Get Your Brand Covered with Joe Tarnowski

Protect your brand, product or invention from the hazards of consumer product launching and go from idea to product to big brand. With guidance from retail product design and development experts Tracy and Tom Hazard. Get the insider secrets to put the right things in the right order with the right resources so you can out design, outsource and out profit your way to retail success.

Okay, Good morning everybody. I'm Joe Tarnowski with ECRM and our arrangement. Today's discussion is going to be about how new and emerging brands can get their products covered in the trade media. So a little background on me to kind of set the stage. My role here at ECRM and RangeMe is the vice president of content. I create content to help keep our customers engaged with us as well as to kind of bring new customers into the fold. And what ECRM does is, is we help retailers with product discovery and category planning. We do that in two ways. One is through our in person sessions and where we bring buyers and sellers for particular categories together. And we have about 65 of those sessions covering basically all of the categories that you would see in let's say a CVS or a grocery store or a Target, except for apparel and then automotive supplies, things like that. Mostly fast moving consumer goods. And then rangeme is a digital product discovery platform, gives retailers the opportunity to do the same thing to discover new products across all categories. 24 7, 365. So in addition to creating content for ECRM and RangeMe, what I also do is try to get coverage from us in the trade media. So my background before I got into ECRM was 24 years in the trade media, most recently for a magazine called Progressive Groceries. But I've also written for convenience store news, gourmet retailer, store brands, retail tech, retail leader, whole bunch of retail trade publications. So I've done this and I've been on the other side where I was the editor deciding whether or not I would cover a particular supplier. What I'm going to do is I'm going to take you through from an editor's perspective what they're looking for and how to best get your product and company covered either in their magazines or online or in their social media. With that intro, let me give you a little inside look at the average day of a trade media editor because there's a couple of things that are common with any editor in the industries. One, they have, they are very overworked. They have a ton of work that they do across a lot of different things. One, they manage the overall editorial direction. They plan out all of the stories, they usually have multiple news stories that they have to post online every day. They're all involved in social media, plus they travel a lot, they visit retailers, they visit trade shows, they do a lot of speaking engagements, webcasts, so on and so forth. So they're really busy, they're really overwhelmed with different things that they got to do. At the same time, they are also getting bombarded with press releases and calls and pitches by suppliers and in some cases retailers. But the suppliers are always pitching them to try and get in the magazines. So how does an editor in chief or an editor in general decide what is going to go into the magazine or online on the website and what's not going to go? And there are a couple of very overall guidelines if you're looking to get ink in the trade media. One of them is relevance. Relevance is key. If you're not right for their audience, you're not going to get coverage. The key thing is when an editor is looking at something that's a potential story, that's the first thing they're going to think about is, is this right for my audience? Is it going to help them to move their business forward in some way, shape or form? One thing that you want to do when you're researching trade publications or trade media brands, because some of them are online too, you want to check out their editorial calendars and their media kits. For the most part, you can download them online. There's two things that you want to look One is their circulation statement. Many of the print magazines have audited circulation statements. In other words, a third party will evaluate their audience and break it down and tell you who it is. So this way it's verified. You know that when they say we have this many retailers, this many CEOs, this many VPs, you know that that's a fact. The other thing is it'll give you, it'll tell you its overall editorial direction, who its readers are, what their intentions are as far as content. So you want to get a background and you want to really target those trade media brands that are reaching the audience that you want. So for example, if you have a food product or a new snack or something, you want to look for the magazines that cover food retail, like Progressive Grocer where I used to work, gourmet retailer. Or you have supermarket news, Windside grocery business. There's many, many trade magazines, but those are some of the big ones out there. If you have a health and beauty care product, you want to target something like a drugstore news or Chain drug review, though. Food retailers also cover health and beauty, and all of them cover general merchandise products to a certain extent. Those are some of the key players. There's a bunch of them. We'll try and get you a list as well that we could publish on the site along with this. So you have a bunch to look through and a bunch of websites to look at. So that's the main thing you want to figure out your audience. The second part is when you're putting together your pitch. There's a few different ways to do it, but you want to keep in mind a couple of things. One, like I said before, is it relevant? Two, what can you do to make the editor's job easier or more effective? And I'm going to go into detail on that. But basically what it comes down to is creating content that's going to be of value to them. There's a few ways that you could do this. There's actually a bunch of different angles that you could take. And I'll go over some of the ones that I do now with ECRM when I'm looking to get coverage in the trade media myself. But as a product supplier, there are a few different things that you can take. Keep in mind, if it's a retail trade publication, and I'm assuming a lot of you are trying to get your products into retail, so you're going to be going after the retail trade media. Keep in mind their audience are retailers. And there's nothing more important or nothing that gets a retail trade media editor's attention more than than if you can get retailer involvement in whatever your pitch is. So, for example, if you just