Latest / Talk Commerce / Hack Your Way to Free Press Coverage: A Small Business Owner's Guide with Gloria Chou �

Transcript

Hack Your Way to Free Press Coverage: A Small Business Owner's Guide with Gloria Chou � · Talk Commerce

• Brent Peterson (00:02.33) Welcome to this episode of Talk Commerce. Today I have Gloria Chou. She is the founder of Gloria Chou PR. Gloria, go ahead, do an introduction for yourself. Tell us your day-to-day role and one of your passions in life. Gloria Chou (00:14.68) Hey, small business heroes. First of all, thank you for having me on the show. I am based in Brooklyn, where my New Yorker's at. I am a small biz PR coach. And I say coach because I am not a PR agency. I kind of cold called my way to hacking my own PR. And now I teach product founders around the world how to get featured organically without knowing a journalist or ever having PR experience. So this is a very sacred mission for me. One of my passions in life is I just love to see, to make people feel seen. I always joke that like in my other life I would be... one of those like hype men like on like a hip hop show, like hyping people up. I just love being anyone's unofficial hype woman. So yeah, that's me. Brent Peterson (00:52.75) That's great. I spent last week, I did a marathon session of podcasting in Brooklyn with a friend of mine. We did 10 episodes in one sitting. They're all coming out right now as we're trying to get them out. can't, anyways. So it was such a fun time and I love going to New York anyways. Before we get into content though, you have volunteered to be on the Free Joke Project, or should I say I volunteered you to be on the Free Joke Project? I'm just going to tell you a joke and all you have to do is give me a rating, one through five. So here we go. I called it elevator, but my British friends called it lift. I guess we're just raised differently. Gloria Chou (01:40.287) Okay, I think that's pretty good. I would probably give it a four. Brent Peterson (01:43.236) Wow, a four, I would have given it a two, but I appreciate that. All right, Gloria, so give us the 10,000 foot view on coaching PR and what does PR mean and maybe make it distinguish it from press releases. Gloria Chou (01:46.777) haha Gloria Chou (02:00.428) Yeah. So when we think about PR, I think for most product owners, think, well, you know, it's a lot of money. I don't have money to hire publicists. It's for big brands. Or you think like a celebrity agent, like music, TV. And so my whole thing is about demystifying what PR is. And for me, what I'm talking about is organic PR is when you are featured in a magazine, you're not paying a journalist. Otherwise it would be an ad and not editorial. And you're basically convincing them with so much conviction and authority that they want to feature you, whether it's for a gift guide like an Oprah's favorite thing, or a founder's feature like a business insider or a podcast. So what I mean by organic is you're not paying to play. And I think for a lot of product owners, this notion of PR largely was not accessible to them, right? The industry has traditionally told us that, you know, if you want PR, you have to pay an agency. And that in New York starts at around five to $10,000 a month for at least six months. So for 95 % of product owners out there, it's largely inaccessible. So my mission is to make it accessible for people because journalists are like credible journalists are looking to interview and feature indie brands and products from all walks of life, not just the big big box brands that you see. So that is actually absolutely true. And it really starts with us understanding what PR is, is that one, it's getting featured to knowing that it's available to you and getting rid of the mindset beliefs and blocks around that it's not. And three, knowing that like you can do it as a founder. So that's really kind of what I'm teaching is for people to understand that it's available to them, to have confidence, to pitch themselves. And then how can you make it into a repeatable process, a system in your business so that you're consistently getting featured and planting those seeds and connecting with journalists? Because that is 10 times more effective, in my opinion, than paying for an ad or spending your time on social media that either is not targeting the right person or your account can get hacked, restricted or banned. For anyone listening, I'm sure they're nodding right now because we all know someone who knows someone or even ourselves who has had the bad doomsday where we go into our account and Instagram or Facebook says something happened to our account and we're facing a permanent restriction or we can't get in. And so that is why I really want founders to know that PR is the only one that thing that's in your marketing activity that builds SEO that gives you backlinks, that gives you sales, traffic, visibility. Gloria Chou (04:23.998) and authority. It checks all of those boxes in a way that social media and blogs and paid ads or paying an influencer cannot. Brent Peterson (04:33.134) Yeah, I agree. I think that you could look at PR as being the, like you said, the ultimate ultimate SEO tool. Talk a little bit about how that compares to just traditional social media and how, yeah, talk about the differences between those two. Gloria Chou (04:50.84) So