May 26, 2020
On today’s episode, we talk with return guest, Norm Farrar, about
moving into the world of PR. Norm loves to create standard
operating procedures for even the simplest of tasks, but finds that
it streamlines life significantly.He owns a company called PR Reach
and uses various SOP’s to run his business. Today, we discuss how
to get more organic traffic through PR. Tune in to hear our
discussion with Norm. Topics:
- Norm’s experience with Ecommerce.
- Why his company still does press releases.
- The benefits of a press release for Amazon sellers.
- The importance of consistent press releases.
- The popularity of his webinars.
- Blogging and keyword stuffing.
- Brands for which PR works best.
- What to do when your keywords drop in ranking.
- Checking in on competitors.
Transcription:
Mark: For a
long time, Joe, I had a number one podcast recording that we've
done on our list of all time. It was with Shakil Prasla and so I
thought I would have a reprise and I would bring back Shakil and it
didn't do as well. I mean it's still a really good episode and I
recommend people listen to it. It was on how to hire CEOs. Your
challenger to my number one episode back then; I know that you have
the number one right now, but your challenger was Norm Farrar, who
had an amazing story, and you brought him back on to talk about
moving into the PR world and over the traditional world.
Joe:
Yeah. Let's just get it clear that a long time as in your case, it
was, what, two or three days. So in your world, that's a long time.
But in the rest of the world, that's not very long at all. Shakil
Prasla, a great guy, if you haven't listened to that podcast,
folks, please do. Shakil is a longtime friend of Quiet Light’s and
just a good all-round human being. But yeah, Norm Farrar came on to
talk about SOPs. Who would have thought that the audience would
have gravitated so much to SOPs? And Norm is in the top 10 for a
long time. He had SOPs on how to make coffee. He has SOPs on how to
create SOPs; SOPs for VAs to hire other VAs. It was very, very
thorough, made his life and the ability to run multiple businesses
much, much easier. And Norm is an old school type of individual. He
helps a lot of eight-figure Amazon sellers and seven-figure Amazon
sellers with a third prong approach to rankings. The first being,
people do sponsored ads, second, a lot of folks do search, find
dime, many chat, things of that where you get into a little gray or
blacked out stuff. But Norm does PR for a lot of folks. He owns a
company called PR Reach and he finds that the third approach really
helps when somebody has a listing that's doing incredibly well and
somehow gets hit by competition and the organic ranking start to
fall. And they go on to on a monthly subscription to do PR work to
keep that organic ranking up. And he finds that it works with
social media influencers; they reach out to social media
influencers to get links and even online magazines and news outlets
as well. It's a great story, great information, and it's a bit of
throwback. People think, hey, this is an online world, online
business, we shouldn't; we don’t need PR, but it definitely works
and Norm talks about it quite a bit in the podcast.
Mark: You
know, I think this whole idea of PR, especially from a buyer
standpoint, is really important because when you buy a business,
there's so many opportunities in that first year or two years for
PR opportunities to be able to go out and get some really good
juicy links, help out the SEO get some natural exposure and get
that ROI back up. So it's an exciting and very relevant topic to be
talking about for anyone who's looking to buy a business or
recently has bought a business, use that, and use all the changes
that you're making to get PR. Let's listen to what Norm has to say
about that.
Joe:
Hey, folks, Joe Valley here from Quiet Light Brokerage. And today I
have somebody on the podcast that's been with us before. Norm
Farrar covered SOPs and he was in the top ten for a long time in
terms of listeners on the Quiet Light Podcast. Norm, welcome back.
Norm: Hey, thanks
for having me.
Joe:
It’s good to have you here. The beard still looks as long as it
ever was.
Norm: And
it’s filling in from the hamburger burn.
Joe:
I remember hearing about that. That's right. Today, we’re not going
to talk about SOPs, we're going to talk about something old school
or at least what seems old school, which is PR work and your
company PR Reach and helping Amazon sellers, e-commerce
entrepreneurs, content developers, or SaaS companies all reach more
people and get more organic traffic through PR. So let's jump into
that just before we do, though for those that didn't hear your epic
podcast on SOPs can you give folks a little bit of background on
yourself so they understand who you are and what you do?
Norm: Yeah, sure. I
am an old dog in the e-commerce game. I go back to the early 90s.
