 Hello Aces, welcome back to module seven, lesson 2.1. Get free press. In this lesson, you're gonna be able to learn how you can get some free press in four simple steps. It is a continuation from module six, lesson three. We did cover some parts of PR and that's truly just scratching the surface. And today I'm gonna be sharing a lot more in-depth strategies with you so then that way you can get some free press that usually cost thousands of dollars. So the reason why I say this is because there will be overlap for those of you who have been through module six, lesson three just to let you know. So why is PR so amazing? And I always say PR is a gift that always keeps giving. Why is that the case? It is because it gives you ongoing brand awareness. That means that people, an audience of other publications and their followers are always gonna be able to see your article and to see your brand. On top of that, your online traffic and your organic traffic is gonna increase because of other publications talking about you. Also acts as a really great link juice and what is link juice? It is when people are like a well-known, reputable publication talks about you and links to your website automatically in Google's eyes, they see that your website is credible, that it's not just some random website that is on the internet, it has credibility. And what does that do? That means that you have more link juice. What does link juice means? It means that when people are searching for best ice cream in Vancouver, our site pops up even closer to the top. That's why it's so good when a well-known publication links to your website. On top of that, it is also great social proof when your brand is on a well-known publication. So I definitely really, really enjoy PR because it's, once again, it's a gift that always is always giving. And lastly, ripple effect. What is the ripple effect? It is when one outlet covers your story, other outlets and other journalists will have much more incentive to cover your story because they have a fear of missing out. They don't wanna miss the next big thing and that's the reason why when one decides to talk about you, many others will follow suit. First, PR is what? PR is either earned media or paid media. So you can have either or. Earned media means that it's organic and it is completely free. What are paid medias? These means that it's sponsored and you need to pay money for them. Now, how does that appear in earned media? You can have an article that says it's a list of the best five cafes in Vancouver or it could be a food blogger that writes a lengthy blog about your food offering or local radio show talks about how great your happy hour is. So what is paid media? You can pay money to appear in the top five cafes in Vancouver, pay the article, journalists pay the publications or you can pay a food blogger to write a blog post about you or you can pay the local radio show to promote your happy hour. Nonetheless, what we're doing today is we're looking for free PR. So if you're looking into paid media, that's not now and you can really focus on how you can get the free PR which can easily cost thousands of dollars because we actually paid for an article and that cost us more than $2,000 for one article. That's how much paid media is. So just imagine you being able to have one earned media, it would pay for all the investments that you have already done so far. So to compile your free PR toolkit, you need a toolkit in order for you to be able to reach out to these publications and today I'm gonna share with you how you can come up with this toolkit, how you can reach the journalists and how you can have them list your article. First up, wow factor. Second, irresistible press release. Third, journalists outreach. And fourth, FOMO enhancer. What do these all mean? These are your four steps to get free PR. In the link below, download the worksheet so then that way we can follow along and do this together. Now first to start off, what is a wow factor? Media wants edgy content that makes them go wow because that's what audience would want. If your audience would find this article or this wow factor interesting, then they will read the article and in turn the publication that posted this article will have more viewership and thus they'll have more ad revenue and ad dollars. That's how the game works. We need to understand that the journalists, they need good content, the wow factor content to do their job because that's how they sell their ad space. So understanding this allows you to craft your article and your restaurant with wow factors. We need to give them fresh content so then that way they can repackage that and send it out to their own community. Once again, I was just sharing with you a good story, a good pitch is not only gravitating for the journalists but also should be gravitating to the customers because ultimately that's what truly counts. Now, how do you find your wow factor? This is something that I always get asked a lot of times and right now I'm gonna share with you a few ways to find your wow factors or things that inspire you, okay? Look for trends around the world. What works elsewhere could potentially work within your community because you need to understand there's always a cultural gap. There's always a gap between different countries, different cities. So if you're exposed to other country or other cities or other ethnic backgrounds and you're able to bring that to your city right now that might work, okay? So that's how we created our ice cream shop because I traveled to Korea. I see that smoking honeycomb ice cream was so popular. It was a whole movement but then yet in North America this movement haven't even started yet and that's where I see an opportunity and that's why I jumped into creating our ice cream chain. If this could be a particular item like the smoking ice cream or it could be a specific ingredient like honeycomb or it could be a cooking style or the ambience nonetheless all these things are variables that you can look at that differentiates you from your competitors, okay? For example, beyond meat burgers are trending within the whole fast food business because it is the trend. It is the wow factor. Burgers