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The Six P's of Publicity: #s 1-3

Hi, Andrea. I came across your soaps Inorganic spa magazine. They look absolutely delicious. I'm reaching out to you because I read your about us and really like your story. We are ourselves a family based business. We work for our small business clients, hoping with Internet marketing and advertising. So if you ever find yourself looking for expertise in this field, I hope youll get in touch with me. And then she sent me a link to her website. So I wanted to share that with you because first of all, her subject line just said hi, Andrea, with a smiley face. It was totally personal. Made me open it. But then she opened it up. Obviously was a pitch, but she opened that up with, you know? Hey, I just read about you in Organic Spot magazine. I love your soaps. And then it shows me that she went on to read even more. She said, I just read your about us page. And I can totally relate to your story. So who knows? I mean, I'm definitely gonna answer to her. Maybe she might be a marketing part...

ner. She might be someone end up working with, but just a simple email can really go a long way if you show the person that you're emailing that you're really interested in them. So I just thought it was so timely that we were talking about the about us page and how important it is. And here we are talking about pitching, and then I'm getting that teach that's totally relevant, and we'll see what comes out of it. But I just wanted to share that with you guys to show you that on email could really have a great intact. And it doesn't have to be long. She didn't write a huge email with 20 paragraphs that talked all about her business and what she does, she just said, Here's my website. If you're interested, this is what we do. You can find out more. So keep that email in mind as you are reaching out to the press as well. And hopefully you'll get responses to just like I'm gonna respond back to her. So I just wanted to share that before we get started. So this next segment we're going to talk about everything you need to be media ready. So before we talked about your mindset and how the publicity picture fits into the overall picture of your business. But today we're going to get down to really specific things that you need in order to be media ready and before I should share with you all of the things that I think are necessary. I wanted to share with you another quote, and I'm really big on quotes. Obviously I started T shirt business based on quotes. My soaps have inspirational words on them, so it's only fitting that I would share that with you today. But the quote says, by failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail. So basically, what that means is that you need to prepare when you are starting a business when you're reaching out to the media and if you don't prepare, then you're basically headed to failing. And I know preparing sometimes can take a lot of effort. It could take a lot of work. I know when I start a business, the last thing I want to do is prepare. I just want to sort of dive into it and start doing things and get out there. But if you leave out the preparation part when an opportunity does come, you're not going to be ready for it. And it couldn't really impact your business. So, in terms of publicity, we all need to prepare. And these What these This is what I think are the six peas off publicity. I know some people talk about the four piece, I think off marketing or products, but this is what I've come up with. The six piece of publicity, and we're going to go through each one of these in a lot more details in just a minute. But this is just an overview of them. So the 1st 1 is your plan, which is basically your goals. What are you trying to accomplish? What are you trying to dio with your publicity? The 2nd 1 is your pitch or your story. And we talked a lot about that just before break. Then we're going to talk about having product ready and having your photos ready. And lastly to things that I think are key our patients and persistence because, as you know, magazines work ahead of time. People don't get to respond to their emails. You're gonna have a lot of patients, But you're also gonna have need to have persistent, so you can keep on following up with those contacts that you really want toe connect with. So in terms of a plan, this is basically what are your goals with your publicity efforts, and it's easy to think Well, obviously my gold is to get into a magazine, But why do you want to get into that magazine? Do you want to get in so you can get more traffic to your website? Yes, off course, and publicity definitely leads to that. Or do you want to get in the magazines or be a guest blogger so you can increase your email list? Yes, definitely. That's a nice perk of getting publicity as well. Do you want to use it to introduce a new product or service like I did with my soap business? I launched it. I wanted to give the press interested so I could introduce this new product or service. Do you want to use it to increase your sales and, yes, publicity Comte de Finitely lead to increased sales as well. Or if you have a service based business and not a product, you might use publicity to establish yourself as an expert. I know when I first wrote about Pinterest and I launched my Pinterest course, What better way to establish myself as an expert than to have articles