Melanie
Welcome to the Monday Morning Marketing Podcast for all decision makers and action takers. Take it away, Esther.
Esther
And welcome back to another episode of the Monday Morning Marketing Podcast. Today we're talking to Gloria Chou and she's here to tell us all about PR and being your own PR specialist. Welcome, Gloria.
Gloria
Oh, thanks for having me on the show.
Esther
You're very welcome. And you're joining us all the way from New York, which is somewhere that I always wanted to go. But tell us how you got started in PR.
Gloria
Yeah, so this is a very untraditional path. So I'm not your typical PR gal. I always say I never worked a day in my life at any PR or marketing agency and that's really surprising. So what ended up happening was that I actually was in government, I was a US diplomat and I had a 25 year career laid out for me pension. But I was deeply unhappy and misaligned, personality wise. I think just was meant to be an entrepreneur, you know. And when I wanted to pivot away, I applied for over a thousand jobs, you know, in PR and communications because I always was really strong in that, in that field. And I couldn't get a single job because the PR agencies all wanted PR agency experience. And that's when I realized like, wow, this industry is really gate kept and it's really traditional. And so me being a total outsider, I had to just literally type in the Google search bar New York Times newsroom and had to cold call to get these unknown clients onto TV national publications by literally cold calling with my sweaty palms. And so from doing it from, you know, on the outside cracking the code, I am on a mission to make PR and publicity truly accessible for all of us and the rest of us.
Esther
Brilliant. Love that.
Melanie
Okay, so I, I love the, the way you did that. You know, if it's not out there the way you want it, make it, create it.
Gloria
Totally.
Melanie
So the people who are listening today could be small businesses all the way up to actually medium sized SMEs. And I know we have had a couple of corporates in the past listen to us. So for the smaller businesses, how much emphasis should be put on the PR side of things when it comes to marketing their businesses, whether it's product or service?
Gloria
Yeah. So let's talk first about PR versus marketing. Right. I think there's a lot of blurred lines and we all get those spammy messages in our DMs. That's like, hey, I'll get you featured in this random 40 under 40. So that's not the PR I'm talking about, I'm talking about earned organic media where you're not convincing a New York Times journalist to cover you, where you're not convincing a BuzzFeed or a Forbes to feature your product. So that's really the pinnacle, the holy grail, if you will. And I always say, like this marketing is you talking about you, NPR is your industry talking about you. And we are in the state of over saturation. And so the best thing I think for any CEO to know how to do is how can I position myself and as an authority, how can I get that third party stamp of approval? And you do that by getting featured. But here's the best benefit of PR is you get SEO. You get that search engine optimization optimization. You get found by having powerful backlinks free of charge by getting featured. And we know from studies that companies who actually focus on SEO and visibility are actually the ones that are able to sustain any kind of economic downturn. So that's really my kind of argument for PR and why PR is perhaps the most leveraged activity you can do in all of your marketing. I'd, for example, I'd rather get onto, for example, this podcast, right, and create content for Instagram that I can, you know, then repurpose, then create content all day for Instagram that maybe won't get seen or I could get hacked, banned or restricted at any point and I'm locked out of my account. So when you think about how do I work smarter, not harder, how do I create that longevity? PR is the one thing that checks all of those boxes of search-ability, credibility and also sales and traffic.
Esther
And it's quite evergreen as well. Then because you've got somebody else talking about you unless you pivot and do something completely different or bring out, you know, 40 different product lines or whatever. But in general.
Gloria
And you're allowed to, Right? You can just do a redirect on the on the web link and that's totally fine.
Esther
Yeah, but you could also, you know, because you've got the company or you've got the industry saying like, look at these guys, like that, that's gold. That's, you know, so how do people get the industry's eyes on them?