launched a product at a retail location and that retailer is doing very well with it, and they're doing something interesting with it, try to get the retailer to tell your story. When we were looking for stories to publish in the news, for example, say, Progressive Grocer's website, because I used to edit for them the press releases that had retailer quotes. Those are the ones that really jump out, the ones that are more likely to get coverage than just a press release about yourself, Right? So anytime that you can involve a retailer in your pitch to the trade media editors, that's always going to help you to get coverage, because that's one of the things that's toughest when you're a retail trade media editor is getting retail quotes. So anything you can do to help them in that area is going to increase your chances. The other thing is you want to make yourself available as a resource. You Want to let them know who you are, you want to stay in touch with them. So every editor has an editorial calendar. And that's another thing that you should download from any of the media brands you're planning to work with. Download their editorial calendar. Because aside from the news, that is the one thing that's planned. They plan it in advance. They let you know what categories they're gonna be covering and when they're gonna be covering it. So you wanna check out the editorial calendar, see which planned features are related to your products. So let's say the snack example. If you have a snack product and you see that they have a few stories around snacking that throughout the year, you wanna make sure that you and your company is considered as a resource when they're getting ready to put together that story. So if the story is going to run in the June issue, for example, that writer, whoever's writing it, is probably going to get started on that story in April or maybe even sooner, depending on how far in advance they prefer to work. But usually that issue is going to close. In other words, it's going to close and go to the printer probably no later than maybe. So you want to be a little bit in advance and stay in touch. And the other thing is how you pitch them for that story. You just don't want to say, hey, look, I got a great product you want to include in the story. Now, that may be a part of it. Some features they might do on a category, they may include some new products. But what you might also want to pitch them is your expertise or your ability to get them in touch with a retailer that's doing something interesting in the category. Again, it comes back to that retail angle. If you are working with some retailers and you can get them to give editor quotes on a particular topic, that's invaluable and you're helping them to do some work because they won't have to go and hunt down that retailer. You're giving it to them. So the other thing is you want to give out your expertise, let them know that you're available as an expert on this particular category. You can give them a little background on why you're an expert in that category. Again, if you're new and your product's not in retail yet, it's going to take a little bit more work. But again, you want to put that product out there. You want to send them a release about your product, because like I said, sometimes they do have sections of product reviews in which they feature new products. That haven't hit the market yet. So that's something that you definitely want to focus on. The other thing is, and this is really important too, when you're framing these pictures, when you're putting together a press release or you're looking to get something in print, whether it's a press release or it's a product review, you want to also keep in mind that the less work that you give the editor, the greater the chances of your success. What I mean by that is, if you're doing a press release on a new product that you launched or maybe a success story, and I'll get to those in a second. Before you write it up, check how the trade media brand writes their press releases or writes their news stories and writes their product review stories. That's the format that you want to follow. And when I was an editor, because I worked with a lot of PR firms that were always pitching me stuff. In general, when public relations firms write up a press release, the editor edits a lot of them. They have a lot of work to do. They edit the crap out of them because a lot of them are salesy. They have all of these, oh, this is wonderful. This is the best. This and that. We don't want that. We take all of that stuff out when we turn it into a news story. So if you write your press releases in the format that they use for their news stories, the editor just has to cut and paste and make a few edits here. That's gold. That's going to really save them a lot of time. And then over time, if you're doing that, they're more likely to work with you rather than sending a press release that they're going to have to really, really rearrange. So that's the other thing you want to keep that in mind when you write your product review pieces. Some of these magazines, they will have a product gallery and they'll have a little blurb about the new product and a little information, Check how they do it and the format that they do, the number of words that they do, the types of images that they use and follow that, the more you can give them something that is similar to what they already do in terms of style and layout and format. That is going to take a lot of work off their hands. And then they're going to start viewing you as a valued resource instead of just somebody that's pitching them something. The other thing is, like I said, success stories. They like success stories, but not about you, about retailers. So if you are working with a retailer or you just land in a retailer, you can send out a release about how you've got on the shelf of retailer XYZ and why they did it. However, if you can get a quote from that retailer talking about why they're working with you and the benefits that you're delivering to their category, that's newsworthy, they're more likely to include something like that. And again, you want to format that release in the same way that they format their news stories online, which in general, you'll have the retailer quote in the front, up top, and then the information about you a little bit lower. One general rule for you to follow is you want to think in terms of them and their audience, not in terms of your product. How are you going to help the trade media best serve their audience? We covered that. How to get into features. Again, pay attention to the editorial calendar. Let you let them know that you could