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How to Get Your Products in Magazines

Do you still have a lot to learn about how to get pr for your crafts and products in magazines and these air national magazines, regional magazines, trade magazines and any sort of prince magazine that you are thinking of getting featured in? But what's really in it for you? We talked about why was important to get your products featured in blog's, but why do you want to get featured in magazines as well? Well, the first thing is that you gain more credibility right away and really, really quickly when you get featured in a national magazine, especially some of the huge national magazines that have a really large reach, you also have social proof, so we talked a lot about testimonials and ratings and reviews and social media mentions, while a mention in a magazine is another way that you could get social proof for your products. Build trust with your audience, especially if you do what we talked about, where you leverage your press mentions in two more sales and put all of your press m...

entions on your web site and on your product pages. We could also this is almost a guarantee. When you get a magazine mentioned, especially a big national one, you're going to get more traffic, you're going to get more sales to your website, and often times it will happen right away. But the best thing about it is that it also trickles in over the next few months and sometimes even years later believe it or not, especially some of the more major magazines. I know what things like oprah magazine I have entrepreneurs, friends who product whose products have been in there and often times oprah magazine readers will keep those issues and they'll go back to them over and over and over again and read them so your products are really have a really long shelf life when you are featured and some of these national magazines now, not every magazine reader will keep and go keep going back and reading by with some magazines he will still get sales from it months later and possibly even a year or more later, and you can also get more social media followers more subscribers oftentimes people will learn about your products from magazine and maybe they're not ready to buy maybe they're wantto let's say you product is in a holiday gift guide and they've already bought gifts for this year, but maybe they'll keep your product in mind. Don't go to your website they'll sign up for your newsletter following on social media so that way they don't forget about you and when they're ready to buy don't come back a year later and by a product so some of this is really hard to track as you can see, unless you are specifically giving readers of this count code which sometimes you can do as well you could be featured and I know lucky magazine has a deals page and you give him specifically coupon code a couple of other magazines do that as well so in that case you can track it but often times there really isn't a way to track it but it still is really powerful but why do you want to get pr as opposed to pay for advertising? Well, this is a magazine advertising great sheet how many of us have a budget of one hundred seventy seven thousand dollars to spend on a magazine ad? Yeah, I do right man of us have this budget this is really, really expensive for most of us crafters we cannot afford to take out even the smallest ad I don't know which one this one six page thirty thousand dollars if you run it twelve times in every single issue so this is a huge investment if you want to advertise by you don't have tio because you can still get in a magazine without advertising still get your product on the editorial side and the product review pages where it's free other than the cost of your sample to actually get featured in that you have to pay zero fees and oftentimes if you negotiate ahead of time you could even get your samples back return and they'll pay for shipping to and from so really oftentimes this could cost you zero money if you do it the right way, so advertising is expensive. Pr is a lot more affordable, especially when you're reaching out to some of those national magazines. So now that you know why it's really important to get pr and magazines let's, talk about one magazine editors actually look for so they are often times, believe it or not, they look for products that are colorful, that are bright and that photograph well. And if you I know, we've been talking a lot about oprah magazine today, and it's really is on everyone's radar, but if you open any page of oprah magazine, the first thing you see in there is a color you see bright, you see things that look really good things that have really great packaging and a lot of magazines also look for that they look for bright. These are just some holiday gift guides that I took a screen shot of you see the variety of color that is in their magazines love color there covers are colorful, their product pages are colorful. Now, that's not to say that if you have a product that's, maybe black and white that's, not to say that you'll never get featured is just more for you to keep in mind that when you are pitching you want to be pitching your brightest most colorful on dh stuff that looks like this when you're pitching your product so yes robyn kind of tickles because one of the jewelry designers that's in our community and that we work with um her bracelets right there on the left hand side that's oprah's gift guide right yeah above them the little tag yeah yeah oh well so yeah so you're doing the right job training them on how to get the o so yeah so this is really I'm sure I don't know if you've talked to her about the impact that the oprah mentioned had yes and you're saying gives hugh jack yeah it's huge so not every magazine will have that huge impact but that is the power of being an oprah magazine but you still could have a really huge impact and if you can send them your most colorful products I think really think one of the reasons why my t shirts that so all and why my soaps that so well when he came to pr is because when you look at them everything it's colorful I didn't have black and white shirts and I didn't have packaging on myself though is just black and white that doesn't often work with pr buddy can I have a friend who she runs a company t shirt company called be good to people and her message is that being good to people is as simple as black and white, so all of her products are black and white, and two months ago she was featured on oprah magazine, so there still is a chance of you being featured if your products are not colorful, but keep in mind that your products have a better chance of being feature featured if they are actually colorful, so magazine editors also look for products that are available to their readers located across the country. If you're reaching out to let's, say, allure magazine, and you are pitching them your newest skin care line, but your skin care line is only available