social media, don't really feel like social media has SEO. First of all, you don't own it and we don't know like with the algorithm if they're gonna like you or not. Raise your hand if you even have a hard time getting in front of your couple hundred, a couple thousand followers, let alone getting in front of new customers. So that's the thing about that. Now we know as a matter of fact that if you get featured in a high authority, you know, place like a TechCrunch or a BuzzFeed, you know, that has a high domain ranking, then those backlinks are so valuable. They're SEO gold. I always say that if you can get featured on one magazine, that's like you writing a blog every day for six months, truly. Because I think gone are the days of just posting every day on your blog. That is just such a hard battle to climb, a mountain to climb. So in terms of SEO, PR ranks the highest. And then also in terms of leveraging your activity, I always say if I can get featured, whether it's on a podcast or... on an L or a Forbes, I can repurpose that into other content for my social media. So when I think about leveraging my time as a CEO, how can I work smarter and not harder? And PR is one of those high leveraged activities. If you get onto one podcast, you can repurpose that in 20 different ways. That's Reels, that's Instagram, captions, that's blogs, that's newsletters, that's YouTube, that's all those things. So I challenge your audience, I invite them to think about how they're thinking about social media and the ROI on that. versus just learning how to pitch, getting featured once, checking off all of those buckets, and then repurposing that media feature to other contents. I think that's a much smarter and more sustainable way to work. Brent Peterson (06:28.986) Yeah, I think that repurposing thing is something that's really born out of doing a video in the past. You could have done a YouTube video and then turned that video into a blog post. I mean, it's really good approach. Talk a little bit about how getting into, a holiday gift guide can really be a game changer for your business and even eclipse what you could possibly do in paid media. Gloria Chou (06:53.752) Yeah, so, you know, I think that this is undeniable that like if you are featured in a home garden or a real simple or Vogue or whatever, that simultaneously gives you that traffic, right? So like people are reading it and then also gives you that authority and it builds trust. So if you pay for an ad or if you're on Instagram, yeah, maybe people will see it, but are they going to trust you? Are they going to trust that your brand is more legitimate, more credible, more vetted than your big box competitor? And so for a lot of the people listening, one of the main challenges is, okay, I have this great product, but how do I go up against my competitor that has like 500,000 times more budget than me? And PR is one of the ways to leverage that authority because someone reading that is probably also more likely to want to buy that too and also can trust that it's been vetted or seen in Elle. Another reason why it's better is that on social media, if you're clicking on, let's say if I'm following you and you make baseball hats. there's no indication that I'm ever going to buy from you or that I am your ideal customer. It could just be that I happen to be one day clicking and you popped up because of a friend of a friend of a friend. But if I'm clicking on an article that's like best baseball hats for children under 15, my buying intent is probably 10 times higher. I'm probably going to want to buy something if I'm going to click on that gift guide or that product rather. Do you see where I'm getting at? So that's why PR is so much better because it not only gets you closer to the sale, but it also converts them with that trust factor that you just simply can't with paid ads. Another thing about paid ads is that there's no SEO. So, you you see an ad, it's not building that long-term traffic. it's something that is, I always say you're kind of feeding the machine, right? You have to keep feeding it. And the moment you stop paying for ads, poof, everything goes away. So you're not building anything sustainable in the long-term. Brent Peterson (08:44.57) Yeah, think one thing that a lot of people make the mistake on for SEO is they don't see it through, right? I think with any sort of campaign, be it organic SEO or just writing blog posts, you do have to kind of be there for a while. How important is that in the PR game if you're trying to get journalists or trying to get your product into a gift guide? How important is it to have some... long-term goals in terms of content on your own site. Gloria Chou (09:15.406) So actually, journalists don't care about your follower count at all. They don't because you can buy followers. You could buy 500 followers, 5,000 followers today. So that doesn't really do much for them. What they care more about is, you pitching something that's relevant for the season? So all the journalists that, you know, in our PR program, I invite journalists who actually write these gift guides. And they all tell me, I don't really care about their follower count. I want to know, is this something that my customers can use this season? And so we have to stop thinking about pitching as like a marketing thing. think A lot