How to get FREE PRESS for your small business with PR Expert Gloria Chou

Wanna get your small business featured in magazines, podcasts and mainstream media? This is how to do it...
 
In this episode, Gloria Chou breaks down the myths around PR and shows how even new, unknown founders can secure top-tier media coverage in outlets like The New York Times and Wall Street Journal. 

After having journalists slam the phone on her dozens of times, Gloria started to uncover patterns in her pitches that made journalists actually hear her out. She took her experience and created a signature framework (the "CPR Method") which helps her clients craft pitches that resonate with journalists.
 
Today we chat about...

• Defining PR: Earned media that builds trust and organic visibility— AKA journalists talking about you, rather than you talking about yourself.
• CPR Pitching Framework: Start with what’s relevant (seasonality or trending topics), deliver a strong point of view, then briefly share your credibility.
• Position for Journalists, Not Customers: Focus on the story or insight that appeals to an outlet’s audience.
• Seasonal Angles & Contrarian Takes: Use data, newsjacking, or timely themes to stand out and get those “yes” responses.

Watch Gloria’s free PR masterclass at www.gloriachoupr.com/masterclass to see exactly how her CPR method can help your business get more exposure.

Connect with Gloria on Instagram @gloriachoupr 

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Music by Jordan Wood

Hosted by Jenna Harding (Warriner), Creator of Magic Marketing Machine

Transcript

Did you know that I used to be a publicist? I used to be a publicist and I worked under this really cool publicist, , out of LA and it was one of the most stressful jobs that I've ever had. But I feel like learning about publicity and learning about PR is so important. As a business owner, and funny enough, I've met so many business owners that don't actually know what those words mean.

So if you don't know what those words mean either, you are in exactly the right place. If you do know what they mean, and you want to get in on that, you are also in the right place. Because today I have a special guest. special guest on the show. In just a second, I'm going to introduce you to Gloria Chou, who is a former TV producer and U.

S. diplomat who works extensively with unknown and early stage small business founders to help them get their stories into top tier news outlets like New York Times. Ever heard of it? Wall Street Journal. Ever heard of it?

One of her claims to fame is she has cold called her way to gaining a billion organic views for small businesses. She's created a proven pitching framework that has helped thousands of scrappy entrepreneurs get their message out to more people. She's going to tell you more about that. And she's on a mission to make PR accessible.

No matter the size of your biz. No matter if you've launched yet, no matter if you're funded, she's a PR coach and host of podcast, Small Business PR.  Let me introduce you to Gloria Cho Yay. Thank you, Jenna. I'm so excited to be here. Tell us literally everything.   When you think of PR, you know, you think like, Ooh, that's for like politicians or celebrities.

, and it's almost as kind of like, Oh, like I don't, I either can't afford it or it's for, you know, people who need a crisis mediation.  Yeah. It's like, Oh, it's like need PR. There's something, there's something troubling. And I think there's a lot of mystery around it now because you know, with influencers and quote unquote fake writers that are not really writers.

And so  I think we need to define what PR is. So for me, PR is that organic earned media where you're not convincing. You're not like paying a journalist at the New York times or apartment therapy or Vogue to write about you, but you position yourself in a way where they want to have you be an expert, right?

Whether it's a quote, or it could be a longer form story. It could even be a podcast. Like right now I'm on your podcast. So that is what I mean by that earned organic PR. And I think in this year, there's no other marketing activity. That's. As important because it's the only thing that drives Organic SEO,  SEO is the key word right now, right?

Powerful backlinks back to your website, being ranked on Google. And it also builds that trust and credibility. I always say, no marketing  is you talking about you and PR is your industry talking about you. Oh my gosh. I love that.  And as small business owners, you know, even if you make a product or not, a lot of times people are like, well, I don't, I don't need PR or , I'm more of a behind the scenes girly.

Yeah. And it's like, well, no one's asking you to be on live TV, but you need to step into that frequency and acknowledge that your business needs you to be its number one spokesperson and, and to pitch for it. And so that's what we're going to talk about today. The very easy, simple ways that even if you're behind the scenes, girly, even if you're an introvert, how you can give your business, the leverage, the SEO, the traffic and credibility that it needs so that you can get more sales easily,  we want to build that long term ROI and that's exactly what PR allows you to do.  It's so interesting. So you're kind of saying it's not just about being on breakfast television and the X number of people who are sitting there that morning in front of their TV watching you on breakfast television.

And it's about. The backlinks and then being able to put the logo for Breakfast Television on your website and the authority that gives you and the SEO that that can help drive to your website, like it's almost more like an ecosystem. It's not about just that one moment of 15 minutes of fame. Yeah, and if you learn how to do PR in this way, which we're going to show you, which is you doing and taking in house.

