Latest / Imagine If with Doone Roisin | Health, Wealth & Wisdom for Women (formerly Female Startup Club Podcast) / "I went Viral on TikTok for Asking People about Their Poo”: How to Land Organic Press with The Dream 100 Ft. Loo Drops Founder Anastasia Chapman
Transcript
- 0:09Welcome back to the show. It's Dune here, your host and hype girl. This is so exciting. It's the first episode in our new community-led content series where you DM us a question or a topic and I come back with my thoughts.
- 0:26Quick reminder on the girl code for this one, if you love this episode, please take a tiny action to give us some love right back. It could be a review on the podcast. It could be something on social media. It can even just be telling a friend about this episode. Alrighty, let's get into today's episode.
- 0:46Hi, Dune. I'm a huge fan. I'm curious as a small bootstrapped business, what are some strategies to get your business featured in the media besides paying? Because obviously that can be quite expensive. I'm curious to hear your thoughts on some ways to organically get some features.
- 1:06Oh my gosh, I love this question. Thank you so much for reaching out, Anastasia. I'm so excited for you to be the first person in this series. And I want to just say firstly, I love your brand, Lou Drops. It's so fun, so cute. And I feel like you have so much room
- 1:23for fun activations, fun and scrappy activations, the best kind. I just quickly want to say to everyone listening that being a bootstrapped brand is really an advantage, especially in the beginning, because when you have a $0 budget for marketing, it forces you to think outside the box and get really creative and have fun in the business.
- 1:49Okay, so let's get to the question. Let's get to the answers. I have many thoughts on this, both from the perspective that, you know, I, as someone in the media, receive a kajillion pictures every day, every week, every month, whatever, but also from the perspective of being a small business owner myself and landing press. So I'm going to talk about my own personal experience, and then I'm going to give you my Dream 100 formula to getting started.
- 2:19So I feel like when I look at my inbox, 90% of people send me a pitch that goes something like this. Dear Female Startup Club, I am obsessed with your show. I have an amazing guest. He or she does this or that. These are the benefits of the product. They will be a perfect guest for your show. What are the next steps? Kind regards.
- 2:42And I want to break this down a little bit just to show you how I personally view pictures when they come into my inbox. First of all, and this is just absolute common sense 101 stuff, if someone starts an email without even figuring out my name, it's just an immediate no.
- 3:00If you're someone drowning in a million emails and someone hasn't been able to take the time to figure out your name, I'm not gonna give you my time back. That's just like classic 101 stuff that you should be doing. I mean, like anything,
- 3:15and everything, relationships matter so much. Taking the time to show that you've done your research into the host's name, what they usually talk about, what they might be interested in personally, personalize an email, personalize a pitch. Don't send a shitty template. It's just the absolute pits. That's one number 101 stuff. I don't know what I'm saying here. 101 stuff? Anyway, that's just 101 stuff for me.
- 3:44As a quick side note, I also get a lot of pitches for guys to come on the show who are like coaches or CEOs or whatever. And I'm like, good one, bro.
- 3:53We interview female founders in the CPG space. Huh? It's really easy to tell when someone has a good idea about the show. They might even be a listener of the show. They're able to quickly tell you why they'd be a good fit and why they'd be valuable both to your audience, but also to you as the host or the business owner or the founder.
- 4:17For example, as you probably know, I always interview founders who are a few years into the journey. They've already proven out the concept. They've got product market fit and they're in this phase of scaling. They're always open to sharing their blueprint when it comes to money and marketing and mistakes. And you'll often hear us break down that kind of stuff. So I can kind of tell in an email very quickly who gets it and who doesn't get it.
- 4:44It's also good practice to understand what is the hook that the host or the show or the person that you're pitching gets from having you on the show. Because again, it's a two-way street, especially when you're talking to someone who might have already built a show or a publication that is kind of in demand. What value can you add to them?