of times founders are like, okay, well, I'm going to pitch to a journalist the same way I pitched to a customer. I'm going to tell them about the benefits and features. And that's actually the wrong way to pitch because the journalist is not going to buy from you. But if you take off your marketing hat and put on the hat of how can I make my product relevant for this season and select the best one that fits a certain problem, that solution, that's how you're going to get featured. And we can go into the nitty gritty of that and how you pick that. basically, if you have a way of marketing to your customers, whether it's through a newsletter or an order form, and you're basically taking that and sending it to a journalist, that is the fastest way for your emails to go straight into the trash. Brent Peterson (10:24.664) Yeah, I think one thing that I learned recently was that when you're doing your pitch or when you're sending out a release or some kind of an article that you would like, not having a story arc in that, not having a compelling reason why a journalist would even pick it up, how do you coach people into making sure that story is compelling? Gloria Chou (10:48.738) Yeah, so this is my, there's a little backstory on that. So remember, I never worked in PR, I never worked in an agency. And so as an outsider, I literally had to Google the newsroom at New York Times by daily the operator and cold calling. And so from getting phone slammed in my face and getting rejected thousands of times with, because again, I don't know any of these journalists, I started to pick up on patterns. Okay, how is it that a journalist who doesn't know me and they don't give a crap about what I do and How do I get them to respond? And I picked up on patterns on when they did and I turned it into a proven pitch formula that I'm teaching now. It's called my CPR pitching method. No one else will teach you this because again, it's the traditional agency route. so CPR stands for credibility, point of view and relevance. And when your pitch has these three elements, it's really solid and it usually gets a response. And so we can talk about kind of what that pitch looks like, but your pitch needs to have specificity around what is the relevant season. or problem or sentiment that you are pitching. So for example, right now, at the time of recording, we're in Q4. So Q4 is what, holidays, right? It's like winter, it's coziness. So if you make something that's skincare, you're not gonna pitch something that's citrusy or fresh. You're probably gonna pick the one standout item that's for dry skin. If you make something that is food and wine, it's gonna be for recipes that's good for the holidays. So always pitch the product in relation to what is happening right now. It could be also a social media trend. So it could be a trending thing on Netflix. It could be if you make apparel, it could be something to wear to a Taylor Swift concert. So do you see where I'm getting at here? It's basically zooming out and finding out what out of all of the products that you sell are perfect to solve a problem for the consumer right now. So that really is the relevance piece in CPR. And I like to start my email with that right off the bat. I usually say something like, as your readers are looking for cozy, know, winter home goods, like for example, if we're doing home goods, You know, here are the best, the reasons why like my wool blanket is a better alternative than what other people are selling at half the price. So you see how I'm starting off with like, this is what's relevant. And then in terms of the CPR method, after you start with the relevance, go into the point of view, which is the P in CPR. Point of view is usually three bullets, three tips, three tricks, three reasons. I like threes. Gloria Chou (13:14.836) And I like to have it in bullet points because it just makes it easier to read. And so if you were starting off with the wool fur blanket winter situation, your three bullet points could be three reasons why your wool blanket is better than the competitor, or three reasons why it's a better choice, or three reasons why it's a great gift for X, and Z. And then you can even conclude the email with C as in credibility. It's just one or two sentences saying you're a founder, you found this, you know, a great solution in this product and you would love to share more about it. And so let me know like if you ever want to chat. So do you see how that flow of the email is not desperation? It's not please feature me because I can't afford an ad. It's basically presenting the relevance, which is, know, what are people looking for? And you're presenting your product as a solution and then you're giving them a way to continue the conversation. Brent Peterson (14:07.044) You talked a little bit about just going straight to their either spam folder or just not even getting opened. I would imagine that the subject line on that email to that news person is the most important part that you could possibly do to get them to open. What advice do you give for just that subject line part? Gloria Chou (14:16.856) Yes. Yes. Gloria Chou (14:23.47) Brent, you're a good marketer because marketers all know it's really about solving the right problem. And we have to solve the problem of getting it open, right? So I have a whole training on