written by me about Pinterest and other influential magazine so automatically I already have this list of magazines that I've written about Pinterest on people. By my course, they couldn't see that I've already done a lot of this, and I know what I'm talking about. Um, you might also want to use publicity to increase your income, and this is different from increasing your sales because this specifically targets those entrepreneurs that have a service based business and not a product based business. A couple of other reasons that you might want to use publicity are to change public perception. So, for example, let's say if a lot of this applies more to larger companies, that maybe something bad happened, and now the meat, the the public sees them in a really bad light, and they're trying to change that perception. They might want to reach out to the press to try to get their their reputation changed and the way the public views them. So that's another way you could use publicity as well, and we're not gonna necessarily talk about that today. That's more for, like, the large companies that have PR firms. And they have a whole department that monitors the public perception and how they couldn't sort of shift that as they go along. And lastly, you can also increase use publicity to increase your social media following. So any time you're mentioned in the news or on TV on on a blawg, you're probably going to get some new social media followers as well. Just like it happens to me. Every time when I do a product review or a giveaway, I get a ton of new um, followers to my social media, and lastly, you could also use publicity to raise awareness for a cause. So if you maybe have a product or service that gives back and you really passionate about that cause you couldn't lead with, that s so that way, not only are you getting written about your products, but you're also increasing awareness of this cause that your business supports as well. So as you go along your publicity goals, my change and your plan might include some of thes maybe all of the's, maybe just two of these, and again a totally depends wore you out in your business and what you're trying to do. But as you are writing up your plan, it's really important to keep in mind your goals. So you know exactly where you need to go, um, and have a plan off how to get there. So that was goals. The second thing you are gonna need is a pitch, so we're gonna talk about how to craft your pitch. But this is really important. And sometimes I hate this word because pitch seems more like selling or marketing, and that doesn't necessarily associate with providing value. So if I can change this word to something that doesn't start with P, I would, you know, maybe, say, providing value or connecting or just putting yourself out there rather than just pitching at someone you're providing value to them and helping them do their job better and a lot of or help them do their job easier in a lot of ways. So let's think about what picture you gonna use to get to your goal. So if your goal is to get more social media followers. Your pitch might be to do a giveaway or a product review with your block with a blogger. If your goal is to, let's say, introducing your product than your pitch might be. Just here's a great product for a holiday gift guide. Or if you're introducing a new service, your pitch might be to a blogger asking them Teoh, publish an article that you wrote about the top three ways to reduce overwhelmed with technology or something like that. So all of these depend on what your goals are and how you're pitches Match up with what your goals are. So how do you crafty your pitch? Because it really is. There really is an art to it, and that's why I use the word craft, because there's not one way that works for everybody. And because everyone's businesses are so different and we will have such different stories. You really need to sort of craft this and see what's working. And maybe if you send out an email and you see you're not getting a response, maybe it's time to consider approaching you from a different angle or doing something a little bit differently. But again. This is un evolving part of your business as well. So and if you want to come up with a pitch or different pitch angles, here are some steps you can take. So first you want to make a list of all of the different stories or angles that are relevant to your product or service, and I'll give you really specific examples off those in just a minute here. But as you're doing that, start thinking about your unique selling proposition, your benefits and your features, and how all of that is going to fit into the pitch that you're gonna be sending out and then figure out what outlets are the bust fit. So, as I was saying before, with my example with the Gulf and Biking magazine, you want to be really relevant to the outlet that you are pitching your products, too, so that's guaranteed. Or, if you're not relevant, it's pretty much guarantee that your pitch is going to get deleted. And any time that editor season email from you, they might be a little wary of opening it because they know you haven't touched on topic before. So here are some ideas for pitches. So if you have a product, think about how your product can be used and what it does. So, for example, for me, for my product, you know it's just a bar of soap. But it could really make a great gift, whether it's for Mother's Day