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7 Steps to Get Your Product to Celebrities

So now let's talk about if you do decide to do this celebrity gifting yourself. And if you feel like you have the celebrities that you want, here are seven steps you can take to really get your products out there. The 1st 1 and this is my favorite database. It's called Contact any celebrity dot com, And the great thing is that they have contact information for any celebrity, whether it's a sports celebrity or a movie, celebrity or singer, Um, they have a ton of different contact. I think, um, look, they have 67 over 67,000 celebrity contacts in there, and this is what their homepage looks like. And what I love about this site, besides the fact that a lot of their addresses are very up to date, is that they let you sign up for a one month subscription or a yearlong subscription. So for me, the monthly one made a lot more sense because I would Onley do celebrity gifting once or twice a year. It's not something that I did every single month, so I love being able to sign up for this and on...

ly have to pay for a one month fee when I was only gonna be working on it for that month. So it's super easy to use once you sign up. I think I want to say it's maybe $30 a month. It's been a while since I checked the price, so it's definitely a lot more affordable, then $2000 or $ that you might have to pay. And you get access to any type of celebrity you want here. So once you get your membership there, go ahead and make a list of all of the celebrities that you think would be a good fit for your brand. So, like I was saying before, if you have a line of leather handbags, you probably should not be reaching out to celebrities that are vegans because they're probably not gonna be receptive to your products. So if you don't know a lot about celebrities, I personally don't know dad much. So in that case, you could just do a little bit of research on them, see what causes they support, see how many kids they have. If you have kids product and with the Internet, you really confined out anything you want about the celebrities and just make sure that they're inappropriate fit for your brand. And it's not something that they would be embarrassed to use or that they wouldn't want to use. And then once you have your list just like you would have your list of magazines, go ahead and get their contact info so you can log into your contact any celebrity database, and you're going to see there a lot of different people that work with celebrities. They might have their publicist. They're gonna have their manager. They're gonna have their agent listed their lawyer and again, just like you couldn't get overwhelmed by looking at the mast head of a magazine. It can be really overwhelming to look at all of the people that are working with a celebrity and try to figure out who do I need to send my product to and who's gonna be most most receptive to it. So my advice would also be always be to send it to the publicist. If there's a publicist name available and a lot of them will have who their publicist is, it will have their phone number, their email address, the company they work for, um, a lot of them have publicist that work for a firm that have 50 other publicists working with a ton of celebrity. So they'll tell you the company they're working for and all their contact information. But sometimes their publicist information is not available, so in that case, you can contact their manager. But I wouldn't recommend ever contacted their agent or their lawyer, and that's because their agents job is to get them jobs there. AIDS and job. It's not to get them cool products that they can try or put them out in the media. Their job is strictly to get jobs for the celebrity, so you would be wasting their time and your time if you're gonna be contacting their agent or their lawyer. So once you do that and you have all of that information, you do want to verify it. Because, as is the case with media databases, celebrities changed their team all the time. They maybe didn't like their manager or their publicist, so they're going to switch to a new one. So you do want toe contact the person that you would be sending the package to to ask them if they're still the right contact for that celebrity. And for this one, I've actually done it by phone. I think you can do it via email. Sometimes their emails is listed, but a lot of times you'll only find their phone number. So what I did here is that I would call them up on the phone when they were in the office, and I would introduce myself and say, Hey, I'm planning on sending two T shirts to the celebrity. Do you still work with them? And is this the address that I should be sending my package to? And then I would verify the mailing address that I had from the database, and most of the time I would say about 95% of the time, they would say, Yes, go ahead and send it, Um, sometimes they would say, No, I no longer work with them. So then you have to do a little bit of more research and find out who the new person is that you should be contacting. But about 95% of the time they'll say Yes, this is the right address. Go had incented. It's been actually very rare. Where they said, I am the right contact person, but I don't want you to send anything that's only happened a really handful of times. Usually villages give you the go ahead and send it, so once you do that, you're gonna obviously send the package. And here are a couple of tips that might seem a little strange as to why I'm telling you to do it this exact way. But I actually talked to the guy who runs contact any celebrity, and, um, this is what he said is the best thing to do. So he said, I don't