Gloria Chou's Public Relations Tips
“PR is the highest leverage activity, and we’re not taught that because it’s easier to just create a reel and hope it goes viral.”
In this episode of The Unofficial Shopify Podcast, we meet Gloria Chou, a PR coach on a mission to break down the barriers of traditional media. Gloria didn’t take the expected path into public relations—she reinvented it. She shares how she went from diplomat to helping small businesses earn coveted media spots in outlets like Forbes and The New York Times, using her unique CPR method for pitching. We explore the quiet power of PR, how to land a spot in a holiday gift guide, and why PR might just be the secret weapon for Shopify entrepreneurs looking to grow.
Kurt Elster
This episode is brought to you in part by Omnisend. Yes, that Omnisend. Alright, Shopify friends. Are you ready to take your e-comm game to the next level? Then you've gotta check out Omnisend. the go-to tool for supercharging your Shopify store. With OmniSend, you'll be launching pre-built e-com automations in no time. segmenting customers based on their shopping behavior, and even trying out SMS or push notifications, all from the same powerful platform. And that's not all, over 100,000 e-com brands trust OmniSend to drive sales and build stronger customer relationships. Whether you're sending quick to create, highly relevant emails, or targeted texts, OmniSend makes it easier than ever to connect with your audience and convert them into loyal customers. Don't miss out on transforming your Shopify store with Omnisend. Check out we even have a link. It's in the show notes. Your dotomisen. com slash unofficial Shopify podcast. Omnisend. My friends, did you realize I in part got my career started with a few PR tactics and strategies? Yeah, something like, geez, 15 years ago now. I used uh a tool that would connect you with journalists and then you would provide uh answer questions, provide background, give expert quotes. And in doing that, I ended up getting uh quotes in a whole bunch of mainstream publications. And so I was able to use that to help um to generate uh some cachet, some authority around myself initially, as I spent, you know, the first part of my career building uh a cult of personality. And today, you know, this podcast, anyways, that's that's content marketing, is that PR? I don't know. I know a fair number of PR people reach out to me on behalf of their clients. And today, we're actually going to talk to one of those PR people. I'm Kurt Elster. Check Masty. This is the Unofficial Shopify Podcast. And today we're going to talk to Gloria Chow. about her phenomenal career. Uh Gloria, welcome to the show. You went from being a diplomat to a a PR coach?
Gloria Chou
Yeah, it's uh it's a very untraditional huge pivot. Um but I grew up you know in a bicultural bilingual household. I studied political science, I studied abroad in South Africa, so I really loved all things international, right? So I thought this was my path and uh when I got into the government I realized I was not a bureaucrat and more of a creative entrepreneur and I didn't like the rules so much. I like to create my own rules. So kinda gave up a 25 year career would would have been a really great pension um to start over. And now I help small businesses, mainly product makers, get featured organically. I'm not talking about giving tons of free merch. actual earned organic media and um just through a cold pitching method that works. So for me it's about making PR accessible, PR for the people. As you know Kurt, like most of PR is about Privilege and access, paying somebody who knows somebody. And it's very expensive and it's very inaccessible for ninety-nine percent of product owners. So that's really why I exit I exist and I'm here to kind of disrupt the industry and shatter the status quo.
Kurt Elster
I like it, but I want to hear before we move forward. Give me t tell me share with me a little more about what inspired that drastic change. Was there like a moment where you're like, you know what? I'm not doing this. I need to get something different.
Gloria Chou
I I will tell you that uh I didn't feel like I fit in like at all. Um and every day I was looking at PR jobs. I'll tell you kind of how I got started in PR, which is probably more interesting, is I probably applied for over like a thousand jobs in PR agencies. And I got rejected because they all said, well, we don't really understand your experience and we want someone with a very traditional PR background. Right. So I quickly realized that the industry was really guarded by this kind of cookie cutter like you need to work at an agency. And I was like, you know, I'm a great communicator and I love to be everyone's unofficial hypewoman. Like I just love doing that. I feel like in my past life I was like the hypewoman for a rapper who would come on stage like before the c before so I just love doing that. And so I was like, okay, you know what? I'm just gonna do it myself. And my first client, I remember they paid me like a couple hundred bucks to get them on TV. You know, they made this very obscure fintech app, which I had no idea about. And because I was an outsider and I had no contacts to journalists, what did I have to do? I had literally Google like Google type in the search bar New York Times Newsroom And I had to cold pitch from the operator and convince them all the way to the producer that my unknown client should have been on TV. Right. So from doing that thousands of times, I had so many phones slammed in my face. I had so many ugly cries. Just Throwing a spaghetti on the wall, I was able to crack the code. I'm like, okay, here's what gets a response and here's what doesn't. And I'll share that with you in a little bit. Um and now I kind of teach this method, but it was definitely not the traditional route of PR, if you will.