or Valentine's, they If it's for Earth Day, I'm going to focus more on the equal friendly aspect and the equal ingredients that I used in my soaps. But think about how your product is or how your product can be used and what it does as you are crafting your pitch for a specific magazine. And then again, how it fits into their story, Um, and how it's relevant to them. So I mentioned before doesn't make a great gift as a give back. These are all things that you're going to get really clear on once you have your unique selling proposition, and you're going to take all of that from your USP and transferred over to your pitch for a magazine. And if you have a service, some things you can do, you can think about how twos or tips and advice. One of the things that I did with, with my launch grow droid businesses that I decided to design an infographic based around 30 ways that you can promote your block posts. And I knew that that's something that my audience was interested in, something that a lot of people are are interested in. So what I did is I created this infographic. Um, I'm not a designer by any means. I just do some software to create it. It was super quick, and once I had that, I just emailed a couple of blog's, and I asked them Teoh to read it to see if it's relevant. And if it was relevant. I said, Would you mind posting it on your site as well? And believe it or not, a toy kind of people posted it, and that Infographic, crazily enough, has been shared on Pinterest almost 50, times now. So it's huge, you know, just want Infographic that took me two hours to create that. I sent out to a couple of sites that were relevant, and I just asked them. Teoh, share it if they thought it was relevant, obviously reached housing them because I thought it was relevant. Otherwise I wouldn't have reached out, so it was a lot easier for them to say yes. And they're always looking for content. So again, if you could make it super easy for them and just give them the content, then you're going to go along with here. And this is something that it was the same infographic that everybody published. There were no changes to it. I didn't have to, um, create a new one for every single side that published it, but it got on Technorati. I don't know if you guys are familiar with that, but it's a huge blogged. Um, it got on a couple of media services Media Bistro on a lot of other different sites, and it brought me so many new people to my website and people that subscribe to my newsletter and people that are still on my list, really enjoying what I have to share with them. So think about what type of how to and the tips and advice can you share. And how can you package that Teoh, get it into the media and to get it out there. And just remember, you are the expert in your field. I know lately expert is sort of a loosely loosely used term, and it seems like everybody can become an expert. You know, you could just say I'm an expert just because I say I'm an expert, but obviously you have to back it up. But for me, for example, once I started using Pinterest and I started getting results and I got over 50,000 people to repent my infographic on Pinterest, I sort of feel like I had expertise and Pinterest and I also ended up writing on e book on how to use Pinterest and launching a core. So all of these things made me an expert on using Pinterest. So now if someone is looking for a Pinterest expert, a lot of times they come to me because they could see my background with what I've done with Pinterest. And they end up hiring me for webinars or conferences or events that they're doing, and it's another great way to get in front of their audience as well. So this is really great for entrepreneurs that have a service. Andrea Yeah, question about the infographic because they think that's such a great idea. Do you find that more readers tend to be more visual and that it's easier almost to get that quick reaction instead of listing out all the things that they you know, listening out everything, all the information kind of bullet point. But do a graphic, so it's much more pleasing to the eye. Yeah, I do. And it's so interesting that you mention that because my infographic started, I was a block post and the block post was 30 ways You can promote your block posts and then I thought, You know what? If I put this into an infographic, what if I assured the same exact information? Instead of having a bulleted list in a block post? Let me turn it into an infographic, and that's what I did again. It was something that I tried to see what happens, and I'm all about trying and experimenting and seeing what's working, and then it obviously worked. I don't think if he was a block post, it would have been shared over 50,000 times. I mean, none of my block pose our shared shared that many times. So I do think, especially with the rise of Pinterest and Instagram and Facebook on all of their image based stuff. There definitely is a trend towards video and pictures instead of of text and text is definitely valuable as well. But if you really want to grab someone's attention quickly and get it out there, I would say if you could do an infographic, definitely do that. It's or a video of I think videos are the same, so there's definitely a lot of value in that as well. Um, and then lastly, think about what information your ideal client needs to know from you if you have a service, you know? So for me, the clients that I work