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Five Steps to Get in Magazines

So now let's talk about the five steps, so I did talk about if you can send an email, you can get into a magazine, but there are some steps you have to take in order to get there, so the first one is to make a list of your dream magazines and I want you here too really dream big, don't you think? You know, I can't I don't think I could get an oprah, so I'm not going to put it on my list because who knows? Maybe one day you'll be able to get an oprah may be the way you pitch them really speaks to them and they wanna featuring a product just when you launch, so I would start with about twenty magazines that you'd like to be featured and you could do this whether it's a blogger you want to be featured in. I know this presentation is mostly focused on magazines, but it doesn't have to be magazines. It could be five morning shows you want to get on or five blog's you want your products to be reviewed on and you can have more than twenty if you'd like you could have fewer. I like to start wi...

th twenty just because it's a more manageable number, starting with something like one hundred khun seem really overwhelming, especially have to get all of their contact information and build up a whole database of one hundred magazines so just stop started twenty of your biggest magazines that you would if you're products were in there you would be the happiest person ever on dh think outside the box think about consumer magazines think about trade magazine I know with my soaps yes they are for consumers but part of my audience is also retail store owners because I do sell to stores is well so in that case I decided to add magazines like gift shop magazine or internet retailer magazine or magazines that cater to those stores because those are my customers to so think outside the box especially if you're selling both the retail and wholesale if you sell primarily online is it better to be featured in a blob because people can click right from it whereas a magazine if they just put your web site they have to go to the internet and get online before they you know what? Yeah so that's a really good question and I think being featured and blocks is really great and it's great for the lynx but it doesn't necessarily result in sales right away so like the same way that a magazine would so I would say just because you're on online business don't discount the offline publications because I've done a ton of giveaways and blogger reviews with bloggers that even had, you know maybe one hundred thousand readers every month and I don't get as many sales from that as I do when I do a magazine that has one hundred thousand readers, so the fact that they're actually, you know, taking the time to look through the magazine type in your girl in a lot of ways there are a lot more qualified because they've read about your product, they know what it is, and they want to find out more, so when someone wants to find out more, they're more likely to buy they're more open to that s so that's why? I think magazines are really great and don't want to discount blocks because I'll be talking about the benefits of those two tomorrow and they're really great, but I would say to go for both, even if you just have an online presence, just the impact thing, too, is that even if you have a physical product that's in a store this day and age, people are ordering them online all the time. So even if I saw a gadget that I was interested in, I knew that it might be at the mall. I probably go to the site first to see if I can order it online and have it shipped directly to me, so kind of for both, I'd say. Yes, definitely, and what a lot of people are also doing now is they go to the store, and then they re searched the product online to find out more about it and sometimes then that buying get up buying it online. Sometimes they'll bite from the store, but I know a lot of stores are really upset because of what people are doing because, you know, we all have more the phones now, it's super easy to just push a button and click, buy and leave the store without buying anything, especially if you just want to see what the product looks like first and touch it and maybe try it on and then go buy online. So so yeah, it's, the more out there you could be in the more different avenues you could take the better is because some of magazine readers might not be reading these blog's, even though they're part of your target audience as well. So you want to get people from all different media outlets and just get at them in different ways itself. Yeah, maybe thing, too, is that a lot of the magazines have web presence and they even have aps, so I knew lucky magazine has an app and you go on there and it will show the products that are featured in their magazine at the time, so it's, another avenue toe get in there they do yes and that's exactly what happened to me and self magazine so they published my soaps in their holiday gift guide that hadn't come out yet and then a few weeks ago I saw a tweet from them with my selves and they said for anyone who's looking tio get an early start on their holiday shopping here are some great gift to recommend so yeah so they mentioned me not only in their print magazine but also to their online audience and it's sitting on their website they tweeted and I think they have over two hundred thousand followers on twitter so again it couldn't leave to so many things you know and from that I got stores calling me and wanting to be in there people buying obviously so the more well rounded you can be with your publicity the better it is and I also wanted to say something about publicity because it's really only one part of marketing your business there are so many other different avenues you khun take um you going to trade shows you can take out ads if you have the budget for that you can sell directly to stores it could do email marketing social media mar working I mean there's so many different ways you can go here but publicity is really one thing that works really really well and if you couldn't figure out how to do it on a study basis it's just going to result in a steady stream of traffic and people buying and again, if someone sees you on social media, then they see you in a magazine that's two times they've already seen you and then they come to your site that's three times they sign up for newsletter you send them your first newsletter that's four times right there and by that time they're probably almost ready to buy yeah, yeah, yeah so it's just really important tio be really well rounded