Kurt Elster
So you got your start uh through brute forcing the experience by cold pitching because you had no contacts to start with.
Gloria Chou
I had no contacts and I had no email, I had no way I just knew like, how do I find a story from this obscure thing and how do I make it interesting for this person who doesn't know me? And I have about ten seconds to convince them before they hang up the phone. Same thing with email. And so if you repeat it many many, many, many times, you start to pick up on patterns. But yeah, it wasn't it wasn't the easiest time in my life, I will say. It's very uncomfortable.
Kurt Elster
The yeah, I don't I don't have it in me. I'd have to want it So bad to overcome, I don't know, what is the feeling like that stops us? What is it that stops people from engaging in in PR in this manner?
Gloria Chou
I think we're not taught, right? We're not taught as business owners to do our own PR. I think PR has been shrouded in a lot of secrecy and prestige, like, oh, it's for celebrities or politicians. Or that it's a scam so that if you get featured it's because you paid somebody. And so that's how the agencies have been able to charge five, ten thousand dollars a month and and for six months contracts, usually that's how it works, at least here in New York. And so for a long time we just thought, well, unless we had really deep pockets, we're either not gonna do PR because that's reserved for rich people. Um, and I realize like that's absolutely not true. Journalists want to talk to the expert, you, and let's just remove the middleman and let's just make this process more seamless and take it upon ourselves to be our best advocates. And I think that as product owners a lot of times We because of this lie of the PR industry, we think, okay, well we can't get featured, so let's just only do social media paid ads or pay an influencer. And I'm here to tell you that absolutely is not true. You can get featured in an Oprah's favorite things, in a buzz feed, and you don't need to know the journalist. You don't need to be spending tons of money paying an influencer of the week.
Kurt Elster
I wanna you mentioned social media, uh you some of these other things that often get prioritized over PR when in my experience PR could be as effective or more effective than social media. Either way. Yeah, there's going to be a lot of like shouting into the void until you get someone to pay attention to you. Um But I think PR gets overshadowed by these these other things, these flashier tactics, the stuff that's That's newer, so it seems like that's what everyone's talking about. It's just the reality is PR has been around so long, it's not a part of a day-to-day entrepreneurial conversation. Um, so What makes PR, and to be clear, we're talking about this in the context of of Shopify entrepreneurs, merchants with product-based businesses. Um what makes PR your favorite, more effective, more sustainable than these other channels.
Gloria Chou
Yeah. Well first I will say like raise your hand if you or someone you know has had their account, Instagram, Facebook banned hacked restricted right we all know somebody and so when we are just purely doing content for that quick hit of dopamine We don't know if our followers are ever gonna buy from us. It's it's a very low intent. But let's say if you are if you're in an article and you make children's products and it's like best ten best, you know, children's products, whatever. If someone's clicking on that article, Likelihood of them wanting to buy something is is a lot higher than just someone, you know, looking at it looking at your Instagram. And I will say that it's not enough to just get people to see your product these days, right? So Yes, you can do the Facebook ads. You can just like bombard them with content, but what do they also need? They need to trust your product. And there's no other way to build that authority. with visibility other than PR. So PR simultaneously for me, it fills all the buckets of SEO because you're getting those powerful backlinks and it also builds trust and authority, right? Because you're basically leveraging that that whatever it's New York Times like their authority. And you're simultaneously like getting traffic and sales. So PR is to me the highest leveraged activity, but we're not taught that um because it's just so much easier to just create a reel and hope that it it will go viral. So we get stuck in this loop and we never break out of that. Um but you know that's why we're talking today is that we're gonna give you actual like tangible proven ways that you you can break out of that and actually get featured.
Kurt Elster
Really, the way you described PR to me, this either is complementary to a digital marketing strategy or is a digital marketing strategy. We just don't necessarily think of it that way.
Gloria Chou
I will say that it's not a lot of times we think, oh, it's a lot of work. It's something to add to your plate. But think about this. I'd rather post where I've been featured onto my Instagram feed instead. I'd rather repurpose one podcast interview 20 different ways than make those 20 pieces of content. So I always think about how can I work smarter and not harder. And if you can just get one feature, right, that that is content right there for your social media feed.