Gloria
I think there's like, I think there's a big mindset piece and then there's the actual logistical, like how do I connect with journal? So let's talk about the mindset first, because I really think it's 80% mindset. I think we're told by the PR industry, by the Quote, unquote gatekeepers who want to charge us ten grand a month for six months, that you have to be either a very big company or you have to pay someone to know someone. And from helping thousands of small business owners and actually talking to the journalists themselves, it's just not true. We know that journalists want to talk to, you know, new founders, indie brands, they want to feature new voices and they want to talk directly to you, the founder. So that myth of like you have to go through a PR rep, it's just a myth, it's false. Another thing is that you have to be at a certain point in business, right? And it's not necessarily true. You can still get featured in a product gift guide if you're brand new because people love new products, that we depend on journalists to find out these new products. Another way of thinking of it as is like this. If journalists were only Talking to Fortune 500 brands, Big Box companies, we probably would get very bored and we probably would lose credibility and faith in them. And so part of their job is to find these new and upcoming brands. And so you as a founder, you're actually doing them a huge favor by putting your name in the hat. And when you boil it down, you know, PR, don't let anyone tell you it's anything different. But at its core, how do you get featured? Right? It's writing a relevant pitch and sending it to the right person. And that's really the two step process. And notice how I said relevant pitch. I didn't say good or best because I don't inherently believe there's a newsworthy person or a brand more than someone else. Right. I've written pitches for AI neuro things and also toilet paper and they get featured. So it's not about your level of perceived newsworthiness. Right? We all have this imposter syndrome. So you know, I had a client who is a Pilates teacher and she literally got featured five times in like U.S. world News Today. And one of the articles, I kid you not, in 2023 that was published was called what is Pilates? So just when you think everything is said, everything is done. It's not about reinventing the wheel. Even water is being reinvented every day, right? There's new companies. So don't think about it like you have to have some groundbreaking information. Information. It's just about giving them something that's relevant for that season. So let's talk about what that means. You might start asking questions like what are our consumers dealing with right now? So are there any changes in your industry? Are there any seasonal trends? If you make products, it's probably going to be what people are searching for that season. It could be a gift guide, occasion. It could be a seasonal ingredient. It could be travel essentials. If you are in consulting or a service and you don't make a physical product, it could be something that's data backed. You could do a survey using Instagram polls and ask your people how they feel about X, Y and Z. It could be riding on the coattails of a bigger news trend. Like right now we're dealing with a lot of tariffs, a lot of AI changes. So think about what are the bigger overarching trends in your industry. If you're in something that is regulated like health care or, you know, or finance, then there's so many policy changes. So those are all the ways that we can be relevant to what the zeitgeist of what people are talking about. Remember, it's not about new, it's just about adding to what people are already searching for. How can you be a solution? How can you be a guide? And here's a pro tip. There is a free AI tool that I am using and it's saved my ass. It's called Perplexity.AI. It's free and it's replaced my Google. So if you think, well, I don't know what to pitch or I don't know what's relevant, put it in Perplexity. You can literally type in, I am a founder of x, y, z. This is what I want to pitch. I don't know what are, what's trending in my industry. Can you come up with five or 10 relevant trends that I can pick from so that I can possibly pitch this to news producers? Boom. Perplexity will give you that and then you can start to have a conversation. So Perplexity AI is absolutely game changing if you think you have nothing new to say or if you don't know what the trends are. So that's kind of like, like just like 101. How do you get started? I try. Trust me, you have something to say, you just don't know how to put it into words. And Perplexity will help you.
Melanie
Wow. Before we started recording, Gloria said, oh, we must tell people to get a pen and paper. And we forgot people. I mean, I'm trying to restrain my right hand right now from writing down stuff. You know, I, I do the promotion of the podcast when it goes out and I promote it on a platform called Missing Letter. And I am Hearing so many one liners that I'm going to be putting in there over the next couple of months. So this is absolute gold. Now, you mentioned getting to get the actual sort of notification to the right person with the right, you know, the right journalist with the right message. But half the battle, and I am a journalist, is getting the right subject line. If you don't have the right subject line, you're getting pitched by so many people, you kind of just get rid of it. So what is the message that you can give people about getting the right subject line?
Gloria
Yeah, so there's a whole training that I have on this and you can watch a free training on my masterclass and it shows. So when you talk about the actual email. Right. So we talked a little bit about, like, what the relevance is. Now let's put pen to paper. How do we actually write a pitch and listen, it's a radical act. It's going to be scary, it's going to feel uncomfortable. And a lot of people write their pitch and they go hide in their bathroom. Right. But here's the thing. Journalists are not judging you from their thrones. They have hundreds of different priorities and it's just a matter of giving them something that they can use in a concise and direct way. So let's start with the subject line. As you said, the subject line dictates whether or not the email gets open. So your subject line should not contain your name, your, your company name, or the word pitch they already know. Instead, it should almost read like an article. For example, three power words that introverts can use to be set up for C level positions or samples available. Three best stocking stuffers for vegan moms who love Beauty under $25.
Do you see how it kind of is very specific of what you're pitching? Right.
Melanie
I'm going to open both of those.