- 5:08For example, we've got a show that's a leading popular podcast for entrepreneurship. So we have a lot of demand for people who want to come on the show and only a limited number of spaces to fill. So for me personally, I want to know what your key standout hooks just straight up are that make my ears perk up.
- 5:28So for example, maybe you would have given me a few key angles that are really different to what we've spoken about before on the show. But then you're also like, oh, also I have a TikTok audience and last week I made a video about you. You can see it here. I'm like, damn, that's so cool. I appreciate that. Thank you so much. Like, let's chat. That's a win for me. Most pictures I receive are the same. Okay.
- 5:54People are thinking about just themselves versus what else they could offer and the person on the other end who's receiving that pitch.
- 6:03And just quickly, lastly on this, when someone is receiving hundreds of pictures, whether it's a journalist or whether it's an influencer or whether it's someone in the media space somewhere else, when they're receiving hundreds of pictures, it needs to be truly easy for the person receiving and reviewing to immediately get the gist of what you do, why they should care, and how it will benefit both them and the audience.
- 6:28So with that in mind, I want to break down a really simple strategy that has landed me press on the other side of the coin. The formula is really easy. It's called the Dream 100.
- 6:39Now, it doesn't actually need to be 100 specifically. 100 is a lot. It could be the dream 10 or the dream 20, whatever you want, whatever you feel like makes the most sense. But I personally like the dream 100. And I used this exact formula to launch my show. I did the dream 100 formula exercise for my dream 100 guests.
- 7:00So with the Dream 100, you're going to spend a bunch of time researching all sorts of press and media that speak about your niche. So this could be podcasts, it could be newsletters, it could be online publishers, social media accounts, whatever it is, you're going to flesh out that list to build your Dream 10, 20, 100, whatever. And then, for example, I would be going to Google and being like, okay.
- 7:27Let's do some digging. What journalists have talked about my competitors or similar products in my niche in the last year that would be good for me to get in front of? Because they're already talking about what you do and your niche and your industry. So for you, Anastasia, you might be looking up someone that featured Aesop's poo drops, for example, or something in the same niche, but different like the tushy bidet.
- 7:54I'd be making lists of all those people, all those journalists, all those people in the media, and adding them into a spreadsheet. So you want the website, you want the name, you want their social media channels, you want their LinkedIn, you just want to build out a Bible that kind of paints a picture of your dream 100. And once you fleshed out the list,
- 8:16I like to order them with the smaller publications or channels first and the heavy hitters towards the bottom. Because what you want to do is start landing some base foundational coverage and test the waters on what pitches work and what doesn't work so that when you finally pitch a heavy hitter,
- 8:33You've got a great pitch that they're going to open and then they're going to Google you or they're going to look up your social channels and they're able to get that immediate social proof or see that you've already got a lot of buzz happening online about you. Next step, classic relationship building. You're going to follow these people on social media. You're going to connect with them on LinkedIn. And here's the thing.
- 8:58you're not going to pitch them. You are simply just going to start observing what they're posting. Get to know them. Get to know what they're talking about, what they're looking for. Just start engaging with them as you would anyone else online. You want to start building friends in the online space because truly, truly, truly relationships matter. And even if something is a no today, it doesn't mean it's a no forever.
- 9:27You want to be out there building strong relationships that are going to last forever. They're going to last throughout this business. They're going to last throughout the next business that you do or whatever you do in your career after that.
- 9:38You never know what someone's going to be working on in six months, next year, five years from now. And what you want to do is cultivate a relationship so when the time is right and they do have an opportunity that's totally amazing just for you, they actually think of you and they come to you first.
- 9:58And by doing that, just by observing and engaging and making friends with people online, that's how you're also going to discover opportunities like this one. This is a perfect example of a small way to get your brand and your name featured in front of a huge audience. And it's because you already follow along with what we're up to. You're already keeping your eyes peeled for opportunities around you. So it's really important to keep doing that.