in tampa, they're probably not going to feature it unless they're specifically doing a story on local retail stores in tampa. So keep that in mind, too. If you have your if you don't have your own web site, make sure you get it because magazine editors really look for that, and you don't want to be sending them to on etsy shop where they share that link with their readers and your readers or your potential customers get distracted by other products that they could be buying on, etc. So you want to have your own website magazine editors will want you to have your own web site. Especially if you don't have national distribution if you're not in every city in every state and some of the major change, so that is really, really important when you are when they're selecting, whether or not they're going to mention you or not, and they also look for this is an obvious one, but I wanted to mention it because it's still really important, but they look for products that are really relevant to their readers, and they know their readers very well there survey they readers regularly, they talked to advertisers about their readers. If you look at some of those media kids, the first ten pages often times of a media kid is all about their readers, who are their readers water, the demographics, what's, their education, what are their ages? What are their interests? They really know their readers, and they're really good and knowing what product their readers will actually enjoy. So you have to make sure that when you're pitching that your products are really, really vela vent to their readers, and they also look for products that are interesting products that are newsworthy. Did you just launched something with an ingredient that has never been used in that way before? Did you launch something that's making headlines? That everyone needs to know about oftentimes most of our launches air products will not fit into that category, but depending on what you're doing if your product is new and innovative, the media will write about you simply because it hasn't been done before and they haven't written about it before. So if you have products or if you can position your product in a new a new noteworthy sort of way that makes headlines, you're definitely going to be getting a lot of media coverage too and then we talked about story a lot and your story your brand story, your product story but they really do love products that have a story even though it could be a short story like mining the previous example when I said I started it because I was frustrated with the lack of organic skin care and so on that's still part of the story because it's sharing why I started this and they love to hear this those stories so now that you know what they're looking for, we also talked about contacting the right person as being one of the keys to your publicity success. So who do you contact at a magazine? How do you know and elizabeth? I think you're the one asking before about are there different people you can contact? Is everybody in charge of the same things like how do you know who to contact so this is an example masthead from a magazine and this is actually it was just one long image but I sort of took it and put the first half on the left side the second half on the right side so you can see it a little better but you'll see here that they tell you their beauty director editor in chief, senior writer and so on so this is all of the people that actually work at that magazine and what I love about this and a lot of magazines or doing this now they have little quotes or they'll ask their magazine staff a question of the month and then different editors or writers will write their favorite things so they'll write their answers and this is a really great insight to know what magazine editors also prefer on a more personal level. So for example, this one she's saying she's not a big yogi but stretching in a downward dog relaxed my muscles now what if you had maybe like a body bomb or something like that that was all about when you put it on it helps to relax your muscles imagine if you reached out to her and you said I was just reading in your last issue that you don't love yoga buy you love stretching and we have a body bomb that would really help with your stretching that goes along what your email automatically stand out so don't discount this page I know oftentimes when we look at a magazine, you sort of just flipped through the pages and go to the first actual page, but there's so much really great information in here, in addition to just the actual name of the person who you need to contact. So this is a really great insight. Now, this particular magazine doesn't give you their email address, often time some magazines will save right here at the bottom, it will say to contact one of our staff members, please use first name that last name at time inc dot com sometimes they will give you their email address format that you couldn't use, and you'll know, because you have the first thing we have their last name, you have the email format and that's one way to get their email address. We'll talk about other ways that you can get there he milijas in just the second by looking at the masthead is something that we should all do for all of the magazines that we are interested in pitching our products, too. So now that we've looked that let's, break it down a little bit more. So you have the editorial department at a magazine there's so many different departments off people that are working on different things for that magazine. So the editorial department is where your main focus should be there looking for content there featuring products. They are the things that you actually read in a magazine few of us actually read the ads, right? We most often will read the content on the editorial side, then there's the design department and they're in charge of the are the photography delay out? This isn't really who you're going to be contacting, you're not pitching products photography, you're not pitching anything else other than a product. So the design department, even though maybe you might have an arts related product, they're more focused on the actual layout of the magazine and what it looks like rather than the content that goes in it. So you never want to reach out to anyone as a crafter who was pitching a product in the design department. How your fear photographer or something like that and you're pitching your services as a photographer, then that's exactly who you would want to be reaching out to you, but for our purposes today pass crafters, we're going to be reaching out to the editorial side there is also the production side, so they're in charge of taking everything and putting it all together and making sure that the magazine rack actually gets produced, and then you have the marketing department and they're often in charge of things like partnerships or special promotions or campaigns that they might run with some of their advertisers