Pitching Product Gift Guides And Product Review Publicity with Dave Farrow

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Hey, product launchers, welcome back to product launch Hazards. And I have a really exciting guest for you today, Dave Farrow of Faro Communications. And we're going to talk about all kinds of product publicity and really how to get gift guides, reviews, like all of these things that you're all looking for because they're extremely important in getting the word out about your amazing products. And it's getting harder and harder. But Dave has been doing this a long time. He shifted his business multiple times to kind of keep up with how things work. And he's got a lot of great relationships. So he is the guy, the knowledgeable guy that I decided to bring in for you guys to hear from and really understand it. Because it's one thing for me to tell you I'm not going to write about this, and I tell you that all the time when you meet up with me. But he's going to tell you why this is so important but yet so hard at the same time.

So, Dave, welcome to the show.

Hey, thanks for having me. This is great. I always love talking to you.

Yeah, we have a lot of fun because you have a really deep understanding of products. So give us a little bit of your background and why you have, you know, you kind of have an engineer's mind.

Yeah, I'm a tinkerer.

Yeah.

I've actually been an inventor and design engineer. But my big claim to fame is that I'm the memory guy. I'm in the Guinness Book of Records for memory. And I developed a method for kids to study better for adults to improve their memory. And that was really the product that I used to launch. I did over 2,000 interviews on that product, sold about $10 million worldwide. That was partially with the help of an infomercial that I was able to get a deal with and even a deal with Sony at one point. Essentially, I started off just creating something that solved a problem for me, and then I spent most of my focus trying to figure out how to make a buck from it. To be honest, I was trying to just sell the damn thing.

Well, it's great, though, because too often people are like, build it and they're gonna come. Right? You said we need to Work hard at this. We need to build a business around this.

And it took a long time to figure out where the market was. You know, they started. I was 21 years old when I first got my Guinness record. I got it as a business decision. It's not just something like, it's a lot of effort to get it. And my record is memorizing 59 decks of cards all shuffled together and got it so that I could get that credibility, that attention. And I just thought pennies would fall from the sky after I'm in.

The celebrity comes and it works out, right?

Yeah, but, you know, the thing is, it's a great credential, but I was actually working like a minimum wage job, like, a couple of years after I got it. Like, it wasn't the big launch that I wanted it to be. I certainly had some great successes, but it didn't get me where I wanted to go. And I had to do it for me. And I realized that I had to figure out how to leverage that credential into product sales. And if you want to do product sales, you have to have a lot of other people talking about you. So one of the first things that I did was I got a lot of people trying my system, critiquing it, telling me what was bad, what was good, all that stuff. But in the process of having that conversation, a lot of people heard about it. Now, when I started in the 90s, talk radio was the big king for me. I could do a radio show, and I would typically get about 2, $3,000 worth of sales on my website from even a bad station. And then a good station would be fantastic. I've done as much as like, well, my big record is $170,000 on Jeff and Jer in San Diego. You know that.

That station, that's a big station out here.

Yeah, I did $170,000 in sales on my website. That's a big response even from that station. But other ones, It'd be like 10,000 here, 20,000 there. The way I got it is by getting people getting the host oftentimes to try the product, teaching some part of it on the air and. And then getting some feedback. And once you got that credibility going, then it was pretty easy to sell because basically people wanted the result. They wanted to have a better memory, but they were skeptical. So if you find out where your product is along that line of, what's their major objection? For me, it was skepticism as to whether or not it works. So that was what I focused on with Other products. We focused on other things.

Yeah, absolutely. You know, this is really interesting. So I just. We interviewed Michelle Weinstein and she is a former shark tanker who didn't make it on the show. She has a really interesting story about, you know, all the back information. But, you know, thinking that the celebrity of these things are going to be a windfall. I've now interviewed three different shark tankers and, and the article will come out probably before this airs. That will be linked in the, in the blog post for this episode. But, you know, this is the thing, is that celebrity didn't build their business, not in one bit at all. It didn't make sales for them. It didn't do any of that. All of them have that same result.

Yeah.

And two of them got deals on the show, but they fell through after, so they didn't end up with deals. And so keeping that in mind is that just having that sort of celebrity, just having that feature isn't enough. That's what Dave is telling you. And really have to hear that it isn't enough to build your business for you. It's not.

I'll add on to that. I have competitors in the memory space and I don't want to go into all the details. A lot of them are, I consider close friends, but business wise, they're. They're technically competitors and they took their hat off to me because they've tried to do, you know, follow my lead or do PR of their own. They would say, well, maybe they got one speaking gig out of it or they got a few hits on their website, but they didn't really get any sales and it was because I was doing something different. So you can even do the identical thing to your competitor. But if you don't have the business set up and you don't know how to actually drive the traffic, then you know it's not going to work. So figuring out that I like how you said, is an engineer's mind. I really think it's like building a machine and you can have 90. Like if you have 99% of a machine functioning, it's broken, Right. If you have one spark plug's gone, it's gone, Right?

That's right. All the pieces have to be. And they also be. And this is what we talk about on product launchers all the time. The right things in the right order with the right resources.

