On this bonus episode of Honest Ecommerce, we have Gloria Chou. Gloria is an award winning small biz PR coach and host of small business PR podcast, making PR accessible for all founders everywhere. We talk about aligning PR strategies with ecommerce goals, finding creative angles for product pitches, advocating yourself in a competitive PR landscape, and so much more!
Gloria Chou is an award-winning PR strategist and host of the top-rated Small Business PR Podcast.
Known for her untraditional yet proven approach to PR which makes visibility and access to media accessible for anyone, Gloria helps BIPOC and female founders get featured organically in top-tier media without needing PR connections or a large following. experience through her CPR Pitching Method™.
Her strategies have earned small businesses in nearly every industry niche over a billion organic views and features in outlets like the New York Times, Oprah’s Favorite Things, Vogue, and Forbes, without any pay-to-play.
A former U.S. Diplomat turned small business advocate, Gloria has been on 100 podcasts and was named "Pitch Writing Expert of the Year" in 2021 as part of the Influential Businesswomen Awards, and a Forbes Next 1000 honoree.
In This Conversation We Discuss:
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Gloria Chou
Your customers now are more discerning than ever. And so it's not enough to just have them see your product. That's half the equation. They also need to trust your product.
Chase Clymer
Welcome to Honest Ecommerce, a podcast dedicated to cutting through the BS and finding actionable advice for online store owners. I'm your host, Chase Clymer. And I believe running a direct-to-consumer brand does not have to be complicated or a guessing game.
On this podcast, we interview founders and experts who are putting in the work and creating real results.
I also share my own insights from running our top Shopify consultancy, Electric Eye. We cut the fluff in favor of facts to help you grow your Ecommerce business.
Let's get on with the show.
Hey everybody, welcome back to another episode of Honest Ecommerce.
Today, I'm bringing to you an amazing guest, Gloria Chou. She is an award-winning small business PR coach. She's also a host of an awesome podcast in the PR space. And she's making PR accessible for all founders everywhere.
Gloria, welcome to the show.
Gloria Chou
Thanks for having me.
Chase Clymer
I'm so excited to chat. I think this is the first time I've actually dove deep into PR for helping to launch and to grow an Ecommerce brand. So I'm super excited to get into it.
And before we get into the more strategies and tactics.
Just let's walk through your background. How'd you end up here?
Gloria Chou
So it's funny. Thanks. So I never worked a day in my life in any agency, marketing or PR. I actually used to be a US diplomat. So if anyone's thinking of a career change, this episode is for you.
But I've always loved to be everyone's unofficial hype woman. I always say that in my next life, I'm like a hip-hop MC because I just love hyping up the crowd and I just love to see people win.
So when I was in government, I wanted to make a pivot. I was not happy being a bureaucrat. I knew I was meant for something more creative. I applied for like 1,000 plus PR jobs, and they all wanted very cookie-cutter traditional PR agency experience. I quickly realized that, “Wow, this was an industry that was very traditional.”
And so I was like, “You know what, I'm just going to hack it on the outside.”
So I got my first client. It was this weird FinTech AI thing. I had no idea what any of that was. And they're like, “We'll give you a couple hundred bucks if you can get us on TV, like CNBC, Forbes, Wall Street Journal.” And I didn't have any contacts with the media and I had no idea what their product was.
So I spent nights sitting with the engineer, just trying to pull out, “What is the best story?” And then I had to pitch it.
And because I didn't have a book of contacts, I literally, I kid you not, I had to Google New York Times newsroom and I had to cold call from the operator and get on the phone where I had thousands of times where it slammed in my face, but perfect that cold pitch so many times where I convinced the editor, the producer to actually get my clients on TV. So I ended up getting them on CNBC and Wall Street Journal and New York Times.
And so that was kind of my thing, PR, but then I pivoted and now I'm shifting into helping product makers, especially women product makers, get featured on gift guides organically.
