Lessons

Lesson Info

Pitching to Magazines Q&A

As creative as you get and as many ideas as you get if you pitch off topic it's not really going toe get you very far so pitching on topic is a really key for anything you do in your publicity efforts and actually have a great question about that just about products specifically yeah here's a question from mary and she says if you have an expensive products say one hundred dollars or more is it out of line to request to get the sample back if the magazine does not feature you because as a small business it's not financially feasible for me to send out multiple products of samples that cost that much especially if they don't feature me but I know that they want to see the product is there a good solution? Yeah so the good salute the good solution is to actually ask for your sample back. So aa lot of magazines know this they feature you know, three thousand dollars dresses or two thousand dollars pairs of shoes and they don't necessarily always keep them so the large magazines are totall...

y used tio getting you to request their products back. What happens sometimes is that they'll actually ask you to pay for the shipping to be shipped back to you or they'll ask you to include maybe like a self addressed stamped package or box that they could easily send back to make their jobs easier because imagine if they had to send one hundred products every month back again, that could get really crazy. So if you do want your products back, just make sure tio let them know before you send it to them and make sure it's okay with them before you actually do that and see how they would like to be sending them back sometimes don't pay for your products to get there, they'll pay for it back, the larger magazines have a budget for that sole, they'll do it and some of the smaller magazines I've had magazine saying, you know, if you want to send samples, I'm sorry about our policies that they're not returnable because we just don't have people on staff to take care of sending all of these products back. So at that point, you have to decide, ok, is this worth it for me to send it, and I get it back? Or do I only really work with magazines where I can actually get it back? So it's just about communicating with them and really letting them what you're letting them know what you need and seeing if there is not a fit, then you can just cut your losses and not work with that magazine, but usually they're pretty good about working with you at getting your samples back. Great, great, thank you. When you were sin, when they asked you for samples that you send full samples or did you have, like, a small a bar for the media or, you know, people that requested samples? Yeah, I usually send full size samples just because I feel like they really need to see how the packaging looks and how customer would see it, and then if they're going to photograph it instead of using my photo, I'd really like for them to have the full size sample, so I would recommend sending full size samples and again, if you need it back, just ask for it back, but the more that they can see your product as a product that their customers can use and a lot of times they could on lee really see that if you're sending a full size sample, the easier it's going to be free to get featured, so have a designer who is in sundance catalog and then there's another catalog called our house, um, they're very well known, especially sundance, and how I mean, can you even use that when you're pitching or, um, you know, to get it she's, not in a lot of magazines yet that she's a growing her, you know, she's incredible designer, and we know that's coming, um, is there any way tio because I know certain stores actually bring clout and may have grabbed the attention you know if it's a bc home in new york city or if it's sundance catalog is any of that kind of relevant when you're pitching yes I think that's totally relevant again if they see that someone else is writing about or or have carrying your products in their store or in their catalog especially if it's a huge catalog like sundance totally relevant they love to know that the only thing I wouldn't necessarily say in a pitch would be something like my products have been featured in you know in style magazine and oprah magazine and allure and cosmo because then at that point they're like ok, you've already been featured why am I going to feature again so you can still have those on your site just don't put it out there when you're pitching to them yeah, but catalogs or things like that definitely relevant or even if a celebrity is wearing one of your products they love things that celebrities actually use and where because a lot of the readers love celebrities especially if it's a consumer magazine for women maybe that's not as relevant if you're pitching to a business magazine or a tech magazine or something like that but if you're pitching to a consumer magazine whose main audience is women and you have a celebrity that's using your product or worrying your products definitely just put that out there because they're going to love that and it's gonna take you a lot farther than if you didn't have that so um, yeah, totally relevant in that case, and then I just have one more question about the service aspect of it because the guys were mentioned, you know, this is a great creative live is a wonderful gift to give, so if you don't buy it for yourself, they can actually take by the course and give it as a holiday gift. I think that was brilliant, but offering services like what we dio, um, how do you get on a gift guide? I mean, I think that's kind of a brilliant idea to buy a course for somebody else or, you know, buy it. Yeah, sometimes on magazines will do they'll have things like last minute gift, and a lot of times they focus on things like you can donate money to charity on someone's behalf, or you could buy an online product or maybe even a gift certificate. So for you, you might be wanted to think about pitching it as a last minute gift that somebody come by and have access to right away that specific day when they're buying it so it's totally last minute if you haven't been able to think about anything else to get the person on your list you're going to do something last