with all of your marketing efforts and everything you're doing in your business and not just put all of your eggs in one basket, so to speak yeah? Um yes, so I think you guys are already thinking about dreaming big and what type of magazines you want to get into? And then the next step is to really study each magazine and I wanted to study it because the way they talk about the products that they feature it's going to be a little different from magazine to magazine, but all of them do talk about benefits and some features as well, but the more you study the magazine, the more familiar you're going to be with it and the easier it's going to be when you're actually pitching to them, so go ahead and just read a few off their back issues if you maybe want to spend an afternoon at your local bookstore or barnes and noble and just get a whole bunch of magazines maybe your top twenty ones and spend some time looking through them and take notes maybe even take a photo with your phone about the page that you want to be featured in and look at what types of stories do they cover isn't more like an inspirational magazine more of a um just product reviews or product features do they engage their audience? Do they provide a lot of stories? What type of stories that they have and where on their pages can you actually see yourself fitting in? I know aa lot of times and we'll see this in the next presentation but a lot of editors say you know I wish people would just pitch me for the section that they want to be in so sometimes they have like oprah magazine they have a, um the oldest or oprah's favorite things where if you email them and you say you know I love you products that you mentioned in your old list and I think my products would be really great along these other ones then you're already making their work easier by telling them or directing them to where you think your products would be a great fit and their pages and it also shows them that you're familiar with their magazine that you actually read it and if you're familiar with it they're more likely tio to actually listen to you then if it's just someone randomly who says hey here's a press release so it makes him more personal, it shows them that you care uneven with my email that I was sharing yesterday when the woman wrote and she said, you know, I've been to your website and I love yourselves it already shows me that she's done some work to go to my site to see if it's a good fit before she actually e mailed me and that goes a long way with everything you do not just with publicity and then look at the other types of products that they feature. Could your product fit somewhere along those other products that they have and you'll know pretty soon and this goes with stores as well if you walk into a store, I've done this many times with my t shirt business, I walked into a store that was local to see if I thought it would be a good fit for my products and some that I thought would be a good fit just from looking at their site. I walked into the store and I thought, there's no way I could imagine my t shirt sitting in here and not because the store was not great or my t shirt weren't weren't great, but just because the other products that they had just were not a good fit for my t shirt, so it's really important to just look at the whole picture and see what else there featuring as well. And then look at is their audience similar to yours if there's a fit, if you see that a lot of your maybe when you do your next survey and you see that a lot of your readers read a specific type of magazine, then you're going to know that's, probably a good fit, and that actually happened to me with my t shirt business one I pulled my customers and I said one magazines you read, and I was expecting the obvious, like lucky and cosmo and oprah and all of those things. But I was really surprised when I saw things like food and wine magazine because I never would have thought that my customers were reading food and wine magazine because I just had an imagine them that way. So when I knew that, guess who I decided to pitch? Even though my t shirts were not food or wine when they do their holiday gift guide, they are probably going to write about other products besides food and wine. So that again, another way to think outside the box and really learned from your customers and get to know them really, really well, so once you've done all your researcher, familiarize yourself with their audience the next step is to get a copy of their editorial calendar and editorial calendars allow you to see what stories editors are working on and what their deadline is and aa lot of times they'll just have the main theme off the issue they're not going to have every single story that they're working on because that would be a huge editorial counter and a lot of times they don't necessarily know if something is going to be newsworthy or if some celebrity just had a baby and they want to put that in there s so they don't give you a lot of details, but you can still get the overall theme of that issue and if your products fit in with the overall theme, then you're going to know it's a great fit and just think about, you know, maybe your products are going to sit into their february issue by not their july issue, but if you have a good idea of what they're going to be working on it's going to be really helpful as you're planning your publicity calendar to know exactly when you need to contact them. So there's a couple of ways that you could get editorial calendars and we talked a little bit about some of this yesterday, but the first one is super simple just search for the magazine name and the word editorial calendar and you'll see here I type then oprah magazine editorial counter and it came up right there with their media kit and you just click on it you'll see I clicked on it, and once you do that, you get this and this is basically a good idea. This is their twenty fourteen editorial calendar and you'll see here that in january they're working on transformation. So if you maybe our health coach or ah personal trainer or a life coach or someone that helps people to transform their lives, this would be a great issue to be pitching them for or for me, for example, I pitched my products for their valentine's day gift guide and february, and she said all we're doing the whole wellness issue in february. I think your products would be a great fit, so if she has health and beauty products, that would be a great fit in there and just really look at all of the things that they're going to be writing about and see how your product if you think about