subject lines in my program, but basically what you don't want to do in the subject line, which many people do, is you don't want to put the name of your company or your name because it doesn't matter to the journalist. The journalist has never met you. Also, do not put the word pitch in the email subject line because they know it's a pitch. They get pitches all day. Instead, your subject line should be very concise and specific. that almost reads like an article title. You three stocking stuffers under $25 for the Taylor Swift fan in your life. You see how that's a much better subject line than here's my name and here's the socks I created and here's why it's great. You know I mean? So like that's a subject line hack. One other bonus tip for your audience is install an email tracking device because that way you know if it's a deliverability issue. So you don't make up all this drama in your head about, the journalist hates me. It's just that maybe they didn't open it or maybe they don't work there anymore because they're freelancing. So let's get some analytics around if it's being open and if it's being open multiple times and your email tracking software is telling you that that's a good indication that your pitch is really good and they want to put it somewhere in their story. They just haven't found a place for it yet. And that's when you want to go in with the follow up on DMs. Journalists are on all the social media platforms like we are. So use it to your advantage. Follow up. Brent Peterson (15:51.386) Yeah, I think even the free version of HubSpot will allow you to, at least in the CRM portion, see how well, if somebody's actually opening it, and I use that. I mean, I think you can compare this a lot to just cold email, cold outbound emails that a marketer might try to do to promote their product or service, and seeing that they've opened it. So now you've seen the... Gloria Chou (16:07.138) Mm-hmm. Yeah. Brent Peterson (16:16.194) The newsroom has opened your email. What's your next step? Maybe they open it five times or 10 times. Is there a point where you send a follow-up or even get on the phone if you think it's important enough? Gloria Chou (16:21.453) Mmm. Gloria Chou (16:27.906) Yeah, so a lot of these product guides don't really require a phone interview anymore because it's pretty straightforward, right? It's like, okay, well, this fits into my father's day gift guide. You know, I just need to know like, is it shipping right away? Will it ship before Christmas? Can I find it on Amazon? You also want to put that in the pitch, by the way. The nitty gritty of a gift guide pitch is you want to put in like where it's available if it's on at. if it's on Amazon or only on your website. You want to put in the price so they know if it's a stocking stuff for a gift or a premium luxury gift. You also want to tell them what the shipping is. Is it shipping only to certain states? Is it shipping all over? What is that, right? So those are kind of the basic things you need to put. Now it also attached like one photo. I wouldn't attach your whole brochure. I wouldn't attach anything big because it's going to trigger their spam filter, like you said. So the way to get around that is to add a hyperlink and to simply say, here are our best sellers. and here are some testimonials or here's some behind the scenes look. Here's some more information. And so you can hyperlink to a page on your website or a Dropbox link for some high resolution photos. And that's how you can kind of get around putting in a whole media kit. And then once you send it off to them, if they don't respond but they're opening it, I always just follow up once a week. Something like, hey, now we're getting back to school or we're getting three or four weeks into Christmas. Let me know if you are writing, you know, if you're writing this type of gift guide or, you know, you can always keep following up, not just saying follow up, but talk about something that's relevant. Maybe something happened in the news or maybe people are looking for a certain trend. You can follow up on that thread and say, hey, this is a new trend with consumers. You know, this is why my email is relevant. Let me know if you're still working on something like this this season. And the best way to connect with journalists, which we'll get into, is to just simply see if they've written that type of story last year. So someone wrote, if someone has a history of writing Father's Day, Mother's Day, these types of gift guides, they're probably gonna write another gift guide or many during Christmas time. And so it's as easy as you either giving them a compliment saying, hey, I loved your Father's Day roundup of the best golf clubs. We're launching this new edition for the holidays and it's the first time we're doing this bundle and here's why I think it would be a great gift. You see how that's a much more natural way to kind of break the ice and follow up with them. Gloria Chou (18:49.75) So compliment them, follow up with new and relevant interesting angles, illustrate the relevancy and urgency that you're, know, you're, because what you're doing is basically providing a solution to their readers. Brent Peterson (19:01.974) I immediately thought about how do you find the journalists and then how do you send it to them without bulk sending and