Yeah. So you literally need everything. So if you have. We're working on a Kickstarter campaign with a client, for example, and we found out the video is Just not up to snuff. So they change the video and they say, so Dave, you know, once we change the video, then it's going to take off, right? And I went, well, that's the best guess right now. But what about what we don't know? Maybe, maybe there's something else. You know, we looked competitors, we did a competitive analysis and things like that to figure out what is the expectations. But I like to think of it like you're having a conversation with the client and if you can't answer every single one of their questions, people don't buy while they're still questioning. So you have to answer all of that in your marketing, in your conversation, in your interviews, in your byline, everything before people are going to sign on the dotted line.

Yeah, absolutely. So let's talk about this time of year, that gift guides. So I actually have a gift guide coming out the day before Thanksgiving.

So I was trying to get some of my clients in there, so. Yeah, that's right.

And maybe they made it.

There we go.

But you know, the thing is, is that when we look at that gift guides, like I don't write them very often. There are lots of people write them more often. I usually write them a few times a year. I like to write Father's Day because, because I write a more tech style column, innovation style column. It fits men more. And so the gift guide's always good at that time of year and I usually do one at the holidays. And I try to support small businesses, small brands and, and I try to tie it into either small business Saturday or something in this particular one is going to be about giving thanks. So like about social good. And there's a little bit of that element in all the gifts that I've selected. And so, you know, so there's a theme around it and you don't know that when you're going to pitch someone. And that's really part of the problem. But why are these gift gu so important?

Well, the gift guides are really important mainly because you want to be ranked in your category. So there's kind of, I could say there's, you know, five or six different ones, but one of the biggest ones is if you have, let's say you have a new tech product or you have a new type of chair or whatever it is, you know, chances are there's other people in that space as well. If you're in the gift guide, then you're approved. It's a level. It's almost like winning an award in my opinion. It's a level of respect that magazine or that outlet is giving you that they're not giving you to your competitor. And there really can be only one. If you look in a lot of these gift guides, you wouldn't have multiple of the same product. You wouldn't have multiple tablets. Be like, this is our recommended tablet for this year. This is our recommended chair for this year. This is our recommended axe for this year. Whatever the gift guide theme is. But it would be one thing from each category. And yeah, we see a large variety. Speaking of the manly stuff, there's ones that are like manly gift guides. And it's like the best ax, the best pen, the best knife, the best, I guess, suspenders or whatever other manly stuff. Whiskey, I guess, things like that.

But that was in my 3D printed guitar, was in my Father's day gift guide. Now that's when really expensive, but really worth it.

Yeah, but there's not going to be any other real 3D print. Well, you might have more 3D printer because you love the stuff. But my point is, if you're the one who gets your guitar in there, there's not going to be any other. Any other guitars. If you're the one who gets your knife in there, there's not gonna be any other knives. Typically, you're blocking out your competition as well.

Yeah, absolutely. You know, that's really interesting. But, you know, a good gift guide, though, is one that is facing to the right consumers. And so I think that that's also something to consider because, you know, I've had companies who you get the best of at a trade show list and that is a, you know, within the industry. And while that's kind of important amongst your competitors and everything, it doesn't sell more product for you.

Yeah, what really sells the product is that people use these gift guides to buy gifts. And it is amazing. People respond to these. You know, being in the media, when you publish a gift guide, it's one of the most read sections in a magazine or in a blog. It really. People really do like lists. They want to know what's new. They want to shop without spending money. Like, you know, kind of window shop a little bit. And it solves all of those powerful needs that people have. So, yeah, a lot of people will go to these gift guides and just go, yes, no, no, yes, yes, yes. And they'll just buy right from there. You see a big jump in sales.

I find even an attraction like, so when I do a gift guide, like I did my gift guide at Father's Day, I can already it getting hits at this time of year. So even though it's slightly older gift guide. Right. Like I did it for Father's Day, but it's for men. And so it starts to re rank when it's the holiday and no new gift guides have come out. So that's something that's happening all the.

Time on Facebook when people post something and it's some political article or whatever it is, and then you look at it like this is from 2014.

It's old. Yeah, exactly. And so but gift guides tend to do that. You know, if you go too old, it's not people don't track it as well. But if it's within a year or two years a of times, people will check it out anyway for ideas. And so I would also add to.

That authors you want to be on book lists as well. So there's the summer reading list and there's also the holiday book list of, you know, the hottest books for, you know, 20.

Yeah, I do a podcast list every at the late in the year because people travel and they're in their car for a long period of time. And so I always do my podcast list, podcasts to check out while you're traveling, you know, over the holidays. And so I usually do that at the very end of the year. And so yeah, so there's lots of these lists that happen and need to find them. So, you know, you have a whole program on doing gift guides. So tell us a little bit about how that works. And yours is very focused on product businesses, but authors as well. But let's focus on the product because this is product launch hazard.