And by the mid-90s, the first website was up for a Fortune 500
company that we developed; helped develop and then got into some
manufacturing and manufacturing facilities were in the US, and
Canada, Taiwan. We outsourced in India back in the 90s. And then
now we have a factory that we own and operate in China. So you
can't own it, but we have a general manager and people working it
for us; it’s all our equipment. And that right now, by the way,
we're producing travel wipes. So just coincidentally, it wasn't
planned that way. We've had it for about a year; a year and a half,
but we're working with that right now. I got involved with sourcing
and logistics and Amazon like this was a perfect storm. So what
we're talking about today actually is everything, it's the
logistics, it's the e-com, it's all elements of getting onto
Amazon. And one of the components; very important components is the
press releases. So when that happened and when I got involved with
Amazon brands and helping other brands, I always used press
releases, nobody really were; unless I think it went back a few
years ago at Amazon and press releases went hand in hand. And then
there was some bad press and people just weren't using them right
and they kind of dissolved. But I kept using them. I did it
properly and kept crushing it so I bought a press release company.
Joe:
Just the introduction and the old school that you're an old dog in
this business, it feels very much like there are not enough old
school techniques that are in play today. Having an 800 number,
having the ability to have your customers call you and communicate
with them and especially when they're checking out and they're
confused and things of that nature. It works and that's; I'm old
school, I used to own a radio direct response media buying agency
to market all my products on radio before I went 100% online in
2005. So I'm an old dog as well. The PR stuff just feels like and
seems like old school but it's important in many ways that I think
a lot of online entrepreneurs are not using today. So why don't you
explain what the heck a press release really is and who sees it and
how it works and it's not just, again, for Amazon sellers
necessarily, but it can help people with an online business or any
kind of business, for that matter? But go ahead and define what it
is and how it's out there and who it reaches.
Norm: Sure, so it's
not a public relations company. We'll get people calling us and
wanting us to promote their event or create something for them;
earned media, that's not us. We work with those types of companies.
So a lot of people get those mixed up. We have press releases and
it covers an event or a benefit or a feature or something
newsworthy about a product or service. And what happens is a press
release is written and then it's put through a distribution
channel. The distribution channel could be to; right now, it's
usually online media, search engines, content providers. It could
go through print channels like periodicals, news magazines, trade
magazines. But in today's society, we have a lot of influencers and
bloggers and journalists that get on the bandwagon and two and pick
it up through maybe a Twitter feed or something along those lines.
So it's completely different. If you were to take a look at it,
there are really three types of press releases. There's the
traditional press release which takes care of all the online, but
it also goes out to the print magazines, periodicals. Those are
typically more expensive and I would only use those if it's a
launch or if it's something that you need to have out there. It
will get you the most exposure however, it's the most expensive.
You're looking at around $750 to $2,500 for that type of exposure.
And then you have which most people know, which is the online press
releases, well, depending on the service, it's strictly that. It’s
just online. It's going out to inaudible[00:09:52.9]. And there's
the third type and this is the one I recommend and that’s…
Joe:
What kind of businesses are going out to the second type?
Norm: Oh the second
type is going out to, it could be Washington Post but it's there
online. It could be CNN, Fox News, any of the NBC affiliates. So
it's everything online and it will go out to the search engines so
they'll pick it up. Google will pick it up; Bing. The next one just
adds an extra element and that's the social component. So it will
take it. It will share it with Twitter, Facebook. That press
release will also pick up a lot of journalists so you can go
through typically, HARO, they have 55,000 journalists. So a company
like ours has that on the list. We’ll push it out to HARO we'll get
the response back. We'll push it out to influencers and bloggers.
So if you're in a specific niche, usually it's typically fine to do
the social media press release and that's very inexpensive. It
could be $100, it could be $300 but what you're getting is national
exposure. And if you get the right press release company with the
proper distribution; I'll get to that in a second, that's really
important, but if they produce a video. A video allows you to
repurpose everything, so just…
Joe:
The videos are linked within the press release or its part of it
itself?
Norm: Yes.
Usually most press releases you can embed a YouTube video but I'll
get to that in a second.
Joe:
Okay.
Norm: With
some press release companies, you can do a video, just a regular
video that it's a second script. It's not what's written, but it's
for an anchor to read. So it looks very similar to what you would
see on the news. And then you can take that and you can make that
your third of link. So the problem with microbrands in e-commerce
is that they have no authority.