seeming like spam? I mean, I guess those are two great questions, right? Like how, like first of all, how do you recommend sending it so you don't just send it like for MailChimp? Gloria Chou (19:05.688) Mm. Gloria Chou (19:20.718) I love how you just ask all the good questions. I love it. So, you know, obviously, like in our program, we walk you through this. But what I recommend is I just use a very simple tool like I use Gmail. So you can just Google like a Gmail Chrome extension that's a simple mail tracker. And they've run the gamut from being like $50 a year to a lot more robust. I don't think you need a lot more robust. I use like MailTrack.io, which I think is owned by another company. I think it's like 60 bucks a year to get rid of their logo watermark. And it just simply tells you if an email has been opened and if they've opened it many times. That's enough for me. I don't need a lot more analytics. And what I like to do is once you get the pitch written, then you can pretty much schedule send individually on Google, on Gmail, and schedule send all at once. So you don't have to sit there and draft it and send it, but the first step is to write a good pitch. And once you write a good pitch, then you can draft it. And I like to do one to one. And once you have a good pitch, then you can copy and paste it. Obviously, pay attention to the formatting. You wanna address it to the journalist by their name. It makes it more personalized. That way, the tweaking is very minimal. But you don't need to tweak a lot, you know? But I also don't recommend you sending in bulk either. So I think there's an in-between way that we can do it where there's maybe 70 % all the same, but then those 25 % of the emails can have one line of personalization, especially if it's a top-tier outlet. that you know is very competitive, you can put in the first sentence of either complimenting them on their previous articles or acknowledging that they have written these types of gift guides before and asking them if they're gonna write the same for this season. Brent Peterson (21:01.399) And I guess the second part of that question is there a public database out there of journalists that you would like to send to and can you break it down by industry? Gloria Chou (21:11.138) Yeah, so PR at its core is very simple. want everyone to remember this. Anyone that's telling you that it's not, it's just trying to monetize on you. So PR at its core is writing a good pitch and knowing who to send it to. And so the CPR method helps you write a good pitch. Now let's talk about who to send it to. So there are ways that you can grassroots do this. There are software out there that's like a seven, 10 grand. And obviously in my program, we have a database for a fraction of that, but you can start to populate your own media list by installing a Google News Alert. So you type in the search bar, Google News Alert, and Google News Alert will give you all the articles written online about your specific keywords. And all you have to do is copy and paste the journalist's name and their email into an Excel spreadsheet. And sooner than later, you're going to have your own. But here's the thing about media contacts is do not send your pitch to an info at BuzzFeed or shopping at New York Times. Those are internet black holes that's never going to see the light of day. What you want to do is be very specific with the journalist who's covering your beat. So if you are making a wellness like herbal thing, it's probably going to be the wellness and beauty editor. If you make something that's an apparel or like jeans or a bag, it's probably going to be the fashion, the fashion shopping editor. So I look for people who have like commerce in their bios. So a commerce writer, associate commerce editor or a shopping writer, those are the people. who write shopping and gift guide roundups, but then also for the people who are covering your beat. So like a staff wellness reporter, like those people as well. So that's kind of how you can start to get really granular about who you send it to, because it's really about sending it to the right person. Brent Peterson (22:54.84) When you're writing your pitch, and let's just say the biggest mistake I think people make is just copying and pasting the pitch straight out of Chat GPT, how annoyed do writers get when they hear, in the evolving world of e-commerce, blah, blah, blah, and you can tell that nobody's even bothered to edit this pitch. How important is it to D, I'm gonna call it D. DAI it or humanize it I think is a much better word. Gloria Chou (23:26.112) Yeah, mean, thank God that AI cannot replace it. Otherwise, like my business will not exist, right? So that's where the relevance piece comes in. I don't think there's anything wrong with the word evolving, but it has to be very relevant to right now. And unfortunately, AI is not something that gets updated in real time. And so the part where we get to be creative as business owners is to see what is the pulse on what's happening in our industry? What are some of the pop culture trends, TikTok trends, Google trends? Those are all things that you can pull. to make your pitch relevant to that person. So for example, like if you're in beauty and wellness, there are certain ingredients that are like really interesting this year and different formulations