How A Moron Entrepreneur Drove 400K in Sales With Press
I’ve been running Mantry.com for 10+ years (I say this for context not as spam) and suck at a lot of aspects of the business. One things I have been wildly lucky / successful at is press. We’ve been featured in Oprah, The Today Show (Three Times), Good Morning America ect. ect.
1) HOW TO INSTANTLY FIND PEOPLE WHO COVER YOUR TOPIC:
In our case Google search “Father’s Day Gift Guide” then click tools > anytime > custom range and choose the month before Father’s Day the year before. You will now get every gift guide written from that year, if you click news or images you will get more long tail blogs. Do this for anything if you make coffee mugs or a meditation app search “Best coffee mugs” and follow the process.
2) CONTACT ONLY THOSE AUTHORS:
Reach out to the writers of these blogs. DM is easiest as just google [Author Name] instagram or twitter will produce their social accounts. For email you can either guess or if you have any email from the news outlet they all use the same format ie First.Last@nbcuni.com
3) KEEP YOUR EMAIL TO ONE SENTENCE
One sentence, the email has to be brief and appear handwritten or you are dead on arrival. I write the same thing “Saw your post on ___ sending a tip for any Valentine’s Day Gift Guides! If included I’ll have the social team re-share it!
4) OFFER TO RE-SHARE IT
Writer are in the eyeballs game and if you have any type of following it’s just more traffic which will make them look good.
5) SELF DEPRECATING SUBJECT LINE
The #1 most effective subject line we have ever used by far is “Mediocre Gift For Him”, we then add Christmas, Father’s Day, Valentine’s Day, Grilling ect. like “Mediocre Christmas Gift For Him” — Nobody likes sale-sy stuff and it makes you seem human.
6) FOLLOW UP
People don’t do this, if you don’t get a reply write these words and hit send “Following up!” — That’s it. 50% + of opportunities happen on the follow up.
CONCLUSION:
This is not a slow and steady thing. Book off 1 day every 3 months, drink a tonne of coffee and reach out to as many people as possible in 10 hours, follow up 3 days later and forget about it. I watch motivational movies in the background while I do it to stay sane.
PS: Focus on the Big Dogs! One appearance on the today show drove 24K in a day! Your product is good enough I promise. News needs to talk about the new things constantly.
Here’s a Video Version:
Thank you!