Joe:
What's a micro brand?
Norm: A microbrand
is these small private label brands that are trying to be something
on Amazon.
Joe:
Do you mean they're doing 25,000 a month in revenue, 100,000, a
million?
Norm: They
can even be a million dollars a month, these are just brands that
are…
Joe:
They’re not a Nike, okay.
Norm: And they don't
have that type of money behind them, but they have to get exposure.
And the problem is most microbrands; and you could even say, you
can expand this out to law firms or dentists or chiropractors who
are just getting into the business, but they don't have a name. So
they need to get that authority. So how do you do it? You do it
through a press release. And you can take that press release and
repurpose the written press release through social media. You can
take the video and put it through social media or put it on your
YouTube channel. But get this, you can write an article; a blog
article that's going to get Google exposure, and you put that into
your content in the blog article. So when people come to it; when
you go to a blog and you're on somebody’s site, you don't know
these people. You don't know the company. But if you see something
that's even showing that it looks like it's authority; some sort of
authority, people will take it as they will start to feel trust.
Joe:
I got you. Well, let me ask sort of a silly question here, but what
is the ultimate purpose of the press release? So let's just say
we've got and let's target it, so I'm an e-commerce entrepreneur,
50% of my revenue is; I've got one of these microbrands, but I'm
selling both on shops via Amazon. What's the purpose of a press
release? What's it really going to do for me?
Norm: Okay, so it
depends if you're an Amazon seller or an e-commerce seller. First,
there are two different types. The first thing it’s going to do is
build trust and authority. You're going to be able to take your
store and you're going to be able to show it on 500 different media
outlets. This is if you get a good one. If you get a good press
release distribution company, they're going out to the CNN, the FOX
News, the FOX affiliates, the NBC affiliates, they're going to get
you the content placement like on Market Watch or through Reuters
or through Yahoo! Finance.
Joe:
But it's out there and then they choose to pick it up and it
becomes a link on their site or something like that. They could
ignore it completely as well, right?
Norm: Yeah, if they
find it spammy they can ignore it and if you've got a crappy,
cheap, free press release distribution company, you're going to get
what you pay for.
Joe:
Okay.
Norm: You're
going to go out to small town USA and nobody's going to see it.
Joe:
Okay. So the purpose, again, is creating authority and creating
influence and credibility with your brand?
Norm: Yeah, I was
doing a webinar and the night before I was looking and doing some
keyword research and we were working with this pet product and the
whole from Chewy Amazon.com, Amazon.ca, Press Advantage at that
time; that's another press release company, every single spot on
Page 1 was filled up with our brand.
Joe:
Wow.
Norm: On Page 2
every single spot except one spot was filled with the brand.
Joe:
From the press release that you created?
Norm: Yeah.
Joe:
Okay.
Norm: So it's
not you can't do one press release. It's like one radio
advertisement, it just doesn't work. I put out a press release; a
minimum, and this is before I bought the company. I put out a
minimum of one a month and if you're not doing at least one a
month, then you're missing out on it.
Joe:
And how much is that going to cost somebody that's doing the social
media and the newer stuff or really somebody that is trying to just
build more organic traffic and authority and their own reputation
with a micro brand, as you call it?
Norm: Yeah, you
might not even get a lot of traffic, but what you're getting are
those links and you're going to rank on Google for this. I’d give
you an example. So just like the press release I was telling you
about just a second ago, we went out and we were looking at
launching a press release 24 hours before this webinar. And by the
time the webinar started, 279 keywords; ranked keyword phrases were
ranked on Google, and 179 were on Page 1 and 131 were number one.
Now there were a lot of horrible combinations, but there were some
beautiful ones that's not true. And I'll give you an example, those
people that are in the pet niche, Bully Stick. So Bully sticks
launched Bully Sticks Amazon Number 1 and it lasted for quite some
time.
Joe:
I’m sorry to interrupt, an example of a webinar where you are
talking about your product or helping people understand what to do
with their pet in this case, the ultimate goal is to get more
people to attend the webinar, isn't it?
Norm: Well, the
webinar was just showing people about press releases.
Joe:
Okay, I got you.
Norm: How it affects
and so now going back…
Joe:
But you had more people come to your webinar to show them about
press releases because of the ranking system.
Norm: No, this was
just another webinar. It was another webinar group that wanted to
talk about launch and rank on Amazon.
