Episode 18:

How to Use PR to Increase Product Sales In a Downturn

About The Episode

In this podcast we cover:

*How to approach journalists so the actually pay attention

*Simple tactics for ensuring your get coverage in the press

*How to find out which journalists to contact

*How to go about getting press in new countries and markets

*The ways in which PR can interact and augment digital advertising

*The importance of roundup articles

*How Chat GPT will impact PR and news

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Full Episode Transcript

Hello and welcome back to the E-Commerce Impact Podcast. We've got a super exciting guest today. So we've got Rosie Davies Smith, who is the founder of PR Dispatch. Now, PR Dispatch is a platform to help product-based e and e-commerce businesses to get PR and press coverage without the need of a PR agency.

So Rosie is the absolute expert in this space. She helps over 350 brands to. Amazing coverage and all sorts of press from magazines to digital press, to podcasts to roundups magazines, you name it. She's got coverage for her clients and she's got a ton of actionable divi advice for all of you on how you can get in front of the press so that they pay attention and so that they actually cover you and create articles that drive.

Revenue and attention and social followers and get people paying attention to your brand. So strap in, get ready, and let's dive into loads of tactical and really strategic advice that you can implement right away in your e-commerce business.

Hi Rosie and welcome along. Hello. Thanks for having me, Jessie. No worries at all. So my first question to you is, why do you think PR is particularly important at the moment in the current economic climate with, you know, challenges against c challenges with consumer spending, consumer confidence?

How does PR kind of fit in the mix given the current challenge? Well, we know that consumers are gonna be spending less. So it's really, really crucial that you are visible and a great way to do this, aside from maybe organic marketing and paid. Is by getting pr. So the first thing you should know is PR is never paid for.

It sits in its own space in the earned media space. And yes, it increases visibility about your brand. It increases awareness but it also boosts credibility and trust, which when consumers are spending less, you wanna be constantly visible and you want to be creating that trust and credibility with.

Mm. . Yeah, it's a, it's a big point. I think people are more considered in their spending now, but they're wanting to choose to support brands that they feel a resonance with and that they feel maybe have more of a purpose as well beyond Just a big brand making money. So I think certainly myself, I see that.

I think one of the things that we interesting with this in this economic climate too, is like in the pandemic we saw that people really wanted to buy from independent brands. Yeah. And if you can push that angle through your PR. And show the story behind your brand, people will be more likely to support you, I think.

Yeah. So I totally agree with that. All right. So you work with brands at kind of every stage along the spectrum from just getting started with PR to more established brands, you know, multi seven figure.  What should brands be thinking about in terms of and when they're first getting started with pr?

Cool. So imagery. If I could talk about imagery for an hour, I would, imagery for PR is so important. . So making sure you've got a range of images. If you're a product-based businesses, if your product-based business, obviously kind of e-comm shut cutouts are really, really important because that's what the press use when they're compiling their stories.

If you are the founder of a business and you wanna put yourself at the forefront having some really good. Of you get too far in the press. Some behind the scenes imagery as well. I call it behind the brand. So it be, could be the process or your studio. It just add some personality and actually it opens doors to those features that create you know, more of a brand storytelling angle.

And they're the features that create that emotional connection with people that are reading about your. And then finally some product lifestyle images as well, and probably talk about product lifestyle images a lot. It gets you far, it does having some really nice product lifestyle images. So in terms of imagery, I would recommend if you're just starting out and you are, you are really heavily focused on product, you know, you've got a number of products, really good, strong products that you need to push, then make sure you've got that product cutter imagery, if it's more.

Maybe it's one product, but it's all about the process. Or the sustainability behind it. Then get some behind the brand photos and some founder shots instead. It depends what you're gonna push most kind of when you're starting out and you're never too small to start. I think there's a misconception that, you know, you need to be a big brand to be able to do pr, but really you should be doing pr.

From day one of your business and doing it consistently throughout your whole business, it's not something kind of, you say, right, I'm gonna get to year three and then I'll start doing some piano notes should be done continually. And your, your angles will change as your brand queries, as your hire team, as maybe you raise investment.