Gloria
Yeah. I always say good pitches have two ingredients. They are specific and they are relevant. And the way I teach pitch writing is think of an onion. Layers of an onion, Right? We all start by the first layer of an onion because we don't know how to peel the onion yet. And the onion at its top level layer is not very juicy or flavorful. So we need to do the work of peeling away the layer of an onion with layers of specificity and relevance to reveal that inner core. So, for example, a podcast pitch. Right. I could have pitched you and said, I would love to talk about how women can elevate their business in 2025. Top layer of the onion. Not very specific. How do you add more layer? Specificity, right? We can talk about the publicity angle, we can talk about using AI tools. So try to see how you can always refine, refine and chip away at your pitch. That is really the secret to getting featured. So we talked about the subject line. It needs to be specific. Let's talk about the email. Now Perplexity can definitely help you with that. Use Perplexity to come up with the trends, the angles. But from thousands of pitches and rejections, I came up with a golden formula of how you can get featured. And this has worked for speaking for award submissions, for retail, for wholesale, and it's called my CPR pitching method. It stands for credibility, point of view and relevance. And when I start writing a pitch, I usually flip flop CPR. So I start with the R in CPR, which stands for relevance. Because what is news if it's not relevant? And how do you know your relevance? Use Perplexity. So for example, I just worked with someone who is a social media manager. Right now you can say that social media, the trends are kind of the same every year, maybe not. So I don't know that. So I put it in Perplexity. I said, well, what are the 2025 trends happening right now for viral short form video? And it gave me 10 different things. One of them was AI transparency about how we need to be honest when we're making product, you know, when we're making like viral videos with AI. And I thought, okay, that was really interesting. So let's say you pick one relevant, like point of relevance, right? That's how you start the email. You can say something like, in 2025, social media platforms are cracking down on AI content and creators are being rewarded if they are more transparent. You see how that's a beautiful way to set it up. You might link to a survey, a data point, a hashtag, a trend, something to substantiate the relevance. If you are in product, you can say, in 2025, baggage fees for airlines have skyrocketed and so people are looking for new ways to save on that. That's why our Travel Essentials can 30% reduce your, you know, your luggage space or whatever that is, right? So the relevance needs to set up what people are looking for, what's going on. And then the point of view is three bullet points to substantiate that context that you just set up. So my travel case is perfect in this season because 1, 2, 3, right? Or you know, see, you know, introverts can use these three power words to set themselves up for success in the boardroom or as a homeschooling mom. Here are the best free tools that I am using in 2025, whatever that is.
So it's usually bullet points, could be product or service. And then you conclude with C and CPR, which stands for credibility. Now don't go crazy here. This is not your unpolished autobiography. This is not your slide deck. Do not attach anything. It's going to trigger spam. Use hyperlinks. I like to conclude the email with as your readers are looking for this problem solution, you know, I would love to talk more and I'm happy to send you samples. Here are more photos. Here's a link to our story. Here's the price point. Here's you know, how fast it ships, all the kind of nuts and bolts. And then just give them an easy way to contact you. If you make products, you need to have the link where it's available. Is it on Amazon? Is it, where is it? Right? You need to have information about shipping. Is it us, Canada, worldwide. You need to have the price point so they know if it's a luxury item, if it's a stocking stuffer. Those are kind of essentials. And if you use an affiliate link, like a skim links or Amazon, like put that in there too. If you don't make a product, if you have something that is a service, then you might want to hyperlink to your speaking page or your bio or something else, right? So use hyperlinks, but be specific and just give them a way to find out more about you. The whole energy of pitching to a journalist is not like, oh my God, I'm so scared, I don't know what to do. I can't afford an ad, but please feature me. No, it's, hey, I know that your readers are already looking for this thing or they're talking about this trend. And here's how I can be a part of that conversation. That's it.
Melanie
Okay, I feel quite exhausted by that answer. So what I'd like to ask now is what you were talking about. There is how you can pitch and get something for free, but do you still think there is a basis for advertorials as well?
Gloria
I mean, I still think that there's different buckets of marketing, right? You have your paid, you have your owned, which is like a press release or, you know, you doing social media and then you have your, your earned. I think PR goes the furthest and it lasts the longest. Now, I don't think that, that means you don't do ads. But I would much rather spend my time to get featured on publications that give me backlinks on podcasts and then I can repurpose and you can turn that into an ad. I think-.
Melanie
They come a lot cleaner, don't they?
