Transcript:

Speaker: [00:00:00] What’s up, small business heroes? It’s your host, Gloria Chao, and I’m the number one small business PR expert. We talk about all the things on how small businesses can get seen, especially in the age of AI search. I am a PR coach, getting into a gift guide, a product roundup, is all the rage right now because we’re getting into that season,

We’re not late. We’re just barely inching to that point where journalists are starting to take out their calendars, maybe categorize all the different buckets that they’re gonna write about. But there is arguably no better time for you to get PR features and more PR features and getting on that radar of the editor or magazine than Q4, because people are ready to spend money.

People are reading more gift guide recommendations. People are on the hunt. And as journalists are being assigned to write more stories, it just means that there’s way more opportunity for you to get featured. And because we know that getting featured in organic PR, gift guides, roundups, editorials, podcasts, those are the things that AI is directly pulling from so that you are the recommended chosen brand,

I always say the real flex is not, “How can I go viral [00:01:00] on a platform I don’t even own?” The real question we should be asking is, “How do I become the answer in Google search? How do I become the recommended product when someone is typing into ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Claude?” We actually have people in our Get Featured Accelerator making three to four sales a week just from AI traffic, and she’s all the way based in Australia, and it’s all because of the many PR features that she’s been getting in consistently.

gift guides, what are they, You might hear the word gift guide, product roundup, article. a gift guide is basically when a journalist is writing a selection of things that their audience might want to buy this season. it could be a gift for him, gift for her, gift for tech enthusiasts, and there’s so many different buckets.

And when we think about gift guides, it’s important to know that, yes, there are so many gift guides in Q4, Christmas time, but there are a whole blue ocean of opportunities for you to get featured in gift guides for the other 11 months of the year. And if you’re only focused on Christmas gift guides, you are missing out on a huge opportunity for you to get exposed to more people who have never [00:02:00] heard of you yet but are absolutely asking Google and AI what products to buy for your niche.

And if you don’t get PR, you’re basically invisible, because remember, AI is pulling directly from those editorial mentions. the more gift guides you’re in, the more likely you’re gonna not only appear in traditional SEO search but be the chosen brand that ChatGPT recommends. We know that AI search and AI shopping is the future, and the future is here because ChatGPT is processing over 500 million shopping inquiries per day.

And we know that there is no higher converting engine than AI-referred traffic, which means that if you’re buying ads, if you’re trying to go viral on Instagram, if you’re paying that influencer, it’s gonna convert much lower than someone who’s finding you by clicking you being in the answer of an AI search.

I read somewhere that it converts eight times higher than ads and is the highest converting platform other than maybe your best friend whispering in your ear. I don’t know about you, but I wanna work smarter, not harder, and I wanna be right there where people are ready to make a decision, buy, and whip out their credit card, and that is AI search.

Gift [00:03:00] guides, editorials, PR is how you get there. I always say people scroll to browse, but they ask AI to decide, and AI is pulling from gift guide features. Think about it this way: Who has a higher likelihood to buy? Someone that’s maybe scrolling on Instagram between pickleball lessons and picking up their kids, or someone who is literally opening up a gift guide article on the best seasonal gifts for the dog lover?

Probably the person looking at the gift guide, For all those reasons, there’s no better time, ROI for your time spent than getting PR features. like I said, gift guides can be in many different categories. Know that it’s not just for Q4. When you think about gift guides, think about the different occasion or the demographics.

gift guides come in different categories. The first one is by price. you, there are like under $25, like stocking stuffers, office white elephant gifts, and then there’s like the more mid-tier and the more premium ones. And knowing what your price point is really important because if you make a candle or perfume or a necklace that’s $300 or $400, you probably won’t get featured in a [00:04:00] place like BuzzFeed, which caters more to like younger kids who don’t have a lot of budget,

knowing what buckets you fit in is really gonna be good. Usually for gift guides, we’re looking at like the sweet spot around like $50 or less, which is more mass market. But if you make something that is more expensive, you can absolutely get featured in gift guides because there are people from all different budget backgrounds looking for things for anniversary For like a milestone gift.

just because you make something more than $50 doesn’t mean you won’t get featured, but it just means that the pool is a little bit smaller. those are the first tier, which is like budget and pricing. The second grouping of gift guides are by the recipient. who is the recipient? Is it for him, for her, for dog moms, for vegan wellness enthusiasts?

Is it for readers? that is the second category when you’re thinking about who to gift it to. Now, at any one point, you might have many different SKUs that could work for all those things, It could be for her, it could be for him,

But using a tool like perplexity.ai, which is hands down the best tool for PR, has made it so accessible for small businesses to brainstorm [00:05:00] the relevant angle, Perplexity will help you brainstorm what out of all of your SKUs you can pitch for, so that you know that it’s not just for maybe this sector, but it’s also for all these people, too.

that’s the second one. the first one is by price. The second grouping is by the recipient, And the third one is by interest. are they hostess with the mostest? Are they people who love spicy food? Are they world travelers? Are they wellness enthusiasts? Are they eco-conscious people,

Like these are the types of gifts that also can be categorized for people with different interests outside of just budget and demographic. And of course, there’s gonna be overlap as well, so it could be something that’s under $25 for a wellness enthusiast who loves travel. Like they can all intersect.