The stories that you're pitching in will change. But that's the beauty of PR Italy. It kind of grows, grows with you. So they would be my top tips for just starting. Yeah. Amazing. And I've always wondered about this, so the product cutout images, so those are typically just to get quite tactical, but I think people appreciate this.

They are studio shop images that are then like cutout and Photoshop, or you can probably use Canva these days, is that right? That's right, yeah. So they are, yep. Studio images and they can be, the press don't mind if they're on a white or a clear background as they, they can be on a white, black background.

Mm-hmm.  and a jpeg. Before they can be on a clear background and a P N G, you don't actually have to cut them out yourself. A lot of the press will do that for you. It's just the smaller magazines, the more independent magazines that maybe don't have a team to do it, but the majority of the time they're fine with it.

On a white background, I just make sure it's 300 d p i. So hi res. Yeah. Awesome. Okay, so product imagery is the big thing for getting started. What else? So you've got your images. What's the next step starting to reach out? So I would I would kind of set the goal of pitching to five to 10 press a week.

That's what our members do and they do it in 60 minutes. So if you have access to a press database, it makes it really, really easy and quick. If you don't, you're gonna have to spend long, longer hunting down, hunting down press contacts. But five to 10 is a really good place to start and I would say, A mix across pitching a product and profile press.

So those interviews or the q and a or how I built it or founder profile, all of those all of those articles are really important as well Alongside, alongside the product and. It's the easiest thing actually to do. All you need to do is send them an email, so there's no kind of calling them up or anything like that.

You're just literally sending them an email saying, Hey, I know you compiled this feature at this publication. This is what we do. This is what's cool about our product or our brand. I've attached a few low res product suggestions. Let me know if anything works and I'll send you some high res imagery, and then it's the safer profile press as well.

You know, you say, I noticed that you do a spotlight on female founders every month. At The Telegraph, I'm a female founder. I've recently started this business. This is what might be interesting to your readers, and you'll see when you're, when you're kind of reaching out to the press, you'll start to see a theme in the features that they compile.

So the same features are compiled every week or every month, so they're always looking. Someone to profile that is female, that's overcome a hurdle and that's the angle that they write about, or they write a feature on, you know, a brand that helps with mental health. So the, you'll start to see the themes and it's about picking out those bits of your story or your products that are relevant for that feature.

Amazing. So, and you, you mentioned having like a database that you subscribe to can help. I know your membership offers a service a bit like that. Do you wanna talk us through how that works? What the different options are for people actually sourcing journalists to approach. Yeah. It's, I think I learned this quite easy quite a hard way when I first started out.

It's a really, it's a really tenuous task,  trying to get hold of, firstly, the people, firstly, figuring out who writes what article. Secondly, their contact details.  and then keeping that information up to date as well. So actually when I had my pr PR agency previously, we did always subscribe to the database to make it much easier.

And now we do it for brands. If you kind of are at the stage where, you know, you just wanna reach out to a few press, my advice would be is pick three to five publications. And features within those publications and just focus on them. It will take you at kind of an hour or two to track down the right people and their email addresses and their format.

If you really can't figure out the format get on the phones and ask the main desk. You know, I want to contact Sarah at the Telegraph. Can I please have her email address or what's the email format at the Telegraph? Like first name surname at so that's one way to do it. Mm-hmm. . The other option is us accessing a database like ours.

The benefit of that is it does saves.  Hunting down those press contacts and it's always up to date, I think. The thing with the press is they move around all the time. They never stay in one job very, very long. So even people that kind of have an Excel sheet of you know, press contacts that they, they borrowed from a friend a year ago, 90% of them will be out outdated.

So just make sure you're keeping on top. If you are kind of doing it yourself, you're keeping on top. Hmm. That's really interesting. Okay. And so. So you could source them yourself, but that would be a case of trying to like, delve through the publications, contact, et cetera. So the other option is to go with a membership like yours to have access to contacts.