Kurt Elster
Give me I'd love the idea of repurposing content, right? We we want to be efficient and we want to maximize the resources we have. Uh walk me through an example of repurposing content. Let's just illustrate the idea.
Gloria Chou
Yeah, so let's say let's say you because a lot of times we think, okay, well We make with this one product, all we can talk about is this product. But it's not true. Let's say you make a product and you really care about sustainability, right? Something with your packaging. There's so many podcasts out there about sustainability and environmental things. Let's say you get onto one of them. That is a 20, 30, 40 minute video podcast that you can literally splice and dice and make it into YouTube Shorts, YouTube Longform, Carousel posts, audiograms, quotes, captions, blogs, newsletters. Like, do you see where I'm going with this?
Kurt Elster
You could take the transcript, you could transcribe it, take the transcript, and then chop that up. And of course generative AI, chat GPT, will help you do it.
Gloria Chou
And newsletters, you can put the link into your um into your signature line. Hey, listen to my podcast episode. Put it on LinkedIn. Shout it from the rooftops. It's just so much better and I think smarter to get featured and then use that to fill up your feed because it's it's just much more authoritative content
Kurt Elster
When you mentioned PR and you said it provides some crucial things, we're making the case for it as like this is part of digital marketing. You said SEO. Well, SEO I love, but you know, like all content marketing, and that seems to be where PR is falling into, a kind of content marketing or inbound marketing. Those things are often long-term strategies or longer term, say, than the the instant results of a PPC campaign, perhaps. When do we expect to see results? How long does this this PR process typically take?
Gloria Chou
Well, I had someone who, you know, pitched using my CPR method and then pitched a couple journals and got a response in 24 hours and her story went live within that week. Right. So it's really just depends, but you need to start pitching. You need to know who you're pitching and and what you're writing because at its core PR is very simple. It's writing a good pitch and knowing who to send it to. And if you can put the two into together, you can replicate that as a system in your business. So you can do it yourself or have an assistant on one day. Writing the pitch that you can use over and over again on the other day, build your media list, and on the third day, batch, send, and schedule it, and then One week later follow up. So there's a process that we teach and sign up my program, but it absolutely is about planting those seeds and knowing what you're pitching for what season. And it's really important because you know what, you're spending time on social media anyway. Why not take five, ten minutes of what you're already doing and use that time to connect with actual journalists? Because they're on Instagram and LinkedIn too.
Kurt Elster
They mmm. So you mentioned it did you mention pitching for the season?
Gloria Chou
Yes, that's that's a way to pitch, yes.
Kurt Elster
Is there seasonality to PR?
Gloria Chou
Yeah, so in terms of pitching your product, right? Let's say so give me an example of of someone's product in your program.
Kurt Elster
Uh we work with a brand, Tactical Baby Gear, they sell diaper bags.
Gloria Chou
Okay, great. So let's say like new year, like there's a lot of angles around like new year, new gear. Right? There's a lot of stuff around Father's Day and Mother's Day. There's a lot of stuff around Earth Day. Maybe there's a sustainability angle. And so when we pitch our product, it's not just, oh, buy my product, buy my product, but like how can we select the one or two standout items that can work for that seasonal story? So, you know, for babies, if you make you know, let's say if you make baby gear, maybe there's something for the wintertime that's a little bit cozier than something for the summertime. If you mix skincare, there's something for springtime, there's citrus flavors or wintertime. We're talking about like eczema, nourishing. So that's what we want to do is out of all the products that we have, what are the one or two that we should pitch for this season? and then really tailor our pitch to that. So right now at the time of recording this, it's all about Q4 holiday things. So it could be what is a great stocking stuffer? If you have something that is a low cost and can fit into a stocking, pitch that. If you have something that's a limited time bundle, that's only available for Q4, pitch that. If you have something that's a luxury gift. You can also pitch that too, because there are different gift guide and product guide categories that the journalists are churning out like crazy right now. I will say that they're monitoring their inboxes like a hawk and they're tasked with writing so many of those stories. I mean, even one a day. Right. So best gives for him, best gifts for dad, best gifts for the tech person. Like so many. So you just need to figure out, okay, what are the products? What is the right angle? And then you just send it to the right person.