And nothing makes me happier because traditionally the PR agency makes it very complex and expensive. And I think for 90% of the product owners out there, they either think PR is not accessible for them or that it's like a scam, right? And so my whole ethos, my whole mission is to make it so that there's PR for the people.
And that we're understanding how to do it and that it's absolutely possible to have a game changing way to get more sales, visibility and SEO through learning how to do this PR. And basically telling you the things that the agencies won't tell you.
And hopefully today, we're going to really dive in deep to figure out how can an unknown small indie brand, even with a team of one, get featured in a place like Oprah's Favorite Things? And how do you replicate that into a system in your business so that you're constantly getting features that get you more sales, SEO and visibility?
Chase Clymer
That's amazing. And she's not lying. I know what we're going to talk about. We are going to tell you exactly how to do it. And obviously, if you need help, how to reach out to the right people.
So I just want to make sure we're talking the same language. And you mentioned a lot that you work with product founders. This show, we call our audience, a lot of them are like Ecommerce merchants or ecommerce founders. We're saying the same thing, right?
Gloria Chou
Yeah. Anyone that's selling a physical product, you don't have to make your own product. We have people in our program who curate subscription boxes with other people's products. But something that's physical, or sometimes digital. But I'm really talking about getting into a gift guide, like a wire cutter or something that's a giftable, shoppable thing.
Chase Clymer
Absolutely.
And before we get into that tactic, I really want to highlight why that's a good idea. So what is going to be the outcome of getting featured in one of these things?
Gloria Chou
So traditionally, what are the 2 or 3 ways that product owners can make more sales? They can pay a lot of money for ads, which, unless you have a runway of about $3,000 a month, you're really not going to be able to have enough to get the ad.
Chase Clymer
I would say it's 10,000 now. It's higher.
Gloria Chou
Okay. Yeah. 10,000. I was just being like... Yeah. So unless you have $10,000 a month to really play around with a pay-per-click or any kind of ads, you're not really getting the ROI. And so again, there's no access in that because a lot of product owners just don't have that margin. Or you can spend your time spinning your wheels hoping that you will get a following on social media.
But let's be honest with the algorithm changes and the fact that you can get hacked, banned, restricted at any time, it could take years for you to go viral. I always say that unless you went viral 5 years ago, it's really hard now with social media.
And another thing is that your customers now are more discerning than ever. And so it's not enough to just have them see your product. That's half the equation. They also need to trust your product.
And I think for a lot of the smaller brands, the biggest challenge is, “Okay, now they've seen it, but how do they pick me over a big box brand that's maybe a fortune fight?” That is the main challenge.
And PR is one thing in all of your marketing activities that checks all of those buckets. It solves the problem of authority. It solves the problem of visibility. And it also gets you the added benefit of SEO, which your ads and social media really don't have.
If you can have one article in a TechCrunch or a Parents magazine, that is a very powerful backlink that could replace what? Six months of blogging. So for all those purposes, PR is probably the highest leverage activity, but no one is making it accessible or simplified.
And so that's what we're going to talk about today. How do you actually get PR in a way where you don't have to spend $30,000, $40,000 on an agency? And how do you do it yourself with that success?
Chase Clymer
Let's do it. Pull back the curtain, as they say.
What are you helping your clients do?
Gloria Chou
Awesome. So from hacking it from the outside, again, I never worked in PR. So I didn't have fancy cool kids relationships with journalists.
I realized that PR is actually really simple. PR is two things. It's writing a good pitch and knowing who to send it out to. And if you can put the two and two together, you can repeat it as a system in your business.
And I don't think anyone's really distilling it in that way. Here's the thing. Journalists want to talk to you, the founder. So let's just remove the middle guy. Like we don't need a PR agency because the journalist wants to talk to you anyways. So this myth that journalists want to talk to an agent, that's absolutely false. Let's remove the friction. So that's number one.
Number two, the mindset belief that you need to just absolutely shatter is that journalists only want to talk to big name brands or brands that have a huge following. That is absolutely not true and I'll tell you why.