not made of real beef. It is made of plant-based beef. How much of a wow factor that is, right? Healthy, not a vegan, all this good stuff. So where do you look for these trends? Instagram food pages from different countries, news sites with food categories from different countries or if you like traveling, travel to different countries and ask your friends who you're traveling with what is some of the best places to eat and that's where you're gonna be able to have your creative juices turning a lot. Do something polarizing. This is something that is very interesting because when you go against the convention of what is the norm usually it's quite polarizing. It could be interesting, it pulls attention or people will hate you. It is a risk that you need to take but nonetheless, if it is a tasteful risk then oftentimes it works like a charm. So for example, polarizing in your community specifically but is common in other countries. So charging for a deposit for a reservation is not a common thing that happens in Vancouver yet in New York it is the norm and that's the reason why you may if you start charging for reservations in Vancouver but for a great cause that might be able to generate some buzz for your restaurant. Having something timely and relevant is also a wow factor. Journalists need something to talk about that is relevant to the season that they are in right now. That's what people are looking for. That's what is current because for example, if it is Christmas everyone is looking for Christmas things to do and if you can create something that is timely for that season then people will start picking you up because it's something new, something interesting, right? Something fitting for the season or the holiday. For us, for example, if you have a special five course meal just for Valentine's for you and your better half or it could be a pumpkin spice ice cream flavor for the fall or a refreshing watermelon shaved ice for summer. These are all interesting menu items that you can create for your restaurant and thus use this as a wow factor to reach out to PR. For us, we did right here as you can see new cups for Christmas and then also a new flavor and new presentation. As you can see, the flavor is not very new and it's not super innovative. We've been selling green tea ice cream for a while but we dressed it up like a Christmas tree. That presentation is new and novel and is timely. Same thing with here. This is milk tea ice cream that we already have and we have been serving this for years but we changed it up and made it look like a reindeer and in turn this was a huge smashing success for our ice cream shop because it is timely and a lot of articles were written about this creation just by us repackaging the goods. This is how you can find your wow factor. Sometimes it doesn't even have to be that wow. It could just be a change in packaging like what I'm showing you right now. Example, when we entered and when we expanded into Edmonton we knew no one there was doing smoking ice cream there. That's the reason why when we approached the PR they gobbled it up like crazy because it is something interesting and highly attractive story. It made journalists think, wow, this is something new. Wow, Edmonton people would love this because they haven't seen this before and as you can see we had multiple different radio station talk about us and even different publications that talked about us. Find your wow factor guys and be inspired to do so. Next up after you have found your wow factor or you have narrowed down your wow factor it is time to create a resistible press release. A lot of people don't know what press release is and that's the reason why I'm going over this with you right now. When you are approaching your journalist you need to be able to write a cohesive document that has the gist of what you're trying to say and the story or the angle that you're trying to approach it with and then your journalist would be able to read this in a very fast manner so then that way that they can decide whether to post your story or not. That's the overall gist and I'm jumping ahead but let's go through this step by step. You need to do a lot of homework before crafting your press release and I'll tell you the reason why. Because pitching a story is like selling a product and you need to get into the heads of your customers and in this case your customers are the journalists. You need to be able to be in their heads and understand what is it that they need? What is the job to be done guys? Right now I'm gonna share with you the three steps in crafting your irresistible press release. First of all is to find the outlets that you're wanting to send the PR to. Second is to study the journalists that you're trying to pitch to and thirdly it is to create a irresistible press release so then that way you can pitch them. So for the sake of this whole exercise we're gonna put you in a scenario that you are a Japanese restaurant that specializes in both authentic and also crazy sushi rolls. And your signature crazy item is the Flaming King salmon roll and this just think about a salmon roll that is torched for 25 seconds and that is super spicy. That's your signature. Okay, first up finding the outlets. How do you find outlets? Look at the media articles of your competitors. So look for the top three competitors that you have and then look at their press release page on their website, okay? Make a list of all the names of the outlets that they have been publicated at. A lot of times because established restaurants they wanna be able to once again position themselves for explosive growth which is why they would highlight the press that they get and this is a great way for you to be able to find all the different outlets that have featured them in the past. If they don't have a press section on the website and if they are not as good but you still wanna be able to see because they have a lot of press they just haven't compiled everything on their website. You can also find that by just Googling them and looking at the top five pages and the spot coverage and looking for the magazines, right? Who has covered them in the past before and as you can see there's