Yeah, sure. I would say good. 40% of our business is authors as well. So same sort of rules apply, same package. But essentially what a gift guide allows us to do is I built a bit of a machine for pr. So a lot of publicists, what they'll do is they'll just have a series of connections. They'll know people like you or like other people in the media, and they'll just work those connections and work those leads and they're natural connectors. And that's great. I do think more like an engineer and I created a system where we build up our natural connections. We do have a number of people in the media who pretty much always book our clients, but when their new client comes in, we always get the majority of their new bookings. We get them completely cold. So we've really made it a pitch system to pitch to these people. So I can pull back the curtain a little bit and tell you how we do it. I don't mind. I'm totally transparent about these things, and I think it's really interesting. Actually, one of the first things you want to do is to really answer the question of why should people care? You know, so, like, who is actually buying this gift? Who needs this desperately, and what need does it fill? And usually with the gift guide pitches that are different, we also want to have kind of a quirky. The thing that people really want the most seems is the gift that will be unique, the gift that will make them feel special. So some of our top gift guides were things that played on relationships. You know, the perfect thing for a woman to buy their man, the perfect thing for the man to buy the wife or to buy your kids or something like that. If you start off with the scenario, who's going to buy my product? Who will buy it as a gift? And where would that gift go?

And it doesn't have to be just one thing because you're going to pitch different outlets that have different angles. So it can be, like you said, it can be the perfect gift to buy your spouse the perfect gift to buy. It can go man, woman, either way. And so how does that work? Right?

We find in pitching that if we kind of paint the picture for them, they can always change it. So we'll do like a dating gift guide, perfect thing to get your boyfriend, girlfriend on Christmas, you know, and then, you know, some media outlets will come back to us and say, well, we want to change boyfriend girlfriend to this, or we want to change it to family or something like that. But we do find a bigger response when we get more specific, when we kind of paint a picture of that buying decision. So, you know, also think of what genre you're in. You know, is your product outdoorsy? Well, then you want to have the, you know, the perfect gift guide for the outdoor person. You know, something like that. I think the big thing is when people are pitching the media, they're afraid to go too specific. They go more general, and they just like, hey, this is the perfect gift for everybody.

Everything. Yeah.

And you get lost in the shuffle. But if you say, hey, this is the perfect gift for the father in your life, Daughters get this for your dads. Then what happens is the media will come back to you and go, well, we can also have sons buy it for them because this is, you know, because our market skews towards this. But unless you get specific, then it tends to get lost.

Well, that's exactly it. So I hadn't. I was thinking about my gift guide about, you know, a month ago, and someone reached out to me and gave me a single product. And it planted in my. Had this idea that maybe there were people around there looking to do a social support with whatever gifts they buy. And so my sister did that a couple of years ago, and it got me thinking that she wanted to support all artisans and so that all of her gifts were bought from artisans. And so I was like, oh, okay, well, what's my angle on this? And this happened to be that, because that's how the pitch was made to me. And so I was like, okay, so now what else can I find? And I reached out to people like you and to others, and you guys all sent me submissions based on that criteria. And so that helped me decide what my gift guide was to be this year. Because I was looking for my angle because I was like, I can't just write the same old, you know.

Yeah, well, that's actually another thing to keep in mind. If you go far enough in advance, then you can trigger the media. Like, typically when we encounter the media, they already have a plan. They want something, and then you have to fit into their plan. But a good percentage of the time, you know, if you get them early enough, you can give them the plan. You could say, hey, I think 2019 will be the year of such and such. You know, it'll be the year of 3D printing or something, right?

Probably not.

Actually.

I'll tell you one, we were doing one. It's not a gift guide necessarily, but we're saying the 2019, the gig economy is going to explode, you know, so we have a whole bunch of pitches around that. And it's really. That's a pitch that is really getting the attention of media because we're making something that's predictive. So if you can do that, if you get a little bit of a crystal ball and you do see around the corner a little bit when it comes to products, then you could really do it. You could also say that, you know, 2019 could be the year of the startup Kickstarter or something like that. There's a lot of great experts that's coming out, and people are getting hungry for kind of independent tech companies.

Yeah, absolutely. So, you know, let's talk about timing, actually, because, you know, I think there's a difference to whether you're doing print media versus online media. And so the timing is very, very different. So what do you find? How early is Necessary? Yeah.

Well, I mean, for our gift guides, we're doing them in October, typically for Christmas. So right now, actually going into December, we would actually be talking to some people about Valentine's Day. That's, that's not always exactly a three month thing, but you're safe. If you go out three months for something like Father's Day, you can be a little bit closer to it. People don't seem to be looking that early, so it does have some variance. But the earlier you get people's attention, the better. The earlier you blast your list and ask them about it, the better. But I've usually found that three month window for print, specifically a lot of magazines, anything they're out in advance. Bloggers can be shorter, they can be months would be a comfortable time for a lot of bloggers to review a product and then get a review posted. So you maybe want to get a hold of them six weeks before a campaign or before you really want them to publish something.