it from many different angles, how your product might be able to fit in there. Yes, for me I would be I'm honing in on march because I thought about it last year and I was too late for it, so when it says december thirtieth that's really that my date is that's really not the date I would be looking is it before december thirty because that's really for it so what I just say beginning? They said, you know, because I don't want this yeah, so that's a great question so what happens is when you get editorial calendars it's goingto almost all of them look like this and it's going to have on sale date so you see there that's the date the magazine is on newsstands or is being sent to their subscribers and before that they call it space clothing because again their editorial calendars were made for their advertisers and advertisers need to know what the last day is that they can actually book an ad in that issue and for this one for the march issue, let's say their space closing is december twentieth, so advertisers have to get in their ads if they want to be featured in there but with editorial it's usually thirty days before that time, so for you it would probably be november twentieth, so I would usually start about three weeks before that so you can give yourself enough time to actually follow up if you didn't hear back from them or enough time tio maybe pitch a different editor with a slightly different take on your subject, so the space closing is usually about thirty days or so ahead of or after you need to be finalizing your pitching so I would start about yes yes yeah on break and start pitching because he has this would definitely be the right time for you yeah this is the thing I mean this is this is amazing to be able to pull up the editor of the calendars which um that to have access to I mean it makes it makes the guessing not guessing I mean it just really helped so much yeah it really does and some magazines make it super easy I mean, who knew that you could get access to the oprah magazine editorial calendar right and they have it right there on a lot of magazines have it some might not but if they don't I'll tell you how you can still get it but some do have it and the other thing about oprah is that they also make it release if you can find the editorial counter they have other ways that you can get in touch with them and for example this is on there what sight and they're telling you what they're looking for so a lot of times you couldn't just click on this link and so many magazines have this so many tv shows have this where they really tell you we're looking for this kind of person or this kind of story if you're a good fit click this link and obviously they're going to read that because they're specifically looking for those stories so if your products fit in there then just go ahead and tell them how you can help, how they can fit in there, and you have a direct access to people who are actually reading these emails. So if you can find the mag the editorial calendar by looking at or googling magazine ayman editorial calendar, try going to their web site and at the bottom of their website. We're talking about this yesterday, but at the bottom of their web site, they have a section called advertising or sometimes it it even says for advertisers and there you can click through and just requires their media kit because they want to make it easy for their advertisers to go ahead and advertising in the magazine. So they provide them with all of the information that they need to make the decision if they want to advertise and you technically be considered an advertiser because you have a product that at some point who knows, you might add, would want to advertise in there? Maybe not, but they make it super easy. Sometimes you will have to enter your name and company name and phone number, and sometimes they'll call you to follow up just to see that you got everything okay, and to see if you have any questions, so that's just part of the game I wouldn't recommend putting in a fake number but you know but just sometimes to expect the phone call from them and you could just politely turned them down and say, you know, thanks so much I decided not to do it at this time so that's totally okay, maybe one day you might decide I know it's a local magazine their ad rates were totally affordable and I really wanted to support my local magazine, so I ended up advertising just from requesting their media kit on dh learning more about their rates and it just made a lot of sense for me. So who knows? One that you might be an advertiser, but for now we're just going to use that as a way tio get their editorial calendar and to really see what they're working on. Yes, for example, for you, you really wanted to get into oprah magazine if there is one magazine that you really want to and then you see sort of that calendar and maybe six of those months look good to you and you have ideas, is there sort of a time where you can, you know you were becomes too overboard and maybe you're you're pestering them too many times? Or could you once a month like hit him up for an idea for half a year with the editor sort of I want you to stop bugging them or is that good? Yeah I think it's it's good you could definitely hit them up every month I would recommend trying tio not email the same person every month because a lot of times there's more than one editor was working on something so maybe email one editor one month and follow up if you don't hear anything, try a different one the second month if it's a smaller publication where they it's only one person working there or one person in charge of the section I would probably do it every two months or so not not right every month selya online thank you all for your questions that coming in a ellen interpretations is asking if you're pitching to magazine will they not consider you if your media coverage isn't his last scale is them if you are really small business I know vote for example would they consider you of your small business or are they looking for something that's going to similar media profile yeah you know I think they are going to feature you if they love your products so for example with my soaps I mean I had no customers I just put on my web site when I email them so I was by no means a large company I'm still not a large company and I was still able to get over one hundred of them to request him also don't feel like you're too small. I know we talked about this yesterday, one of the quotes in the beginning that my company's too small to be featured in a big magazine there's no such thing as too small. That