Vancouver Courier, there's Monte Cresto, there's Georgia Straight. These are the outlets that you wanna target, okay? Next up after you have finalized, okay, you know what, these are the top five outlets. We need to study the journalists that wrote the article, okay? Each journalist has a different way of writing articles. Some lean more towards articles that are listicles that include four to 10 different restaurants. It's quick and easy to read for the viewers. For example, top 10 sushi restaurants in Vancouver and just imagine being able to have your restaurant being listed in this listicle alongside with all the other companies and restaurants that have been in existence for many years. That's gonna have an uplift for your brand. Some other journalists would prefer to write features and usually this is highlighting one or two restaurants that is a little bit more in depth and is unbiased. Basically, they're just featuring you and it's a very unbiased, very objective way of writing about your restaurant. Miku launches the Brewery Prime. So something that is unbiased, right? Or lastly, some journalists would prefer to write reviews. So usually it's a deep dive about their experience at your establishment, okay? And this is usually opinionated, for example, their personal experience dining at your restaurant. Look for the journalist who wrote the article by scanning through their work, okay? As you can see, once you clicked into the outlet, you can click into the journalist. Once you click into the journalist, oftentimes it leads to the previous articles that they have written. By you studying this, you're asking yourself these questions. What type of articles do they tend to write? What is the pattern between their work? What is it that he's writing? Is it opinionated? Is it reviews or is it listicles? As you can see here, some of the listicles by Tammy, right? Like she likes doing listicles, as you can see, 10 new wild fruits to eat this year. Two Vancouver dining spots. So it seems like that she does enjoy writing these type of articles. Now, understanding what they write allows you to position the pitch a little bit differently because you wanna do a majority of the work for them. If you can hand all the work to them in a silver platter and it is down the pipeline of what they are thinking, what they are wanting to do, and it just becomes so easy, what is a reason for them not to feature you? They have all the reasons to feature you because you already done all the work for them. In this process, make sure you don't rush the process, okay? Because at the end of the day, you're not only contacting the journalist one time. It's an ongoing time throughout your whole journey. Every time you have a new launch, every time you have a new menu item, every time you have a new wild factor, every time you have a new location, you're reaching out to these journalists. So make sure you guys don't rush it and be super respectful. Now that you have located your outlet and you have located the journalist, it is time to craft your irresistible press release. And this is what we're gonna cover in depth in the next lesson because I wanna be able to dedicate one whole lesson in helping you craft the perfect, irresistible press release, okay? So these are all the things that we're gonna cover in the next lesson. This is just a sneak peek for you on how we're gonna be able to do that. Now that you have crafted your irresistible offer, your irresistible press release, it is time to outreach to these journalists, okay? How are you gonna be able to outreach to these journalists? You figured out, hey, you know what, you know where they work, you know for a fact that these are the journalists you wanna reach to and you have created the press release. How are you gonna be able to send it to them? Well, a good way is so when you click in their bio, you can actually see their contact info. You can see email, Twitter, Instagram. It is usually in the bio section of where they work and that's where really you can contact them there, okay? Next up is you can actually Google their name and a lot of times with journalists, if you Google their name with the publication that they work for, they would, their contact detail would definitely show up. Something for you to understand and to get into the heads of your customer, which is the journalist right now is that these journalists get around 20 to 30 pitches every single day. It doesn't matter how big or small they are, they always get pitched, okay? So you have to make it super, super easy for them to read and how it's relevant to the style that they write and which is the reason why we did all the legwork in the previous step, which is to study your journalists, right? Use similar article that they wrote about as a connection point, right? So for example, if they have written a listicle that has gained a lot of eyeballs and a lot of viewership, you can talk about that when you're outreaching to them, okay? Copy and paste your press release into the email so then that way they understand exactly what is it that you're asking for, what are the talking points and whether they would want to write about you. Customize a message to the specific journalist and once again, that's why we did the homework in the previous step, is to understanding the style that they write in. Create a public folder in Google Doc and share this folder with your journalists and in this what you wanna include would be your press release, your campaign photos and a picture of you in the case that they want to feature you don't need to have this conversations back and forth. They have everything they need in order for them to do their job. Last thing they want is like they feel interested in your wow factor, they feel interested in your restaurant but the coordination with you is just a pain. They have to ask for a picture, they have to ask for the press release, they have to ask for more footage and that is not a pleasant experience. Just imagine them writing multiple articles at once. If you can provide everything for them in a silver platter once again, they'll be much more likely to feature you. Pro tip number one guys, when to send these emails to the journalists, first