Gloria
Hmm.
Melanie
They come out cleaner, don't they?
Gloria
Yeah. And it's just like more, more credibility. Right. So especially, especially if you're in something that's very saturated. I want to see that you have established your thought leadership. I want to see that this is legitimate and credible. And ads don't give you necessarily credibility and neither does your social media. But being featured in a publication does. Yeah.
Melanie
Great answer.
Esther
And you mentioned there about, you know, reaching out to the right person. How do you find the people? Because I know from Melanie telling me that she is inundated with emails from people and they go to the wrong department, they get into her inbox instead of somebody else and she's not going to forward it on to anybody else because she's not going to read it to start with because it's not a title that's relevant for her. So how do we get to the right people? How do we get to the person that needs to be not targeted but, you know, emailed to get your information to the them so that they can then contact you directly?
Gloria
For sure. So remember, PR is two things. It's writing a relevant pitch, which using my CPR method and Perplexity, you can do. And then the second part is sending it to the right person. So what does that mean? It means you're not sending it to infoorbs.com, it's going to go into an Internet black hole. You're not sending it to the editor at Vogue. You're sending it to the specific journalists covering that beast, whether it's the Metro reporter covering local news or it's the health and lifestyle writer. If you are in wellness, it could be the commerce or shopping editor if you make a physical product and you want to be in the gift guide. So you need to find out who that is. So how do you do that? There's a couple of free tools you can start. So the first thing is install a Google News alert. So you type in the Google search bar, Google News Alerts, and you set up a news alert for a couple of keywords in your industry and it pings you with all of the online articles being published about your industry. And it's beautiful because what it does is it trains your brain to think in terms of subject lines and News Stories. But you can also click on the article and copy and paste the journalist's name and get their email, which is all, by the way, public information. And you can start to fill out your own ever expanding media media database. Right. So use Google News Alerts. The second thing is also free tools called HARO, which stands for Help A Reporter Out. And also sourceofsources.com so these are two websites, haro.com and sourceofsources.com that aggregate journalist inquiries every day. And you might get a hundred different things about what journalists are looking for. It may or may not fit what you can answer, but if it does, it gives you the exact deadline for the story, the journalist email, and exactly what questions they want you to answer. And I've had people in my program get featured in Forbes just by signing up for these. This is also free, by the way. So first is Google News Alert. Second is HARO and Source of Sources. The third one is Substack. So Substack is a blogging platform and we know that staff writers are being laid off and there's a lot of freelance writers that might write for many different places. What are they doing? They are actually starting their own blogs on Substack to create an audience. And they actually favor their Substack subscribers first by telling them, hey, here's what I'm being tasked with to write for Business Insider. Hey, I have a story that I'm working on for Marie Claire. And so they'll tell you exactly how to pitch them, when and all the things. So definitely use Substack to find journalists. It's a great way to find what they're working on first before anyone else does. And you can also use Perplexity. You can say something like, hey, I make a candle under $50. I would love to get into some magazines who are the writers who usually cover home decor gifts in this category. And it'll give you a list and you can kind of start building that way. So those are four really easy ways that you can start to connect with journalists.
Melanie
Okay. It made me laugh when you mentioned candles.
Esther
That's my go to example. Every time.
Melanie
Always candles.
Esther
Right?
Gloria
Yeah.
Esther
See, I knew Gloria and I would click.
Melanie
There is another website that other people might want to consider learning about the. The right people to target. And it's called Muck Rack, which is a terrible name, but on there you can get the details of all the journals or papers.
Gloria
Yeah. Muck Rack is paid though. So you have to pay for it.
Melanie
Oh, yeah. But it. But it's. It, it has literally everything. It has every article ever written.
Gloria
Yes.
Melanie
And you know, you can follow journalists and see what they're writing about, but it is paid and I can't remember how much it is, but I don't remember it being that expensive.
Gloria
It's not cheap, it's a couple thousand a year. I think.
Melanie
I must be on the team then.
Esther
Moving on. Gloria, when people reach out to the journalists and they send in their, their pitch, how long should they expect to wait before they hear back from to see if it's, you know, if they're going to run with it or not so good?