Yes, you can delegate to an assistant.  But.  Once you learn how to do this, you gain a skill for life because you're like, Oh my gosh, I, now I can, there's a blue ocean of opportunities for me to get featured. And I'll tell you why most people don't do it this way is because for decades, the PR industry have shrouded PR in some kind of exclusive cool kids club, where it's like, you got to pay us five to 10 grand a month for six months so we can call up our buddies.

And so they've, they've really profited off of this. And they made it seem like Well, for the, you know,  like business owner, unless you know someone, unless you pay a lot of money, you're just not going to get seen. My people are mainly small businesses. They're mainly women of color, privilege and access are things that we're not born into.

And so when I talk about PR, this is so much more than just getting a logo. It's really sacred work. It's about feeling safe to be seen in places. Maybe you don't see yourself reflected. And there's a lot of generational work there. And so this absolutely is so important, more than just a logo on your website, it's learning how to advocate for yourself.

 In your process, which I know we're going to get to, but in your process, how much of it is like internal work? Because that comes up a lot on this podcast. I'm always trying to like be like, here's point A to point C and step by step and strategy. But anyone who comes on here who has found success can't help but talk about the mindset and the inner work.

It's like so undeniable, which I love. Yeah, , it really is because I think a lot of times you think, well, I'm too early for PR or I don't have a celebrity influencer or have VC dollars. And, you know, from cold pitching thousands of times. And actually now we have these journalists like from good morning, America and business insider coming into our program.

I always ask them, does it matter how many followers they have? And they always say, no, it's not a popularity contest. Because you can also buy your followers. But what matters is like having an angle that's relevant. And no, you don't have to do groundbreaking things. Everything is kind of a remix. So it's really about knowing what to pitch for the season.

So I want you to know, like from your, for your audience, instead of thinking about like talking to the journalists, like you would to your customer. So don't talk about your benefits and features. Know that , the journalist is never going to buy from you.  So we need to take off our marketing hat and put on a different way of communicating.

And what does that mean? It means that you need to start asking yourself different set of questions like what is trending in my industry? What are some of the predictions of what is going to be big? What are some of the big things happening in the news that I can kind of news Jack and ride that wave?

What are some of the, you know, insights or data points or seasonalities?  I don't care if you make a fidget spinner or if you're a lawyer, there's always some kind of seasonality to what you're in. And, you know, if you can bring in, like, maybe, like, a regulatory angle, if you're in finance, healthcare, or legal, that's always going to be relevant.

So it's really about relevancy. How can we pitch with relevancy and specificity so that the story works for that point in time for the journalist? It's almost like, instead of talking to the journalist, like, you're trying to get them to do you a favor. What favors can you do for them? How can you make this interesting to them and to their audience and for them?

And then you get. Obviously a benefit. It's a mutual benefit. Yeah. And it doesn't have to be interesting. Like, Oh, you know, like, like, so I'll give you an example. We have someone who was a Pilates teacher and she got featured in an article in 2023 title. What is Pilates?  And so it, you know, there are people reading the news and new cycle for every level from beginner to advanced.

And a lot of times we think, well, I have nothing interesting to say, or I have nothing to contribute. That's the main thing we need to just throw, throw it out because the new cycle is 24 seven. They need content. So why not? Why have it not be you, but there is a way to pitch that makes it concise. That makes it easy on the eyes for the journalist to make a decision of, okay, yes, I want to hear more or maybe later.

And I think we're just not taught that. And from cold pitching, because remember, I never worked a day in any PR firm. I cold called from Googling New York times newsroom and had phone slammed in my face. I started to pick up on patterns on when someone would answer my pitch or not. And I put it into a framework called my CPR pitching framework.

Which stands for credibility point of view and relevance. And you always want to start your pitch with relevance. I don't care if it's a LinkedIn DM, if it's over texts, if it's over phone or email, because you want to capture the journalist's attention right away, because what is news if it's not relevant?

So right now at the time of recording, it's Q4, Q1. I love this time because there's a lot of end of year. What do we learn and new year predictions? What's going to be trending. Those are great ways to make your pitch relevant for the journalist. And then after the relevance. You're going to tie in some point of view.

It's usually three bullet points,  three tips, three insights, three things. It could be, you know, three ways to interpret X, Y, and Z. That's your point of view. And then you want to conclude the email with credibility, which is just one or two sentences. Don't go crazy here about why you are in a position to pitch this angle.