Joe:
I got you. Okay.
Norm: Anyways, if
you do that you're going to start to see; if you do this once a
month, you're going to start to see your brand more and more and
more out there. You can start targeting more keywords. And so
that's the brand side and that's just like listening to a radio ad.
If you hear it once, you're only going to remember it slightly.
Joe:
So for a company like Quiet Light Brokerage; I'm going to get
selfish and I keep interrupting, I'm sorry. I’m going to get
selfish on this Quiet Light Brokerage should we be doing a press
release every time we sell a business, should we be doing a press
release every time we publish a new podcast?
Norm: You should be
doing more than that.
Joe:
Okay, which should we be doing?
Norm: There is a way
to get sort of a one-two punch and that's you create a blog
article, you put that onto your website and this is for e-commerce
as well, you talk about; now you write it as a blog article which
is completely different than a press release. Press release has to
have a newsworthy title, blog article are the five reasons why.
Joe:
Okay.
Norm: So you
launch the blog article first about what you just did, then you
take the press release; you have the writer or whoever is doing
this for you, link over to your blog article. So now the press
release goes out and it's linking back to your website. It's
linking back internal link over to your blog article. Google loves
it because they love knowledge and education and it's a newsworthy
item. They love it. And you've got the extra juice coming in from
the blog article, which, again, it's not a sales-y blog article.
It's talking about the five reasons why. So to give you an example
for Amazon, you've got a natural, healthy, grass-fed bully sticks;
keyword stuffing. Healthy, grass-fed, natural bully sticks provide
nutritious snacks for elderly dogs. On your blog article, it's five
reasons why bully sticks provide or why you should be feeding
elderly dogs bully sticks or something along those lines;
completely different angle. When you do that, you get a one-two
punch.
Joe:
It reminds me of link building really but you're getting organic or
legitimate links that are related to the article that you're
publishing and the information that you're sharing. Okay, so when
it comes to the press release itself who writes them?
Norm: Usually most
people try to get it on the cheap thing inaudible[00:20:34.1].
Joe:
How do we; who writes it, when it's written well who writes it?
Does your company have writers? I mean I've written an article.
When I first launched my e-commerce business back in 2005, I wrote
every article every month and they were just horrible until I had
enough cash flow to hire a professional writer. I'm not going to
write a good press release. So is that part of a service that's out
there, do we have to find somebody on Fiverr or Upwork or
something?
Norm: You
could but usually the press release writers that you'll get are
article writers who say that they can do press release. They don't
understand how it works. So yeah we do have about 20 writers.
Joe:
It's part of our service then as well.
Norm: Yeah, it's
part of the service. If you do want to submit a press release that
you've written we’ll distribute it for you. But if you do that, you
want to make sure that your title is optimized. It's not the links;
like there's a lot of press release and we have no links. It's the
title. And if it's properly optimized, that's where you get about
80% of your ranking.
Joe:
Okay.
Norm: Just in
the title.
Joe:
And when it gets to the companies that are out there that may pick
it up, the news agencies, for instance, do they actually have human
beings looking at these press releases and looking at the titles,
or is there some sort of botnet scrapes and picks the ones that
makes sense for them and whatever's newsworthy?
Norm: I'm pretty
sure that it's just some sort of algorithm that allow them to; I
mean they would be bombarded. There might be, I don't know. But if
you're going over to some of the majors, I know that we get a lot
of kickback whenever; for example, some people will try to sneak
through a promotion. You're not allowed to promote so they'll have
a delay on their website. So we capture their website and five
seconds into it, 10% off will pop up. Well, that'll automatically
get you kicked off of a lot of the majors out there. And it also
depends on the category. So Amazon sellers have abused supplements
so a lot of the premium networks are either it's hard to get a
supplement published. You can, but you're going down to the second
tier networks now. And you're seeing that with; oh, what's the
other big one? It just happened. There are; like supplements is the
biggie that we're getting kickbacks on right now and we've got
other networks that we can use but because it's been abused,
they're very cautious on them. And they're also cautious on like if
you're doing a reverse mortgage like there's a whole list that you
can see.
Joe:
Okay, what type of microbrands work really well with PR? And I
understand it's one part of the marketing department, so to speak,
doing PRs but what kind of brands or micro brands work best?