or with different companies or maybe with other magazines you might have seen. Maybe I think shape magazine sponsors a women's five k race every year, so that something that the marketing department is usually responsible for again, not the kind of department that you would want to be pitching your products too. There's also the circulation department, which is in charge of subscriptions they deal with if a subscriber changes their mailing address, or if someone wants to cancel their subscription, not someone who we would be reaching out to and then there's also the advertising department and their job, they're the ones who put together that media kids that we looked at earlier and their main job is to see sell ads, and oftentimes the advertising department and the editorial department are totally separate. So you might think, well, if I buy an ad, I'm going to have a better chance of getting featured on the editorial side. And I have seen that in some, like the really major magazine, for example, I think shape magazine there is a little bit of a link between their advertising in their editorial, and I have seen advertisers also mentioned in their editorial I don't know if that happened because they paid, but I've also had my products featured in shape magazine, and I never bought an ad so that's not to say that you only can get in if you pay for an ad, because you can get in even if you haven't paid for an ad. And again, I don't recommend paying fries, especially in some of these these big magazines. So now there's also you saw in the masthead that everyone has a different title, so let's, talk about who does what at magazine there's, the editor in chief, and this is one of the questions that I get asked most often is how do I know who to contact at a magazine there? So many people there? There's, an assistant editor and associate editor, this kind of editor, I just don't know who to contact, so I want to take a few minutes to break it down so that you can really understand who's working on what, at a magazine. So, you know, when you're looking at the masthead and you know the product you're pitching, you know exactly who you are going to be pitching. So the editor in chief, they oversee all of the operations they had, they had up all the departments, they sort of have their hands and everything that goes on at that magazine, the on ly thing is that smaller magazines for those smaller magazines, the editor in chief is also responsible for choosing product looking at products, reviewing them. But at the bigger magazines, the editor in chief is often the last person who sees the product. So if it's a smaller magazine, you can go to the editor in chief and pitch them. If it's a bigger magazine who has departments, the editor in chief is never your contact person, the editorial director, you might have also seen their more in charge of division of the magazine the types of products that there are not necessarily the specific products, but they oversee the overall vision. Maybe it's, a beauty magazine, they are in charge of the overall look and types of products that they want to get in there, and they also managed the editor, so they're more of a people manager and magazine manager as opposed teo on actual editor who's looking at products. So the editorial director is not the right person for you, either, and I'll tell you who the right person is, has they're going to move through this? But the executive editor again is not someone who is your contact when you are reaching out to the magazines, they usually approve all the copy. But all the copy all they do is approve it they don't necessarily do the research for it and find the product and they also do a lot of the hiring so they're super busy with growing their staff hiring people are not as focused on the editorial side even though their title is editor so it is a little bit misleading but they're sort of the editor of the whole I think that goes on then there's also the managing director and they oversee the production of the magazine so they deal with the printer they deal with the advertisers they deal with all of the actual stuff that goes into producing the physical copy of the magazine and they have nothing to do with what content goes in the magazine there is the utter ah large that some magazines have no not every magazine will have an editor at large but in our case usually the editor at large is a contributing editor which means that they're not a full time staff member they just contribute content it could be regular content it could be a once in a while oftentimes the editor at large could be a celebrity that has kind of partnered up with that magazine to provide some content or to do some of the editorial stuff but they're often not again not your contact person and sometimes they're full time oftentimes they are part time and they sort of have their hands in a few different jobs, and this is not their main job, and they also work on special projects. So there are some exceptions if the magazine that you're pitching tio let's, say they have the editor at large, put together the holiday gift guide. So that is an exception where they assigned that project, the holiday give guy project, which is a huge project for most magazines. They might assign that to the editor at large, but often times this is not going to be your contact person either. All right, so let's talk about the copy, chief. So the copy chief is the person that that heads the copy department and the copy department is not the editorial department that you should be reaching out to. So am I confusing all of you? Yeah, no. Okay. So in a minute, and I'll tell you who your contacts will be, but these are showing it is because there are so many people there and you can sort of cross them off your list, you know, not to contact them because they're not the right person for you. And you could narrow down from all of those different choices in your masthead, all of these people you can cross off and know that they're not the right contact for you. Now here is where you are starting to get in touch with the right people, so the editorial assistant they usually are entry level, a lot of them are out of college or maybe they just finished on entering ship had the magazine and this is their first step into getting in that magazine, and they provide a lot of admin support so they support their boss and they also can write and research products. I've had a few times and I e mailed an editor and I said here's some products for your gift guide, and she said, oh, I'm forwarding this to my to my editorial assistant who's putting all of this stuff together for me, and she'll be in touch with you so often times they will dio sort of the entry level filtering out product so they could be your contact person at a magazine the assistant editor, they usually do a lot of the editing, the writing and there the next step up after the editorial assistant, so they've been at the magazine for a year or so they