Kurt Elster
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Gloria Chou
Yeah, you want to make it easy for the journalists to understand where they can put your product. And we know just from historical data, just from if you just Google GiftGuy that there's certain tried and true categories that are always there. So gifts for mom, gifts for dad, gifts for him, gifts for her, gifts for kids, gifts for stocking stuffer, luxury gifts, high-end gifts, home Yes, these are always going to be written about And so a lot of times it's easy to be like, okay, I know that they're gonna write about this. What is the one product that fits in this category? And then all year round you have your evergreen angle angles like in general, like best product for X, Y, and Z that doesn't need to have a season. that can be in the general product shopping list, you know, like a best of. And then you have, you know, your your your quirky angles. So maybe avound around Valentine's Day, it's like Champagne for when? Like self-care, like loving on yourself. Um we actually had someone who is a bourgeois photographer get featured in Well and Good um on an angle about why you should do like a self-love like broudoir photo like photo shoot for Valentine's Day. So think outside the box. But there are definitely those tried and true like buckets that we can all go after this season.
Kurt Elster
That's very clever. Okay. Um well Before I get into misconceptions, I want to talk about your framework. You have you have a PR framework. What's it called?
Gloria Chou
So it's called the CPR pitching framework.
Kurt Elster
What's C PR stand for?
Gloria Chou
So from all the thousands of times that I was cold pitching, literally throwing spaghetti on the wall Uh because again I never worked in Pierre, had no contacts. I knew it was a lot of people. How do you get the pasta sauce out of the paint? Right. It it felt more it felt worse than that, honestly. Um but it was like how do I get someone who doesn't know me? to respond. And I picked up on patterns and I realized that when your email, which just starts with an email pitch, has these three elements, CPR, credibility, point of view, and relevance. It usually gets responded to. So it's a way to structure a cold pitch. You could use it for emailing wholesalers, retailers, for pitching yourself for an award category or podcast. It's a way to have a value-driven conversation that keeps it really concise. which journalist likes concise. So usually how I start the email is with the subject line. Subject line is very important because that dictates whether or not it's going to get open. So your subject line should not contain your email. It should not contain your company and it should not contain the word pitch in there because like the journalist knows and they don't know you so it's probably gonna go to the trash. What you want to have your subject line is to be very specific, almost reading like a title of an article For example, best eco-friendly gifts for the vegan mom in your life, under $25. You see how that's specific and relevant? You want it to read like that. And for especially for gift guide categories, right? It could be like best XYZ stocking stuffers for And then in the email, the CPR method, I actually start with relevance first because you want to get their attention right away. You want to get the journalist attention before they like go on to another email. So you want to set the stage. So a gift guide pitch I wrote recently is like You know, as parents are looking for back to school items for their kids to keep organized during in the classroom, you see how that's relevant, right? It's like back to school, what season are we in? What's the problem that you're solving? You know, my all-in-one, like transparent, uh um heavy duty pencil case is perfect for parents and students on the go, like juggling busy schedules. So it's like you're starting with the relevance and then you talk a little bit about why your in your product solves that problem. And then that's the relevance. And the point of view is usually three bullet points. So it could be three ways that you're solving the problem. It could be three standout features. It could be about three tips, three benefits, three things. And then you want to conclude your email with a couple sentences about credibility. So I am a founder and I found, you know, I founded this brand because I noticed that my kids were struggling with this. And, you know, I've been voted best whatever pencil case by our teacher school district, whatever that is, it doesn't need to have a lot of credibility, don't need to be featured, but just the one or two sentences. And you want to conclude with like, you know, um as your readers are looking for gifts this holiday or items, you know, I'm happy to talk more about this. So that's really how you end it. And if you want to give a sample, you can offer to give a sample. I want to be careful with that because you don't need to always give samples to get featured. Then you start to go down the rabbit hole of attracting fake influencers who just want a ton of free merchandise. So you want to make sure that it's a vetted, accredited place. And um if they're interested, you can offer a sample, but I wouldn't say that you need to offer a sample in order to get featured.
Kurt Elster
So that might be a common misconception. I've heard people say uh uh oh you know to do PR we have to send product samples and we get in similar to what you said it's like either we get ripped off, you know, we send it, never see them again, hear from them again, or uh Yeah, it it's just not realistic to send that many samples out.