might have been the case ten years ago when they were on lee really featuring a large companies before the internet, where people can easily buy something, but if your products can be purchased online, you can get into a magazine or if you have some sort of an online presence, it could be an etsy shop to you don't need to necessarily have your own web site. I see magazines a lot of times mentioning at ceilings, although I do think if you do have your own site, it couldn't get you a little more coverage that if you just had an itsy shop and I always recommend having your own website for many reasons, I couldn't do on entire course on that, too. Yeah, but but, yes, you should definitely have your own online presence as well, because as long as you have that and they can go to your side, they can feature you if it's a good fit for them great question like you, so now that you've got a copy of their editorial calendar, your next step is to determine where your stories fit. Into that calendar and if you're going to pitch on topic, you're more likely to actually get a response so if they're covering travel in march and you're pitching them in july for there september issue let's say and they're not talking about travel, you're pitching them off topic and you're probably not going to get get featured and you're going to annoy them so next time if they remember that you send them an email before and it was off topic, they're probably not going to open it because they're going to assume that it's off topic again. So just think about where your products fit into their and your stories and just make sure to pitch on topic. So now here is I love this because this is like an editorial counter chee cheat and aa lot of magazines follow the same formula they covered the front products or different things, but ah lot of them focused on the same topics because a lot of them cater to the same audience and these are topics that are timely things that everyone's going through. So for example, in january everyone wants to lose weight, right? Everyone has near his resolution or almost everyone we have new year's resolutions and we say this year is going to be totally different and I'm ready to change or I'm ready to step it up or whatever, so a lot of magazines cater to that so they have a lot of fitness trainers talking about fitness tips or health coaches talk about health or psychologist talking about what people need in order to keep their new year's resolutions and weight loss and wellness and all of those things. So if you can fit in one of those then it's definitely a great way I know for me un example with my t shirt business and this was thinking way outside the box but I had a t shirt on it that said today matters and I thought, you know, maybe that would be a great t shirt to sub um it as a way to remind yourself to keep your new year's resolutions right like everyday matters it's totally thinking outside the box and I pitched it as a way tio keep yourself and just remind yourself to keep your new year's resolutions and it didn't get picked up by any magazines but that's fine, you know, it was just gave me more practice to do it and of really allowed me to think outside the box in february a lot of them talk about valentine's day gifts and travel s o for you shitty show this would be a really good one teo get on there sometimes they did talk about travel in march as well because people are getting ready to baby planned their summer vacations and again people sometimes do plan in advance and magazines want to serve their readers and if they know their readers air starting to plan then they're probably going to provide them with content that's allowing them to plan in march a lot of times they do a spring theme where they talk about spring fashion or spring products even gardening that like how to get your garden ready for the summer season in april april a lot of it is all about equal friendly products, so if you have something that's made out of recycled materials or organic content or ingredients this would be a great issue for you to be pitching them in may there's mother's day there's graduations there's memorial day people are starting to have barbecues and be outdoors more so magazines are going to pay attention to that and they're going tio cater to their readers by providing them with tips and advice specifically on those topics june as again father's day and more graduation here's where they really start going into summer so if you have maybe bathing suits are products for barbecues or grills or or something like that where it has to do with summer maybe tote bags for the beach I don't know just think creatively um this would be a great issue for you to be pitching for that time in july they really get into the summer entertaining where it's all about barbecues and being outdoors and more of that beach stuff fourth of july and also a lot of weddings to so if you have a product that would be great for weddings july would be a great time for you to be pitching that because a lot of people and I don't know the statistics but I think a lot of people get married in july and august and over the summer in general and again magazines totally cater to that because they want to serve their readers and were there at during the year august is a lot of times it's all about back to school and even though it may be let's say you have a product for grown ups you can still pitch for that because they still do want to feature new products to so it's it's definitely about back to school but it's also about sort of like starting over with the back the school season when a lot of parents may be are done with the summer and they're getting ready to maybe go back to work or just depending on on where they're at but that's a great focus for august and in september they start talking about okay cooler weather is coming what products maybe umbrellas or maybe coats or boots or things like that where you can teach your products for that issue again if you're really thinking about what they're needing to make their readers happy and where their readers are at in october is all about halloween s so if you have a product, even if it's an orange product think outside the box and just pig pitch your orange products, you never know, right? They might be recommending that to their readers, and they also talk a lot about breast cancer awareness. So if you are a health coach, maybe a personal trainer, you can talk about the benefits of exercising on a daily basis to prevent breast cancer. If you have a product that donates to breast cancer research, this would be a great time to pitch