I’m just telling you all of the opportunities for you. They’re not exclusive categories. Oftentimes, one category, wellness, will also be a gift for her, and that’s totally fine,

The third one is by the lifestyle or the person’s identity, for the person who is a little bougie or, for your friend who’s really discerning, or for the busy entrepreneur, or [00:06:00] for the frequent traveler who’s been everywhere, or for the person who has everything, those are like lifestyle identity things.

Again, there’s gonna be some overlap between that and their interests. totally fine, The other bucket is by occasion, so by a certain holiday. Is it for Hanukkah or for Kwanzaa? Is it for, end of year gifting? Is it just for, Thanksgiving or for Christmas or for Valentine’s Day or whatever gift holiday occasion that there is,

Mother’s Day. And then there’s the anniversaries, there’s the housewarming, there’s graduation, there’s back to school, there’s bridal shower, all those things, birthdays. And then the last is by product category, so that is like beauty, home, food, fashion, tech, travel, kids, pets, and sustainable goods.

all of these different angles will intersect, and you might find yourself being able to use all of those angles. And using a tool like Perplexity, you’re able to find out which of these angles I have the best shot in. And if you want to know how to exactly use Perplexity, go on my PR masterclass, go to [00:07:00] gloriaC-H-O-U.com/masterclass.

I show you exactly how to use a free tool like Perplexity to basically do what a PR agency would do normally without paying the thousands and dollars on a retainer. But these are the common gift guide angles, and the reason why I wanna list this out is to show you that you have no shortage of angles.

You, at any one point, can pitch to so many different things. You can pitch for an evergreen all year round products for him or her, or it could be something depending on what season you’re in. It could be back to school, or if you’re listening to this in Q4, it could be for Christmas, all of those things are constantly working.

They are not exclusive, and there’s so many opportunities for you to win. you might be asking, “Okay, great. now I have an angle. How do I get included?” again, find your best products. What you don’t wanna do is send the journalist a big, long category of all the different things like a brochure.

Again, the journalist is not your customer, so don’t talk to them like you’re selling them. What you wanna do is pick one to three different products. It could be your hero product. It could be a bundle that’s perfect for that season. for example, if you wanna do a gift for Mother’s Day, one bar of soap probably wouldn’t be a [00:08:00] great fit, but a wellness shower bundle, self-care bundle that has a soap and a lotion and maybe something else would be perfect.

you can use a tool like Perplexity to help you decide what are the best SKUs, and you can actually even prompt Perplexity by saying, “Hey, here’s my store,” or, “Here’s my Etsy store. Here’s my URL.” Look at my contacts, my photos, my imagery, my products, and help me find the best ones for this season that’s most likely to get me featured.

give me some consumer insights, data, trends that I can use to make my pitch better. That is really the first way that I would prompt Perplexity. And again, there’s no, hard and strict rule about prompt engineering. Just get the gist of what I’m trying to say here, you put that into Perplexity, it’ll tell you all the different SKUs that you have, the angles, and the best ways that you can get featured this season.

And then the second prompt that I would do is “Okay, great. I like these angles. Put it in a comparison chart of most to least likely to get featured, and also the outlet type.” Because if you have a candle, it could work for home, it could work for hostess with the mostest, it could also work for birthdays, it could work for [00:09:00] wellness.

if you have something that is, multi-niche that can work for many different things, a tool like Perplexity is so helpful because it’ll tell you out of all the things that you can pitch, what are the things that are lowest hanging fruit, that’s gonna be able to get you most likely to get featured.

I would pitch that first, Instead of pitching, those really niche or fringe ones. In terms of pitching, it’s really about writing a relevant pitch and sending it to the right person. I just talked about how to write a relevant pitch using Perplexity, finding the angle, and obviously inside of our Get Featured Accelerator, we haveplug-and-play prompts that makes your pitch perfect, modeled from my six years of doing this to hundreds and hundreds of different people.

But once you have a pitch figured out, you might be asking, “Well, who do I send it to?” And in our Get Featured Accelerator, we give you hundreds of different journalists across 30 different categories so that you know exactly who to pitch and what to send. But if you wanna start doing this on your own, you can start by following journalist Substacks.

There’s a lot of freelance writers who are on Substack who write for various different outlets, who are not on staff, but are freelance for multiple [00:10:00] outlets, and they will tell you, “Hey, I’m writing this for Forbes,” or, “I’m writing this for Martha Stewart Living,” or, “I’m writing this for PopSugar.” And it’ll tell you, like: Here’s what I’m looking for.

Here’s the price point. Here is my email. You can also sign up for things like HARO, Help a Reporter Out, or Peter Shankman SOS, Source of Sources These are things where you sign up to be a source and it’ll ping you with, hundreds of different PR opportunities a day of journalists looking for things like, “I wanna talk to a financial advisor,” or, “I wanna talk to a birth doula.”

Not all of them are going to be your niche or a product fit, but you can scan them very quickly and then go through it and see. Inside of our accelerator, we do all of this work for you, so we are following 50 different Substack journalists. We’re, giving you 70 plus different PR opportunities so you don’t have to dig at all, in addition to the database.