Yeah, too early. And they, you know, they're like waiting for product. So if you like contact them and you don't have anything to send them or you don't have all the details, it's too early. But let's talk about product guides and you know, sort of that product pitches rather, and that idea of getting into reviews from it, because that's a really, I mean, gift guides are usually just here's the product, here's the mention. But there's no endorsement of it necessarily, except that it made the list like that.

So just to clarify, the difference in a gift guide is you want to get on that list. It's a ranking. It's almost like winning an award. A product review is when a media outlet actually tries out the product and they give you, they give the public their opinion on it. Now it goes without saying you better have a good product. But I would say most people would stand behind their product, you know, so they're not too worried about it. And if you won't stand behind your product, then you shouldn't be talking to the marketing guy. You should be talking to research and development.

Yeah.

You know, to start off with. So when they come to us, they have a product that's really good. We have a brand Dead Socksy, that's a sock brand we did really well with. We have, you know, a number of other products. You had a little infomercial product that was like a wall leveling device. And we also do a lot of product pitches when it comes to books as well, so. And also my Memory course. I did a lot of product pitches. So what a product pitch is, is you want to think of it like an ethical bribe, but you don't want to think of it too much on the bribe side. Think of it more on the ethical side. Because these people who review their product, if they have a bad experience, they will actually write about that. And you've got to be careful about it. You're not getting a paid advertisement that will just be a sycophant. You do have to earn this media. And I think that's a big mistake people make. You know, they start sending out product or they get stingy or they start getting really demanding and then you're not wooing that media outlet. But essentially what we do is we come up with a really good pitch that takes the product and ties it into what's going on. Whether it's what people want nowadays, like I said, dating or relationships or, you know, workplace, outdoors, whatever it is, ties it into a story. And then we offer a copy of the product to that media outlet in exchange for a product review. And usually the response on this is absolutely incredible. You can get hundreds of responses wanting to do product reviews. And when we start sending the products out and selecting the list from the ones that we want to go to, it's quite common to get, you know, 50 or even 80 or 90 product reviews for a particular product. And you want to say like the top 10% of those will be decent out outlets. Like, why say decent? Like big ones, you know, like Inc and Forbes, Fast company and things like that. And the rest of them, there's a pretty steep drop off when you get into bloggers. They can have a really good following, but it's a niche following. So it's a very loyal but small following. And I really strongly recommend product companies send products to each and every single one of those because someone's reading it. And you'd be surprised how much these little niches they can produce percentage wise, depending on how their followers. Let's say you have 10,000 unique views per month on that website. You might not think that's as big when you look at like say 58, 60, 80,000 for like, you know, a business insider I just looked at the other day. But that 10,000 is a bit more loyal, you know, and maybe more focused.

Like that's the other thing. So if you're really choosing a channel or a blog or that has a mom following or you know, a parent following, whatever that might be, and it fits your product, that is more the Relevancy goes way up where Business Insider or Forbes or Inc. Our readers are all over the place. A lot of them are really young. They don't have families. So if you had a family product in there, it might not resonate with a good portion of them. And so that's really where you can get a little more specific if you're dialed in. And you know a lot about these bloggers and you kind of, you know, I'm a fan of reading their product, reading their blog before you send stuff in, because you can clearly tell there are some who do nothing but bash product.

Yeah. The thing is though, even some of them, if they have the traffic sometimes that, like there are some people who don't necessarily have loyal followings, but they have good traffic analytics and, you know, good keywords and things like that. And that's the way they do it. But it still brings in the traffic. You know, Google watches all of these as well, and it helps protect your reputation going forward. But before I get into that, I want to say that the other big thing, the reason to go with some of these smaller groups is you're a big fish in a small pond. You're going to be showcased, whereas you might just get a small section in a bigger outlet. So get as many of those small ones as possible because really add up. And in some cases, some of these bloggers can even be entrepreneurial and contact you wanting to be affiliates and make money from the product if they really believe in it as well.

Yeah, they can offer coupons and other things. But the other thing that is there are some bloggers who do will take their own photographs if you've sent them the product. And that's really important because now you've got like, maybe they're wearing the socks or they're, you know, doing that and they put a picture up on Instagram. That is social proof for you. And so you definitely want to encourage that. And that's one of the really great reasons that you recommend to all of your clients to send product if at all possible.

So.

And I would also add to that, then you're getting into the category of influencers. So it's a blurred line. But, you know, technically the product reviews, they're acting more like a journalist. And then the influencers, when you start getting on a social media and Instagram and things like that, it becomes more entrepreneurial. Not everybody, but most of them are, you know, getting involved in, you know, doing some sort of affiliate arrangement or something where they're driving traffic for you, which is fantastic. You know, they're driving traffic and sales. Yeah, I think that's the future. We're actually expanding our influencer work as well for our client to get them more of that. And I think we're only going to see that expand in the next few years.