minute, right? And a lot of them do have last minute gifts as well. So for you guys, that would be a great one to be pitching to, especially so it's more like a business magazine, like entrepreneur magazine or something like that, where they could buy something last minute and have access to your course or to your library or videos if you charge for them. Yeah, so more for business magazines, since you guys both cater to entrepreneurs. Um, but, yeah, I just you obviously wouldn't be pitching for maybe like gifts for women or something like that because they for those specific things, they do want actual gift that they can photograph and ample combined hold and you can put in their gift bag or something like that, but for last minute gift, so it would be perfect, and I've pitched my gift certificates for my t shirts as a last minute gift because I was offering gift certificates, so if you offer gift certificates, I know a lot of online shopping cards allow you to do that. It will be a perfect way, tio, to be pitching your product or your services there as well, I could see it as a good stocking stuffer, yeah, you know, maybe an envelope. Would you look very sexy underneath a tree but slipped that into a stocking on the wall right? Be something nice that somebody could share yes someone else yeah, yeah definitely definitely so yeah like what? You guys are talking about it just thinking outside the box? What other problems as my or does my does my product solve or how can he be position in a different way then maybe I haven't thought about from now because I'm so involved in whatever I'm doing in my business that sometimes you're just so in it that it's really hard think about how other people might be seeing your company or your products and using them and I know for you with your wedding your wedding flowers that's such a great way now you have a whole new market that you can actually get your you know, your products featured and um and I'm sure you have a lot of other customers that are using them for other reasons that maybe haven't even thought about before so it's all about really just listening to the feedback listening to them and asking them for that feedback on a regular basis so you know exactly how they're using your product because the way you had intended for them to use your product might not be how they're actually using it and the more feedback you can get from them and the more you can listen to them the easier it's going to make your marketing messages on dure pitching for you to come up with and just getting lots of good ideas. I've gotten so many awesome ideas just by asking people. Yeah, sure, I have a question here from snappy gourmet, and they want to know if you only have one product. Is it spam e to keep pitching them different ideas at all revolved around the one product, like, for instance, if you pitch a product that's a good for holiday gift guide, then you also say it's, good for valentine's day or mother's day. Does that make you sound desperate, or is that a good tactic? Yeah, it's a good question, and I think it makes you sound desperate if you're pitching all of this in one email and you have a long list of what the product could be good for, and I'm a huge fan of just pitching for one specific thing, as opposed to saying it's, good for this. Oh, and that, too, and I forgot about this, so just pitch for one idea, and if your product as many things which aa lot of products dio, then you can pitch it at a different time, either to the same person or to a different editor, pitch them for a different idea, but if you're going to send be sending an email just focus on one specific thing even though I know editors are probably working on a lot of different things at the same time but if you could make their jobs easier so they can focus just on one specific thing at a time then they can decide if it's a good fit or not but I think just sending out twenty different ideas or even three or four ideas at the same time it does sound a little desperate and it makes their job easier or harder because then they get confused and like well maybe I should save that for the valentine's day and not here so just if you do that just space out your e mails and only focus on one thing that it's good for at the same time we had a question coming from lk now we've talked a lot about where you find the editorial calendars and where you can actually see what magazines will need in which certain periods but what about like a general calendar that features all of the things that may be happening in a year like for instance what month is animal adoption month? What year? What month is secretaries days we used to have these do you have a resource there that you'd recommend we find all this information so you can pitch things that are relevant to the general market rather than specifically a magazine yeah, you know there's there is a calendar like that and I can't remember what it's called I don't know if any of you here remember and it really has every single thing that happens in every single day off the month I don't remember what that's called I could look it up maybe in the break but I think if you google something like um or like events that happened throughout the year or calendar of of yearly event or something like that I think you'll be able to get it yeah I don't and I do you know which talking I think I've seen it before but I know for me for like social media since my brand is all about fun and you know, children's clothing I like to celebrate like national pancake day national talk like a pirate day so that those might not be like newsworthy for publications but there's something that I do so maybe it's something just you know if you can't track down that calendar just kind of doing a little bit of googling and finding so yeah, I think you kind of yeah some of those fun you know, kind of serious holidays but they have a pretty good list um that I've gotten some that's great him yeah so thanks for sharing that I wish I could remember the name of it and I know I've seen and I remember thinking oh my god that eggs exists you know but but it does and there is a lot of different things and that you can really have fun with and have ideas and yes, maybe magazines might not be covering those topics