In order for journalists to be ethical, for them to be believable, they have to interview people from all walks of life. They have to feature fresh voices and indie brands. If journalists only featured the Fortune 500 companies, they probably would lose their credibility very quickly because they would just be the mouthpiece for those big companies.
So you're actually doing journalists a favor by helping them create content for the 24 hour a day news cycle.
And right now at the time of recording Q4, arguably there is no better time to get into their inbox because why? There are literally thousands of gift guides, gifts for him, gifts for her, shopping guides. Like all of these being churned out at a crazy rate. So journals are scouring the internet so that they can fulfill their deadlines like churning out one per day.
So if you can just get on one, let's just say one, it becomes a domino effect that can absolutely change not only your business, but your confidence. And you're gonna be like, “Well, why didn't I do this earlier?”
So that's what we're gonna talk about today.
So remember, PR is two things. It's writing a good pitch and knowing who to send it to.
So let's talk about who to send it to. A lot of times, again, not our fault, we're not taught this at all. This is not something that the agencies are telling you because they want you to pay for their relationships. So how do we kind of bypass that and really take ownership and be our own best advocates? How do we find journalists?
So a lot of times, we think, “Oh, well, it's the media at Buzzfeed.com or info at,” No. Those are internet black holes. Your emails will not get opened.
What we want to do is find out who is the editor for our beat. So if you make sports equipment, it's probably someone who covers the sports stuff. If you make apparel, it could be the fashion editor. If you make bath and beauty products, it could be the wellness person. So you want to find out who is a specific journalist who is writing that.
And a lot of times for shopping guides, you want to email a shopping editor or a commerce writer. So the word commerce, anything before, below it, those are the people who are writing those lists, best of lists, seasons gift guide. So that's who we're after.
You can actually do this on your own and start to populate your own media database of all the journalists writing your beat. So let's say you make bath and body stuff. So the person will be either a shopping editor or it will be a wellness and beauty writer.
And what you can do is type in the search box, search bar of Google, Google News Alert, and set up a Google News Alert for your keywords. And Google will pin you all of the different online articles written about your topic.
And so it's as easy as copying and pasting the journalist's first and last name and their email, which is in the article, it's public information, in your Google Excel spreadsheet. And you can slowly populate your own media database.
Now, obviously, in my program, we have a database for you. But that's how you can start to do it.
You can also find out what journalists are writing about by signing up for HARO, which stands for Help A Reporter Out. And so if you sign up to be a source, I think HARO is bought by another company, but you can just put in the search box HARO. You sign up as a source and it will give you hundreds of different inquiries from journalists writing about hundreds of different stories.
And if you happen to fit that demographic of what they're asking for, then please respond to that inquiry. A third way you can grassroots find journalists is online. So Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, they're all using it because journalists are writers and they're actually publishing their stories and they want you to read them.
So you can follow different hashtags, but the one hashtag that's really important is journal request. So on Twitter or LinkedIn, you can follow this hashtag called journal request. And it's a journalist request that they're putting out there of, “I need to interview someone that does this.” So you can see what they're doing every day. And if you, again, if you fit the bill, then respond. Those are very grassroots ways.
Okay, so we talked about how to find a journalist. You wanna find the specific journalist.
Now let's talk about your pitch. And this is where my CPR framework comes in. You're not gonna hear this anywhere else because this is my framework from literally throwing spaghetti on the wall a thousand times and picking up on patterns on, “When did a journalist who has no idea who I was, how can I convince them to respond?”
And usually, the pitch had these three things. C for credibility, P for point of view, and R for relevance. It's really a structure of a pitch that you can use for anything. You can use it for gift guides, talking, podcasts, and awards. It's a value-driven conversation that prevents you from blabbering on and on and to get that person on the other side to quickly say, yes.
So I can give you examples of CPR if you want.
Chase Clymer
There was just so much in there that I wanted to follow up on. The first thing is talking about who to get in front of and also the mindset shift.
I think a lot of people think they're bothering folks when they're reaching out to them. I did this when I was younger. I was like, “There's no reason people want to be on this podcast. I'm gonna bother them by asking them to be a guest.”