that, and even if you don't have a product, maybe start thinking about can I have? Can I make one of my products somehow fit into that theme? Maybe for the month of october, I'll donate a portion of my sails to this breast cancer research and that's totally fine you're giving back you are contributing and you have another great way, another story and another pitch idea. I know I did that with my t shirts and then their feet being featured in woman's world magazine, and it wasn't that much harder for me to just make one extra t shirt and keep track of how many I sold that month to donate to breast cancer research so it's something you might have to do a little bit of work behind it, but if it could mean a feature in a magazine it might be worth it and you're also competing with a lot of your products let's say then you would competing with holiday gift guide or valentine's day gift or something like that so just keep that in mind as you're planning your publicity for next year in november a lot of them talk about things giving and they tough focus on recipes about getting ready for holiday sometimes they even do an early holiday gift and they'll start writing about products and do like a mini gift guide in november as well and then in december it all about the holidays and gifts and almost every magazine I think has a holiday gift guide so I would say any type of product you have would probably be a great gift for any type of magazine because a lot of times they don't just cover one topic of gifts they talk a lot about, you know like gift for men gives for women gifts for kids gifts under fifty dollars gift where you can get away. So if you know the magazine and you know the readers which they obviously do know really well you're going to have a good idea of whether or not your products are going to sit in there so once you have all of this down I think you guys are pros at it by now it's time to pitch your story and pitching your story I mentioned yesterday I not crazy about the word pitch because it just seems like something that you do that's for you and not for them so maybe think about providing value by sharing your story or something like that, but keep in mind that people buy stories and we talked about this a lot yesterday, not product and yes, they do take how their credit card to buy a product but it's because of the story they tell themselves in their mind as to why they want your product so it's really important to everything you do to tell a story and magazines love stories you saw an example before where it was all about creating a story around a specific product that they thought their audience would be really interested in and again, sauron's don't have to be personal if you're not the kind of person that likes to get out there and be the face behind your brand, you don't have to share your personal story. Your product could have its own story and your company could have its own story as well without you being present and it is a little better if you couldn't get behind it because that's what sets you apart from some of the larger brands out there but you don't have to if you're not comfortable with it and here we talked a little bit about this and editorial calendar cheat sheet but these are just some ideas for gift gives throughout the year gifts at the holidays, graduation gifts and so on so if your products make a great gift sure, why not go ahead and pitch for those those gifts stories there's also a timing story so are you do you maybe provide tax advice or or help people to get organized? Maybe you are a personal organizer one thing you can think about is pitching a story to a magazine about getting organized so that when taxis and comes you have everything in place and you don't need to be running around getting all the receipts together. I know I could have benefited from a story like that when I first started my business and tax time came around so again it's all about thinking outside the box how can you really provide value to their readers and help them there's also gardening season back to school breast cancer awareness there's even a chocolate month believe it or not s o if you have chocolate, why not pitch for chocolate month or if you could talk about maybe how to lose all the way that you gain from eating chocolate? I don't know then you can pitch yourself for that so it just be creative think outside the box how many different stories can you come up for your products and how are they interesting to that specific editor that you're going to be pitching to there's another kind of story and that's the solves a problem story and some of you in this room and I'm sure on the internet have a ton of product that actually do solve a problem, maybe there's a stroller accessory that adds more carrying space. I know I have a client who has a stroller accessory that you can put on the handles of the stroller, and it makes it more comfortable for you to actually be walking around in the stroller, so the media loves stuff that's actually solves a problem, so can your product solve a problem? Or maybe it's a handbag that has a pocket for a cell phone? You know? And maybe you already design a hand back that has an extra pocket, but if you compete in a way where you're saying, I know a lot of your readers probably misplaced their cell phone in their hand back, is it so big? Or maybe they drop it because they don't have a spot in their purse to put it in? Then you could have a different spin on your handbags and position it as a product that actually is going to solve a problem or maybe even an umbrella that doesn't fold when it's windy, maybe one the cooler weather is coming I know I have a client hoo ah, and he inspired me to write this because he hasn't abroad that actually doesn't bend or fold or you know what I'm talking about with umbrellas when it's windy. So this is a great thing for him to be pitching when the cold season's coming, maybe for traveling because it's also nice and compact and can fit in a bag. So there's, so many ways you guys can get really creative here with your products. With your business is, um and even I have another client that has, ah, little band you put around your genes so you could wire before during and after pregnancy so you can save money right by not having to buy three different pairs of jeans. And if you pitch that product as it's going to save your client's, money is going to have it's going to save them time because they don't have to go shopping there. You have another story right there. So you just have to get super creative here and think about how your products are going to fit in.