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Lesson Info

Get Your Brand Media Ready

Now that we talked about your story, let's talk about getting media ready because there are some things you need to have in place before you can actually pitch the media, and I often you know, I'll say, as entrepreneurs were never fully ready for everything, we're never really ready to launch were never really ready to create something new or ready to pitch out emails or pitched the stores, so you're never one hundred percent ready, but with media it's a little different because you do need to have a couple of things in place in order to actually get those media placement. So first, you need a plan. Second, you need a product, and we talked a little bit about your plan and your goals, and we're going to talk about that a little more, but you also need to have your product ready because if you're pitching and a magazine editor says, yes, I love it. Send me a sample I needed by tomorrow and you don't have your product ready to send you've sort of, they're not going to wait around for you...

. They have a deadline that they're working with, so you need to pitch them and send them the product that they need when they need them, so you do have to have product ready to go you also need photos so often times instead of product they'll say yes, we love your product can you please send us high resolution photos so you have to have their high resolution photos ready as well? And lastly, this is really, really important, I would say this is the key to pr is that you have to have patients and you have to have persistence oftentimes I called is the four piece of pr because they all start with p but it really is true, and if you look back on my story that I'm sharing this morning, if I didn't have patients, if I didn't have persistence, I don't think I would have had all of those success stories that I had and I would have had a really not as a successful business as I did with my t shirt business, so patience and persistence oftentimes pr is all about patients and keep going even when you get the nose. If you need to take a couple of months break like I did that's totally fine, I just come back every coop and keep going so let's talk about each one of these and more details, so your plan so what is your goal? We talked about your goals with publicity, but before you really reach out you do need a plan, you need to think about what I really want to get out of this do I want more traffic don't one more leads dwell, more sales. Do I want more wholesale accounts? What? I actually want to get out of this? You also need your product. You have to have your product ready and in stock and ready to ship. Oftentimes there quite a few times on the magazine said a magazine editor would say, yes, I love your product here's my fax number. Can you overnight them to me? And you have to be ready to go to the post office or to fedex and ship your product because it's worth it to you? Because a mention in their magazine could really mean huge things for you and your business yesterday, our products are custom made, based off of the customers photographs. So would you recommend, like, just printing some images so that they're ready to go? Or would you take the time for them to send images to us? That's a great question, I would say, you can ask the magazine editor, so you could say we already have some pre printed samples here that I could send you, or would you like me to customize it with your own picture that you want to send us? So sometimes they love custom stuff, especially bloggers, like, if you're pitching to a blogger, they will absolutely wait to have your image so that you can put it on on a product and send it to them, and usually bloggers don't have those crazy deadlines, but if it's a really crazy design, and I'm not sure how long it takes for your products, you get made, but you can let them you can let them know and ask them what they would prefer to do. Okay, but don't let that again hold you back from pitching and doing pr. Yeah, um, and then the other thing that you have to keep in mind, because if your products aren't unique and if they're not different from their competitors, or maybe from other products that they're featured, why should they feature you? So as you are thinking about your product and what you're going to ship to them, make sure that your package stands out your packaging when you're sending it to the media should be even better than when you're sending into your customers. That's not to say that your customers should get really crappy packaging because they shouldn't. They really need great packaging with attention and care, too, but the media needs that even more because they get hundreds of thousands of products every year or every month, and how do you make your stand out? So having really great packaging and paying attention to all of those details? Is what's going to make you stand out? So even if they said yes, I'm interested and you send them a sample and they don't like your packaging or the way you wrapped it or the way you present your company they're assuming that that's how you present in your company to their customers and their readers and do they really want to associate themselves with a brand who has that sort of packaging and and all of that? So they really like every sort of thing you do has to have attention and care and it has to make you stand out when it comes to the media, all right and lastly water the benefits of your products. So when you're pitching the media yes, you're saying here's a t shirt, but you're also telling them why their readers will actually love your t shirts and I'll give an example of that in just the second today. Now product photos the's air so important to so sometimes they will ask for product photo sometimes they'll ask for samples but not often times. What they do is they look at your own product photos on your web site before they actually decide if they want to request photos or not, so I gave you this example yesterday of my two product photos the first time I sent a pitch with this product photo, I got zero responses I switched it up got my packaging, got my photos professionally done and I ended up sending the second photo and that's what helped me to get into all of those fifty magazines that I was mentioning before for holiday gift guide so your photos really, really matter even though the editor might not be asking from photos from u aa lot of editors will still look at your web site to see what your photos look like and they sort of try to imagine their readers seeing those photos in their magazine and is there if it so I don't think any magazine that you want to pitch to has photos that look like that in their magazine right that's now what they look like so most likely they will look like the second photo so your photos really do matter yes, jodi name photos in your initial email as well like those wouldn't be high rez nous necessarily yes, you are sending low risk photos in your email and we're going to talk about where you should put it and how you should place it on how many to send s o you're sending little rest photos in your email and high risk high rest photos when the editor request him and lastly patients we I have gone over patients I feel like since the beginning off the course today by publicity really thus take time it's not something that happens overnight for you, it could be a few month journey for others. It could be a six month journey for me, really, until I figured it out. It was about a two year journey, so you need to have that patients you need to have that persistence to keep going, even when you get the nose and we're going to talk about what to do when you get the nose. But giving up is definitely not why you should be doing just keep going and it's not a one time thing, it really is to be an ongoing process. Once I got my system's down and I figured out what I needed to do when I had my plan, I really would be pitching every single week. So that's not to say that you have to pitch every single, because maybe for you, you might decide, ok, I only really want to be featured three times a year because I'm on ly launching three times a year that's fine for you for me because I had a product that I felt was sort of year round and it made a great valentine's day gift than a mother's they give the holiday gift and it was great for spring and all of those other things that we're going to talk about. I felt like really my product was newsworthy in some ways year round but your product can be different so your publicity plan could be okay so at the end of each month I'm going to take three hours and focus on publicity but for me it was really at the beginning of each week I would focus on publicity so in addition to those four piece he also need your own website and this is a little tricky because I know a lot of of you watching probably have at sea websites and that's the only home you have on the internet and I would recommend if you are looking to get pr you should have your own web site as well because the first thing that people dio or the magazine editors do when they are trying to find out if your product is a good fit they'll go to your website so if you don't have your own web site and they go toe see what could happen when they go on that he felt safe you're giving them on the ceiling they could see oh I really like this other thing that I'm seeing over here or in this ad maybe I should feature that so you never want to do that don't send them to where your competitors are you want to send them and get them to focus on your own website on lee and this is really the first place they go and you're what side even more importantly should read like the lifestyle of their readers and this is how you can do that through photos you can do it through your branding you can do it through your language I'm sure for your jewelry fatima not every magazine is going to go to your website and think this is exactly who my readers are because you've made it clear that you have your audience that you're trying to target and that's great because it's not a good fit for them and your product if you're doing a good job should not be a good fit for everyone. I think if you're ah huge retailer that you're like wal mart or target or sometime where you're trying to appeal to the masses that's great but that's not your job your job is not to appeal to everyone your job is to find your niche and serve them really, really well and given products that they can find anywhere else that's why they come to you that's where they come to your website that's where they shopping, you're at sea shop and really that's why people buy for me so don't feel like you have to appeal to everyone it's really a way to get lost in your messaging and to feel like no one's listening to you because you don't really know you're speaking tio what you're speaking to everyone