- 10:24So while this is happening, you can obviously start crafting your pitch as well. Figuring out what your hooks are and crafting your message. Every pitch should be personalized to that person. And because you'll have been seeing what they're up to and creating content about, you're able to put forward really interesting ideas. And it's key here to always think out of the box. And this really reminds me of a story when I had Mickey from Tushy on the show.
- 10:54Her mantra is winning with weirdness. She likes to make taboo topics fun and weird and interesting. And I'm going to tell you a quick story about how she got press around the launch of Tushy when she had a $0 budget.
- 11:10So she basically created an invite called the year of anal or the year of the anus, something like that. And she hosted this event at her house, at her apartment, where she had someone come in and do some kind of workshop with anal beads. Totally out there, right? I'm talking about this story right now. You're going to think about this story. You might even pass it on to someone else. You've probably never been to a workshop with anal beads.
- 11:37And you can probably guess what happened. Everyone she invited came because it wasn't the usual invite that those kind of press would get. Usually press are invited to the same kind of events. And this was something that they'd also never experienced before. They were intrigued. They were curious.
- 11:58From there, she went on to host something called ButtCon, and she got all these amazing, quirky, out-of-the-box people to be involved. Like, for example, I think there was a butt plastic surgeon for celebrities and different kind of butt dancers and whatever else.
- 12:16again, landed a bunch of amazing press because it was different. I have told this story to founders and investors and other people basically so many times because it is just etched in my mind. It's
- 12:36Everything is so saturated. There's so many different brands. There's so much advertising we're marketed to all the time. It's really important to think outside the box and be bold with your marketing. And this is why I also believe that when you don't have a budget, you're able to be scrappy and fast and do things that aren't polished but have high impact.
- 12:57And so, for example, for you, Anastasia, you could launch a series on TikTok talking to people on the streets about poop. And then you could use that as your pitch to press, being like, hey, I went viral on TikTok for asking people about their poo. I bet, like I literally bet that isn't something people usually see in their inbox.
- 13:23And then of course, finally, you've just got to start hammering away at the keyboard and keep on trying until you start seeing results. You've got to test and iterate and tweak and try again. Everything is in the follow up. And this is where you get creative too. Don't get lazy. Most people will drop back into your inbox and say, hey, I'm just following up on the below.
- 13:47But this is another opportunity to wow someone again. Follow up when you have news to share or something crazy that just happened. And it doesn't need to be huge. It doesn't need to be, oh, I just got featured in X. It could be like the most beautiful message and you word it in a way like,
- 14:05Hey, I hope you're having a great day. I had the best day. You know, my customer sent me this beautiful review and share what the review was. It just needs to be something that is a further kind of pop into the inbox to let them know what you're up to and kind of bring it back to the top of the surface. Help show them all the cool things that you've got going on so they know the full picture. Yeah.
- 14:31And that's it. That's the Dream 100. My final thoughts here, just to summarize, be weird, be scrappy, be different, and try and then try again and again.
- 14:45All right, that's all for today. If you want to feature in this new community series, remember all you need to do is send us a voicemail DM on Instagram at female startup club. Or if you want to join in the group chat vibes, come hang out with us on threads. I am seriously obsessed. I'm loving the vibes in there. That's all for today. Bye.
- 15:11Hey, it's June here. Thanks for listening to this amazing episode of the Female Startup Club podcast. If you're a fan of the show and want even more of the good stuff, I'd recommend checking out femalestartupclub.com where you can subscribe to our free newsletter. We send it out weekly covering female founder business news, insights and learnings in D2C, and interesting business resources.
- 15:35And if you're a founder building an e-commerce brand, you can join our private network of entrepreneurs called Hype Club at femalestartupclub.com forward slash Hype Club. We have guests from the show joining us for intimate Ask Me Anythings, expert workshops, and a group of totally amazing, like-minded women building the future of D2C brands.
- 15:58As always, please do subscribe, rate and review the show and post your favorite episodes to Instagram stories. I am beyond grateful when you do that.