Yeah, absolutely. So, you know, here's a couple of things that I would also on my side recommend having being an influencer and being on my side of it is that pick media that's different. So written video, audio, like go for the different types of media. Because the Google algorithm has shifted to being voice recognition because of, hey, Google. Right. And so Google's rewarding that. But Google owns YouTube. So now you've got YouTube embedded in your blogs or embedded in people's websites. This is really good for you to be in all those different media. But what's happening next is that if you are a video watcher, you're gonna get videos served up to you first. And if I'm a reader, I'm gonna get blogs served up to me first. So you want to make sure you're capturing anyone who's typing in, you know, perfect gift for Father's day or her, you know, and. And you want to make sure that you are getting served up. And if they're not gonna serve up a blog because I happen to be a video watcher, then wow, you missed out on not being able to capture that. So. So all the different types of media as well.

One good way to say is like a number of years ago, people were doing tons of split tests and there was a big argument as to whether or not video ads worked better than text based ads. And from what we know from a ton of Facebook data and a ton of ads, is that both are true. The fact is, some people like the video more, some people like to read more. And so you're missing out on one of that group of the population if you only do one of those categories.

Right? And this is a funny thing. So we've been split testing on my. Because I have another business, podcast business, Brandcasters, as you know. And not all of our watchers of product launch hazard know that. But hey, what we do over there is we do this audiogram and it's actually like an audio file so you could listen to it if you had your headphones plugged into your phone. But. And you're on Facebook, but it also has like the words. So it's transcribing the words so it's like captioning. And we do a little subsegment those get more traction, more engagement than any of the other posts we make on our podcast. And we have video because these all come from videos originally. But it's the audiogram that gets the engagement. And I believe.

Is there words coming down underneath me at this point?

Not yet. Yeah.

Okay. Follow the bouncing ball.

Exactly. And so, but, but we think it's because a lot of people have the sound turned off on their phone as they're scrolling. And so they're really so reading the words. They sit there and they watch it. And so even though that's a really important audio file going in the background, they're reading the words.

But how can you do that, like, cost effectively? If you've got a system to do that very cheaply or doesn't take a lot of effort or money to put those captions on there, then that's a great aspect. Absolutely.

So there are some free tools out there. There's a tool called Audiogram, but what we found was, is that the trans. Because it does an auto transcription, you'd have to like fully edit it. It's really not well done. Right. So I have a team, of course, I have over 40 employees worldwide, so my team just does it. But yeah, it is if you can do a section of it. And so I did do this on my LinkedIn page where I had been someone's podcast and they, you know, and they said this about me when they introduced me. And so I use it as almost a testimonial. And so I, I have a clip of it. I have the picture of their show. So it's not just, you know, random audiogram and then the caption of what they say goes on underneath it. I can tell you that's one of them. I can see that people click on that. It's very high and very often. So, you know, that's kind of things work. So starting to see that mix up happen. Like, these are really good ways for you to utilize that PR afterwards. So let's talk a little bit about how you leverage this. Good. You've been in a gift guide, you've gotten product reviews. Now what do you do with it?

Yeah, I can actually tell you a bunch of stories about using some of that translation software and the transcribing software. It's hilarious response. Like, I remember one part in my course, we were translating the video and it was something along the lines of I said, you know, guys, I'm saying, just do this right? And the translator turned, guys, I'm saying, just into Gynecologist.

So yeah, you definitely have to add.

It's that Canadian accent. There you go.

Oh, yeah. Don't, you know, play some hockey and drink some maple syrup? Okay, so how to leverage these gift guys? Well, you know, the key is that getting as many of these placements as possible is really important. And I'd like to start with the things that people don't think of first. Course, it can help you get traffic and even help you get affiliates and things like that. It builds your reputation more than anything. If you have a product, any product. I mean, consider every product a tech product. Nowadays it's amazing how much we're spreading out what we think of as tech now. It used to be just, you know, phones and stuff, and now it's like chairs and different things. So if you have something that is a technology, people are going to be very, very picky and they want to know the details, they want to dig into it. And they do this through product review. So if you have a bunch of positive product reviews for you, it builds up your credibility like you wouldn't believe. And what I like to say is that it gets the fence sitters off the fence. There's going to be a lot of people who like your product, but they're skeptical, they're not really sure, and they're sitting on the fence. And this helps get them on. The other thing is your reputation. This is something people don't even think of. But there is always. There's going to be tons of people who are going to want to unseat you if you're doing really well. I experienced this even myself in a variety of different ways. But if you're selling a product, it could be something as simple as keywords or something, right? But if you're selling a product, you're going after Google keywords or something and you're starting to make money. People are going to see that and then they're going to try to bite into that, Right? But the thing about product reviews is Google reads all these reviews. So you come up more in the organic search sections, you come up more in several different places, you come up much more credibly than ever before. And the other cool thing about your reputation is you can't please everybody. And if you piss off somebody and you know they leave a bad review, well, if you have all these other people reviewing you positively, those negativity, the negative stuff gets buried and there's always going to be trolls out there. But, you know, that's why you want to have the volume of Reviews because you want to have 90, 99% of it being positive so that any negativity is just buried.

Yeah, absolutely. Well, you know, what are some other things? Like can they place ads and boost other people's blogs and do things like that to kind of highlight themselves?