know why, but you have to send your package via FedEx. Don't send it via UPS phone. Send it via regular mail or the post office because it's not going to get open, he said. There's something about FedEx that celebrities love and they're gonna open your package if it's sent via FedEx, so you might have to spend a little bit more than if you were sending it via, um, the post office. But at least you know it's going to get there and it's going to get opened and in your package, make sure to include include a personalised letter. So if you are sending a package to a celebrity that just had a baby, you want to say in your letter high, I you know, congratulations on your new baby. I wanted to send you something as a way to to say, you know, congratulations and obviously not in those words, but something along those lines where you are showing them that you know a little bit about them, that you took the time to make sure that your product is going to be a good fit for for them. And the other really great thing that you should do any time you're sending out a package to a celebrity is to include a self addressed and stamped thank you card. So this is literally a card that says thank you on it. It's blank. You're not going to write anything on it. Put it in an envelope that has your address as the main address and a stamp on it. Because what happens is if they love your product, you want to make it easy for them to send you a thank you card. So instead of having them go to the store by thank you card or have their assistant asked them to write a thank you card. You really make it so easy. They can just take the thank you card out right. Thank you on it. Put it in an envelope and give it to their assistant to put in the mail. So again, you want to make it as easy for them as possible. Teoh to write back that. Thank you card. And it might seem weird because right shouldn t show. You're looking at me like this is weird. It is weird. It's a little strange that you have to do this because you're saying send me a thing in car glee. Yeah, but it works and they do. A lot of times, they will take the time to take two seconds and write. Thank you. And right. You and I snowed and send you that card back. Dorothy, I know you're looking at me to, like, do I really have to do this? But, um, yeah, that's part of the game. That's how it works. This is how a lot of people do it. Even the celebrity gifting cos they'll have the thank you cards. They asked me to include a self addressed and stamped thank you card with the samples that I was sending out because they also send those thank you cards to celebrities when they're send their gift basket. So it's just part of what you have to do if you want to thank you. Card back. If you could care less that you got a thank you card back then, you don't have to do any of this. But then it's harder to say the celebrity loves my product and it's a lot more. Um, you have a lot more proof when you can show a copy of the thank you card on your website, and you can put it on your product page or on your testimonials page with the actual thank you card from the Celebrity and then in the letter. Also include your contact info, and I've had this happen where I send out a couple of T shirts and a celebrity row back. She emailed me and she said, Oh my God, I love your T shirts but I just took a look at your site and I love this other color more. Can you send this to me in a smaller size. Sometimes it's hard to know what sizes they are, especially for sending a T shirt or something that they can wear. But if you give them your contact info so they could easily get in touch with you, then it's gonna again. You're making it so easy for them to work with you and offer them a different size or color or a product, especially if you have a varied product line. Sometimes it's hard for me to know what she prefer a pink T shirt or what you want a brown one. But if in my letter I say, um, if you prefer a different color or if you need a different size or different phrase on the shirt, let me know and I'll be more unhappy t to send it to you. And a few times they actually have done that again by email. They wrote to me and they said, Oh, thank you so much for offering a different size. So again you want to make it easy for them to actually say yes to get more if they want, and that's a good sign. If they want more of your product, you're gonna have to send their for free. But the chances are that if they really love it and they're taking the time to actually requested, they're probably gonna be using good and hopefully using it out in public where they could be photographed. And then hopefully that photo will end up in a magazine with celebrities. So that's how it all works to translate into a sale. I know it's a crazy long process, but that's just how it is. So after you've send the package, sometimes you're going to hear back. Sometimes you're not going to hear back, but just like you do with everything else, you want to make sure that you're actually following up. So what I usually do is about a week after I send the package. I tracked the package to make sure that it arrived, and then I'll call the same person that I called previously to verify the address because they already know packages coming right there expecting it. So I would call in about a week and say, Hey, wanted to check in to see if you receive my package that I sent last week, and sometimes they'll say, Yes, we got it. Thank you so much or no, I haven't gone idiot, but I'll keep an eye out for it, and sometimes you're not going to get a response. But I would say call if you have to leave a message, leave a message, ones if you still don't hear back call again and leave another message. But