Maybe this is a solution that you found as a homeschooling mom, or maybe you're just passionate about fitness. Or maybe you created this hot sauce because you travel to Thailand and you realized that this wasn't available in the U. S. Whatever that is, right? One or two sentences. If you make a product, put one photo and then use hyperlinks so they can find out more.

Do not attach your unwritten biography or a pitch deck. Boom! There you have it. That's really kind of the framework of a winning pitch.  You know, it's so funny, but like, simple things like the pitch deck being a PDF,   I was working in PR, we were doing film festivals, and your inbox is a nightmare, and you're dealing with people's assistants, and I would have email chains that were like, 80 emails long.

So if people are sending you PDFs, you know, quick, because you're getting like your inbox is getting full and, and they're all over the place. And so I learned that lesson in just a simple way from being on the receiving end of all of that information. Like don't send it to people. They don't want it and make it clogs their inbox.

And then they resent you. Totally.  Yeah. I mean, and the thing is like.  We don't know what to say, so a lot of times we just want to put everything in the pitch, and it takes some time, right? So it's a way of writing. I always think about pitch writing like a layer of an onion you're trying to peel so that you can get to the juicy core.

So the top layer, everyone starts off very general, very, very fluffy, like, you know, wellness tips. Okay.  That's not specific. So let's peel away layer of an onion wellness tips for women. Okay. A little bit more specific. Let's peel it again. Wellness tips for women over 50. Okay. That's good.

What about more wellness tips for midlife women with long COVID? Like, do you see how it just gets more and more better? The more you peel away the layer of an onion. So just imagine every time you're writing, everyone starts off with a very generalized pitch more. You can peel away the onion. The more you're going to get to that juicy core.

And that's often what the journalist is looking for. Something very specific and relevant.  Yeah, and people get so scared of specificity because that's a rule in social media marketing too and in marketing and in niching and messaging and all of that. , we worry that by being specific, we're limiting ourselves, but really you're making the most perfect people feel exactly at home and like they're getting what they want from you.

Yeah. 100%. And it's not, again, I always say like, you're not at McDonald's, right? Like you're not for everyone with pitch writing is it's even more, it's like, it's just one article out of many articles that you're going to be on. And so it's okay to be very specific, but remember, think about the season that you're in.

If you're in fitness, you're not going to pitch something that's like winter exercises. This is just, if it's summertime, if you're in skincare, you're not going to pitch like this really heavy moisturizer in the spring when people are looking for freshing and like citrus scents. So we just have to know.

what the seasonalities are, what people are looking for, and just simply offering up a point of view for that.  How do you yourself kind of stay tapped? Well, probably a lot of it's second nature, but how do you stay tapped into the zeitgeist? For people who are listening who are like, well, I'm not like tapped into pop culture and maybe they don't like subscribe to different magazines and newspapers.

 What should we do to kind of keep our finger on the pulse?  Well, I always say like, you don't have to be a pop culture connoisseur, but if you're on Instagram, you know what's trending, right? So I know like Taylor Swift's tour was really trending. So if you're in apparel, it could be like, here's a suggestion on what to wear for your next Taylor Swift concert.

Like whatever that is. You know, White Lotus was really big on HBO. So there's a lot of things for  travel to Italy and  white linens and things like that. If you're in food and wine, it could be something with remember the show, the bear on HBO on Hulu. So there's always a way you could make it trending.

 Even on TikTok and social media, that is your newsfeed right there. But if you want to do something, one extra step, what you can do is install a Google news alert, which is free. You type in the search bar, Google news alert with your keywords, and it'll ping you with all the articles written about in your industry.

And so then you start to think in terms, not of benefits and features, but of what are the subject lines and what are the articles? And you've just become better and better at pitching that. That is so fun. it's creative, right? , even you when you're, coming up with these ideas off the top of your head, you, like, light it up.

It's, like, what can we create? What can we offer? , what cool piece of content can we help a journalist collaborate with us on and then serve to the people? , another one I like is the contrarian angle. So if everyone is telling you to do X, Y, and Z, and you found that this ABC is working better than pitch that.

I'll give you an example. We had someone who was a communication coach for introverts, and she actually just brought up like a third party data, which is another way to pitch a third party data that, you know, it's, it's a research survey that actually said that introverts are better suited for these specific C level positions in the boardroom, which is like, you know, Contrarian, right?

Because you don't think about that usually. And she pitched that and she got on "Introvert, Dear", Huffington Post, and a bunch of different places. And so don't be afraid to use data. Don't be afraid to be contrarian. Don't be afraid to take a different point of view.  Amazing. So on top of your, ,  CPR strategy, what kind of nuts and bolts do people get when they work with you?