be a resource for them when they have any appropriate category stories. Or again, it can be broad. They may be doing a story about organics. You have an organic product regardless of what the category is. So any angle that you could put, if you put yourself out there as a resource to them, where they know, okay, I'm doing something on this category, I could call this person and get some good information, maybe even a retailer contact. The other way that you could do it is by expert columns. If you volunteer to write an expert column on a particular topic. Now, these expert columns cannot be sales pitches. They have to be something, again, that would be of value to the trade media publications audience. The value of expert columns is the fact that you're showing your expertise in the content of that column. They will always put your photo and your bio and your company name at the bottom of the column so people will be able to find you and reach out to you. But in the expert columns, what you have to do is you want to find out what the key industry issues are that are related to your company and then write a column about what your audience can do to address that issue. So it might be merchandising, something about merchandising snacks. To go back to that example, it might be if you're a health and beauty care product company that has maybe natural ingredients, you might want to talk about the trend towards clean labels and why it's important for retailers to focus on products that have clean labels. Again, not mentioning your product, just talking about it in general as an expert resource for the retail audience. But in doing that, you will make yourself invaluable I think most of this audience here, if you're a small or emerging brand, you don't have money to advertise. So this is all focus on content. However, just to let you know, now, while most trade media editors, that wino, they're very good at keeping a separate wall between advertisers and content and they don't let one influence the other. However, if everything else is equal, if it's the same quality content from both suppliers and one of them is an advertiser, it's more than likely that the one who's advertising is going to get more attention. That's just the fact of life when it comes to trade media. But again, when all things other than that are equal, but if you can make yourself a valuable resource to the editors, they're going to come back to you again and again and again. So again, you can't be pushy. You want to deliver them value and you want to help make their jobs easier because there's so many things on their plate and there's just way too much for them to do. Anything you could do to give them back some time is going to be well appreciated. Another point is exclusives. So if you have some content that and you want to work with a trade media brand, if you offer them an exclusive, that is always going to get their attention. So rather than pitching something to everybody, sometimes it might be better to go deep with one particular magazine, one trade media brand, and offer something and let them know that you're not going to offer this to anybody else, you're going to give them the first opportunity for that. Now when it comes to guest columns, that's a given. They usually will not let you publish a guest column anywhere else, unless maybe it's your own blog. But whenever you offer an exclusive, it gives them the ability to have a scoop that their competing trade media brands will not have. So exclusives are another way to pique their interest. And then finally, their research. If there's any research that you can share, that's something that will grab their attention too. Now again, this research cannot be too biased. Let's say maybe you conduct your own research using a third party firm on consumer snacking trends or what consumers are looking for as clean label snacks or organic snacks. Anything where you can get third party research data that can make a story if you uncover some interesting trends. Let me jump into that and tell you some of the ways that we work with the trade media at ecrm. One of the things that we do related to data is right we have RangeMe because we have 130,000 suppliers and thousands of buyers on there, we can get a lot of interesting data about buyer behavior among all of these categories. So what we started doing is putting together some custom research around how these buyers are navigating these different categories. So what trends, which categories are getting the most interest from the buyers, what size suppliers, where these suppliers are distributed and located. So a lot of great data that would be of interest to retailers that these magazines reach. So we would put that data together. Not only would we put it together, but we'll put together the layout of the page, and we'll put together some content in there so that when we give it to the trade media, they do not have to do any work. They basically could just reproduce that page in their magazine. And by putting that page in the magazine, that means the editor does not have to fill that page with other content. So if they have, let's say, five pages, they're dedicated towards cosmetics products. If I can fill up two of those pages with data, that could be anywhere from 1200 to 2000 words that they don't have to create. So in addition to providing them with valuable content, we look to help them save some time, too, because they're not going to have to create that content themselves. Another way that we work with retailers to get content in their magazines or on their websites is by partnering with them. We work with MMR and with drugstore news on awards programs that are tied into our sessions. So with drugstore news, not all, but a bunch of our health and beauty care sessions will have what's called the Buyer's Choice Awards. And this is a program where all of the suppliers are welcome to put their products out front in our hospitality area, where, throughout the session, retail buyers come evaluate the products, and then they vote which is their favorite one based on the packaging and on innovation of the product. And then towards the end of the session, we will tally up all the votes, and then we'll have a winner and a finalist. I think one of our cocktail hours, we'll have an award ceremony. Then following that, we will write up both of those award winners and then publish it in the trade magazines. So again, we're writing up the winners for them. We're taking the work off of their editor's hands by putting it together in a format that works for them. I mean, fortunately, I've written tens of thousands of news stories in my career, so basically, I know the format that