after that, I would say to just drop it and move on and assume that they got the package, Um and that hopefully they passed it on to the celebrity and, ah, lot of times because you're going to be sending the package directly to their publicist and not to the celebrity. If you want to say, can you please make sure that the packages forded to the celebrity that you work with, as opposed to assuming that they're gonna forward it, um, again, call to action. What do you want them to dio after they get it? You want them to hand it off to the celebrity, So hopefully the celebrity will be using getting wearing it. So asked them for what it is that you want, and hopefully you will be getting that. So all of that is really great. But how do you actually turn that into a sale because, as I said before, it really is a much longer process than you would if it was a magazine or a blogger. So a couple of ways to turn it into a sale is to email all of your customers. And I've done this where I've sent one email to my customers that had nothing else in it except the fact that Tori Spelling loved my T shirts and my baby onesies and if they wanted Teoh get some, too. So it was a little promotional on my end. But at the same time, I don't send these types of emails too often. I'm not going to send one email every time I get a press mention or a new celebrity. So I think about it. Was it a major celebrity? A major press mention? And in that case, it's fine to send one email or a couple throughout the year to your customers. But then also let your retailers know, because what happened a lot of times, the one Denise Richards love my T shirts, and she sent me a photo of herself wearing my T shirts. I emailed all of my retailers that had that T shirt and stock. And I said, Hey, the celebrity really loves my T shirts. Would you like a print out of her wearing them so you can put it next to my T shirts on the shelves of your store and believe it or not, a lot of them said, Oh, thank you, Yes, that would be great. So again, you're making their job easier because you're providing them with marketing materials. It shows them that you you're taking an interest in your brand and you're actually going out there to promote it. And the more you promoted, the more they benefit and the more their sales are going to increase. And it's really a win win here. So after you've done that, if you don't have any retailers, obviously you can skip this step. But after you're done, that led the media note. Let's celebrity magazines. No, like the local media. No, and and I was mentioning that her things got got in the media and I did the same on a website and the same thing happened to me. I sent out to all of the celebrity magazines and the celebrity websites I sent out her photo and I said she loves our T shirts. Would you like to write about it, or do you want a photo of it? And, um, a couple of online websites have said yes. It never made it into a celebrity magazine, but it didn't make it into a couple of websites. I think it even made it on the website of Glamour magazine because they were on my list. So a couple of other websites picked it up and again. It was great because it was more traffic back to my side. More links to my site, more people knowing that celebrities are loving my T shirts. So it was just and I know from just from those mentions, some people came to buy my T shirts. But had I just lead the photo, sit on my desk or in my email box without doing any of this, then probably none of those sales would have happened. So you do have to do a little bit more work, and a lot of this works with magazine mentions to If you get a major magazine mention, you want to make sure that you let everyone know that your products were featured in a magazine and then obviously put it all over your website. Put it in your media kid in your wholesale kit shirt on Facebook, shirt on Twitter blogged about it, the more you could get it out there, the more people are gonna see it and they're going to trust you. And it might seem a little strange at first because you're thinking, Well, why should I be talking about this all the time? But you don't have to put it in people's faces. Just put it on your site. And if people come to your site, they'll see it that it's there, they're gonna trustee more, and hopefully they're going to be buying for me more to so it really is, Ah, thing of where you have to be patient if you're gonna be doing the celebrity thing. But again, a lot of times it could happen super quickly to depending on which avenue you take. So a few more tips that I wanted to share with you guys today before the session is over is that you are gonna have to give away your product for free, so make sure you have the budget for this. I don't want you to take away product from your customers to give to celebrities or even to the media. I think your customers should always come first, and they are the people who really do matter. A lot of this matters, too, but it really is ultimately about making sure your customers are happy and you have what you promised them. And if you're giving away all of your products to celebrities and all of your products to the press and then you don't have any for them when they come to your site, they're probably not gonna come back. So has your doing this Keeper customers in mind doesn't make sense. Do I have enough product for them? And if they come to my site, can I fulfill what I said I would do? And then this is the other interesting thing, especially if you're making handmade products that can be personalized. Celebrities love personalized products, whether it's a personal ice T shirt or a onesie or necklace, maybe with their name on it or their kids name on it. I