with are entrepreneurs that have a product lines, so they're interested in things like trade shows. What should I do at a trade show? How can I get in the store? So all of the information that I put out there is directly related to how my clients could market their business? And yes, a lot of times I share my own experience, but it's I freeze it in a way that okay, this is what I learned, and this is how you could benefit from it and what your take away it is from that. So again. You can share your own story in your own experience, but lead your audience, know how we can benefit them as well. So here are some really specific pitch ideas, and this is both for product entrepreneurs and for service entrepreneurs. But let's say you're a jewelry designer and you've heard me talk a lot about holiday gift guides. And the reason for that is because pretty much any type of product that's a consumer product or physical product that you have couldn't get into a holiday gift guide. So if there's one thing you dio all year about publicity and you have a product, the holiday gift guide should be something that's on your to do list. And that could go for if you have a tech product, it can be in a tech magazine. If you have a cooking product or food product that can be in a cooking magazine. So really, the possibilities are endless here and for any type of product you have, there's a magazine out there that's publishing a gift guide looking for those types of products. So that's one taken. I want all of you guys to take aways that if you have a product. Get it into holiday gift guides. If your wedding photographer you can pitch on idea, let's say maybe you pitch a wedding block that talks about wedding photography. And if you reach out to them and you say, Hey, I have a great idea for an article about 10 tips to get awesome photos for your wedding. Who wouldn't want that right? All of their readers are looking for tips on how to get awesome photos for their wedding. Now, if I just pitch them and said, Here's a recent wedding that I shot, would you be interested in publishing my photos? That might not be as interesting to them because they get that kind of pitch all the time. But if you position it as here's a great article, I can provide that I think is really relevant to your readers than they're going to be more interested. And I have to say, you know, a lot of photographers, though going to photography. So they conveyed articles about how people should post for photos. But if you enjoy writing them, great if you don't, you can always hire someone to write a quick article for you and you can pitch that article and obviously add your spin to it. Make sure that it's in your voice, and then you could just pitch that article. And there's not that much work you have to do around that. If you're a fitness coach, you can talk about a simple workout routine that anyone could do. So maybe you might want to contact a women's website or a women's magazine and say, You know, Hey, I know your readers are really into fitness. They love getting tips and they love saving time. And I have a great article for you about, ah, fitness routine that anyone could do in 10 minutes or 30 minutes or whatever it is. Would you be interested in hearing more or publishing that and again, a great way to sort of think outside the box and provide something valuable, which is content to the outlet that you're trying to reach out to? And two more examples. If you're a life coach, maybe you can talk about five ways to ensure you keep your New Year's resolution. So if you've read any magazines, you know that in January all they talk about is how to lose weight and how toe keep your near New Year's resolutions, especially if it's a woman's magazine. So if your life coach, maybe you can reach out to one of the editors and say, Hey, I know in your January issue you're gonna be talking about New Year's resolutions. Would you be interested in getting my tips? And I conserve as a source. And here's what I'm thinking that those five tips are and chances are you might get quoted in that magazine. Um, and then once you get quoted, a lot of times they talk about your business as well, or they'll provide a link to your business. So again, an indirect way, because you're not saying right about me. But you're saying, Here's what I can provide for you and for your readers. Are you interested in that? So they are you guys saying the friends where you're not pitching yourself, even though that's the result of what happens when you get in a magazine or another blogged. But you're pitching something that's useful to them to save them. Time to save them, you know, time from doing research on our spent writing an article and that again that's that value that I'm gonna be talking about a lot throughout the next few days. And lastly, if you're a financial planner again, January's a huge month in terms of finances and getting your finances in order so you can pitch a magazine or a Web site that talks about finances and you can pitch them. Let's say three little known ways to get more from your bank, and you can talk about I don't know how to increase your interest rates or something that's relevant to them and again, thinking outside the box. But really providing value here is key. And then I want to get even more specific if you are. And I put this here, Robin, because I know you guys work with a lot of jewelry designers, and there's probably a lot