No, you're doing them a favor if you actually think about it. If I'm a journalist and I need to write a gift guide about beauty products and some awesome new brand that no one's heard of ends up in my inbox, I'm lazy at the end of the day. You're gonna make my list. All right? You just made my job so much easier.
That's what you need to think about is you're helping people do their job. And you need to get out of your comfort zone and just start reaching out.
Gloria Chou
And here's the thing. If the journalists from every magazine, let's say Marie Claire, Vogue, Refinery29, if they just covered the same 15 big box brands, there's no point you would ever read their articles again. They need fresh ideas. Otherwise, you wouldn't click on it.
Another beauty of all of this is that you think about the person reading it, right? The person who's going to click on an article ‘best sustainable skincare brands’ is probably going to show a much higher buyer intent than someone who is just following you on Instagram.
So I would rather just focus on this PR thing and get one feature that's going to get me all those things more than like posting 10 different reels. The best thing about getting PR is if you can get into one feature, then you can repurpose that as your social media and blogs. So I always think as a CEO, how can we work smarter and not harder and how can we leverage our time?
Chase Clymer
Exactly. Alright, let's walk through some of these examples of CPR.
Gloria Chou
Okay.
So I want to talk about CPR, but I also want to talk about your subject lines. We know this in marketing. If you're emailing someone who has no idea who you are... And by the way, this is normal. Journalists get pitches. This is how the cookie crumbles. They know that they write stories from people pitching them.
Your subject line is going to be the number one gate, if you will, that you need to pass to get your email opened. And a lot of times we think, “Oh, well, maybe I should put me, my name, and the company, and the word pitch in the subject line.” No, do not do that. It has no relevance to the journalist.
Your subject line, I have a whole training about this, but your subject line needs to be written in a very concise and specific way that almost reads like the title of an article.
So for example, ‘best non-toxic soy candles under $25’. You see how that's specific? It tells them what category. Okay, it's sustainable. It's a home gift under $25. Okay, maybe a stocking sufferer.
So you want to write it in a way that they can automatically understand, “Okay, this is where I can put you.” So that's a subject line.
CPR is more like this. So C stands for credibility, P for point of view, and R for relevance. And when I'm writing a pitch, I like to put it upside down. So I want to start with the relevance. Why? Because what is news if it's not relevant? You need to capture their attention right away.
I always say: if your pitch doesn't pass a test of, well, “Is this still gonna be relevant five years into the future or five years into the past?” Then it's not relevant enough. So keep working on that relevance.
So I'll give you an example. Let's say you make food and wine stuff, right? You might have many different things that you're trying to sell. Now, what is that one item that's going to be relevant for the season? So if you're pitching something for Q4, let's say Thanksgiving, I'm going to pick the one that has a cinnamon spice or something that is like for Thanksgiving flavors. And the flavors that are more citrusy and fresh, maybe I'm not going to pitch that for Q4.
So start with the relevance. And the email could be as simple as, “As people are looking for cozy recipes that remind them of their grandma's home cooking this holiday season?” You see how that already is relevant. What is the consumer looking for this season? And how are you filling that gap?
So then you can say, “Well, I would love to share our brand new apple spice cider mix,” or whatever that is, right? “Which will make you feel very cozy and delightful like all of your guests.”
The reason why, and then you go into the point of view, which is usually three bullet points, three solutions, three things, insights. You can say, “The reason why this mix or bundle is perfect for the holidays is because, one, there's a non-alcoholic version, two, it's low in calories.”
You see what I'm saying? It's like you're painting the problem, which is the relevance, the context, and then you're basically solving that problem.
So then we want to end the email pitch with C for credibility, which is just the one sentence, like, “I am a stay at home mom that loves this recipe and I made it with my daughter and now it's a fan favorite and I'm happy to chat more about that and even send you a sample.”