Yeah, absolutely. So when you do the product pitch, it actually blends itself really well into ads because you can add through the algorithms, you can actually make your ads appear on any place that you have articles. So you have an instant button that they can press to buy your product. And I've seen that been done very effectively. It's actually something that if you miss out on a lot of the money because people are reading about your product, they like it, they enjoy it. But most, you know, credible outlets will not just be, hey, if you like it, buy here. Right?

Yeah. Although that's starting to shift a lot. Hearst publications, all of her publications that would be like, you know, we do Popular Mechanics and some of those. They're actually doing a lot more what I would call affiliate links. Right. Through Amazon or through other places like that. And so they're encouraging their writers to write about things that they can put affiliate links in.

I think that's the future, actually.

It is.

And it's, it's really weird because it goes back to the origins of media. You know, if you look back at the early television days, all of the TV shows were sponsored by some sponsor and they were the showrunner. They chose the actors, they chose the scenes, the plot, the everything. It was like a soap company was making a play. And it seems kind of crazy by today's standards, but it started to go back to that where, you know, people have to monetize this somehow. And advertising needs to be, you know, custom, it needs to be relevant, it needs to be something that people are interested. Not interrupt driven, but content driven. So all, all of these things kind of bring back to this place where the sponsor, the outlet that is doing an article for that sponsor can start to have links. And it's much more credible because people are going to want to buy it anyways online. Doesn't really ruin a lot of people's credibility. But we're not quite there yet, really. It's getting more.

It's early.

Yeah, yeah, but we're not quite there yet where everybody does it. So you still should buy some ads for keywords that you'll find. If you have a pitch, for example, or keywords of your product, run some ads for that. And you'll find that everywhere your article is, you'll also have your ad pop up in those screens.

Yeah, so this is something that I own for my gift guides and it isn't something that many people do. I do it because of product lethal. I'm really sensitive to all of you Amazon sellers and you e commerce sellers out there. So after I write my gift guide, I go into my Amazon account and I write a review of your product. I write the blurb that I wrote about you because usually there's at least a sentence where I said something. I write the sentence and I link to the article of where you've been in there because you're allowed one link in a review and Amazon doesn't block that. And so now I'm not a certified purchaser if I didn't buy it. But that review has weight and so at least it's there.

Yeah. And you can do that. Well, kind of in the same realm of product review and getting reviews on Amazon, you know, you can also be creative and start having things like contests, encouragements to get your customers to leave reviews, all sorts of incentives.

Fine line guys, remember we talked about this a lot. Brenda Kremmy's on our platform. If you have any questions and you're concerned about the Tyne contest you're running, run it by her. Because your terms of service with Amazon is very restrictive. So that's a good point. Very careful how you run it. There are incentives and it's weird though.

Because there's so many services out there. I think Amazon's trying to clean up its act. But right now there's still a lot of people that are putting up, you know, they have these review companies and they do these big reviews and you know, by the 10,000 reviews at a time. And I know it's getting better. Amazon I think is going to crack down on more of these, but they've.

Been cracking down for the last couple of years and it's been getting better and better as to how they're doing it. But I have found a complete pop up lately, just like you have. Most of them are overseas companies coming in and violating the rules.

Well, it's an arms race, right? You know, Amazon comes up with some way to detect it and then they find some way around it. Right?

Yeah, exactly.

But I think ultimately it would hurt your brand long term if you, if you relied on that as a strategy. These are people who are doing like, like pop up stores. They're selling a bunch of stuff and then they disappear and they come back with another name. That's not a long term Business plan. So, you know, getting real reviews like you did is the way to go. And I think the algorithms will always favor those better than any of the tricks.

Yeah, the algorithms of sales matter more. And so if you sell steady every day, that, of course there's a launch strategy. Right, to getting, you know, to selling more than your competitors and getting on that first page immediately and getting the buy box and all of those things are a strategy for launching. But day in, day out, it's not going to matter what your reviews are. If you are not selling on Amazon, you won't keep ranking. So both things matter. The reviews do matter to consumers, but they matter if they're legitimate. Like, they can tell. I mean, I can look at.

That's the biggest thing. You can tell what, it's a fake if you read it.

Yeah, you can tell. Totally tell. Like, I was at a conference in Hong Kong and they were putting up what was a great review, and they were like, this is a fabulous review. And I looked at it and I go, a PR firm wrote that review review. It's still fake. Somebody may have legitimately bought the product and it's considered certified, but that is not a real review because it was too specific as to what it said in it. Too many packed with too many keywords. And I could tell.

Yeah. And also, you know, you want reviews. Here's another thing about product reviews that I think people aren't realizing. You want reviews that get a little critical. If you have something that's just 100% glowing review and somebody just a sycophant, then there's this feeling of, wait a second, is this just paid? Am I being scammed here? You actually want somebody to go, hey, I love this product, and I wore it well, and it feels. It's comfortable and everything. I just wish it came in a different color or something like that. You want to have that. Customer service was good. Shipping was a little late, but once I got it, it was awesome. Like, you want to have one little black mark in this sea of positivity, because that's actually a realistic answer that real people would give.