 So do you wanna talk to us a little bit about like, what's been happening in the, in the press industry in the last few years?

Like, what's the situation of the journalists that you're talking to? What are their kind of motivations, challenges? How can you, how can someone who's approaching them kind of best play the game given the current circumstance? Oh, so much has changed. Where do I start? So firstly, there was a, as you said, a huge movement during Covid where obviously everyone wanted to support small businesses, independent brands.

And actually what happened was lots of founders, businesses found the time to do pr. So it was really, really nice to see so much. Firstly time going into like people doing their PR and maybe had never done it before. And also the, from the flip side, the, the support from the press. That hasn't really gone away.

I feel like, you know, even now we're still in that mindset. If we're gonna buy something, we really want to buy it from a small business or an independent brand where possible. So, and it's the same with press. If they can feature an independent Over a kinda a, a bigger retailer, they will. The problem is, is they want it made easy.

So a few things you can do as a brand or a business is firstly have great imagery that's gonna make their life so much easier. So those cutout images that we talked about and all the image, other images you can know how to work with. So I think it's really important that, you know, both parties understand it's a two-way relationship.

You're not selling to them. They don't have to feature you. You know, you are putting pitch suggestions or someone is putting pitch suggestions or product suggestions in their inbox. If kind of it might be relevant for something that they're working on in the future. So we always say one pitch email, one really strong written pitch, email not too long, you know, two or three paragraphs maximum with some really good either product suggestions if it's product that is relevant for that publication.

So you know, if you are. Selling something that's thousands of pounds, it's probably not gonna be relevant for the stylist. So just doing that research before and knowing that, you know, the stylist isn't gonna feature something that's a thousand pounds. So really well written and including key words.

So, The way the press work is they will search their inbox. So if I am kind of an editor at The Telegraph and I'm writing a feature on ethical jewelry brands, I will literally search my inbox for ethical jewelry and up for pop. Wow. Up for pop. Everyone has pitched that in. And then I will go back through all those suggestions and I will say, Oh yeah, actually this is really, this is really good for what I'm doing at the moment.

Can you please send me suggestions? And we get it every single day with our PR dispatch members. They'll say, I just got a response to something I sent two months ago, three months ago, six months ago, a year ago even. We've had, and it's, it's so true. So it's just about using those keywords so that you are discoverable.

You can send one pitch email and one follow up. So the follow up is about a week. And it's just popping it to the top of their inbox. No phones. The press hate being phoned, like, unless it's like a real newsworthy story, if like it's front page stuff and obviously call them. But this is, this is lifestyle press mostly that we're writing about, so, Don't follow up on the phones.

I actually saw someone tweet yesterday saying, if a PR calls me to follow up on sending their press release, I'm not going to feature it no matter what it is. So you know, don't, yeah, don't  don't, don't try and follow up on the phone and then go back to them with something new. So we, depending on.

what your angles are, what your product is, how quickly you're turning over products or collaborations. We recommend every six to 12 weeks. So every six to 12 weeks go back to them with a different prompt suggestion or go back to them with a different pitch angle if the first one didn't work. And it's just about, you know, if you, if you have something new, if you have a collaboration, they might be interested in hearing about it.

So get back in touch with them. And if they do respond and they do call you in, you know, they do call in a, an image from you or you know, they say, actually we'd like to run this. Don't hound. Don't kind of be like, when's this coming out? It hasn't come out yet. Again, it's never guaranteed. And it's a two-way relationship, so just give it time.

And if they don't, if it doesn't go into print or it doesn't go online, it doesn't get published, next time you have something new, go back to them again. Say, Hey, I know that like I didn't make the cut last time, but I've got this. I thought you might like it based on like the image you called in last time.

You can help them to do their jobs. And the last thing I'll say on this is, The press move around, as I said so often and even more in the last few. . So they are, they are, there are constant new opportunities. There are constant new kind of reasons to be going to new people when they're writing features.