up it is to send it at 855 right before their work time or right before they decide where to have lunch, 10, 10. Use a tool called MixMax on Google Chrome. Go download it, use it because this Chrome application would allow you to see whether they have opened up the email and whether they have seen it. Don't be afraid to follow up after two days of sending your first outreach because like I said, they might be very interested in your article and your restaurant. They might want to really feature it. However, because they've been bartered with so many emails on a day, they might have forgotten. There might be some kind of thing that popped up and they might have forgotten about it. So that's the reason why it is not rude to reach out after two days just to give them a friendly nudge. Super easy for people to miss emails on a daily basis as well. It could have just been buried in their email and if you send it two days after, that could be the first time that they see it. So that's the reason why you have to make sure that you follow up. Next up, FOMO. Fear of missing out guys. We talk about the FOMO enhancer. What is the fear of missing out? We all want to be part of something that is cool, something that is interesting. That's the reason why we would feel left out if we were not included or if we were not invited to the cool party, ate that latest dish or gone to see that popular movie. That's the reason why we have this kind of feeling. Our journalists would have the same thing. They would have a fear of missing out that they did not cover the latest story. That's the reason why we need to use this psychological state to our advantage. How do we do that? Make them FOMO, okay? You can make the journalist FOMO because they know how trends get attention, that they get viewership, that when people view their articles, they would have much more statistics to sell to add and get more ads, right? Which means that more views potential to sell more ad space. That's what we talked about. So I'm gonna go through this whole cycle with you in this map. So imagine after sending out your press release, you monitor all the outlets to see if they have covered your story, okay? When one publication covers your story, share it with all your social media channel and your website. Find the handles of the outlets that are journalist outlets and also publications and tag them in all of those posts that you're doing. Bonus, if you can actually boost the posts with engagement and objective to build social proof. This part is when you're running paid advertisement. Basically, I'm just saying, hey, you know what, run an advertisement and target the outlets. Target the journalists so then that way they can see it. They were like, wow, they see it now. When they see it, the reaction would be, wow, this is something I'm missing out on because a lot of people are seeing it. A lot of people are commenting on it or a lot of feedback is going on and they feel like they're missing out on something. And what's gonna happen is that they're gonna start talking about your restaurant. So for example, in the scenario of the restaurant that I presented earlier, let's say Georgia Strait covers are Flaming, King, Sam, and Role in a feature article. We share this article on our Facebook, Instagram and on our website. We tag the outlets like Monty Crestill, Vancouver is Awesome, Dish Vancouver, Vancouver Sun, Vancouver Courier and these are all the well-known publications in Vancouver. We place an ad on our Facebook post so then that way we can target the potential outlets and also journalists. One reach out to the journalists and one for engagement ad for show show proof. We set the geo metric so then that way we target the people within the headquarters of Vancouver to narrow down our targeting. We also set engagement for ad for our customer avatar so then that way people that our customers would see this. Yay, it looks like Dish Vancouver also covered us because they feel FOMO. That's how you can create this loop right here. We repeat the cycle by sharing that coverage and tagging the whole outlets so we keep doing this whole circle, keep doing what we're doing and to squeeze every single thing out of this through our Flaming, King, Sam, and Role feature. That's how we're gonna be able to get people talking about us, okay? So in this lesson we talked about the wow factor, how can you find an edge that is not only attractive for your journalists but also attractive for your consumers, okay? Second, we talked about how you can create a irresistible press release. The outlets, the journalists that you need to study and also crafting an irresistible offer. Next up is the actual journal outreach process. How do you find them? How do you find their contact info and what do you send them in this whole package? And then when they cover you, how can you create that FOMO enhancer so that more articles and more outlets would cover you? This is the four step to get some crazy advertisement and for us at 720 Suites, we got tens of thousands of free press because I utilize these four steps. In the link below, download the templates and follow along to get your own free press. Once again, remember PR is an art. You won't get this every single time. On your first try, maybe none of the articles or none of the outlets would cover you, but you need to analyze what worked and what didn't work so then that way next time becomes an easier process for you. It could be a timing thing, it could be your angle, it could be your wow factor not wow enough or it could just not be relevant enough and know for one thing, once again, journalists gets pitched a lot of times and that's why don't give up, okay? Now it is your turn to find your wow factor, do the research on the outlets and journalists, craft your irresistible press release, reach out to journalists, monitor for hits and use the enhanced FOMO, okay? In the link below, download the templates, follow along. In this lesson, I just shared with you the four simple steps to get free PR. In the next lesson, we're gonna cover in depth on how you can craft the irresistible press release which you'll be sending to all the journalists. I'll see you guys in the next lesson.