Yeah. My favorite is when I read a review that says, oh, and I bought a size up or a size down. Like, when it says something like that, you know, I bought a size bigger than I was. It was a little tight, and it was like, great, that's really useful as a reader of it. And I'll buy the right product. Everything else is great. But now I know what size I am, and I'm more confirmed okay, it runs a little smaller, it runs a little big. Yeah, those are always really great ones. So before we go, I always dive in here to the hazards of what you do. So tell us, you know, maybe a couple of stories of things that went wrong or, you know, or what you consider to be some of the mistakes that most people make. The rookie error.

Right. Well, I would say mention any names, but I think the biggest mistakes I've seen are timing and planning. Product reviews are a portion of what you should be working on. You should coordinate this with other plans. So, you know, if you're doing a Kickstarter, you want to make sure you get product reviews out in front of the Kickstarter, for example, so that you drive pre traffic to a pre registration page, that you kind of massage that audience saying, oh, it's on its way, it's coming. And you keep sending them emails saying, oh, we're one week away, you know, it's happening tomorrow. Make sure you're one of the first people to get a perk and things like that, or you're going to find yourself playing catch up.

Do you find just to interrupt here, but ask, do you find that Kickstarters are harder because a lot of times they don't have any product at all to send anyone, so it's a lot harder to get someone to consider it.

Yeah, I find the ones that I experience with, they've had some sort of product but they were doing an upgrade or doing a better version too.

So those are a little easier I see.

Yeah, you can do a little easier one. But that was just an example of something like you really, really have to be a master of organization and planning to do a Kickstarter nowadays because they got so sophisticated. You know, beyond that, I would also say that one of the biggest mistakes people make is not being generous with the product or changing what they're sending partway through. You know, we've had, doesn't happen with our clients anymore. We had one time back in the past, but now we always double check, we always make sure with the clients now. But you know, if we send a blast out to the media and say, hey, you know, we're gonna have a product available if you wanna do a review and then, you know, we'll get the 50 or some odd, you know, responses back saying, yeah, we'd love to do a product review, here's our criteria. And then we have to tell them, well, actually it's not going to have this feature or actually we only have this color or something like that. Make sure you know all of these things ahead of time because it can really hurt your review. You can have a great product but if you didn't tell them that they were going to receive what they are expecting, they're going to tell you, you know, they're going to be like, oh, I expected this, but I got this thing.

Well, and then they're going into the review with a negative mindset already. So that's not good for you either.

Yeah, no. Some big companies made mistakes. There's a lot of times that Apple to get their iPad off the ground, they a lot of product out, you know, and if they had, you know, the wrong memory on there or you know, wrong feature or if it was a, you know, different size pad, then all of a sudden some of the reviews were. It was like they were angry because they were expecting something and they got something else. And it's like you just got a product for free. You'd think they'd be grateful. But if you tell them one thing and send them something else, credibility thing and you're going to be slaughtered by them.

Right. And it also makes, you know, as a viewer, when I go to review products and I go to put them out there, it's my endorsement that's going on that. And so if the product not great or if it wasn't what was expected or if it makes me question whether or not you guys have good customer service at the end of the day, you know, like quality control because it didn't come out what I thought it was like. There's a lot of questions in there. You worry whether or not you should even be writing this review and so that you're right, very consistent and very clear on what you said you were going to do and then doing it is a long way there.

Well, and I'll also say one that I think you know the product I'm talking about. You know, if you send a product and it doesn't perform the way it normally does, if it somehow malfunctions or something, don't think that all is lost. A lot of these reviewers are very reasonable and you could talk to them and say, listen, this is seriously not normal for us. These products usually function the way they're intended and you know, I'll send you some new products so you can check it out and see and as long as you're honest with them and upfront, then can actually rescue that and make a really good review out of it.

Yeah, so I won't out them either. But you know, we're referring to what happened was, is I tried the product and it didn't perform. It was a wash issue because it was a clothing product.

Yeah, there's one little defective.

And it was something that I understood because I have a deep understanding of textiles. And so instead of, you know, bashing them or doing any of that, which I would never do because it's just not my style. And you know that, and I know you. So I picked up the phone and talked to the owner of the company and the founder of it, and we had a nice discussion and we had a discussion about ways in which he could improve it. And what it came really clear to me was that, Anna, and this is what I love about all of you product people out there, is you have such passion for your product and for what you want to improve, but a lot of times, the quality of all these other things, because in your passion to get, like, this feature accomplished, you.

Could be experimenting with something and it.

Doesn'T quite work out, sacrificing something else. And in clothing, it could be like you want to go for softness and you lose durability, or you use color fastness, or you didn't know you should be doing a test because you're new to this product category and this happens. And there these are these rookie errors we talk about all the time here on product launch hazards, the things that that then can tank your company. But if you catch it early and we have this conversation, there are ways to fix this. There are ways to improve it, ways to make it happen. So I love to be that collaborator. When people come to me and I see, I was like, this is going to be a problem.