And the volume of content they are producing online is unbelievable. You know, the, the features that are being kind of churned out online. So if you can only focus on one area of press, if you feel maybe overwhelmed by pr, online is by far the best place to concentrate your, concentrate, your effort. Okay.

Interesting. Cool. So would you say it's kind of a numbers game in the end? Like not number of times you hound the one journalist, but number of, if you put a, like you said, was it five a week, five pitches a week? Mm-hmm. . So if you keep that steady process up of five a week, then chances are you'll land.

So, Yeah, exactly. And it might, it might not too, in the not too distant future. Yeah, yeah. And something you pitched in six months ago might get a call in six months later. So it's, it's worth just keeping it going, keeping on top of it. And sometimes you might wanna try something easier that, you know you might get included on.

So you don't always have to go for the national titles, you know, go niche, go smaller. Hmm. That's so interesting. That's such an insight about the inbox. So, you know, we are all kind of sitting here thinking, I've written this thing, they're reading every word, they're hanging off my every word, and then they've rejected me, or whatever it is, but it's not the case.

They're using their inbox like a depository of. Content. They're probably not reading every email by any stretch. They might scan it, but they might not even read it, but they're just letting it all gather up and then they're using it as a way to search for ideas. That's, yeah, that's, yeah. Really interesting insight.

Okay. So brands can very much run their PR in-house when they're in the early stages. What about later on, like, what are the pros and cons of an agency and what advice would you give to brands considering working with an agency and how can it benefit them? Versus going, continuing to do PR in-house.

Oh, it's a really interesting one. So I run an agency for nearly 10 years. And you, you, it was really interesting, the brands that really kind of made the most of their retainer, the ones that had constant. Kind of constant new releases of product, constant stories. Talk about constant collaborations.

We're doing, events we're doing, we're running ads. We're doing kind of really great organic marketing, email marketing. They had. They had a full 360 strategy. You know, influencers, they were the brands that after, cause it retainers start at 2000 pound a month for the PR agency minimum. You know, you're probably looking at about four, 5,000 pound for a very basic kind of press retainer.

And to, to see that return, firstly, it's gonna. Six months at least. But you also need to have everything else around it happening. So don't just think, oh yeah, I could pay a PR agency and that's gonna solve my problems. Cuz that is not how PR works. You need that marketing to support that pr. I would say, I would say when you've kind of got enough to talk about Your turning product or you've kind of, you've really established a name for yourself, then it would be the time to think about outsourcing it.

The downside of that is a PR agency, a PR agency takes a lot longer to turn things around. So what I'm seeing now is larger brands, Doing their PR in-house and they are getting someone like the marketing exec or even I've, I've even seen like sales teams kind of taking on the role of PR and building those relationships themselves with the press.

So the press come directly to the brand. And the reason that's so cost efficient is because firstly, it, it fills someone's. So if you've got a mar, if you're paying a marketing exec, you know, and they need to do a couple of hours of PR every week, it makes sense. But secondly, they can turn things around really, really quickly.

So if you launch product and you know, you. Wanna talk about to the press, you've got everything there. You don't need to send over images, you don't need to send over release details. You don't need to send over this. But then the agency don't get need to, you need to get back in touch with you to be like, oh, that just got featured, but now it's sold out.

And that two-way dialogue with an agency costs time and money and you, you really do need someone. In-house at your brand to manage that relationship with an agency, to make sure they're getting all the imagery to make sure they know when things are sold out, to make sure that they have all the stories and angles that they need, that they get new headshots of the founder.

Otherwise it becomes a very inefficient kind of use of time and money. So yeah, we're seeing more and more brands taking it in house and getting someone like the marketing team to do the pr. Interesting. Yeah. There's so many parallels with a, with a paid media agency as well. Like we see the best, we get the best results for clients that are the, you know, the most knowledgeable, the most engaged that are really true partners with us, versus brands that think, oh, we'll just give that to them and we'll just forget about it because it, yeah.

You know, really an extension of their marketing department. But if they're not kind of working with us, then we can't do all the exciting things that we wanna be doing. And there's certainly, like, I think a critical mass in terms of the size of the marketing team and the size of the business before an agency can really come into their own and like, make the fee worth, worth the money.