they're familiar with. But again, we're putting together the editorial for them, taking the work off their editor's hands, gathering the photos that we need for it, gathering all the other information and then sending them the completed project. It's relevant. We're partnering with them. So it's their award as it's ours. It's the ECRM Drugstore News Buyers Choice Awards Program or the ECRM MMR Buyers Choice Awards Program. So we do the same thing with MMR for our food related sessions. And again, same thing with them. I will get the information from the winners, I will write it up, I will get the images from the winning suppliers, I will put it all together and just hand it off to the editor so that there's a minimum of work that they have to do in order to publish it. And again, these two programs are exclusive to Drugstore News and to MMR magazine. So again, it's partly their program too. So of course they're going to want to publish it. So anything that you could do partnering with a trade media brand in that way is a good way to get coverage. So now we have some other opportunities too with social media. Most of the editors that are out there are on social media. They're on LinkedIn, they're on Facebook, you know, so now on Facebook, that's really B2C. There are businesses on there, but it's not really known for B2C content. LinkedIn is definitely B2B. So for all of you guys in the audience that are looking to get into retail shelves, sure, you want to have a presence on the B2C because that's where your consumers are, your end consumers. But don't forget your customers, also the retailer. So you want to play on the B2B space too. And most of the trade media editors are on the B2B space. They're all on LinkedIn and some of them have some nice followings on LinkedIn as well. And LinkedIn is a little bit easier way to get in front of them because if you post some information about your products, you can always tag one of the editors or a bunch of the editors and make sure that they don't miss your content. I'm going to do a whole separate thing down the road on leveraging LinkedIn for your content efforts because there's so much that you could do on that platform. But again, most editors are involved in social media. They're on Twitter, they're on Facebook, they're on, they're on LinkedIn. So you want to make sure that you're playing in that space as well. The good thing about LinkedIn is that you're not going to be annoying them. So in other words, you don't want to bombard an editor every two seconds, talking about your product, trying to get it in there. What you do want to do is build a relationship. So sometimes it makes sense to start on LinkedIn, where you could tag them on one of your posts so that they're getting your information, but they're kind of getting it passively. Let them get familiar with your brand, see what you're doing, and then maybe reach out and connect to them on LinkedIn and then let that transfer into your connecting with them offline. But here's the other thing. It never hurts to just get to know the editors in your industry. A lot of them are in New York, in Chicago and New Jersey. If you're going to be in town, invite them to lunch or invite them for cocktails and just tell them, look, I'm not expecting anything. I just would like to meet you and pick your brain, learn how we can help you. Don't call them and say, look, I want to take you to lunch and pitch my product. Tell them that you have that product, that you're a supplier in the industry and you just want to get to know them. Learn a little bit more about how they cover the category and what you could do to help them. You want to put yourself out there as a resource to these editors. So that's it. Basically what it comes down to is, one, you want to provide content that's of value to their industry, and then two, you want to make yourself a resource to the editors of the trade media brands you're interested in working with. A resource that's going to help them to better serve their readers, not one that's going to just pitch them products. And again, trade shows. Here's one more thing. Trade shows are another great way to meet the editors of these retail trade media pubs. And you can either do that by if you see them, scheduling an appointment or just catching up with them. If they have photos on LinkedIn, you know what they look like. You could just approach them and say, look, hi, I just wanted to introduce myself. This is who I am. This is what I have. Here's my card. If there's any way I can help you with your content, let me know. Don't do the heavy pitching, they tend not to like that. But put yourself out there as a resource to help them do their jobs better, to help them better serve their readers, and you'll have a better chance of getting published. So if you have anybody that's part of the website, I would love to answer any questions that you might have or you could send them by email. Be more than happy to walk you through how you could do some of this and get yourself in front of these trade media guys. Thank you very much for joining us.

Hey, Joe.

Hello.

I'm going to quickly dive in here, guys. That was amazing, Joe. It was such great information. And you and I come from the same place because I do this. I write columns, I write articles, I do all of these things. I want to remind everyone, if you haven't heard already, that you have an opportunity to be featured here as a member of Product Launch Hazards. There is a form on the site. It will be linked in this blog post and you will be able to fill out the form and we will evaluate you. We'll let you know if you're eligible for a feature, but at minimum, you're going to get to have a profile about you or your brand.

That's a great opportunity.

Yeah. So it's a great early step. If you've never done this before because of our process, it's going to be very similar to what you'll find out there trying to get yourself featured. So it's a great way for you, if you've never done it before, to kind of walk through it in a really safe place where I'm going to be really nice to you anyway, so try it out. Check out that link. And then also you mentioned, Joe, the trade publications list, let's put those lists into the resources area. So we'll put them here and we'll link them here as well. But when you send them to me, I'll have my team put them into the resource area so they are available and we can put them by categories. So if it's health and beauty, trade publications or food and grocery, as you said, that would be awesome. Thank you so much for offering that, Jo. Okay, thank you all. Talk to you soon. Product Launchers.

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