Norm: Okay, so I'm
going to back up a bit. We started talking about the branding side
of e-com. Well, now let's talk about how the Amazon seller can use
it to promote themselves. How can we get them to sell more and get
recognized? And that's with multiple press releases during a very
short period of time. So you've got a product. It doesn't matter
what the product is. You put out multiple press releases. The press
releases are linked back to rebates. So rebates are effective way
right now for any Amazon seller to show momentum depending on the
network, high-quality buyer score, it's very natural, verified
purchase, and you can rank very quickly.
Joe:
A rebate for those that are not as familiar as what in the Amazon
world?
Norm: It’s a
full purchase buy that you're buying either through a network or
through an ad on Facebook or there's a lot of ways of setting it up
but people are getting 100% free merchandise.
Joe:
Okay.
Norm: And
typically they'll be told, hey, go search this keyword. They go
search the keyword, they buy the product, and then they get
reimbursed somehow by either an Escrow account, PayPal account, or
something like that but by doing that with the press releases, I
find that the stickiness of the rank is probably double, if not
triple.
Joe:
Is the rebate talked about in the press release?
Norm: No. The rebate
is done separately and then the keyword that's talked about or is
being used in the rebate is in the press release.
Joe:
Okay, so how do you avoid potential penalties from Amazon? That's
kind of the search, find, buy methodology, that's against terms of
services. How does this get played sort of above board to make sure
that somebody’s seller account is not going to be suspended or shut
down?
Norm: It's not
against terms of service to provide the product. So I was at a
conference and there were Amazon execs in there and we were talking
about this before I did my presentation. So every brand does this
type of promotion. Every single big brand does it. Amazon provides
free products. So all we're doing is providing free product. We’re
not talking telling them to go and leave a review. We're not
telling them to do anything like that. They're just buying the
product.
Joe:
Okay. So they're searching for a keyword, they buy the product,
they’re going to get 100% rebate on that purchase and they get to
keep the product so it's kind of nice for those folks. But those
particular purchases or the searches for that keywords is stickier
and it helps the organic rankings inside of Amazon.
Norm: Yeah, and
we've seen it. We've done it with a knife; a chef's knife, and we
did three different ways. We did it with just rebates, rebates and
press releases, and just press releases. Each time we got them to
rank with each of them but the best by far was with rebates with
press releases. And the reason why that also works, I think Amazon;
I don't have the actual reason, but I think the reason it works is
because Amazon loves the authority links that you get from a press
release. So your press release is going to link back to your
product listing. You're going to put your product listing in there
and all of a sudden CNN is linking to it, Washington Post, Boston
Herald, Miami Globe.
Joe:
Can you give me an example of a keyword that somebody would be
searching for in terms of Bully Sticks?
Norm: Yeah, sure,
natural Bully Sticks. So in the press release we would have natural
Bully Sticks, in the rebates we would tell people to go and type
natural Bully Sticks. They would go see it and then they would buy
it. Now, in the press release, we're talking about natural Bully
Sticks and the natural Bully Sticks, that press release is linked
back. There's one link that's going back to your Amazon product
page. So as long as you have a link back to your Amazon product
page, you're getting all these links from all the media companies.
That's why that works.
Joe:
Okay. All right on to the other question, which is are there any
particular brands and categories that work best for press releases
or certain types of press releases, or does it not really matter?
Norm: It really
doesn't matter. If you're local, it works the best. If you want to
geo-target something; again, it could go back to Amazon and they
notice that there's lots of sales in areas around Fort Lauderdale
that are under 350,000 people. You can target that press release by
putting let's say natural Bully Sticks provide healthy digestion
for elderly dogs in Fort; or not Fort Lauderdale but something that
has some city that has under 350,000. If you do that, you can nail
it. So you could do that with a chiropractor, you can do that with
a lawyer, any service that's out there. If you've got a charity or
you're trying to get the word out about something and it's in a
specific area. Oh, it's golden, you'll be able to reach number one
in all sorts of search terms very quickly.
Joe:
Are you finding micro brands, when they launch new products, which
hopefully they're doing on a regular basis to keep their business
growing, is doing PR something that they should or can be doing
with each product launch and it's going to help those keyword rank?
Norm: I talk about
press releases and content marketing a lot and I'll go and I know
there's one event that I went to, it was a small event. It was
about 50 people. So we were saying that, hey, look at this, it’s
what you can do. These are all smart people. Show them examples.