Yeah. Yeah. So that's really interesting. I, I'm a firm believer as well that.  brands should do their media buying in-house, at least for a time before they go with an agency so that they really understand it. Because if you understand something really well, then when you work with an agency, you are able to kind of come at it from that angle of like knowledge and understanding what their challenges are as well and be able to help them more.

Yeah. Cool. So they would have a, a marketing person potentially. So would you say a bigger brand is still doing the same amount of pitches per week, like five per week or would they kind of up the, up the quantity? So a bigger brand if they've got manpower, obviously could do A lot more. Like at the agency we were probably doing between 20 and 30 pitches per week per client.

So I would say if you are a slightly bigger brand and you've got someone doing the PR on your behalf, you don't just wanna think about traditional media. So you would be thinking about podcasts, you'd be thinking about speaking opportunities, you'd be thinking about raising the profile of your founder you know, industry publications, trade publications, b2b awards potentially.

So really I, I think with a slightly larger business it's all about that key person of influence within that business. Being an, being an expert in their field. So them posting on LinkedIn, then putting out blog content so that when the industry are looking for an expert, for example, in the fashion accessory space, this person sticks out like a sore thumb.

You know, they are, they are everywhere. They speak on every panel that's kind of. , any influence, they have the right content, they have the right thing on their LinkedIn. So I think you'd be doing a bit of both. If kind of you have a bigger team, you'd be doing the traditional media for the product and the brand story, but then you'd also be, you'd also be raising that founder or whoever it is, their profile as well.

And you can do other team members as well. It doesn't have to just be the founder, it can be, you know, head of the marketing department. And Truva did this really, really well. You know, Lucy Ward, who was the creative director of Tru. She always had great press. She wasn't the founder, but she had, she was the creative director and she had some lovely press.

So yeah, it's a, it could be other few people within the business as well, you know, raising their profile too. Yeah. And what about international? So we work in the agency, we work with quite a few. British headquartered brands that are very much pushing into the US because the market is much bigger. It's English speaking with e-com.

You know, it's just a matter of moving your logistics and then you can kind of start selling straight away. How, how would you advise brands to go about getting press in places like the US or Canada if they're not from there? So it would be, so start with product. Definitely cuz when kind of you're entering a market that don't know yet, you have to have the IT product if you like.

I if it's kind of, if you're going for like something that's maybe quite. Fashionable. I would start with the big cities, so kind of the New York, the kind of the San Francisco, like the big places. So you want to start with like lead with your product and once you kind of get enough product placement, people will start to.

People will start to recognize you. And I think if you are British, that's when kind of you, you, you, you play the international card, you play the British card. They love to feature brands from other countries. Just like here. We love to see the next brand from the US or the next brand from Scandinavia.

Like we really do want to see people from other countries and it's exactly the same in other markets. So start with product placement and once you've got enough kind of the ball rolling with. Then it's worth kind of getting some interview kind of slots and press that way. It's a huge market. It's absolutely massive.

So again, if I was to give kind of brands one focus, it would be online. Because online lives forever and it's, it's directing those people straight to your US site if you have one. So yeah, I would definitely focus on online as much as you can. Yeah. Awesome. Okay. And so it would be the same thing though.

You source the contacts, you see what kind of people, journalists that are writing similar sorts of like product roundups or features about founders, contact them directly, pitch the story, but maybe with that kind of international angle we've woven in and yeah. So there there's no particular difference that you'd wanna highlight between like how a US journalist kind of.

Accepts or views, pitches or is there anything kind of nuanced about that part? You know, the US in particular it's exactly the same. I'd just say. You could really use kind of social media to your advantage here. So there's a huge presence of US journalists on LinkedIn, on Instagram, and especially if you are kind of a visual, a visual brand, you know, connect with them through social media.