know some entrepreneurs that have jewelry that they come personalized, and if you can send a product that can be personalized with either their name or their kids name or maybe their favorite charity. There gonna be a lot more likely to respond to you, because again you're showing them that you're taking an interest and who they are, what they're doing and making a product that's custom for them. So I personally couldn't do this with my T shirt business because I wasn't screen printing the T shirts myself. Um, but some of you who make handmade stuff, for example, Dorothy, if you know that a celebrity really loves a certain color, maybe you could make your flowers in that color. And in your letter you can say I made this especially for you, because I know you love blue and it's a small thing, but it does show them that you know a little bit more about them. I also do monogram flowers. Were the Senate as a monogram? Great. So that would be perfect for that. So you could monogram it with their initials or yeah, great idea. Great BSO. That's gonna go a lot longer way than if you were just a send one of your other flowers. So if you can personalize it, go for it. And the other great thing. You know, we talked about celebrity gift lounges and PR firms and doing get yourself. But we can't leave out the celebrity support team. And this are the people that helped celebrities workout. They help him to look good. They helped to buy their groceries or maybe run their errands or watch their kids. So if you can find out who who those people are and reach out to them to an offer them your product for free again, if they love it, they're gonna shared with the celebrity. And it's another way to be getting out to the celebrities. And a lot of it is cutting out all the noise, because when you're working with a publicist or PR firm or even the celebrities on publicist, ah, lot of times they're working with other people, too. But if you're working with someone who has direct access in a celebrity's daily life and you can offer them your products, they're probably going Teoh share your products with their team as well. So this is an indirect way. Sometimes you can actually google a celebrity or, um, and see who their stylist is. Sometimes you'll see it in a magazine. Um, you'll see something like the celebrity got her hair done by her stylist and the least list her stylist name. So you can find out this information through the Internet A lot of times, and even a lot of magazines have celebrity stylists that featured their favorite products in that magazine. So again, if they love your product and they're hired to work for a magazine, ensure their favorite products. It's another way to indirectly get into that magazine without you having to send your product to the magazine. And lastly, be patient because not everyone is going to respond as you saw before Onley. About 10% of the celebrities that I send my products to respond it, and that's pretty normal, I would say, sometimes higher, sometimes lower. Um, but not everyone is going to say yes and send you a thank you note, and sometimes they love your products, but you're never going to hear from them again. So be patient and just again, don't take it personally if no one responds and lastly dream big right, why not your products? Why shouldn't they be using your products even though your small company just starting out. That's okay. They love products. Who doesn't? They have. They love a variety of things, maybe something that they've never had before. So why not have those be your products? So think big and don't think Oh, she will never were my products because I'm just starting out and I'm really small. So I I know I sure this with the magazines, too. But this is really important in gifting to celebrities and pretty much everything else you're gonna be doing in your business as well. So I hope I haven't scared you off to working with celebrities because it really can have a huge payoff. If you do a lot of these things and you take those thank you notes and leverage them into more sales and share them with your clients, share them with your social media followers, your wholesale accounts and everyone else who is somewhat involved with your business. Anybody off because this is really excited out chaplains. Thank you very much for your comments and questions. We actually have quite a few t crank through, so we will try and do as many as we can in the time it's managed first, although some of it might be just recapping in fact infused jewelry. I'm just going to ask about starting to set, but I think on dressed your sense of that one for you that was right on right on target. But let's start with broad tastic was asking, Do celebrities ever pay for your product? Sometimes they will. Actually, I've heard stories they haven't paid for my products. But I first stories where they love your products so much that they're going to go to your website instead of even though you might be offering, then something for free. They'll go to your website and order through your website. Actually, no, I a woman died. I was part of Woman's that working group, and she posted to Everybody said, I just send a product to the celebrity, and now I'm seeing on order from her on my site, so that can totally happen more than you might think. Especially they want a lot of your product or if your products expensive and maybe they feel like they don't want to ask you to pay for it. So sometimes that could definitely happen and that's definitely a great thing if it does happen that way, great. And we have a question here from just in time. And now you mentioned how socially aware celebrities are there, vegan or whatever support sports that they are