Example after example what we were doing and how we achieved it.
And I think one person took us up on the offer to get them going on
a press release. And this is what I find is the norm. It's not the
shiny object. It's not that app that everybody wants to talk about.
So people forget about it and like we talked about just a second
ago there's no one specific service or product. It really benefits
everything. And the people that are doing it properly have always
been doing it have always succeeded. The people that do it wrong
and go for the cheap and just don't listen to the guidelines they
do it wrong. They're the loudest. They’re the squeakiest wheel. New
sellers or new businesses come online and they say oh press
releases don't work. I didn't spend money on a company because it
doesn't work.
Joe:
You bought it because it works and it's profitable.
Norm: I bought it
because I do it every single time and for the last 20 years, I've
been using press releases.
Joe:
And you're helping other Amazon entrepreneurs succeed as well. And
so is the answer yes that when somebody is launching new products,
that they should consistently do press releases or should they be
doing is it yes and that they should just be doing press releases
all the time.
Norm:
Well, you're hitting; I say, yes, I'm a little biased because I
want to build my brand. But if you're doing the product launch yes,
of course, you do that with the rebates. And then you continually
grow it if that's what you want to do. Like, let's say you're
looking at natural Bully Sticks and you noticed that it starts to
drop, you're in Helium10, the keyword drops. What do you do? You
launch maybe a couple more rebates, maybe one press release until
you see it come up again.
Joe:
And that works well, consistently.
Norm: And we're
talking about high eight-figure salaries that are using this
technique that are working it all the time, they're maintaining it.
So once the campaigns are done, they're watching it, maintaining
it, and hitting the keywords when needed.
Joe:
So if it's working for high eight-figure sellers, is it going to
work for high five or six-figure sellers as well or seven-figure
sellers?
Norm: As
long as they use the formula and the formula is very simple. So,
again, on a launch and rank, we can figure this out for you but if
you go over and you use a tool like Helium10 and it gives you like
the Cerebro module that they have you put in, it's called a reverse
ASIN tool and you get the information, you take a look at buying
keywords. It's not browse; I should explain that. Browsing keyword
is like dog treat, dog chew. Pet owner doesn't know what they want
but in Bully Sticks they know exactly what they want. The Bully
Sticks is really high. There are 200,000 searches a month; hard to
work with. But if you go to natural Bully Stick or organic Bully
Stick, then you've got keywords that are manageable and you can
start applying the rebates to. When you look at these; if you take
a look at the giveaway side of it, you take about one-third of it.
So in Helium10, there's a column that says giveaways. If it says
100 then do 33 and see what happens. And there is another trick to
this and I don't want to overcomplicate it, but we take those
keywords, natural Bully Stick, we call that a primary long tail and
we create a silo from that. And let's say it says a thousand
giveaways, which you probably would, we'll go and we'll take the
natural Bully Stick, we'll put it in to find more. So again, in
Helium, it's advanced filters. We put natural bullies. We hit apply
and then we'll see every term, keyword term that has natural bully,
six-inch natural bully, 12-inch natural bully. That way we only
have to take a fraction of the amount that has natural bully in it.
Those keywords, those long-tail keywords move up almost instantly
and it bumps the natural Bully Stick primary.
Joe:
Yeah. Then you're not spending as much PR dollars, I would imagine.
Norm: Not either.
Joe:
Yeah, that's just what I used to do in my old paperclip days back
when it used to cost 26 cents to rank on a keyword like colon
cleanse, and by the time I was done inaudible[00:34:18.5]. Hell no,
it’s probably $10 now. I sold it. Who knows? Yeah, there are
different approaches for sure. Cost-wise, look, you're talking
about eight-figure sellers doing this on a regular basis. They've
got people that focused on keywords and look inside a Helium10
using Cerebro as you talked about. But for somebody that's really
just starting out or somebody that; I recorded another podcast
yesterday with somebody that had an exit and our original call was
24 months ago and I had to be the bearer of bad news, which is,
listen your business is not worth what you think it is because it's
trending down. You've got to hold on. You've got to fight here. And
one of the things that they can potentially do is PR and fight. But
if they're trending down and money's tight and they're worried
about it, is this something that somebody can afford if they're
doing a million dollars a year in revenue and they've got 15% to
20% profit margins?