Now you don't need to send a sample. Be wary of these, quote unquote, fake influencers that want a lot of free merchandise. Only send samples if it's like a legitimate, credible outlet. So don't think that, “Oh, well, Gloria is telling me I need to send a lot of samples.” You actually don't. But you can offer it if it's at a low cost to you.
Now, if you make really expensive wool scarves, don't send them a sample. You can send them a swatch or you can send them a behind the scenes look at how it's made. So there are different ways that you can still offer them a taste of it. And that's pretty much it.
And then if you'd make a product that's very visually pleasing. Attach a photo, right? Just put it in the body of the email. But don't give them a catalog. Do not give them a slide deck. It's going to trigger their spam filter.
So maximum one photo and that one photo, you can do a swatch of maybe four photos. But for more information, hyperlink to a Google or a Dropbox or something else on their website that they can take the next step. But don't attach the whole thing into an email.
Chase Clymer
Absolutely.
And you're so polished with what you're talking about here. And it just adds to your credibility of what you can teach your clients and whatnot. But one thing... And I feel like you read my mind. Because I get pitched a lot. We both get pitched a lot because of our podcast.
Gloria Chou
That's how I got on your podcast. I pitched you.
Chase Clymer
Exactly. And we'll get into it. I want to bring that up before we're over.
But I do get pitched often with samples. And I was going to ask you, what is your thought on that? Does that increase the likelihood of someone that's going to get on there? But I like that you went the other route with it and you're like, “You can or can't. It's up to you. If it's a low cost to your business, absolutely.”
And I'll tell you, I've been doing this for 6 years. And I think, if I was going to guess, the highest thing at cost I probably got sent was maybe $20. These are like... People are giving me candles. They're giving me beverages. They're not giving me TVs. So keep that in mind.
If you've got something that's quite expensive, people aren't expecting it for free. And there's a difference between a social media influencer and the people that are running these gift guides for sure.
Gloria Chou
Yeah, yeah. Be careful with that because there's a lot of those people who are parading as journalists, but they're not actually journalists. So you need to do your due diligence.
A lot of what I'm seeing now, especially with the shopping guides, is they will ask for an affiliate link. So it creates a win-win. So it's not technically pay to play. It's like if they like you and feature you, then they get a commission, right?
If you do have an affiliate program, whether it's on Amazon or SkimLinks. Do put that in the email at the bottom. But it's not a requirement. But certain outlets and publications will do that. We'll generally favor that. So it's just something to think about. It's the direction of where the media is headed.
Chase Clymer
Yeah. And I think honestly, it doesn't need to be in the first email. Because if they're... And this is the other thing I wanted to bring up about how you help structure this. Is it very short and sweet? Because here's the thing, if you send me a wall of text, I'm not going to read it.
I need to be able to skim it, get the idea. And if I'm interested... And this is my favorite outreach strategy for just anything. Just ask if they're okay to do the next step. It's like, “Are you interested in this?” It's just a yes or no question at the end of the day. That's the only buy-in you should be after from that first conversation.
And if they're like, “You need to do x, y, and z for us to feature you,” That's fine. You're already talking about getting featured at this point. But the first thing, it should just be easy for me to understand what you're pitching, it should just be an easy ask for what the next steps are. I think that a lot of people get caught up in trying to share too much too fast.
Gloria Chou
Yeah. The best publicity is free publicity. I think, unfortunately, and it makes my job so much harder.
Raise your hand if you've got those scammy DMs like, “We'll feature you in this random for like…” I don't know who's reading that. A lot of times, I had people join my program after they paid $20,000 with a C-list celebrity who's retired for a TV segment that airs in a North Dakota town at 4am.
So be careful of what you're doing for publicity. There's a lot of people out there willing to take your money for something that's not editorial. It's just like you paying for an ad. So we want to be careful of that.
Chase Clymer
Absolutely.
So we have talked about how to find these journalists and we've talked about how to craft this message. Are there any more tips or tricks or is it just to start writing emails?
Gloria Chou
So there's different angles, right? So you might be thinking, “Well, how do I get started?”