that people care about. And so you can put that in your pitch. So you might have many different things, but if there's a big trend on vitamin C serum versus just your plain old, you know, moisturizer, because I don't know, Gwyneth Paltrow will use it or somebody, celebrity makeup artists talked about it, bring that in. If you're in bridal and makeup, And Sophia Richie's wedding was like trending because she was on like Harper's Bazaar and Vogue. Like talk about that. Talk about like now brides are looking for this type of look, which is a departure from last year. So I think like bring in those relevant trends that AI just simply can't help you do. And then after you write the pitch, hopefully you've watched my PR masterclass, which is free by the way, then you can put it into AI and just do some editing. But I'm never starting off the pitch with AI because we just, know what the trends are and AI does not have a pulse on our customers. Brent Peterson (24:52.654) Yeah, I follow Anne Hadley. She's a writer that has a marketing company and one of her, her last week's newsletter was all about don't start with AI, start with your own idea and then maybe use AI to help it along a little bit or brainstorm some of those things. And I think that's a great point. That's a very, that's a really good point about how people will get stuck in something that could be a year old even because that's all Chetgy BT knows. Gloria Chou (24:57.006) Mm. Gloria Chou (25:06.958) Correct. Gloria Chou (25:19.565) Yeah, exactly. So I'll give you, I'll give you example. We have someone who makes swimwear in our, in our community. She's very early stage. She's team of one. And her whole thing is like just inclusive swimwear. So it's nothing fancy. It's just like regular swimwear in different colors. But when I was working with her on her pitch, the show White Lotus on HBO was really trending. And so the pitch I came up with using the CPR method was like how to find the best swimsuit for your White Lotus Italian vacation this summer. You see how that's really relevant, right, to pop culture trends. We had someone else who makes a subscription box that has one book and one kind of like pantry stable, like cookie, right? So she calls it the read it and eat box. And she got tremendous results because she keeps pitching for whatever movie or novel that's trending on the New York Times list. Remember the show on Hulu, the bear? So there was, so she pitched her like seasonal thing about like, Brent Peterson (26:09.144) Yeah. Gloria Chou (26:14.45) Here's your hot summer kitchen romance read while you're watching the bear. So it's not about pitching something that's outside of our products, but it's about seeing how our products tie into the bigger trends that are happening. And I think a lot of times product owners don't think in that way. We're thinking of benefits, features, pricing optimization. And so in order for you to get featured in the media, you need to just think a little bit more macro about what are the trends, what are the insights, what are people caring about? and what is being talked about or what is that celebrity doing? Brent Peterson (26:48.131) So we've gone through the whole funnel. Now you've gotten your pitch to a newsroom and they've written about it. How do you optimize it after? Gloria Chou (26:57.678) Yeah, so for Kim, know, I read it in eight, she since joining the program had 12 or so press features and they all compound. And so what she did is like, for example, when she got her first feature, then she actually used that to get her second feature by saying that she was featured in. She then used that to get local TV coverage by putting in the subject line as featured in because it shows credibility. And she also puts it in her newsletters. She makes a content out of it. So she could make Facebook ads out of it. She could post it onto her Instagram. She could put it in her email signature every time she sends something. And then she also used it in her Kickstarter campaign because now she's launching a brick and mortar location from all the press success. And so that gives the funders a little bit more confidence that she will actually fulfill on her vision. So there are so many ways that she can do it. And obviously SEO has helped a lot because she's also gotten a lot of traffic back to her website. You can also turn those features into their own separate blogs. So for me, it's always better to start with a PR feature and then repurpose it 10 different ways like she did. Brent Peterson (27:58.938) Do you, would you leverage, let's just say you're a food, you have a food product and you've won some awards with your food product. Would you leverage that immediately into some kind of a release to say, I've won this award and would that be a good way to pitch a newsroom or a publisher? Gloria Chou (28:20.376) So just because you won award is not... So again, it's about taking a focus from being about me, me, me, me to how can this be a solution for your readers? So yes, the award is good, but I wouldn't lead with I got an award. The award is just one reason why you're a better solution. So let's say you make a hot sauce, right? I have someone in my program who makes an adaptogenic hot sauce. So she makes these mushroom adaptogens and she puts it into hot sauce. It's very interesting. So