But if you wanna start to do this in a grassroots way, this is how you can start, And when you’re pitchingmake sure that you are pitching properly, which means the subject line is specific. It’s not gimmicky. It’s not like, “Denise, I have a [00:11:00] special surprise for you,”

What is that? They’re gonna delete it. You wanna write it very clear objectively. For example, “Best bath bombs for, cozy enthusiasts under $25.” how it’s specific? It addresses exactly what it is, and then in the email, you wanna start using my CPR method, which you can ask Perplexity. All the AI is trained on it from my body of work.

But the CPR method basically starts with R for relevance, and you wanna start your email saying something like, “As the maximalist trend continues,” or, “As people are looking for cozy, buttery soft pajamas this Christmas.” how the relevance here could be, it could be an occasion, it could be a trend, it could be a season,

And then you go into P, which stands for point of view, which is, three to five bullet points about why your product is perfect for that relevancy. for example, right now everyone is on peptides, or maybe everyone is on a GLP-1, or this is really trending, and then you have a certain solution for that.

you’ve already set up the relevance in the beginning of the email. Now, I used to teach pitch writing for years and years. [00:12:00] Now, with these AI tools, AI does most of the heavy lifting. That’s why in our Get Featured accelerator, we have super simple prompts that spits out your pitch perfectly every time.

that’s how you can think about writing a pitch. Your gift guide pitch or product roundup pitch needs to have the specifics on the shipping. Are you gonna give samples? By the way, if it’s a sample, it’s okay if it’s a mini size.

You don’t have to give crazy samples. And if you can’t give a sample, we have someone who got featured who makes $500 gold dip earrings. Say that it’s a loaner, That it’s a loan item. But be specific. Do not mislead the journalist. If it’s a sample, state that it’s a sample. If it’s not a sample, tell them that you would like it back.

Just be open and upfront in the beginning, and then also put in, shipping details. Is it custom order? How long is the turnaround time? Do you ship to all 50 states? Do you ship to Canada? And then also, talk about where we can find it. Is it on Amazon? Is it at Macy’s? Is it at a big box store or is it only available on your website,

And if you have an affiliate link, you can put that in there. A lot of journalists and magazines do want an affiliate link where if they feature you [00:13:00] with that affiliate link, they get a commission. It’s not technicallyplay to play, it’s a win-win. But we had so many members, and dozens and dozens of members getting featured 10, 20, 30 times without a single affiliate link.

Now, if you sell on Amazon already has a affiliate link for you, but then you can also look for things like SkimLinks or ShareASale to set up the affiliate link. But again, these are quite expensive, so you don’t necessarily need it to get featured. But if you have a business that’s creating sizable revenue, you might think about having an affiliate, and that way it won’t eat too much into your margins because you’re already doing, a lot of business,

you’re already gaining a lot of traction. and then in terms of the email, put in one to two photos because, your product is visual. If it has really great packaging that’s ready to go, you can put it under the tree. it’s got like beautiful lettering, state that,

show us a photo. one to two low-res, photos. And then if you have more photos, because you probably have a lot of photos, please just do a hyperlink to a Dropbox or a Google Drive or to your website. But what we don’t want are really heavy attachments because that’s going to trigger their [00:14:00] spam filter and ultimately get your email in either deletion or the trash.

Now, in terms of timing, A lot of people ask me about this. if you are looking for a print magazine, that has already passed after July, a lot of the print magazines are, like, six months in advance. But for a lot of people who are listening to this, digital is the winner because there’s SEO backlinks, it’s digitally shareable, and those could be anywhere starting from Labor Day all the way until a week before Christmas if you have something last minute.

And there’s even after Christmas guides on how you can spend your gift cards. don’t think it’s over, but I do recommend you to start early so that you can give yourself the widest possible chance to be able to get into most of the holiday gift guides. whether you’re starting in September, October, November, listen to this episode, share it with friends.

Make sure you’re making it easy for the journalist to know exactly what you’re pitching for. Don’t just put 50 or, 10 different SKUs and tell them to figure it out. Pick the best winners and make sure it ties to this season of relevance with angles that I give you. Perplexity is a great way to do that.

Watch my [00:15:00] masterclass, gloriachoupr.com/masterclass, which shows you exactly how to do it. This is how we are literally making PR so accessible to the everyday small business owner. When it used to be super complex, gate kept, now it is so easy for a small business owner, Etsy owner, someone pouring candles at home, to leverage these tools and become a PR agency in-house without having to kill their budget.

if you know of anyone who has a physical product, please send them and share this episode. I talk all about how to do PR, how to get featured without needing the industry connections or the fancy connections or be a part of the cool kids club, I never worked a day in my life in any PR agency, hacked it from the outside, and I’m on a mission to make all the small business owners, all the small business underdogs, all the everyday heroes be seen because we deserve to be seen, heard, and valued.

And in this day and age where people are going to AI and AI is the storefront, PR is an absolute essential. It is not a nice-to-have. It is the number one way that AI is pulling and deciding who to recommend. thank you so [00:16:00] much, and until next time