So at any one point, I always say, if you make a product, you always have two angles you can go for. One is like your industry insights about your authority and what you think is happening. And then you have the more product focused one, which is what we talked about, the gift guides.
At any one point, you can pitch that all year round. But for most of your listeners, you're probably gonna be more interested in the product one because that's probably closer to the sale.
And I want you to know that there is an opportunity to get featured all year round, not just Q4 Christmas holidays. So the first thing to do is to step back and think about all of the seasons, the reasons, and the holidays that my product would be perfect for? Whether it's for buying for yourself or buying for others. Write that down.
And think outside the box. I mean, there's National Hot Sauce Day, right? I had someone who is a boudoir photographer and we got her into Well + Good. And the whole thing was about why a boudoir photo shoot is the best self care, self love gift this Valentine's day.
So think outside the box. It might not be what you think. And there's a lot of creativity around that. So write that down.
And then write your pitch using the CPR framework. So pick the one standout item. So let's say it's Valentine's day, right? Um, you make candles. So you make maybe 15 different candles. Do you have a special bundle? Do you have something that is more for passion or romance or self-love? What is that one thing you want to highlight for that season?
What you don't want to do is just put all of your 20, 30 different products and just shove an order form down the journalist's throat. You want to pick the one item that fits for that season, like I said.
Another thing is in your gift guide pitch, we talked about the subject line, we talked about the CPR method, and they can watch my on-demand free PR Masterclass, which dives in deeper on this.
You always want to put in the price point and where it's available and the shipping. So is it available only on your website? Is it available on Amazon? Is it available on Target? How much is it?
And what's shipping like? Is it shipping to all 50 states? Is it shipping to the US and Canada? Put that in there. And so those are kind of all the nuts and bolts of how it comes together to make it easy for the journalists to know how they can categorize you and how they can quickly say, yes, this is a fit or no, this is not a fit.
Chase Clymer
That's just... You're giving out gold here. And we are. I just want to bring it up again. Your PR Masterclass, it's free and we're going to link to it in the show notes. Everyone can go check that out.
I'm just going to bring this up. And we've been talking a lot about gift guides. And you said you can break it out to any sort of feature throughout the year for PR and for getting placement on these back links and inside articles for traditional publications.
But we're in 2024 now. There are a lot of other things and other places that you can get featured. For example, podcasts. There are podcasts that exist in your ecosystem. Those people are very easy to find to get a hold of. There are YouTube channels.
So this exact framework works everywhere outside of just getting placement into gift guides?
Gloria Chou
Yeah. I use my CPR framework to pitch you. And so the subject line was very specific about how we can 3X our sales by the unknown PR secrets that no one's sharing.
And then for podcasts, you can do the same thing. You start off with, “What are we looking for now?” So right now, your audience, I literally said in the email, “As Q4 comes around, they're looking for strategies to make more sales that's not just ads and social media.” And then that's the relevance.
And the point of view, instead of the three bullet points, I think I did like “Here are five questions I can answer,” So that's how you can kind of appropriate the CPR method and adapt it for a podcast by actually listing out like here are the questions I can answer.
And so it makes it very easy for you to be like, “Oh, okay, it's a yes or no,” Because you think in terms of questions, you're a natural conversationalist, this is your job as a podcast host.
And it also works for speaking at conferences. I think a lot of times we think, “Oh, we just make a product and we have to stay in our lane,” But no, you can absolutely talk on a podcast and on stage. You are an authority in your niche, regardless of what you make. I don't care if you make a fidget spinner or bed sheets. There's so much around that.
Because there's the eco sustainability thing. Maybe you do something for the planet. Maybe there's something about local, like local employment or like, whatever that is, think about all the different tangents–but not tangents–like adjacent themes you can talk about.
And I think a lot of times people don't think that. So if you make kids play mats it could also be about the future of like, kids home decor, or parenting, or sustainability. So there's so many other themes beyond just what you're selling. And that's perfect for a podcast or a feature on a business insider.