Gloria Chou
Yeah, I mean, if it's from Vogue or if it's from Forbes, like if they're asking for it, maybe yes. But if it's a blog and you only know them, I would be very weary. Um what what we have done in the past is when we've gotten featured is you can give them an experience without giving a sample. So if you make bed sheets Instead of giving them a whole thing, you can ship them a little swatch, right? Like here is our bamboo eco fabric. Um you can give them a behind-the-scenes video of how it's made, for example. So there's different a lot of different ways. I actually interview a lot of journalists on my podcast, Small Business PR, and the person at Allure magazine who does their beauty roundups, she says that I actually Don't want any more samples. My closet is overfilled with them. I don't need another sample. So it's definitely not. I will say that now that we are getting into a different phase of journalism, it does help if you have an affiliate link. So what it means is that like it's a one-one for them. So if let's say they they publish you right like through a certain length and they would get a commission. I wouldn't say that's hundred percent of the time you need that. We had people in our program get featured on BuzzFeed on Forbes without ever having an affiliate link, but a lot of the publishers are now turning more into an affiliate model where they would want you want to have some kind of an affiliate link. And you can get that through like skim links or you know other other ways that you could set it up.
Kurt Elster
And yeah, when you mentioned that hey, there's a lot of people who probably have to write gift guides now, more so than in the past, my my follow-up thought was, well, is this because they're they want revenue generation. They're they're trying to add affiliate links.
Gloria Chou
Yeah, I think that as, you know, media agencies, they become more, you know, strapped for cash. They have a lot more freelance writers. They they do have that model, yes. I wouldn't say it's a rule, but I I say that more and more people are looking for affiliate links, probably more than samples. So, you know, you don't have to, but if you do already have an affiliate link set up, then it doesn't hurt to put that in the email.
Kurt Elster
Okay, when I'm initially doing these pitches, do I develop a list of like these are the dream publications I want to be in, or do I start small and work my way up? What's the approach here as far as like target size?
Gloria Chou
So remember PR like we talked about, it's it's writing a pitch and knowing who to send it to. So we talked about writing it with the CPR method. Now let's talk about who to send it to. Um it's not info at buzzfeed. com, it's not media at Refinery29. com. It's it's going to be the very specific journalist who covers your beat. Uh so if you do kids, if you do home stuff, it's that writer who who writes about kids stuff or home and garden. If you do beauty, right? It's gonna be the beauty editor. A lot of times you'll see like commerce uh or shopping editor, those are the people who write those lists for general products, those are all good people to follow as well because they probably will be the ones writing the gift guides. Um so those are the people that you need to follow. And you know, obviously in my program we have a database of all the journalists, but you can start to build your own media list by simply installing a Google News alert. So you type in the search bar. Google News Alert and Google will pin you of all of the articles being written about your subject. And you can start to just copy and paste the journalist and their email, it's all public information, into an Excel spreadsheet, and boom, you start to slowly populate that that that media list of the people who are writing stories for your niche.
Kurt Elster
So if I want to build my own media list, it's uh Google Alert for when things in my topic pop up or Google News alert. That'll keep it even more relevant. And then I when I find one that's like, okay, that's good. I I want that. then I record, I just note this down with what info I can find in for the the journalist and their contact info. I just, you know, put that in a Google Sheet and I have that. And now I've got. I'm now starting to build my own media list.
Gloria Chou
Yeah, so if you make kids products, I would put a Google News alert for like kids diapers, kids products, kids' accessories. you know, parent parent gifts and then it will ping you with those stories and then you can definitely do that. There's also a couple other ways. Um if you know a lot of journalists are on LinkedIn and Instagram and they have different hashtags that they write and follow. So one hashtag is called journal request and that's when journalists are looking for people to interview that day. And so you can follow those hashtags and see if you Fit the bill for with the demographic that they're asking for. There's also something called Harrow Help a Reporter Out. Now it's being bought by F a new company, but basically Haro, you can sign up as a source and any time that you know every day like they have hundreds of different inquiries from journalists looking to interview or get a quote from someone And if you fit that description, then you can also reply to that as well. These are a very kind of grassroots way that you can do it on your own.
Kurt Elster
Many do and I mentioned at the start of the show that I had used PR to to initially build my career. Yeah. That I was referring to help a reporter out. Um and un it unfortunately I I I think I grew out of it, you know, over time. uh either grew out of it or it got more competitive. Because over time I I had less and less success with it, but I was also putting in less and less effort. So I it not necessarily uh a reflection on them. Do you have any thoughts on Harrow?
Gloria Chou
Yeah, we have someone in our program who got seven Haro features this year, like Wall Street Journal and Sugar, just from using my CPR method. So it's it's there's a lot I did not have a framework, you're right.
Kurt Elster
I was just winging it.