but you khun sure that on social media or maybe one you send out your newsletter you can email your customers and say hey, did you know today is x y z day? You know, thanks for being here this is how this fits into that so yeah, you couldn't do fun things like that I tell you on a mac you can download wantto cycle that the count different calendars I think like they have the japanese holidays like girl's day and boys day and just just all all sorts of things out there, you know, there's a list of things you can add onto your I can't oh, that sounds like a yeah, yeah, that made me think teo I have and jewelry designer that we work with that is there celebrating fifteen years in the business and that's a big birthday so that's in twenty fourteen and how now they've been in some magazines but it can you pitch that to where they're celebrating fifteen because that's really pretty awesome you are a designer yeah, I think that's a that's a really long time, especially nowadays, but I think as they could definitely pitch that maybe even to the trade magazines or the entrepreneur magazine's where maybe they might want to interview them about what it takes to have a business for fifteen years so it's not necessarily bother jewelry right but it is about them and their business I know for me I was able to get into entrepreneur magazine because or on their website because I was providing the tip on how to reduce email overwhelm where I try this thing where you right back every email you right back just with five sentences or less and it just happened that they were doing a story on how to write an email response and five sentences or less and I found out about it and I pushed myself for that and I got featured on their on their sites so it wasn't about my services or my product but I did have my name and there I had a link back to my website and I do cater to entrepreneur so it was definitely a great food so I think for something like that the entrepreneur magazines it would be really great or even the local newspapers and I think local tv stations they love to feature entrepreneurs and people that are local that are doing something really good that the community could learn from so maybe I mean consumer magazines would be good although from their standpoint it's more like well that's more relevant to you than to our readers they might still pick it up and be interested in it but other types of magazines like trade magazines and the local news and things like that would probably a really grateful for that yeah like yeah writing all these things would be to go here in here yeah yeah okay, great. Thank you sure, sure. And then those themes that I was talking about the tv stations are all over those two it's not just magazines and I think even bloggers aa lot of times followed the same things and we're going to talk about bloggers and tv and maybe tomorrow or some of that today but again, it doesn't just pertain to magazines it couldn't really go across all media I have a question here from a ll interpretations and they want to know how often would magazine editors actually check your media coverage when they receive your pitches. So for example, are they looking to see if you've been featured in other media outlets? Will that make them more likely to pick you up or do they want to be maybe exclusive to your story? Yeah, it really depends on the magazine and actually just pitched my soaps to a new magazine that's launching and the editor wrote back and he said I love yourselves have they been featured anywhere else in a major magazine? So for him it was really important to launch this magazine with having products that have not been featured in other media, so obviously, you know, I've been featured in some national magazines now, so I'm not probably not going to be featured on there because they're only looking for products that no one else has written about, so in decades, they'll probably ask you, but I would say that's more the exception, it's, not the exception. If you have a wedding business where you're submitting your wedding photos, I know they've really just want exclusivity, and they want to be the on ly one to publish those photos or to talk about your story for the next year or something like that. So with that in the street's a little different, but if you have a product, it usually doesn't matter to them if you've been featured. But sometimes if you haven't, that could really work to your advantage as well, which is why I think it's really important to nothing that you too small or nothing, that you're just starting out because they do want those new products and those new stories, too, that no one else has covered. But at the same time, the more coverage you get, the more coverage you're going to get, so it really is both both ways, both, yeah. So when we come back, we're going to talk about how to build your media list, how to get their contact information, how to get their e mails and how do you know who to actually contact when you're reaching out to a magazine? So a lot of the morning is more focused on consumer magazine it's for those entrepreneurs, and those are there watching that actually have a physical product, but this afternoon we're going to talk a little bit more about service entrepreneurs and a wider range of off things you can do as a service entrepreneur. Great, I know that earlier we were getting the takeaways from you guys from day one, so we also asked that question the chat room to see what they got out of the class yesterday, so I do want to share one take away that we heard in the chat room from golden one, and they say one of my takeaways from yesterday was when andrea was talking about setting up your about paige and telling your story. I had the idea of doing that and video form. Then someone asked a question yesterday, and she said that, yes, you can also use the video, so that was cool for me. It was like a confirmation of the idea that it already had so happy to hear that worked well for you yesterday, thank you. Yeah, fantastic, fantastic feedback as well. And from everybody, who's joined us online today. Thank you all for your comments in your heart moments musically, we really appreciate hearing them will certainly be sharing them with andrea as we go through the day.