of them watching. But here are some ideas that if your jewelry designer you can think, well, why, how can I get into so many magazines? But there's so many opportunities for you to get featured, and this is could be the same thing if you have a baby clothing company or if you make hats or handbags or food, all of these things can really apply to any type of consumer product business, but the most obvious one is gift for the holidays, and your gifts can be gifts that give back gifts under $30. Just looked in your favorite magazine. Um, and this would be a great time cause they just all published their holiday gift guide so you can see what type of gifts they're looking for. I know, um, I was just looking in Red Book magazine because they published myself and they had all of them were gifts under 20 under $30 maybe under $50. But they're all, like, you know, gifts for him, gifts for her gifts for the person who has everything, gifts for kids. So just think about what kind of gift can your product make and how is it going to fit in there? And already you have so many good ideas Teoh to start pitching. Another angle that you can look at it is you compete yourself as an entrepreneur as opposed to pitching your products on, and I have done this to where, instead of approaching magazines to write about my T shirt, I approach them to write about how I started a business and how I could share what I know with their readers. So it was a totally different angle. You don't have to be tied to just talking about your products. If you have a product, you can talk about yourself as well, because if you've started a business, you know what it takes to have a business that maybe a magazine's readers might be interested and learning from you as well. And I definitely got featured in some local newspapers with that in Boulder. So it was a great story and a lot of great things come from that. Sometimes people think in the local press is not as important as national press. But you can always start a local, and as your sort of getting everything ready and you're figuring out how it all works, then you can move on. Teoh National press is well, you can start off with national press it it doesn't matter either way. But a lot of great things can come from local press to even though in my not necessarily translate into sales. So for me with that story that I pitched, my local paper ended up writing about me and featuring me. And then someone who runs a fulfillment house for entrepreneurs and Colorado emailed me. She said, I just read your story. I love you know, I love everything you're doing. If you ever need a fulfillment house, make sure to reach out to me. I'd love to talk to you more. So at that time I didn't. But two years later, when I didn't need a fulfillment house, I remembered her email. I have saved it. I reached out to her and she still runs my fulfillment just from that one story. And I could have, you know, spend hours and days of researching fulfillment houses online. Um, but here I was over. I already had a lead for something that was in my local neighborhood. So again, as I was saying, publicity doesn't always result in sales, it couldn't result in other things, like the email that I was just talking about where I didn't make. I didn't sell a soap with that, but it could be a new marketing partner, maybe, or someone that I'm partnering with. So a lot of different things can happen just from being featured in a magazine or a media outlet. And here is a couple of more ideas. Um, if you make products for women, you can definitely pitch your product as a gift that every mom will love. Every May, when it's Mother's Day, all of the magazines, just like they do a holiday gift guy. They also do a Mother's Day gift guide, and they do a Valentine's Day gift guide. And I'll give you a list. I think in this session about all of the different things that you guys could start thinking about so you can really have stories for every month of the year. So that way you have constant stream off press and publicity coming in, and it's really gonna help with your plan and give you ideas of how you come forward and a few more ideas products that give back to breast cancer awareness. As I said before, I found out that a lot of magazines do cover products that give back to breast cancer awareness in the October issue. So I decided to have won t shirt. It was actually a pink T shirt. Um, and I decided for the month of October to donate all of my proceeds. Instead of donating them to plant trees, I would donate them to breast cancer research, So that was a different spin on my products, and I created that juiced for the media. But obviously, you know, a lot of other benefits came from it because I was giving back and making a different. But I got a ton of coverage just from that one T shirt that was featured in magazines as a product that supports breast cancer awareness. So think about that, too, for your product. You know, can you tie to a sort of a holiday or some event or something that's going on in the medium so you can get featured in there as well and again talking about gift but the perfect Valentine's they give every February. That's what they write about, Um, and last one goes along the same lines as the local entrepreneur story. But I also pitched You know how one entrepreneur turned $100 into a six figure business and I shared that story, too. So again, think outside the box, there's many different