Gloria Chou
Yeah, it definitely helps increase the open rates. Also, Harrow can be like an internet black hole. It's a lot of increase. So you want to do like control F and then you wanna just type in like whatever your keyword is so you don't have to sift through like the two or three hundred inquiries and just do it very quickly. Another trick for Haro, um and I talk about this in my program is you want to respond within like two hours of it, right? Because then their inbox get flooded. So there are ways that you can increase your chances of of getting featured on Haro, but it absolutely works. Like I said, someone in our program got featured like seven times this year alone just by using Haro.
Kurt Elster
The it the what I ended up doing with Hara was I used uh email filters. It would suppress it, keep it out of my inbox unless that email that day had the keywords I was looking for. Like it had to say Shopify. It had to say e-commerce. If it had that, oh, okay. Then suddenly the Harrow email would pop up in my inbox. But if not, it just You know, kept uh just moved on through past my inbox and into the trash. And that way when it popped up, I knew, ah, there's one I'm looking for in here. But you're right, I did discover quickly, like there's a very short time, very short window to reach out and have it, you know, get any effect. Um and even then, you know, for me it was a numbers game. When I started that, I didn't have an audience. And so it seemed like a more accessible way to to build that authority and then you know over time establish the audience. But I've heard people say, like, well we can't do PR. We You know, we still gotta get our social media audience going or build our newsletter. But isn't the point of the PR to get those things right? Where do you see it?
Gloria Chou
Exactly. And again, it's it's getting traffic but with that authority. Whereas in other ways, so I think it definitely works well with all those things. Um, you can put in the article a link to your freebie too. So you can decide, you can tell the journalist like here's the link I want to direct them to. to build your email list. But what's the point of all this? It's to get more sales. Right. So like I'd rather just link to your shop. And so if people are clicking on that article, um, if they want to buy best gifts for XYZ, like let's Let's not prevent that. Let's not add another another layer. Let's just bring them to your Shopify store.
Kurt Elster
What are the what are some of the other common misconceptions that you see people having?
Gloria Chou
Uh one big one is that it's too late to pitch for gift guides. And so a lot of times people are like, oh well, I didn't get my stuff together, it's too late. And and so if you want to be in like a print magazine Sure, like you want to pitch six months in advance. But for a lot of us, we're not I mean, at least for me, I don't really read magazines that much anymore. Um, it's it's mainly digital, right? So like the BuzzFeed categories, the wire cutters, like that people are writing stories a week even a week before Christmas. And so it's really not too late to pitch. Um I will say that right now is the best time to pitch because again the journalists are really monitoring their inboxes. It's probably presumably the lowest barrier to entry to to getting noticed. And then, you know, like there's even after Christmas gift guides of how you can spend your gift card. So I think a lot of times we make up stories like it's too late or I can't do this. Um but if you realize like there is room for you to get featured all year around, you just have to commit to it. uh the founders that do they're getting featured all year round. Even in stories like I have someone who makes the sun um the sunblock measuring cup. He's a dermatologist, so he made physical product and it's perfect amount of what you should use to cover your body in sunblock. And he pitches all year round. He pitched a story around Halloween, which is not what you think about sunblock. You think about summer, right? And and the story, the pitch that results in the story was like how sugar is wreaking havoc on our skin. So there's so many different buckets and angles that you can pitch just beyond your product. And as long as you know that you can step into that and be like, oh my God, I can pitch all year round. I can get scene all year round. I can get PR all year round.
Kurt Elster
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Gloria Chou
So so there's a lot of different types of gift guides and a lot of times they will have a paragraph about your story. And so for example, one of our skincare founders, um, you know, his whole thing is like minimalism and then making um products for uh melanin-rich skin. And so when he did get featured, it was a blurb about it. It wasn't just like one line. So there's different types of gift guides. And oftentimes they will want to talk a little bit about, you know, how you founded the company in a paragraph form. So that's a great way to do both. And then there's obviously like you know, longer stories about your founder journey, which we've had someone who makes Ayurvedic hair hair care and it was an interview deep diving into why Ayurveda, why this method, right? Um so we don't know that when we pitch because we don't know what they're gonna be assigned by the editor. But we still need to pitch, you know, using the CPR method and then if they're interested and they can discover more. And along that journey of talking to the journalists, like that story will naturally come out. Obviously there's also podcasts, which is one of my favorite Favorite favorite things ever because not only because you can repurpose it 30 different ways, um, is that it positions you as an expert not just selling a product, but what is the bigger thing that you're doing? So if it's a parent, if it's a you know diaper thing and maybe you have some thoughts about parenting. Or if you make uh, you know, uh eco-friendly things, it's about planet conservation. So there's a lot of different topics, thematics. that we can talk about that's not just our product. And I really encourage you to think about what types of podcasts you would be a good fit for, even if you make a product that's a larger theme of what of what you're interested in. And then, you know, there's so there's a gift guides, there's a product guides, a shopping guides, there's a and there's also like local TV as well. So if you have um partnership with a local organization, we have someone who makes a subscription box. with a book and a pantry staple, like a cookie or biscotti, right? And so she donates a pro percentage to her local like fighting hunger initiative. And she was able to get featured around the holidays because it was about like feeding people and this like f you know, feasty season of eating. And so she got on her local Buffalo News like two or three times talking about why this initiative is important and like what she's doing to help the local community.
