Episode 141: A Simple Tactic That Can Help You Cut Through When Pitching
In this quick tip episode, Fiona shares her advice on how to pitch yourself and your business to other brands and provides insights on a quick tactic that can help you cut-through the noise and garner their attention. Listen now as she talks about two simple and quick steps to make it happen.
Topics discussed in this episode:
Introduction
Fiona’s experience on getting published
Familiarity and flattery
Conclusion
Get in touch with My Daily Business Coach
Resources mentioned in this episode
Episode transcript:
Hello, and welcome to Episode 141 of the My Daily Business Coach Podcast. I am genuinely so thankful for you showing up giving me your time. And I hope that this quick tip episode really, really helps you.
If you are new around here, thank you, thank you, thank you. And if you're not if you're not new, just as many thank yous. But if you're new around here, and you're not familiar with the way that this podcast works, there are kind of three main types of episodes. Today's is a quick tip episode, or episode, I should say. And those quick tips are generally under 10 minutes, they're things you can action immediately, and they come out every single Tuesday, Australian time. We also have on Thursdays, either a coaching episode with myself that's a bit longer, it's usually about half an hour to 40 minutes. And then every second Thursday, I interview a small business owner from across the globe, who I think really, really embodies the idea of passion, purpose, and profit.
And if you haven't heard of that, that is my book, Passion, Purpose, Profit. And you can buy it online from all major retailers and from lots of lots of lots of small businesses. So if you are looking for something to kind of give you a kickstart in your business, whether you're already in an established business, or you're looking to start one, definitely check out Passion, Purpose, Profit. It's loaded with lots of tactics, frameworks, all sorts of good things. But my point is to say thank you for coming here today.
So today, it is like I mentioned a quick tip episode. This is something that I've done in my business, but also in my career forever, really, it's kind of just how I work. And I think it is really, really helped me in so many areas. And I do it in a way that's genuine. So I think that's also something to point out before we get stuck in. The other thing to point out before we get stuck in is that I am fortunate enough to work from my beautiful office in North Warrandyte where I live and I just want to acknowledge the traditional owners and custodians on the land of which I work. They are the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin nation, and I pay my respects to their Elders, past, present and emerging and pledged to work in ways that really do aid equality for all.
So today, it is a quick tip episode let's get stuck in shall we.
So for many, many years, I have worked as a journalist, and I have worked on all sorts of publications, I have written, you know, huge articles for the national newspaper in the United Arab Emirates. I've written articles on super cool. People in fashion for Shift Magazine in Japan, I have written about Yeah, industrial designers for Soma magazine out of San Francisco. I've written for cool hunting in New York refinery 29. In the US, I used to have a column in the age newspaper in Melbourne. So I've, I've had that going for a long time, I had a small business column for a while on The Design Files, written for broadsheet, just so many publications. And one of the things that I teach, and I have a short course on is How To Get Published. And one of the things within that core, so if you're listening, and you're like, I'd love to get published on a blog, or in a in a magazine or, or any sort of place. Definitely check that out. It's just over at mydailybusinesscoach.com/shop called How to Get Published in Online and Print. But in that I talk about how to contact an editor. And I think this next tip that I'm going to walk, work through works, whether you're contacting an editor, as an interior designer, trying to get your work published, it works, whether you are contacting somebody for collaboration, it works, whether you're literally just contacting somebody to kind of connect for the first time. And 100% definitely works when you are contacting editors for trying to get published. And you might be like, well, what is this magical thing?
Well, it's just being human, that it is to start with flattery and knowledge. So flattery and familiarity. That's what I always say to people. So I have been, like I said, a published writer for a long time. And largely due to I was the Melbourne kind of contributor for cool hunting for a long time. Shout out to the amazing Josh and Evan who ran cool hunting. I was also like I said, I had the I used to do the back page of the main newspaper here in Melbourne. That was also syndicated often in Sydney as well. And that was the social column and it was before Instagram or any kind of social media was really up and running the way that it is now. And so everyone and everyone wanted to be in a social column and so I would get pitched constantly from all sorts of PR agencies from brands themselves and it was just it was amazing column to have. I didn't have Absolutely love going out every night. I'm not that type of person. But I loved meeting all these small businesses and small business owners, particularly in the creative space.
But one thing I've noticed is that when I get pitched, so it could be people pitching us to be on this podcast, it could be people, we get pitched to have people come in as internships, we get pitched for, "Hey, we think it'd be really great if we could syndicate your blog on this and not pay you." Lots of things. But what I find is that they never start, or rarely do they start with familiarity and flattery. Those two things will get you a long way when it is up to you to be like outreaching and connecting with people.
So what do I mean by familiarity and flattery?