The general reaction to any disgruntled customer is to. Is to go overboard trying to make them happy, and they turn into huge lovers of what you do. I've even had times where, yeah, when I have my infomercial, for example, in order to make a successful infomercial, by the way, you need to have a lot of upsell. A lot of people didn't take this very well. There was upsell after upsell after upsell, but it was just to make it profitable. It just had to be that way. So I got a bit of bad feedback and I was able to respond to them personally. And eventually I made a system to respond to that, to make sure that they were happy. And universally, I got people so amazed that they heard from the author that they actually got a response to this comment they were just making out there. So managing your community can be a really big Thing being able to listen to social media and make comments and respond to customers that you might even be responding. It might not even be a defect. It might be a feature. It might just be a feature that's being used wrong. Or however. Or just the process of how they buy it, which you may or may not even have any control over. Right. If it's your product. But you don't own the marketing wing. So going overboard with your customer service, making them feel better is really good. And I will add one more thing. The biggest mistake, and of course I'm going to say this because I run a PR firm, but one of the biggest mistakes is trying to do this yourself. A product.

I agree with that.

Yeah. It is a bit more sophisticated. I would say that you can do. Do it yourself pr. If you're talking about a topic, you're trying to get yourself on TV or in podcasts. Yeah. Contact them yourself. You know, if you have a book. Yeah, you can do it yourself. Although it's very time consuming, authors very often hire us to do it because we'll get a whole lot more results, obviously with our connections and, you know, we'll make them look really good. But if you're trying to do a product pitch and you're doing it on your own, it can be. Unless you're really sophisticated and you have experience in this, you can almost destroy your brand if you don't do it right, you can end up having terrible.

The last thing I wanted to kind of mention to people is that follow up. If you are following up directly with these bloggers and you're being pushy and demanding, I can tell you right now, that's it. You're done. You're off my list. You won't make it even if your product was good because that I deserve coverage. That attitude doesn't work. And so that doesn't happen when you have a professional pitching age.

Yeah. We actually have a theme in our office of ppp. It's polite, persistent and professional.

Yeah. I mean, don't get it. Us writers are procrastinators. So you do need to be persistent with us, but you also don't need to pester us. There's a big difference between that. Right. And you guys know that fine line. And I find that entrepreneurs trip over it way too often and they cross that line.

Yeah. When I was first starting out, I was definitely on the side of pestering more, but, you know, I was eager and now I've got a bit more experience and they're able to. It Actually is amazing how much more of a result you can get when you have experience. You know, I can, I can say things in a few words or change a title on a pitch and I know it's going to get a much bigger result. And I would have had to put in 100 hours to kind of get that same result doing it the old way back in the day.

Well, and I think that's a lot of times is you don't think that, oh, it's your pitch that's the problem when it's your stuff. Right. So you don't, you don't mess with that. You think, I just don't have the right people and so they don't try that.

So it's your product, you're too close to it. You can't really be objective about it and you can't, like, you have to talk to the blogger like a consumer. You have to talk about what the consumer is going to be interested. You're not talking like the inventor. You know, you already love your product, but you have to talk about what's in it for them, what's in it for the consumer. So having hiring an outside team, like a PR firm to do that, then we handle that conversation because we're in that same boat of receiving this product and talking about how it fits into the world. That one thing alone, pulling yourself out of it, allowing somebody else to market it for you makes a big difference.

Well, guys, this is why, you know, product launchers. This is why I love Dave Pharoah and Farrow Communications, because they really have it dialed in and they understand your products. So when they present your products, they're presenting you in the best light. They're also speaking our language as reviewers and writers and any kind of media that might cover your product.

Well, thank you very much for that plug. I appreciate it. I didn't even have to pay for that. I will actually offer this to your audience and I offered this before and I'll do it again. I do a 20 minute consultation personally, not one of my staff. I'll do a 20 minute consultation to a qualified company or individual that is interested in PR marketing like this. And it's a real strategy call. I'll sit down and actually say, hey, here's the angle we would probably take on it. And of course, you know, obviously this is to acquire clients. We do get a lot of clients this way. But sometimes, a lot of times I'll, you know, do a strategy call to somebody who doesn't become a client. But I just think it's, you know, it's good call. So if anybody's listening to the sound of my voice and wants to do a strategy call with me, you can contact me through ferrocommunications.com if you like.

Yeah, and we'll have links to all of that in the blog post for this episode and of course in the links for the video. So if you're watching this on YouTube, the links will be right in the video description as well. So you can click right there. So you don't have to go very far to find it. And if you're on the road, you don't have to try to write it down and remember and figure out how to spell it all. So we'll have you covered there. So. Well, Dave, I'm so glad you were able to come on and I look forward to continuing our relationship into next year because you guys bring some great, fun products to the market and I love to always see what you're working on.

Oh, it's always a pleasure talking to you and I got to say, your audience as well, you know, when they've contacted me before, it's a very well informed, very expert audience. It's a pleasure to talk to you. So pleasure all around. Thank you very much for having me on.

So until next time, Product Launch us. Remember, you can find us@productlaunchhazards.com and you can find us on social media has design and that's Haz with two Zs. Thanks again.

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