Kurt Elster
So that's perfect. I mean that's exactly the kind of thing I was thinking of. How important is it? Like if I'm a product-based business and I want to do get into PR. Is it a nice to have or I better have that brand story, that founder story that goes along with it?
Gloria Chou
I think at this point with market saturation and everyone having Instagram, it is Absolutely critical for you to not only be seen, but for people to trust you. And there's no other way to build that trust other than PR. If you have a lot of ads, maybe they'll see your stuff. Are they gonna trust it? I don't know. You have a lot of Instagram posts. Maybe they'll see it. Are they gonna trust? I don't know. So I think it's non-negotiable. You need both of those things. And PR is the only thing that gets you that trust, that authority, and more eyeballs and traffic to your site.
Kurt Elster
So if I'm a I'm a small business owner and I'm like, all right, I agree with you everything on all of this, but but PR still feels daunting. I'm I'm afraid, but I'm curious. What's your advice to them?
Gloria Chou
Well say everything you want is on the other side of that send button. You know, like you can keep doing that rat race of trying to go viral. Maybe one day you will, but your account might get hacked. Or you can build sustainable long-term visibility and authority by getting into those gift guides and getting in those powerful backlings that you can then repurpose. And so I think it takes a mindset shift from like, how do I work smarter as a CEO and leverage my time? And I think PR is the highest leverage activity. Um, and and just to understand that like journalists are looking to feature indie brands and fresh voices. Think about it this way. If journalist only featured Fortune 500 companies, they probably will lose their credibility very fast, right? Because they would just be the spokesperson or mouthpiece of them. So journalists need to feature diverse voices, fresh voices, small brands. And so why have it not be you? Why not you?
Kurt Elster
I well that's one of my favorite questions to ask. Why not me? You know, interviewing enough ch or entrepreneurs at some point in their journey, they're like, hey, there's this really annoying thing about the world that I wish I could solve. And then eventually they go, wait, why not me? Why can't I do it? And then that's the thing that ends up inevitably starting their business. What we discover is that all of entrepreneurship is one long journey of going, wait a second, why not me? Why can't I do that too? So I appreciate that advice. Um Now, I I'm sold on PR, but I'm busy. I don't want to do this myself. Can't I just hire you to do it?
Gloria Chou
Well so the thing is that a lot of people actually It either throw money at the problem because they say they're busy, um, or they just don't do it. And here's the thing, we're all doing something with marketing. So You were doing very low leverage activities with not not very high ROI things like posting on Instagram, right? Like I said earlier. No tr no SEO, no authority. Um or you can just like redistribute your time to do something that's actually going to give you those results. And a lot of people hire agencies because they again short on time. $20,000 later, they find me and they're like, I wish I found you earlier because I had no idea what they were pitching. I don't know the journalist and I still have no connections. So it's really important for us to understand, like, if we want to not pay an agency, we need to be the ones to own those relationships. If you pay an agency, they own the relationships. the moment you stop paying them, they walk away with those relationships. So how can we as a small business understand who are the editors or journalists who are copying, who are uh writing my, you know, for my industry? And how can I create relationships with them? Because once you get featured once, like they can tap you again to like get featured in other places. The beauty of it all is that a lot of journalists now are freelancers, so they write for multiple outlets. And so they like you, you're vetted, you have a legitimate company, it's very likely that they will feature you again and again and again. Um and so in terms of time, like we're all busy. I really think about it as this way: like just set aside an hour a week. In that hour, write your pitch, start sending it. And then as long as you create a system around your time, it becomes unemotional, not like, oh, I feel like doing it or I don't. You can set aside Thursdays from three to four It's my day to work on my pitch and send it out. And the following Thursday is my time to then do my follow-ups. And in our program, we teach you how to create a system around it. But we have a system for everything else in our business. Why not have a system for visibility and start planting those seeds? Because you never know when they're going to germinate.