I do want to give some other points. Not only just gift guides and podcasts, think about what is happening in pop culture. Let's say we're not in the holiday season, but I have someone who makes swimsuits. It's not really like a holiday for swimsuits, maybe in the summertime. But let's say she's pitching in February, and she's like, “There's not really a holiday, how do I get featured?”
What we came up with was at that time, do you know the show White Lotus on HBO? Yeah. So that was like Emmy winning, super famous. And so the pitch we came up for her was how to pick the best swimsuit for your White Lotus Italian vacation this year. And she got featured on like Cosmo and like all these different things.
So think about pop culture trends, TikTok trends, what celebrities are doing.
We have a couple of bridal people in our program, right? I know that Sophia Richie's wedding was like the talk of the town and she was on every single magazine cover. So a lot of pitches were around her minimalist aesthetic or the beauty trends that she did.
So do you see where I'm getting at here? There are so many different ways. And you can link it to the show notes too. But I have a list of 10 best angles any product maker can do to pitch to the media basically.
Chase Clymer
Yeah.
And something that I wanted to bring up too that I do a lot because I've got a very... The way my creativity works is different. But I can't really think outside the box sometimes. It's hard for me to think of different ways to pitch stuff.
You know who does it really well? It's our best friend robot ChatGPT. You tell them all about your product and what you're up to. And then you just ask it, “What are some outside the box ways I could think about this to pitch for x, y?” And it's insane how well it can maybe not give you the perfect idea, but it will get you something. You're like, ‘Well, you know what, that's actually close enough.” And you can just iterate on it from there.
Gloria Chou
Yeah. Yeah. That's really good. The only thing about AI is it doesn't really know about trends, right? Because it's not really tapped into that. And what you can do is just look at the Google search trends. What are people searching? What are people watching? Maybe it's a summer blockbuster. There's a lot around Taylor Swift. So maybe it's like if you make apparel, it's like how to pick the best outfits for your next Taylor Swift concert.
Chase Clymer
Exactly.
And then another thing is we talked a lot about reaching out to people and we heavily alluded to using email. I have found tremendous success in the last couple years, also using LinkedIn. So if you are... You get your pitch down under, I believe it's 300 characters.
You can find these people on LinkedIn and you might have a better chance of getting actual eyes on it than some of the larger inboxes that get overwhelmed with what they're getting.
Gloria Chou
So I'm glad you touched upon that. Because what I teach is you send an email and then you send a DM follow up right away. And the DM… It doesn't matter if it's five seconds later or five hours later, but I like to just schedule send on one day and then go down the list and DM them. The beauty of the DM is that it actually reminds them to check their inbox.
In the DM template, which I teach, is like, “Hey, as your customers are looking for back-to-school things for busy moms to organize backpacks, I sent you an email about our best organization hacks. On this date with this subject line, let me know if you haven't received it.”
You see how clever that is. That reminds them to actually go and look back at their email.
Chase Clymer
Yeah. And there's some subliminal psychology to it too, where they'll recognize your name by seeing it the second time wherever it was. And then they'll give it a better chance. It's just such a powerful tool. I mean, it goes back to the old adages like you need seven touch points to buy something.
They're not necessarily buying. But they are buying into the idea of featuring you.
Gloria Chou
So you have... Exactly. So a lot of people... I think a lot of times when people listen to this podcast, they send their first pitch and then they go hide in the bathroom because it's such an unnatural act.
Chase Clymer
So hold on. You also... We never touched on this.
We need to set the expectations on the amount of pitches you need to do. Your first one isn't going to work. All right. This is a numbers game and a consistency game over picking five and seeing what happens.
Gloria Chou
Yeah. But it's the best, most powerful thing because you're already on Instagram watching all sorts of videos that don't do anything for your business. Why not just allocate 10 minutes a day to connect with actual journalists? Why not just comment on their latest LinkedIn article like, “Hey, I love the roundup you did on the best golf gifts for dad. Are you doing it this year? Because I have a new product that would be perfect.”