behind. But question is, I don't have anything to sell, but I want a celebrity to get behind my environmental campaign. How do I get celebrities behind? My cause is if I don't have a product. Yeah, that's a really great question to, and I think that's a lot harder because they already have causes that they're behind, and a lot of times they don't want to take on something new. But I think something like that is much, much harder to do. And I think sometimes you have to. Um, I don't think you couldn't just write to them and say, Hey, please get behind my cause and donate $10,000 to my cause. But sometimes if you know maybe one of their stylist or someone that they're working with, maybe you can get in that way. But that's that's a really tricky one. I think you're gonna have to get your cause out there and be known and be where the celebrities are. So maybe do the celebrity lounges or be at the events or donate to some of their favorite causes. But I think it's a more of matter of getting your thing out there, and you're cause out there and with the hopes of them somehow finding out about it. Um, but it's not as easy as sending them a letter and asking them to support it, because that probably I'm not sure if that's ever happened. But I mean, it might have, who knows? But it's especially for starting out. It's a little tougher to get their support. Not sure I want to understand the question, if I may, because off CEO Arthur Ladies on the panel on the other ladies, because you know what I mean. Ladies here on the panel are already dealing with products and jewelry, etcetera, but you're obviously dealing with very much of a service. Do you think a celebrity endorsement would help you in any way? And what would be your thoughts about going ahead and getting that? That's actually very your question. I think service is a bit more difficult because you're having toe have the celebrity speak out in a way about the item. You can't see your service, at least my service worn on them as they're heading out of the gym or out of their apartment. But I could see it being incredibly useful if they have sort of a voice, if rather there a TV personality or radio personality. I hear this all the time when a celebrity might just kind of give a quick opinion about a service that is not necessarily paying to have them say it. And that, I think, is even more genuine when that happens. So rather and then it say it's being said during an ad block. They might. They might say, You know what? Hey, I've been spending my time, you know, on this site called my Online Tech guy. And it's ants entering all these tech questions that I have that's golden, but I can see that being very difficult to do. You know, in a way I would say to then I think for you. If you ever do read the celebrity magazines or you might come across an interview with a celebrity that's saying I'm having such a hard time with technology It's the one thing I hate. Then that would be a great way for you to approach that celebrity and say, I read your interview in X Y Z magazine and I know you having trouble with technology. Would you be interested in having me share with you? You know, my tips or my videos and it's thinking outside the box. But if you know that they're having a problem with something you condemn, definitely approach them with that. And again, it shows that you read their article and you know, they're struggling with this and you have a solution for them. So with services, it could totally work. If you read interviews with celebrities and see what they're struggling with. Yeah, so really quickly, sort of. On the same lines I heard, I listened to a pretty popular radio host, and just a few weeks ago he mentioned that he loves watching creative live, and he's mentioned this now a couple of times, and he's got millions. Of course, millions of subscribers and it was amazing, you know, to hear and that is golden. You know, that's great, completely unprompted, which is actually just said it's interesting because a few years ago. Very similar, not exact. Same business maturing. But the British government did try to really encourage older people to get involved with the Internet and to start using acceptance. And they did a series of infomercials where they did bring in older television celebrities to actually pitch it to the audience and just say, Look, if I could do this, you can do this. I mean, there are different ways of approaching it. There is no question that I was just going. Teoh also talk about services. Um, celebrities, also, for services like styling is a service, you know, it's not a product like a fitness, you know, that's not a problem. Either is more of a service. And one thing that I have notices celebrities refer, others needle proud. I mean other services to other celebrities they know all the time because, um, especially if they can trust that person the and they're definitely going to refer you. I mean, then you'll be called the you know, hold Celebrity Tech guy, you know, So once they trust you, I mean, it's just, you know, viral B, and they just cautious about their security. Exactly. And their trainers, their service people that cater to celebrities factually because they know if they come into their home or work with our technology. But they're not going to steal their address book and do all this crazy stuff. So So trustworthiness is, you know, key and they'll definitely refer you. Perhaps you're one celebrity will use your product and then recommended to another celebrity. And that kind of tied into a question that says Are from Mexico had Is there sort of a a hierarchy of celebrities? Do you kind of start at a certain level before you pitch to larger celebrities? Do you? Do you