Kurt Elster
I agree with you. Pitch me on your program. You're you're a PR coach. You've got the the CPR system. Let's hear it.
Gloria Chou
So my whole thing is really about like shattering the status quo. Let's make PR accessible for the rest of us. Um it's PR for the people. And what I've noticed is that PR is just writing a pitch and sending it out. So I give you proven templates of over fifty different product pictures that I've written that's gotten featured. And once you learn how to write in this way, you become really invincible. And then it's a piece of who do you send it to? Well I've built a media database of over a hundred thousand journalists across all different categories. And then you put the two and two together and then you just repeat and rinse and repeat. Um I also realized that access is very important, right? So Um PR agencies are very expensive. What I charge is a fraction of that. And I'm actually coaching you as well. So we have um on-demand support from me. We do Meetups, community is very important. So we have a Facebook group talking about all the best practices. We actually had someone share their horror story working with an influencer, and so that's a very interesting thread. And then I actually have the journalists who are writing these Gift guides from Forbes from Refinery from Pop Sugar from their from BuzzFeed coming into the program to meet. the the founders. And I always have them take screenshots of their inbox with examples of good pitches that got featured in bad pitches. And there's just to me it's all about access, right? It's not just Telling you but showing you. And then you get to actually meet the journalists, which is really quite powerful because not it's not just me telling you, but it's actually the person who's writing the gift guides telling you what they're looking for So it's my PR program, go to PR starterpack. com. We are in a process of rebranding, which I'm so excited about because New year, new website. And so we are going to um change a name. It's going to be called Get Featured Accelerator. But if you go to PRCERPAC. com, it'll redirect. But it's the only PR program I have, and it's really focused on helping product owners get featured organically.
Kurt Elster
That's wonderful. Gloria, thank you so much for this. Uh thank you so much. What favorite book.
Gloria Chou
Oh, so one book that I read recently that actually made me really niche down and serve only product makers is TenX is easier than two X. It's a great entrepreneur book. It's really about how do you do less but better? And I'm in a season of simplifying things. And so that's really helped me tremendously this year.
Kurt Elster
That I'm gonna add that to my list as well. That sounds like a good one and applicable. Uh Gloria, again. Thank you so much. Uh one more time. What is the the website we should go check out?
Gloria Chou
Well, actually I I want you to watch my free PR masterclass and people have actually watched the masterclass and gotten featured right away. Just just seeing what that CPR method looks like. And you can watch it on demand for free at gloriachowpr. com slash masterclass. That's gloria choupr dot com slash masterclass. And I have another freebie as well. If you DM me on Instagram at GloriaChowPR the word gift guide, I will give you a freebie, which is my top ten ways to get featured in any gift guide.
Kurt Elster
Oh, what app are you using to do that? Is it mini chat?
Gloria Chou
No, I do it. I do it manually have my team. Oh really? Yeah, I have my team channel. I just assumed.
Kurt Elster
Yeah, we did use many chat.
Gloria Chou
We did use many chat, but like you know, nowadays my team is in there. I'm in there. So I'm very responsive.
Kurt Elster
You're right. It's like you're just sending a link. Somebody could just do it. All right, cool. Very cool. Uh Gloria, yeah, thank you so much. PR such a a frequently overlooked tactic strategy for product businesses like Shopify merchants uh that they they shouldn't sleep on, right? I think you you've made the case for us and given us the tools. So thank you. Thank you. Crowdfunding campaigns are great. You can add social proof and urgency to your product pre-orders while reducing risk of failure. But with traditional crowdfunding platforms. You're paying high fees and giving away control all while your campaign is lost in a sea of similar offers. It can be frustrating. That's why we built Crowdfunder, the Shopify app that turns your Shopify product pages into your own independent crowdfunding campaigns. We originally created Crowdfunder for our private clients, and it was so successful we turned it into an app that anyone can use. Today, merchants using Crowdfunder have raised millions collectively. With Crowdfunder, you'll enjoy real-time tracking, full campaign control, and direct customer engagement. And it's part of the Built for Shopify program. so you know it's easy to use. So say goodbye to high fees and hello to successful store-based crowdfunding. Start your free trial and transform your Shopify store Into a pre-order powerhouse today. Search Crowdfunder in the Shopify App Store to get started.