It's much kind of. Smaller market over here. But yeah, connect with those people kind of as much as you can to get your name out there. The other thing I'd say is if you've got stockers in the us, that really, really helps. So if you are stocked by kind of a well-known name in the us, drop that into your, drop that into your pitch emails.

It does really help. Amazing. Cool. So what else is going on in the industry trend-wise? Like you mentioned, the kind of pandemic focus on independent businesses and that continuing kind of, you know, we both think that we'll continue into the recession. Hopefully it doesn't become a bad recession, but we're, we're all just hoping for the best.

But what else do you see kind of in the industry? Big trends that people should think about for when they're thinking about PR for their product. Well, I said I mentioned online. So just to start, 70% of press lives online and your opportunities are massively increased because they produce more content and it happens much quicker.

less people get cut, all that sort of stuff. Obviously don't even get me started on the benefits, you know, SEO Direct link into your website. Yeah, all very beneficial. So online, definitely I am seeing more and more kind of on the other side rather than like kind of press trends, but more kind of interesting ways in how brands are using their press.

So it used to be that you'd be featured in a magazine, I don't know, 10 years ago, and you know, your, your phone would, your landline would ring of your office and people would, would place orders because they saw you in the telegraph or country living, whatever it was. It is a hundred percent not like that anymore.

You know, you get feature. Someone follows you on Instagram. And it's even more kind of over the last few years. It is a, an absolute visibility exercise. So, you know, we know that touchpoints are increasing. You'll need more and more touchpoints now for someone to even become, not even purchase with you, but become aware of you.

So it's very much about touchpoints and then using your marketing to drive people through their sales. So in, in terms of using that marketing, it's been really interesting how more and more brands are com, like combining their marketing with their pr. So they'll be featured in the Telegraph and it'll kind of be a best you know, best beauty brands to have on your radar 2023, for example.

And they'll use that in their ads. They'll use it on their website, they'll use it in their email marketing, and then you'll land on the website and you'll see another quote from another publication. And it's just so, it's so great to see so many brands doing it really, really well because I think about two years ago, People kind of forgot that that was the point of PR or maybe didn't realize that was the point of pr.

So it's so good to see people using it time and time and time again. So make sure you are using, you know, press quotes, logos, share your coverage, you know, find interesting ways to do it. I love it when I receive an email marketing and it. You know, see what the press have loved this week. It's, it's not like, oh, we were in the telegraph.

It's like, see what the press are loving this week, or see what the press are loving this month. It's just a really great way to use your PR to sell. So yes, I think, yeah, I would totally, totally echo that. Yeah, so I would just add, chime in there from the paid media angle that, yes, so using the quotes in the ads, using the logos and the ads, the landing page, all of that.

But also what's really cool is if you gain a follower through someone seeing you in, you know, an article. That follower, we can then retarget with an ad. So that's what's brilliant about paid advertising is it can augment what you're doing with your earned media or the followers that you are gaining because those people are being warmed up by your organic social.

They're being warmed up by this press article and now they're seeing your ad right at the point in time when the. Shopping for, you know, the in the market to shop, because Facebook knows when they are. So I think the synergies between them are all so fantastic. And I would say as well, like, yeah, email marketing, that's another great place to use it.

And also recycle. Like if you got some great press, you know, three months ago, people might not have read that email that you sent out three months ago talking about it. Use it again with just a diff slightly different angle. So yeah, it's like about working and weaving them all together, isn't it?

Absolutely. Absolutely. It's, it's so good to see. When I see brands doing it, I get really excited. I'm like, yes, that was done really well, and now I want to buy your face rub because the telegraph has told me, but it's the best one out there. And I think it's social proof. It's social proof, it is social proof, and it's so powerful.

And then the other type of press that's, that's becoming more, I mean it's always been really, really important, but it's becoming more and more and more important is those articles where people first find you. So it might be, I mean, I was looking for a mattress top of the other day, for example. So I searched Best Mattress, top and Up came articles from the Evening Standard, the Telegraph, the Times The Guardian on the first page of.