angles. As an entrepreneur, you guys already know so much. You've done so much already. You have a lot of experience. You're an expert in a lot of ways, so just share that expertise with others in the hopes of being featured in some media. And now let's talk about some pitch ideas. Let's say you're a health coach and some of you on line might be health coaches. So these are some articles that maybe you can write or story ideas that you can pitch to either a blogger or a magazine that writes about maybe like a kids magazine, right? One. Mom wouldn't want five easy lunch ideas for kids, so just think outside the box. And I put this here just so you guys can really start thinking about so many ways. Your business can be conveyed, featured or your products can be featured. And it's not just about your actual product. It's so much more than that because your company is not just your product, it's It's everything that goes around its your unique selling proposition. It's some it's it's you, it's your story. It's really everything that is more than just your product. And that's why your unique selling proposition is so important. Yes, Robin, have a question. So let's say you have a Children's clothing line and, um, you're ideally you want to give back to Children's organizations. Could you do something like five easy lunches for kids because it ties in somehow? Or is that just going kind of you? Can I mean totally? Can you know when I think if you when I had my T shirt business, I didn't really write articles, But looking back, it's something that I could have done. But yes, you totally can pitch a magazine if you enjoy writing about that stuff. And if you really wanna get out there from a different angle and then in your bio, they usually will say, You know, this article was by X Y Z person from this company, and then they'll have a link to your site. So, yes, you can totally do that. And I think with my soap business, for example, because my soaps are organic and equal friendly. I could maybe pitch a woman's magazine and talk about five ingredients that you couldn't avoid in beauty products, for example, because there's so many toxic ingredients that people need to look out for, and if I already knows, know what those are Why not just pitch those, um, And then get a link back to my site in my bio. So yes, totally. I would encourage that if you if you want to take a different angle there, too. And if you want to write articles, Yeah. Yes. So here. Just a couple more ideas for a health coach. But again, this could apply to a lot of different people as well. Not just health coaches. It can apply some of these two. Maybe a life coach or a fitness trainer. Personal trainer. Just go crazy and list all of the ideas that you can possibly come up with and just narrow them down and see. Okay. Is there a market for this? Is there a media outlet for that? And just pitch according to all of the ideas that you have. So next, I don't want to overwhelm you, but when I had my T shirt business, I was a little obsessed with publicity, So I decided to pitch something every single month of the year. So this is you know, you might be thinking Well, is just a T shirt, right? How many ways can you actually pitch a T shirt and who can you pitch it to? But here are 12 different ways that I decided to pitch my T shirts every month of the year. So what this did is that it guaranteed me that every single month I had publicity mentions coming in. Now with my so business, I decided to scale it down a little bit. And I only pushed for holiday gift guides, Valentine's Day, Mother's Days and equal products for their April issue. Just because I have another business to run, and I really could do this all day if if I had the time. So you have to think about, you know, do I want this to be a monthly thing? Do I wanted to be a couple of times a year? If my products were featured in the magazine every single month and I make my products by hand, would I really be able to meet that demand, you know, or should I just focused on a couple of things a year here and there. That would be a good fit, So just putting that out there so you guys can see that if you get creative, you really could do a lot with just one product, and this was just really one product obviously had different variations of it. I had men's and women's and kids T shirts and, um, baby stuff as well. But again, so many ideas, just from one type of product. I just remembered that journalists and bloggers, they're people, too, and it's when you're sending out the email. It's not just, you know, this person who, um who is never going to get it or who doesn't understand their people to just like you and they're working, that's their job. Just like your job is to be an entrepreneur and to work at growing your business. Their job is to be an editor or a blogger and work on increasing their readership. So their people to their totally fine you couldn't relate to them. You can. You don't have to be per Teoh formal where you say, you know, dear mam or dear sir or hello, Mrs Whatever their people, you can call them by their first names Totally fine. And then, more importantly, don't take no or no answer personally. So if you pitch someone and they say, you know, I'm sorry, I'm not interested in this right now where it's not a good fit. It's fine. Don't think like, oh, I'm about person or oh, my products must not be great. It just It wasn't a good fit for that magazine