Gloria
So I always say the beauty is in the follow up. And in my program we talk about like the follow up and how do you do it? And. But the first thing is, here's another pro tip is install an email tracking device. It's a software, you can use a Chrome extension, you can use things like Streak or Mailsuite and it's pretty cheap and it tells you if your email is being opened. And that's really the first step so we don't make a big drama in our head about, oh, well, this journalist hates me. Well, maybe they're out of office or maybe it's a deliverability issue. So with that software you can see if your email is being opened. If you, if your email's not being open, try, try them on social media. Try to get it to be open if it's being opened and if it's being multiple, being open multiple times. And the software will tell you it means that the journalist is really interested, but they just don't have a place for it yet. And so that's where you go in and you engage with their content. Because journalists are people, you might share their content, you might promote it, you might comment. So try to see how you can create that personal relationship by, by multiplying the touch points you have with them. Maybe it's sharing an article they wrote on LinkedIn and recommending it to your people all of the ways. Right. And a beautiful way to follow up is I like to follow up once a week for up to three times. So you follow up after seven days and you say, hey, I love your recent article. I actually bought my daughter this product after you recommended it and it cleared her eczema. Right. I want to follow up on this because I've created a product that can help x, y, z. So I like kind of a complimentary approach when I do a follow up. So that your follow up is not just, hey, following up, hey, following up. Hey, following up. So use, use something charismatic, use your charm, use, you know, like, use that layer of connection in the same thread so that, yes, you are following up, but you're kind of adding a little bit more to the conversation. Or another way to follow up is to give them a product update or something. You can say, hey, since we last chatted, we are selling out so many of this product. People are loving it because recently Taylor Swift was interviewed and said that she loved this ingredient. Right. That's another way to follow up too, is to talk about what is changing in pop culture or that if you're, you know, if you have a product that's selling out, so that's kind of like a product update type. Those are all the ways that you can easily follow up without feeling like you're pestering them.
Melanie
You know, the way you're giving away all this information, I'm almost scared at what you're holding back.
Esther
I was thinking the same thing. Like-.
Gloria
I don't hold back. I don't get. Keep.
Melanie
I'm, I'm just blown away. I mean, I've, I'm in the space, but I'm blown away with the, with the knowledge you're literally giving away here. So how would people get to get more information from you? How on earth could you give them more from today? And what's the best way to reach you?
Gloria
You know, my whole mission here is to make it accessible. And, and I think that, you know, my whole mission is to see people elevated. And we can't do that if we don't create access. Right. And, you know, as, as a woman, as, as you can probably relate to. We spend our whole lives advocating for other people. But then when it comes to advocating for ourselves, we, we don't do it. And you know, a lot of it's societal. We are pulled, told to not make too much noise or to promote ourselves. So it's a lot of it is about just giving people the confidence to feel safe, to talk about themselves and then obviously all the PR strategy. So I am on Instagram at Gloria Chou PR. So that's @ Gloria C H O U PR. I share very openly about my life, about my healing journey with my family things, not just PR. It's, it's pretty loud and bold. So be, be, you know, be ready. And if you watch my free PR masterclass, you can actually see the anatomy of an actual word for word CPR pitch that I wrote that got someone featured 12 times. So that way you could actually visually see like what to write and you can watch that for free at gloriachoupr.com/masterclass I get DMs from people I never met from around the world who said they watched the masterclass and they got featured three or four times. Right. So my whole thing is access and getting you featured as soon as possible. And then you'll realize, like, wow, I could have done this earlier. Or wow, I really do deserve to be in the arena. If you DM me the word Monday morning, I will give you another pitching freebie. And that way it will help you even more along your first pitch, because it's really all about just getting that first pitch out the door. I really believe that everything you want is on the other side of the send button. So the more often we can press send, the more comfortable you are, the more tools and resources I can do to champion you to press that send button, the more you're going to be able to create opportunities in your life. So.
Melanie
Wow.
Esther
Love that so much. Thank you, Gloria.
Gloria
Thank you.
Melanie
Well, thank you so much, Gloria, for coming on and for advocating so enormously for the PR space. That's all the time we have for, for now. But you know how to reach Gloria. If you've got any questions about PR, then please do target Gloria via Instagram account or indeed any other platform that she finds herself on. And we'll be back next week with another podcast. Have a great week.
Esther
Bye.
Melanie
The dog says goodbye as well.
Esther
Yeah, I'm sorry, the dog. I kept muting myself.
Gloria
That's cute.
Esther
That's not my dog. It's my neighbor's dog. I have two of my own, but they're in the house. But yeah, the. It's either dogs or birds or cats. Interacting.
Gloria
Good. I'm glad you're thriving.
Esther
Yeah, yeah, I live in the middle.