I'm just, let's just make this an infomercial. I think it's fascinating,  but what sort of nuts and bolts do you give people to help like put all this  into action? So, you know, from literally hacking it from the outside and getting rejected thousands of times, I realized like at its core, PR is just knowing how to write a pitch and knowing who to send it to. 

So you need to write a good pitch and you need to have a media list of the people who are,  going to write about you. And it's not info at buzzfeed. com or media at Forbes. com. It's the specific writer who's covering your beat, whether it's parenting, sustainability, beauty, whatever that is. If you make product, it could be the shopping editor who writes gift guides.

And so we need to have that, that data, and you can do that yourself, right, with, with a Google news alert as easy as copy and pasting their name and adding it onto your ever expanding Excel spreadsheet. But in my program for people who are doing it this way, I have a database of 100, 000 journalists across 150 beats or industries, and then I have a pitch templates of over 50 industries, whatever, whether it's baking or skincare or if you're a sexologist or mixologist. 

You can learn the CPR method and just. Simply just plug your business in a kind of Mad Libs style. And I actually also bring the top 1 percent of journalists from good morning, America from Forbes to come in, to meet you actually tomorrow. We have the shopping editor at InStyle people, food and wine, travel and leisure coming in.

So it's giving you access so that you can do this for yourself. And we teach you how to delegate it so that you're constantly planting those seeds, because here's the thing. If you hire an agency to do it, I'm not saying that no one should, if you have the bandwidth, if you're a startup, you Yes, go, go ahead.

Right. For most of us, we don't have that. So the thing is that you need to learn who the people are and you want to make connections with the journalists because the moment you stop paying the agency, they walk away and you start with zero. The whole point of doing a PR this way is not only do you become a better writer, but you get to own those connections with the editor, you get to cultivate a relationship with them so that they can write about you over and over again. 

That is so exciting. It really does feel accessible. And as someone who, , for a blip, for just a couple years was in this industry, I'm just like, yeah. Yeah, that makes perfect sense, except better.  Like, that's all we were doing,  looking for angles and emailing people, looking for angles and emailing people and  talking up why our clients would matter to them.

Yeah, exactly. It's, it's like, it's a different way of positioning, right? Because the journalist is not stupid. They know that you don't really want to pay for an ad, you want this for your business, but you can't just right off the bat say that it's really about leading with the story or the insight first.

Story, even just the word story,  , we know it's called a new story, but are you telling a story, right? Yeah. Are you telling a story or benefits and features? And look, there's nothing wrong with that. So if you have a product, you should put your benefits and features, but the context is through the lens of what's relevant.

Is it back to school? You're not going to give them all 50 products. You're going to choose the one that's perfect for that season. You make it sound so easy, which I love because that's what you're trying to do!  Access. Yeah, that's amazing. Okay, so, , who should find you and where should they do that? And when, actually, should they do that?

, I'm a pretty open book. I share a lot about my life, a lot of raw and honest things on my Instagram at Gloria Chou PR. That's Gloria C H O U P R. And I have a free PR masterclass that actually shows you word for word, a CPR pitch from the subject line to the last sentence that got someone featured 12 times.

You can watch that at gloriaChoupr. com slash masterclass.  You can start doing this on your own and start getting featured. , and obviously I have my program, , you can go to PR starter pack. com what's most important though, is that you understand that your business needs you to start doing this.

And just like everything else, yes, it might take time, but you're learning a skill. I think a lot of times people are like, Oh, it's just too much work. So then they go back to social media, hoping to go viral and it's still work. We're all doing this work, but how can you work a little bit smarter? How can you build something that's going to give you a long term asset?

And so the PR and learning how to position and building relationships with the media to me is a much higher leverage activity than just spending six months on Instagram, hoping that you're going to get a couple of sales. Yeah, I mean, I teach a proven social media strategy, so I can't say I fully agree with that.

But I do think that everybody needs to do what is right for them. And if you don't like social media, you don't need to be there. And if you're ready to add another element of marketing, then add PR. , why not layer these things in? You spoke before about how they all feed each other, right? And like, press placement, Helps you are on Instagram when you like the press base and helps you in SEO.

Like you said,  it can become a marketing ecosystem. Yeah. It's just not, it's not a one on done. So social media is great. What I love to do is get on a podcast and then repurpose that into 20 pieces of different content for social media. Yeah, absolutely. Thank you so much for being here, Gloria. This is honestly so inspirational and exciting. Like my, my creative wheels are turning. Thank you for having me, Jenna.