at that time. I know. For me, for example, one of my goals has always been to get into Oprah magazine, and I have pitched Oprah so many times with my T shirt business, you know, every single angle you could imagine. And I never got an answer or even or no or anything. So it would have been super easy to just give up and be like, OK, I need to give this up. Obviously not interested. Um, but what I did is I accept the dad and I said, You know, Okay, maybe that's fine. I'll move on to other magazines. But when I launch my so business, who do you think was the first magazine that I contacted? It was Oprah Magazine, and they didn't I didn't hear any response back when I pitched for the holiday gift guides, and then I decided, Well, let me pitch again for Valentine's Day. So I think you guys know where all this is going. But I pitched a couple of weeks ago for Valentine's Day and the editor rolled back and she said, All of these are awesome. We're working on a wellness issue in February, and I think this would be great. Can you send me some sample? So you know, the February issue still hasn't come out. I think I'll have to watch out for it and see if the soaps are in there. But had I given up and take a no or no answer? Personally, I never would have been able to get this sample requests for their February issue, and for some reason it doesn't make it into that issue. Then I have a lot of other opportunities for the rest of the year, um, to pitch. And I'm not saying to stock people by any means. You know, don't keep sending e mails and emails and phone calls and just stock them, cause I'm not about that at all. But it's just if one pitch doesn't work, then maybe pitch a different editor with a different story. Or maybe pushed the same editor with a different story later on. So it's all about just pacing yourself and being respectful off their time to and just approaching it differently. Maybe what you're offering the first time was not a good fit that time. But who knows in my work later on, um and yes. So following up its critical. As I mentioned before, I got most of my press mentions from following up with everyone who I really wanted to, um, to be in their magazine or to partner up with. So keep that in mind. I usually just follow up once, um, with magazine pictures with other things like affiliate partners or marketing partners. I'll follow up more than twice over the course of a couple of months, but with magazines just once I think is enough. And then if there is no interest and just move on to a different pitch or a different editor making sense to everyone, Okay, great. So next let's talk about a product. So when you pitch, do you have product ready for testing or sampling? So what happens a lot of times when you pitch a product if they're interested in it, some magazines might say this looks great. Can you send me high resolution photos and other magazines? will say, This looks great. Can you send me a sample so that we contest and photograph in our studio? Because maybe they have a certain way that they want to display your products. That's different from how you have it on your website. So most editors are going to request product samples to test and photograph, especially the large magazines. Sometimes products are returnable. Sometimes usually they're not. If you have a really expensive or high end product, you can actually talk to them in advance and say, I'd love to send your sample, but because our products are so expensive, would you mind sending them back? Um, and a lot of times they will send them back to you. If it's a large magazine, bloggers are not gonna return your products back. It's sort of their payment for taking their time to revere product and write about it. So if you're working with a blogger, um, just think about the fact that your product is going to stay with them and it's not going to come back to you. So think about your budget, and if your budget can afford that, then bloggers are a great way to go and make sure they have the product ready to ship when you're pitching. So a lot of times editors are working on super tight deadlines and they'll say, This looks great. We're doing our photo shoot in two days. Can you send me some samples? So in that case, you're gonna have to be ready to send them samples. Now, there are times when maybe have a prototype and you wanna get it out there in advance. And then if that's the case, then you can just talk to the editor and say, you know, our products, not here, just it's not here yet. We're gonna have it. And a couple of months, one of the launch, Um and then sometimes they might wait to actually see it, because what happens a lot of times is you might have a great idea, but it might not happen. So if they write about something that they thought would happen and it didn't happen, then they're gonna be upset. And their readers are going to be upset, too. So a lot of times they do want to wait for products to be ready. Um, especially for a small entrepreneur, if they're working with a large brand that they know has a track record, and they already have a ton of products on bacon get products to test in advance. They're probably going to publish those products because the companies will known. And if they said they're going to launch a product, they probably are going to launch it. But as a small business entrepreneur, they're probably gonna want to see your products before they actually write about them.