Familiarity and flattery. So the first is to show you know the person. And yes, you might be pitching to, you know, 10 or, or more people, but you should always individualize the pitch now, before you're like, Oh, my God, that's so much work. What I mean is that you would have a base template of which the bulk of the information would be the same, probably, but the start and the end and some of the information inside but the start is what we're talking about, would really be different and tailored to that person. So say, for instance, you were pitching me, I would want to know, that you like say, for instance, you're pitching for the podcast, the amount of pitches we get, and we get multiple every single day. They so often, "Hi, my name is blah, I look after, blah, blah, blah, who is an incredible founder, and he ... this, and he wants to come on and talk about blah, blah, blah, blah, blah." No knowledge of who I am. No flattery, as in, "I loved your episode about blah, blah" or "I love that you talk about this on Instagram" No familiarity. And so it just instantly is cold, it's like I can tell this is just a cut and paste. Also, you have never listened to the podcast. Otherwise, you'd know that we'd never have these types of people on it.
But you're not starting with anything that is making me feel like an individual like a human. And it's the same way what whoever you're pitching. So one way that you can do this is and it should be done in a really genuine way. Not only like, Hi, I love everything that you're about. But one way that you can do this is to firstly figure out what is your objective with pitching, wherever you're pitching, and then all connecting or sending the email, and then create a list of the places that you're sending all the people the brands that you're going to send it to, you could do that in an Excel sheet, you could do it in a notebook, whatever way to do it.
And then next to that, you want to do a bit of research. Now if you're if you're going to ask somebody for something, take two minutes of your life to go and do a little bit of research. So this might mean for bigger companies, you might have set up a Google Alerts. So you can put in their brand name or even their name, if they're big enough into Google Alerts. And for a couple of weeks before you contact them, get those Google Alerts sent to you every week so that you can kind of understand, oh, yep, this is what they're talking about. This is kind of their brand values. This is what they're in the media about. And maybe you're going to point to that. So you might start with "Dear whoever how to get in contact with you, I read your recent article related to x y Zed. I think it's incredible what you're doing ..."
Make it genuine, don't say think it's incredible if it's if you don't think it's incredible, but you can always find something that you can say that is genuine. And that is also it's flattering, but it's familiarity. So I'm more inclined to read that because when you've said something nice, and you've said it in a genuine way, but also you've shown you're familiar with me you're not asking for something that we've actually just run or you know, you're asking for something that actually goes way against what our brand values are.
And then once you've you know, put that information in, you want to almost have like a sentence next to it. That's your flattery familiarity column, and you can start writing those up, so that then when you have the template and you're pitching out, you can create an individual email to these people or maybe you're sending a DM, but you're showing familiarity and flattery, and that's really really the tactic that I'm trying to get across to you today are the tip really, tactic sometimes sounds so like, no like, sometimes has a negative connotation.
But I think if you can start with familiarity and flattery, you are halfway there, because the person is much more likely to actually read the rest of the email or the rest of the DM and you've put you've put them in a good headspace. They're open, they're much more open. The minute I say "Hi, my name is so and so. I'm a podcast manager for blah." I'm just like, oh here we go. Here we go again. So if you are thinking about you'd like to get into media you'd like to pitch into even a stockist not even but you know, a stockist, maybe you're contacting a stockist for the first time. Always start with familiarity and flattery even have that as a little, you know, post it note familiarity and flattery, and think about and again, I can't stress enough it needs to be genuine. I can tell when it's just like, ah gushy, gushy, gushy with no actual, you know, genuineness behind it. But yeah, really think about where I'm pitching Am I going straight in with Hi, my name is blah, blah, blah. And I'm so great. And you should listen to me because of x y, z. Rather than, "Hey, I know I'm interrupting your day right now. I just want you to tell you, you're awesome at this. I love that you do this for your audience. And here's what I want you to know about me." rather than straight in with. I'm so great. Listen to me.
So regardless of where you're pitching, what you're doing, how are you connecting with people? Consider flattery and familiarity at the start. And like I said, there's lots of tools that can help you such as Google Alerts, Instagram, all social media, just, you know, Google. Whatever your normal search engine ears, just take a couple of minutes to look at them. Look through people's Instagram stories, look through their highlight, you can gain so much knowledge.
And usually if you're asking to be on their podcast to be in the magazine, to connect with them for a collaboration, chances are you already think they are actually good at what they do, or you want to be part of their community. And so you respect them in some way. There's always going to be something you can find that you can genuinely create a bit of flattery in there and show your familiarity of them and their brand and their business.
So that is it for today's quick tip episode. If you want to check out the transcript of this, you can do that over at mydailybusinesscoach.com/podcast/141. That is it for today. I'd love to see you next time. So make sure you hit subscribe so you don't miss out on any future podcast episodes. Thanks for listening. By.
Thanks for listening to the My Daily Business Coach podcast. If you want to get in touch you can do that at my daily business coach comm or hit me up on Instagram at @mydailybusinesscoach.