have a little bit more say into what actually gets featured in the magazine and this could be your contact as well. Then there is the associate editor, and this is again the next step up from the assistant editor, and they do they have even more writing responsibilities, more editing and often times this is the person that I have a lot of luck with when I reach out to them because they're not as busy as the senior editor and they have more say than the assistant editor or the editorial assistant, so this is often a really great person to start out with when you're reaching out then there's a senior editor, this is also a really great contact for you, and they're the next step up again from the associate editor and they do a lot of writing a lot of editing. They are in charge of selecting a lot of the products usually when I talked to people at oprah magazine it's usually the senior editor of that specific section, so this works really, really great, so you could definitely reach out to the senior editor and that could be your first point of contact then there's a market editor and not every magazine will have a market editor. Usually only the fashion magazines will have it, and usually this is the person who is going out to the fashion markets and literally visiting companies and brands in person to see what kind of products they compose for their magazines, so they're usually out there doing research, doing their own research and you can still pitch them because they're always looking for products but just know that they're often times out of the office looking at the fashion market and the trade shows, they're looking for the next big thing and the next big product that they're going to feature. There's, also a research editor and the research editor, will verify the facts before the issue goes to print, and this is often what happened to me with in style magazine. I had their research editor who's, also the fact checker, but this is after the fact after the editor had chosen my product to be featured. So she was the last step before the magazine want to print so you don't wantto contact the research editor? They'll usually contact you if your product has been chosen to be featured, so I know some of these titles are really misleading on dh there's, just so many titles and there's even more titles than I put in here, so it couldn't drive you crazy, but I think you're getting the basics of who you need to contact at some of these larger magazines at the smaller magazines it's quite simple theirs, maybe a new editor in chief on an assistant editor and that's it's, and you really only have two people to choose from. But at the larger magazines you saw there's two, two pages of a magazine editor on whose england there's also a special features editor, and oftentimes, they'll work on special project they could do things like the holiday gift guide if that's a huge project, so this is sometimes a really great contact person for you as well. I know in shape magazine the person that I reached out to to feature my shirts was the special features editor and she had sort of her hands in a lot of different things that she was working on at that magazine there's also a staff writer and oftentimes they'll write the copy more for the editorial stories and not necessarily for the products, although they can write copy for products as well. But it's often after the editor says here's a great product that we found right some copy for it, so they're not necessarily the ones that are doing the research to get the products in that magazine and even more confusing or actually maybe even better, more more useful for you are that at the larger magazines they have different departments they have a fashion department a beauty department on each one of these departments has their own editors as well and there's a senior fashion editor, an assistant fashion editor of fashion editor and a associate fashion editor and the list goes on and on but what you need to know is that if you have a fashion product, you need to contact one of these editors and the fashion department you wouldn't be contacting someone in the lifestyle department so oftentimes this makes it really easy because it really helps you narrow down who you should contact if you have a beauty product maybe you want to start out with the assistant beauty editor on what I'll usually do is I'll start out with someone who is sort of in the middle so if there's three people that are working in the fashion department I might start out with the middle person and if I don't get a response from them then I'll move on teo the next person up or the next person down so that's why this is really good because you can still pitch the same story if you're pitching it to different people it's still in the same department but it's a different person and you totally can pitch a different person with the same story so there was definitely even though this is really confusing there's a lot of stuff that's really beneficial to you as your pitching because you have more points of contact there's also a food department with their own editors especially a magazines like martha stewart magazine and some of the other ones there is a health department lifestyle home, etcetera so you know what categories your products fit and if you have a home product your home editor or the lifestyle editor so you have even more choice would be your best contact so usually when you're trying to decide who do I need to contact for my products usually the section editor for the section where your product would be a good fit is the person you need to go to and then you can go up the ladder so I was saying I started the middle by you can start at the bottom and move you're way up usually you have more success if you start with the people who have fewer responsibilities because they get pitched less often but they still have a say in what goes on in the pages of that magazine. So pick one, see if you have success with one type of editor and for me I know it is usually the senior editor or the associate editor before the main editor so that's just my experience try and see what works for you but you can also know exactly who's working on what so you don't have to guess so sometimes you will know exactly who's working on a specific story and at smaller publications it's totally ok to contact the editor in chief because oftentimes it's just them and maybe one or two other people who are working on the content for that magazine. So at smaller magazines I know at organic spot magazine, whenever I work with them, the editor in chief is the person that I go to and she oversees all of the content so that's ah it's still a national magazine but when you look at their masthead, they don't have all of these departments. They don't have a beauty department on a fashion department in the food department. So that's. How you know, even though two national magazine, it's a smaller one, so you can still get in touch with the editor in chief.