let's say if she got an award. I wouldn't say that, hey, by the way, journalists, like I got an award. It should be like the mushroom trend is booming. People are putting adaptogens in everything, including toothpaste. I am the first one to do it in hot sauce. And so this really speaks to like the trend about wellness and food and how everything is kind of blending in together. And like, here are three reasons why, like, you know, consumers are really loving my adaptogenic hot sauce for increasing performance, mood, focus, whatever that is. So do you see how, where I'm getting at, right? It's really about... taking a stab at a different angle, you can still say that you're, you won an award, but it's really about what are you solving for their audience? What does it say about the broader society trends? Brent Peterson (29:29.71) Yeah, I'm just reminded my previous company was a digital agency. whenever some other agency, it seemed like whenever they won those awards, they would send out these newsletters or releases that said, ABC agency has won this big award about the best customer branding for the year. And it's all about the agency and not about the customer. Gloria Chou (29:53.007) What's a good power play? mean, it's a good way to brag to your industry. And so it can definitely affect the way that other competitors and your customers see you. But from a journalist's point of view, it's less interesting. It doesn't mean that you shouldn't send out the press release. But strategically, it depends on what your goals are. If your goal is to get featured, then that's not the main goal of me writing a press release for I want an award. If you want to put out a press release that you won an award, would, like I said, be a little bit different. It would be competitors, like to let them know. It would be to position you. And also, once your customers see it, then you could arguably charge higher prices, right? Because then you're basically saying that you have won this award. Brent Peterson (30:35.002) Yeah, it goes back to the pitch where you really want your customers to see the solution you've made to win the award, right? Instead of trying to brag about the award you won. I guess the same thing would apply to a product that you've founded or selling like a food product like the hot sauce. If you win an award, the award was won because the hot sauce was great and it tasted good and people loved it, not because you're a great hot sauce maker. Gloria Chou (31:01.422) But why do they love it? They love it because we are in this trend of wellness and edible beauty and having, you know what I mean? So it's like, we have to extrapolate that a little bit more. One thing to remember is that like the journalist is never gonna buy from you. And so we have to fundamentally keep talking to journalists differently than we do from our customers. And so how do we leverage, how do we borrow the audience of a journalist who writes for a tech crunch by not selling to them, but by positioning you as an authority? And so it's less about benefits and features and more about here's the pulse of what's happening. Here's the trend. And here's just one way that I am filling the need of what customers are already wanting. Brent Peterson (31:41.688) Yeah, that's again, just such a great point that people think that, I'm going to just talk about AI one more time, but people think that AI will be their savior, but AI will never buy your product. Another human's going to buy your product, so you need to make sure a human will read it. And in your case, a journalist has to be the first person who's going to read it to decide if they would like to write about it. Gloria Chou (32:06.803) Good point, Brent Peterson (32:08.832) Gloria, we have a few minutes left. As I close out the podcast, I give everybody a chance to do a shameless plug about anything they like. What would you like to plug today? Gloria Chou (32:18.926) So for me, I'm all about making PR accessible for the everyday business owner. And I think for the longest time, it just hasn't been made. It's been shrouded in complexity and secrecy, but it's really quite simple. And so would love to empower your audience to think about PR differently, to know that they are the ones that's holding the keys to their media visibility, and that they are their number one advocate. We are our number one best advocates for our business, and our business needs us to be its number one advocate. So I encourage you to watch my free PR training, which shows you step by step how to use the CPR method. there's a screenshot of a pitch that got someone featured. So you can see it word for word. And you can watch that now at GloriaChowPR.com slash masterclass, Gloria C-H-O-U-PR.com slash masterclass. And DM me on Instagram at GloriaChowPR, the word pitch, and I will send you another freebie. I'm all about supporting you on your journey so that you understand that this is absolutely available to you. And once you really reclaim your power, like your business and your life will absolutely transform. So hopefully. They will watch that and connect with me and thank you for having me here. Brent Peterson (33:22.34) That's awesome. Yeah, I'll make sure I get those in the show notes. Gloria Chou, it's been such a pleasure speaking to you. Thank you so much. Gloria Chou (33:29.006) Thank you.