You know what I mean?
So it's just, again, it's building a relationship and as long as you build the relationships, you will never have to pay for an agency or have someone tell you whether or not you got featured because you own it and you create a system. You can then delegate it to an intern or an assistant to send out those pitches for you. That's all possible for you.
But you need to first understand the mindset shifts and the actual strategies on how you can get featured. And we've already given you a lot. So they might have to come back to this episode again and take some notes.
Chase Clymer
What else is there that they could learn from your Masterclass that's free and it's going to be linked below?
Gloria Chou
So I actually walked through word for word a screenshot of a CPR pitch that I wrote that got a soap founder. So her whole thing is like zero waste packaging. So she makes this white bar of soap that doesn't look interesting.
And her whole thing is like no packaging, like no more planet waste. And she got featured on like Apartment Therapy and Martha Stewart Living and like just from using the one CPR pitch and she keeps adapting it.
So you would think it's just for home gifts. That's what we started. But then she got featured in a Southern living article. That's like ‘the best ways to reduce waste at your summer barbecue’. So all of a sudden she's now pitching stuff around zero waste because she positioned herself as a zero waste sustainable founder.
That's what I mean is like when you start this PR journey, which again is a radical act. Like how to advocate for ourselves, all the things that we're not taught. First, yes, go for gift guides. Then you realize there is so much that you can talk about you just need to step into that frequency of owning your authority.
And another mindset thing I get all the time is, well, this has already been talked about or you know, this is not new. The point is not to give them anything new.
I'll give you an example. I had someone who was a Pilates teacher and she was featured in an article in 2023 titled, ‘What is Pilates?’ So that just goes to show you that there is every type of news for every type of learner.
Just look at Liquid Death, the water company. They are reinventing water and just repackaging it. So don't let the limiting belief that you're not doing anything groundbreaking stop you.
Chase Clymer
Yeah. And I think just...Marketing 101. And this is something that a lot of founders that don't have any traditional marketing training... And I don't either. It took me a while to realize this. If you come up with a good idea for a marketing angle for a pitch, you can run with that thing for years before the steam will run out.
Gloria Chou
Yes.
Chase Clymer
You do not need to reinvent the wheel with every pitch. You can keep doing it over and over and over.
Gloria Chou
Over and over. Yeah. You just need that one good pitch. I've given you the CPR method. And it's as easy as changing the first line from Valentine's Day to Mother's Day. Boom.
Gloria Chou
Exactly.
Gloria, I can't thank you enough for coming on the show today.
Now, is there anything that we didn't cover here that you think you need to say on the podcast before obviously directing them over to the Masterclass?
Gloria Chou
I will say that everything, and this is what someone in my program who actually got so much press that he was able to exit his company and now he's building like his another brand.
But he said, everything you want is on the other side of that send button. So how can we get comfortable with sending? How can we get comfortable with sending things that may have a spelling error? What matters is you keep pressing that send button over and over and over.
Like you said, it's a numbers game and it's on us to be our best advocates because we are up against very pushy PR people who are getting paid, what? $10,000, $20,000, $30,000. And we need to get in there. We need to get in the game.
So hopefully today, I've given you some strategies and I look forward to seeing what the results are. Let me know.
Chase Clymer
Alright.
Before we go, if I'm interested in learning more about you, about your Masterclass, where should I go? What should I do?
Gloria Chou
So the Masterclass, you can watch on demand. It'll show you word for word that pitch that got someone featured dozens of times.
You can watch it at gloriachoupr.com/masterclass. And I'm on Instagram. So hit me up with any ideas. Let's chat. I'm at @gloriachoupr.
And actually, if you DM me the word pitch, I will give you a pitching freebie so that you can even get your first draft done that much quicker.
Chase Clymer
Awesome. Thank you so much.
Gloria Chou
Thank you.
Chase Clymer
We can't thank our guests enough for coming on the show and sharing their knowledge and journey with us. We've got a lot to think about and potentially add into our own business. You can find all the links in the show notes.
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