And all of these articles have done a roundup of the top 15 mattress toppers, and it's the same for every single product. If you are ever looking for something, you'll probably search, you know, best ethical Swimwear brand or Best Vegan Skincare, and up will come two pages of press before you even get to a brand.

So the brands that are really savvy, the brands that are really thinking about kind of consumer spending, decreasing and how people are gonna be shopping. Are pitching into these articles and then like they're like a dog with a bone. They're not kind of letting up and making them sure that the press that write these articles know they exist, because it's really, really crucial that if you want people to shop with you when they're in that mindset that you are in these articles.

So that's the other kind of trend that I've been seeing more and more and more of the shopping. That's interesting. Yeah. So I had an in, I interviewed a p  SEO guy on my podcast a little while ago, Sam from Blink seo. It's a couple of episodes back if anyone wants to jump in and listen. But he talked about product roundups as being a key part of an SEO strategy and making sure that you have that as part of your strategy.

So, do you wanna talk our story? So if the, because those con that content. Newspapers are producing all those magazines. That's their kind of evergreen bread and butter SEO content, isn't it? They've done it for SEO purposes. How would you go about getting yourself on an ad? Would you try and get yourself on an article that already exists or is it about just trying to be there at the right time when they're combining a new one?

So this is a really, really good question. So when I look for that mattress topper, what I noticed is it was the third day of 2023 and the one that I found had been updated from 2022, and that they'd updated kind of the year for 2023. So it ranked top of Google. So they do sometimes update them. If it's kind of a product that, you know, it's not, it's not the most trend driven like a mattress topper, they probably will just update.

The article with a kind of a few new suggestions. They'll check everything is still the same price, and then they'll republish that article potentially only potentially later down the line. If it's something that's quite trend led. For example, handbags, underwear, fashion, beauty, lifestyle, homeware, anything like that they will create a completely new.

The key to getting into them is to be on their radar. So the first thing is always make sure kind of you're pitching in every six to 12 weeks. As I said, make sure you've got the most relevant content contact. It's not an old contact cause these people do move around. Make sure you're using those keywords because that's what they're gonna search.

They might do it once a year, for example, your topic and you never know when they're gonna do it. Topics changed all the time. All the time. You know, they might plan to do handbags, but then we go into a lockdown. So all of a sudden, I don't know, loungewear becomes really relevant. So they do kind of change kind of their content plans a lot.

So you never know when they're gonna do it. So it's really important that you've used their keywords. You are in their inbox. And also go that extra mile with them. You know, connect with them on LinkedIn, connect with them on Instagram. If they are active on Instagram. Make yourself kind of as known as possible.

If it's something that needs to be tried and tested, food, drink beauty. Body care, anything like that it's really worth getting samples to them. So maybe it's something you wanna ask first. You know, I'm, I'm gonna send you this sample, but let me know if you'd like a different flavor or a different color.

They're really influential people and you wanna get the, your product into their hands if it's something that needs to be trying to tested. For example, we work with an underwear brand for many, many years, and they're actually a peer dispatch member now. And they do underwear that. Kind of all different sizes of women and bus size in particular.

So we really had to get this underwear to the editors so they could try it. And they actually, we did and they tried it and they put 'em as, I think it was Indie's Best Buy. So that was fantastic in the independence. So yeah, it's really worth kind of building that relationship with them, getting in touch with them, sending them something or asking them if they'd like to try So, 

how do you think chat g p t plays into pr, but also how do you think it's gonna affect the, the journalism industry?

So it's really interesting. So firstly I was concerned , that people would be able to find press contacts through it. And you can, but it still take quite a while. Lots of people don't put those details out publicly. So if you. Think that you can get it through there, it's, it's rare that actually you'll get hold of the right person.

It's gonna be really interesting for press releases. So a really strong press release has fax figures data. So yeah, if you can pull fax figures data, you know, through there from the internet, you could You could write a much stronger press release. I would never recommend writing a whole press release with it cuz they'll see straight through it.

But you know, if you kind of are contextualizing the problem that you solve, how many plastic bottles end up in a C every single year, for example, it could write that whole paragraph for you. So really for that only kind of other side, You know, people are like, journalists are going to lose their jobs.

