HOW TO GET YOUR
PRODUCT IN FRONT OF
CELEBRITIES
by Heather Christian
N
ow is such a great time to start a business.
With social media just exploding it’s never
been easier to market a business to consumers if you know how. Plus with cell phones
apps it’s so easy to start a business even part time
and work on the business when you can.
So let’s say this is you. You have this great idea
to launch a new product. But you don’t want to
invest too much as you put a ton of money already
into getting your product to market. You have faith
that as soon as people know about it, the sales will
come flying in. You picture that soon you’ll have to
worry about actually keep up with orders instead
of expenses. You build a website, create a Facebook page, an Instagram account and a Twitter
account. Launch day comes and you wait for the
sales. Nothing happens. You decide to start advertising on Facebook and are getting a lot of likes on
your post but still not many sales. You start getting
discouraged.
You might consider that you need to hire a Public
Relations (PR) firm to help you. But it’s way too
expensive. You’ve read stories of how other new
products managed to get a product into a celebrity gift bag and you wonder how the heck they did
that without breaking the bank.
So I’ll be honest, this happened to me. I created
a few product and was wondering how to get them
out there. While still working a 9-5, I couldn’t
really spend a ton of time just through trial and
error. I decided to start emailing PR firms to see
if they could get my products into magazines or
anything that could help sales. But when I got the
reply emails I found out that PR firms can be a
little too expensive for a company just starting out.
I just decided I’d keep pushing through on what I
knew and just give it all more time to organically
grow.
I was telling my sad, marketing issues to my friend
and he said that he heard of a service I should
check out. He emailed me the website, which was
www.helpareporterout.com.
Help a Reporter Out (HARO) is a free service that
sends out 3 sets of emails a day to anyone who
signs for the service. Their emails detail information of journalists that are looking for sources for
their projects. Agencies that use HARO include
The Huffington Post, FOX, and tons of popular
blogs. Journals look for experts in every topic you
can think of - health and fitness, lifestyle, travel,
food, sex, holidays - everything!
Now I had heard that being quoted by the media
was a great way to establish yourself as an expert
in your field but I wasn’t really sure how it could
help me with marketing a physical product. But I
thought what the heck, I’ll check it out, so I signed
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