work your way up, or how do you approach that? I think it really the pines. Sometimes you could if you're nervous. I mean, dream big right there, right? So why not start where you want to be, as opposed to where you think you should start? But sometimes it is legitimate to feel like I want practice. I want to see what's working Is this kind of letter working as opposed to this one? So I think in that case, to use it as practice and to really learn how to do this I think it's totally fine to start out maybe with the B list celebrities as opposed to the A list celebrities numb, so to speak. So in that case, I think it's totally fine. But just make sure that you're still dreaming big and not contacting the celebrities you really want because your ovary, assuming that they might not be interested, Robert Buildings as faras reaching out to people, those stylists and those fitness instructors and those those people that kind of surround the celebrity become celebrities themselves. So even getting endorsement from them is really incredible. Um, and then when I was working for a dog, your jewelry, we, um on occasion would give something to a celebrity. We didn't really participate in gift bags and things like that, but it was always amazing when the celebrity came back and said, Thank you so much. I would love to purchase this for all my girlfriends were going way that, you know, that was really amazing. And so that can happen. But you're giving them the opportunity to contact you directly instead of just they don't know how big or small you are. So if it's coming, it's almost more special coming from you directly, like the designer, the creator. Um And then it's it leaves that open for them to come in shop with you, too. We're just gonna Yes, definitely. Yeah. And on that note, like before the stylists and the whole support team, our maybe at that level. And they are still, you know, kind of still behind the scenes and in the support status, like I think, going through the gate keepers and giving them, you know, like maybe gifting them and then having them kind of beer into the silver. I think giving them that attention is also a great tip, because a lot of times they're just, you know, they're so behind the scenes and maybe they haven't achieved that, like, fitness celebrity status yet. So I think that that's a great technique as well. Yeah, and I think that works especially well with people that are offering the service on a lot of the stylist. They have their own website. I mean, I Google them. I was curious, and I found so many trainers and stylists and makeup artists that works specifically with celebrities. And they have their own website with their own blawg were there sharing their own experience. So you can definitely get to know them a little bit as well before you reach out with your product. Another interesting angle from this I'd like to get your impressionist of it Ties into question we've had from Peeps. Celebrities, of course, do actually have ordinary people as friends. Eyes really with thought. So they may come across your product completely innocently, and they may actually reach out to you because they saw your soap in the household of somebody who just is not a celebrity. Now if that happens and they come to you and ask, I mean, are you then in the same position to ask them? OK, I'm very happy to give you this, but I'd like you to endorse it. Or is that just a little bit too aggressive? And what's your thinking there? Yeah, I feel like that's another one of crossing the line. It might be a little bit too aggressive, but I feel like if you've done your job right and they love it, they might shared with their celebrity friends. So it just really depends again on how comfortable you are and what kind of job you're doing to get your products. Teoh be loved and to be seen and to be shared. So next we're going to talk about. We talked about bloggers in terms of guest blogging, but after the break, we're going to talk about if you have a product, how do you get your product to be reviewed by a blogger or how to do give away? So instead of sharing your contact with content with them, will be sharing your products with them. Great. Before I share a few quotes that we have here, I want to remind everyone you've been enjoying this workshop. If you want to give thanks to Andrea, we've set up a virtual thank you card on our Facebook page. So if you do go to facebook dot com slash creativelive, you will see a photo of us on there. You can leave your comment and we will be reading them on the air throughout the rest of the segments today. So go ahead, tell us what you thought about the course and give a big thank you to Andrea. And we do have a few quotes here that I want to read before the break V s photo says all of Andrea's information about guest blogging has been so thorough. I especially appreciate the things to look for when you're researching each block, including their reach and readership. Previously, I just picked a block that I liked. I didn't take this into consideration. I didn't think if my work was a perfect fit for them or not. But now I'm gonna look into that. And then we also heard from Alicia Dan's wife, and she said, Alicia, she said, I love how Andre I keep saying success in publicity is about persistence and patience. You have to keep trying things and keep putting yourself out there, even though you will get a lot of nose, and that could be discouraging. But knowing that you'll get 20 knows for everyone. Yes, it doesn't make you feel as discourage. That's really great to hear. It is great to hear, and I think it's definitely the key off this morning segment fact, all three days has been not to be discouraged, keep trying things