We are gonna like hit a phase where, you know, we have got robots writing articles. I think that as a product-based business, we're in quite a strong.  Position well the press, the kind of cover our sector are in quite a strong position because you can't get them to write interview pieces, for example.

And if kind of everyone listening to this runs kind of lifestyle businesses or independent lifestyle businesses, that whole space is very personal. Personal. You know, you, if you are writing. We're doing an interview piece with a magazine. You know, someone has to send over the questions, you have to get back to them.

So it would be really interesting to see what it does to the lifestyle sector, because I can't ever see kind of a situation where product pages are being compiled by anyone apart from an editor if they need to be edited. That's the whole beauty of press. So hopefully kind of in the product space.

We're safe. But if I, I was in the mainstream journalist space and I was a journalist in the mainstream stream space, I think I'd be, I think I'd be quite worried. But I would love to know if anyone has listened to this and kind of has a press release to write, can you pull some really interesting facts and figures and contextualize the problem that you solve really, really well using it?

Yeah, it's interesting, isn't it? That's how we've, I mean, we've been using AI for a few years now in the agency just to help us work faster and smarter. So on the content generation side, we've always used it to help us come up with angles for ads. And then our copywriter will, you know, he uses it. It's just to augment and speed 'em up and give them new ideas.

Just give them a new way of. It's kind of like having an assistant, I guess. Yeah. To help him get started with stuff. So I think applying that approach to press releases is great, and it, you know, anything it can do to kind of augment what you're doing and make you more efficient is awesome. Yeah. Yeah. I guess I'm just fascinated to see, you know, at the moment, a huge, and this is, you're right, there's a real difference between product and lifestyle, PR versus like news.

The news industry. Because the news industry, I mean, most of the content we read is repurposed, like. One outfit will put the news out and then all the other outfits will just copy it. And there's journalists whose job it is just to repurpose the news. Right. Those jobs will be gone. Yeah. Yeah. But then, but then what do we, as consumers of the press, like why, why would we even go to the press then?

Why don't we just go to chat g b t to ask for our news? So I guess that's the, that's the bigger shift that will be really interesting is like what will even, what role will the media even play in the future?  I, before we wrap up, it would be really good.

I think our listeners would really benefit from hearing, I mean, I'll put this in the show notes, but from hearing about your membership and how it works, because I think it's actually really unique in our industry. It's, it's the best kept secret and the best hack for getting your own PR without all of the efforts.

So you wanna talk us through, and by the way, this is not a, we're not affiliates or anything. I just think this is a great service and people more, more brands need to hear about it. Thanks Jesse. Yeah, so PI dispatch, health product-based businesses to do their PR in-house. We have a range of members from kind of one, one man band or one female band.

Kind of founders to teams where as I said, the marketing exec might be doing the PR in-house. We give our members access to a press database that they can filter and search to find relevant. Press contacts for their space sector or any angles they might have. For example, sustainable, ethical, female founded.

And then they work their way through and pitch the press. We also do something called press and journal requests. So when the press are looking for something at that particular  and then we have all the support that goes with it. So weekly support calls a community group and pitch templates and learning around how the press works because what I want our members to do is pitch to the press in the right way and build the right relationships and not kind of anger the press so they don't work with them again.

So yeah, we help over 350. Product based businesses and prices start, it depends whether this is going out, but prices start from 54 pound a month. And they will be in, they will be increasing soon. So yeah, if anyone wants to come and have a look, we do a tour kind of every few weeks. So go and have a look.

Amazing. Well, I'll put all the details in the show notes and where's the best place to follow you and get updates and hear from you more. Ah, so yes, I am on Instagram at @PRdispatch and if you are looking for kind of a, a helpful PR calendar, you can sign up to our newsletter list and every month we'll send you a PR calendar for the next two months with key dates and what the press are working on for free.

Amazing. Wow. That sounds awesome.  Look forward to catching up with you soon. Thank you.

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