not be the first anyway, right?
Gloria:
Yeah, everything is a remix, but then you still want to keep just finessing that headline in the sub headline to make it super concise and specific to that right out of the bat, we know that it's newsworthy because you are the first or the only to solve this problem maybe for this specific demographic.
Brett:
I know from a career in sales and sales related things that it's very rare to send one email and then stuff just happens, right? One email and now the reporter is jumping all over themselves to try to get you on and interviewed and stuff. How do we follow up and how much should we follow up after we send that email?
Gloria:
Yeah, I mean follow up is absolutely key because remember, they're getting a lot of emails and they just need to be reminded. And I think a lot of times, because again, this is an unnatural act, a lot of founders who are doing incredible things, they send out first email and they go run and hide in the bathroom. And so the journalist is not monitoring like, oh, this person followed up with me. How dare they
Brett:
Actually
Gloria:
Depend on you to follow up? And it's really just about top of mind. But I will give you one tip is that before you send out any emails, please install an email tracking device. So if it's being open or not. So then you don't have to make a drama in your head about, oh, this journalist hates me. It's like, well, no, they actually just never open it because it could be a deliverability issue, it could be an out of office issue. So let's for the right problem. Now, if the email tracker is telling you that they're opening it multiple times, it means that they like the story. They just don't have a place for it right now in their editorial calendar. But journalists, what they do is they have a very meticulous way of filing and foldering their inboxes so that anytime that they're tasked with something, they're going to go back and type that keyword.
So that's why I always say you have to pitch early and often so that you're at least in the running when they do search back into their inbox. Now if they are multiple times, I'm just working with someone who makes a real kids' kitchen for children. It's a beautifully designed like toy real kitchen, but for kids, and she said that the pitch that we wrote for her got opened 16 times or something like that. So it means that the journalist really likes it. And so that's when you go in and you really engage with the person's content. And so it might be commenting on an Instagram post, it might be resharing one of their stories. It's kind of like how you would nurture a lead when you know that it's kind of a hot lead. It's the same way you're building a relationship with that journalist.
Brett:
Sorry, I muted. There was a train. Totally makes sense. So as we're looking to leverage our time, whether we're the ones executing this plan or we've got a team member that's doing it for us, what are some tools that we can use that makes this process easier?
Gloria:
So the email tracking device, right? I like Chrome because I've heard that Outlook doesn't have the best deliverability. So I like Chrome and I like to schedule, send my emails in a campaign. I use MailTrack do io, which it's like, okay, it's like middle of the road, it's not too expensive. And it just gives you data on whether or not it's been and open. Obviously the Google News alert is really important. You want to have that one tip is that if you do want to take this in-house and for a lot of your audience, they do have a team, it's really helpful to give your PR person, it could be an intern or marketing assistant, like the password to an email that's different from your customer service emails. So it could be like a media ad or a team ad or just something, and then they can kind of own that inbox and just kind of keep that separate.
Brett:
Super smart. Super smart. Well, Gloria, this has been fantastic. Any final tips? I want to allow people to connect with you through socials, and I know you've got a course and some other great stuff, but any final tips or anything that you wanted to chat about that we didn't related to pr?
Gloria:
So I think we all know this, but everything you want is on the other side of the send button. And so we pour so much money in social media and ads and there is room for that, right? But why not just a reality, a little bit of that to do something that has a crazy potential upside.
So it's really about working smarter and not harder. And here's the thing, your business needs you to be. Its number one advocate. I cannot tell you how many founders come to me and join my program after they paid $40,000 for an agency. So it's not about not working with an agency, but it's about knowing how the process works so that if something happens that they don't deliver, then you are not stuck at square one with no contacts because at the end of the day, it's about building those contacts with the journalist. And so my program gives you the database, it gives you what to say, and then you can kind of repeat it. So you can find me on Instagram at gloria Chou pr Gloria, C-H-O-U-P-R. And I have a free masterclass that actually outlines word for word from subject line down to the last sentence, a pitch I wrote in the CPR method that got someone featured like 15 times. And you can watch that for free@gloriaChoupr.com slash masterclass. And if you DM me on Instagram, the word pitch, I will give you a pitching freebie so that you can get started.
Brett:
Nice. And then did I hear, are you on LinkedIn as well?
Gloria:
Yeah, I'm on LinkedIn as well. I'm mainly on Instagram. That's kind of where you can get the fastest response. But I also check my LinkedIn. Yes.
Brett:
Got it. So check out Instagram for sure. And it's so true. You don't get what you don't ask for in life. You don't get necessarily what you deserve. You get what you negotiate and you get what you actively pursue. I'm fired up, man. I'm excited about pr. Like I said, I think this is a missing piece that great brands need to leverage. It will make other efforts better. You can use it to leverage your ads and you can use it to make clients stickier. And there's so many ways you can use this. And so Gloria, love this content. Thank you so much. We'll link to everything in the show notes, but go check it out. So before you hire a PR firm, talk to Gloria first and hey, I think it makes sense. Send someone through the free masterclass, do the paid class or whatever. That's probably better than paying for a high priced firm for most brands. So Gloria, thank you so much. This was fantastic and thank you for tuning in. We'd love to hear from you. What would you like to hear more of on the show? If you have not done so? Please leave that review on iTunes. And with that, until next time, thank you for listening.
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