Norm: Well, the
first thing for any new seller is they've got to be properly
capitalized. So if you're going into this, you have to understand
what your marketing budget should be and you should be looking at
it as jumping into it with two feet. If you're going into plastic
shoe stretchers and you've done your research and you see that most
of the plastic shoe stretcher people out, there are three-star
reviews that they only can sell $3,000 a month that is probably not
a good idea for you to do press releases and rebates. If you go
into a competitive product or even a mid-search volume, I'm going
into it with two feet and what the clincher is proper competitive
analysis. Go and check out what your competitors are doing, see
what the search volume is, and then you've got to do an investment.
And I don't care if it's; like for us we do three things. This is
off-topic, PPC, rebates and press release, and Amazon posts. If
you're not doing those three, you're not optimizing your listing
for your sales. So anyways then I have to jump into it with two
feet. I don't have to spend cash that I have to use for groceries,
but I can start by doing a smaller launch. You don't have to go in
with 100,000 bucks. You can do a small launch, like maybe four
press releases under a hundred, depending on the keyword, but under
a hundred units and you're off to the races. And if you continue
the momentum going, then you're going to be picking up. So here's
what we do. We’d start off with main keywords. So if it's Bully
Sticks and then we'll stray; I just did this one for carving knives
or for Chef Knives. So we started out with Chef Knives, got them up
like number one to number three, number one to number six for chef
knife, kitchen knife then we spread it out the next month to sushi
knives, carving knives and now we've got this really wide base. And
over a period of one year and three months, we've got it rock
solid. We've nailed it down for this company because we're
constantly spreading and making it wide. Most new sellers, they
look at going after the most competitive terms and they spend
either on PPC or rebate's just through the nose they're bleeding
money because they're just not doing it right. They've really got
to know what they're doing. Now for press releases we let people go
out and do their own rebates and go out and do their own press
releases. And then they come back and they cry that it didn't work,
this sucks. Well, let's take a look at your listing. If I had your
listing on page one and we got you there and it's terrible and
you've got iPhone photographs in your listing; everything is just
its terrible. Then you're not doing; you're not winning the Brady
bunch. If you can't win the Brady Bunch, which is beat your
competitors, go out and use PickFu or whoever and do a split test
then you're priming your listing to be optimized. And all what
we're going to do with press releases and rebates is get you to the
listing. We're going to get people to the listing.
Joe:
Can you tell me about your onboarding process in terms of somebody
that is thinking, okay look this guy Norm sounds really smart. I
want to have all three prongs here and press release is one of
them. Do you have an onboarding process for somebody that really
has no experience in this whatsoever, what is it like?
Norm: We had to get
that going because we were getting that type of experience. So we
call it the AMZI concierge. So we'll go in, we'll do a complete
listing on it and we'll tell you what you should improve. We can
help you. We can help like with the manage listings. We can help
with photography. But it's up to you. And then if we look at them
there are many listings we look at and go oh, this is awesome.
We'll let you know. But it's about a $300 cost and it's the best
$300 you'll ever spend because at the end of it, we'll tell you no
or we're going to give you the green light. And if we give you the
green light, most of the time it works. It works well.
Joe:
I got you. Okay, this has been great Norm, how do people learn more
about PR Reach and that concierge service and reach out to you to
get more information?
Norm: Well, first
they have to spell the name right. There’s two R’s in it so it's PR
Reach.
Joe:
PR Reach.
Norm: Okay, so
again I get people telling me that they’ve tried to reach me at
Preach but PR Reach and you could reach me at Norm@PRReach and
we’ll be; like the whole sales team, we've got an excellent sales
team, great customer service. They'll reach out. They'll have an
appointment. You get a free 30-minute call with them and they just
go over everything just so you feel comfortable.
Joe:
That’s great. All right.
Norm:
And to make sure you're doing the right
thing. Do you want brand, do you want launch? It just depends. And
you don't have to be an Amazon seller, you could be that
chiropractor that's looking for help.
Joe:
Yeah, I think it's one arm of the marketing arms that somebody
should be using instead of just one or two. It sounds like a great
approach. I appreciate your time, Norm. I’m looking forward to
having you back on the podcast again soon.
Norm: Hey, no
problem. It's my pleasure.
Resources: PR
Reach Norm@PrReach.com Quiet Light Podcast@quietlightbrokerage.com