Discover the secrets to meaningful brand connections and collaborations with Ahu Terzi on the latest episode of Coffee N° 5. Join host Lara as they shed light on the central role of editors and brand builders, emphasizing the significance of investing in marketing materials that effectively tell your story. Explore different tools to stand out to editors and audiences, and learn the importance of a strategic approach to growing conversions. Ahu also sheds light on the importance of transparency when partnering with brand builders and harnessing the halo effect” on social media as a small brand. Dive deep into the concept of the layered approach and uncover how it can elevate your brand to new heights. Tune in for actionable insights and expert advice on building a successful brand strategy.
We'll talk about:
For more information, visit NewBeauty's Website.
Subscribe to Lara's newsletter.
Also, follow our host Lara Schmoisman on social media:
Instagram: @laraschmoisman
Facebook: @LaraSchmoisman
Discover the secrets to meaningful brand connections and collaborations with Ahu Terzi on the latest episode of Coffee N° 5. Join host Lara as they shed light on the central role of editors and brand builders, emphasizing the significance of investing in marketing materials that effectively tell your story. Explore different tools to stand out to editors and audiences, and learn the importance of a strategic approach to growing conversions. Ahu also sheds light on the importance of transparency when partnering with brand builders and harnessing the halo effect” on social media as a small brand. Dive deep into the concept of the layered approach and uncover how it can elevate your brand to new heights. Tune in for actionable insights and expert advice on building a successful brand strategy.
We'll talk about:
For more information, visit NewBeauty's Website.
Subscribe to Lara's newsletter.
Also, follow our host Lara Schmoisman on social media:
Instagram: @laraschmoisman
Facebook: @LaraSchmoisman
Lara Schmoisman
00:05
This is Coffee Number Five. I'm your host, Lara Schmoisman. Hello there. Welcome back to Coffee Number Five. My coffee is ready, and I hope you are too, because we're ready for a treat here at Coffee Number Five. I'm so happy because I really got to get a really good friend of mine today. And that when we met in person the first time, we couldn't stop talking and then walking and talking. And with those people that you just click and connect and you feel not only that you know her as a person, you understand the same industries and you talk in the same language. But on top of that, she knows the whole side of the business that I don't. And that fascinates Ahu, welcome.
Ahu Terzi
00:54
Hi.
Lara Schmoisman
00:55
How are you?
Ahu Terzi
00:56
I'm so excited. That was such a great intro, because I think you're right. I think it's very rare that you find that instant connection in someone, and we definitely had that. And it was a great conversation. Our first conversation was a dinner. We were so brave to sit down to have dinner with someone that we had never met before. I think that itself is so unlike.
Lara Schmoisman
01:20
Me neither. And one one.
Ahu Terzi
01:24
Yeah. One one dinner. Like, it's a commitment. And we both took a chance and it was lovely.
Lara Schmoisman
01:31
Yeah, it was great. But I wanted people to know a little more about you and tell us a little bit about your background and what are you doing today.
Ahu Terzi
01:40
Yeah. So I am the EVP of brand partnerships at NewBeauty. NewBeauty is an almost 20 year old magazine brand, a media brand, a beauty platform. Now I call it. And it's a trusted authority in the beauty space with expert guides and information on products and treatments and services from our editors as well as board certified doctors. It's been around for a very long time. I followed it for many years as a consumer. I still had the first issue when it came out, it was like a phone book. Everybody will remember who knew about new beauty then. So this is literally my dream job. I got to it by way of working in the industry for almost three decades. And English is not my first language. America is my second country. My home country is Turkey.
Ahu Terzi
02:39
I grew up in Turkey reading old issues of glamour and 17 and J, 14 and Tigerbeat. And I always knew I wanted to work in magazines. That was never really in question. The goal was always to get to a magazine. And I've been very lucky to have had that chance since I graduated from college to have always worked in magazines. And now I'm in new beauty.
Lara Schmoisman
03:08
Yeah, but I mean, you're in a side of the magazines now that is not that well known, because when you're talking about a magazine, oh, what are you an editor or are you a writer? Are you in advertising? And you're not in either one of those.
Ahu Terzi
03:27
So what do you know? The business has changed so much. When I first graduated from college, everything was very siloed, and I actually really wanted to be an editor. And when I was offered a job at New York magazine, I realized that the key card that I had as an advertising sales assistant didn't even open the editorial floors date. It really was church and state. If you got a job in sales and marketing, you couldn't really commingle with the editors or interact with the editors. But our business has changed so much. We are all collaborators now. We are in an industry where we're publishing content, holding up journalism, and serving that content up to consumers.
Ahu Terzi
04:21
Whoever wants to consume that media in all different kinds of forms and formats, it could be a magazine in print, it could be an article, it could be a social media account that you follow, and then through a link in bio, you go to read an article, right? It will be an editor know suddenly appears in your stories and is videotaping themselves in a way to tell you about a product that they just found out about and how they've used it. But you can also go to events like we did in Miami and walk the booths and find different things you want to try, different products or services and treatments you want to try. And I think as a media brand, we all now have the responsibility to connect the dots for people. Editors are not behind closed doors anymore.
Ahu Terzi
05:20
The brand partnership side is the side where we bring everything together. We're not just selling ads in a magazine and a printed magazine. We're really bringing solutions to brands, whether they are a brand new company, just launched their products, and are trying to find consumers that match their criteria, match their target audience, or a legacy brand who's trying to differentiate themselves from all the other competitors, or the indie brands that are popping up. We can find the right solution. It's a collaboration between editors and the event organizers, the marketers, and the data scientists on our team. We all have to work together. Yeah.
Lara Schmoisman
06:06
And it's so interesting because this will change so much before. And you guys listen probably to so many of our podcasts that we talk about PR and that many years ago was very straight business. It's like you pitch a magazine and you were white, and if the editor or the journal is interested, they will write the piece or not. But now, there are so many other opportunities to be featured in different magazines, and I need to say that there's a lot of paper play, but it's a name of the game these days.
Ahu Terzi
06:45
Well, I think definitely investing in marketing helps a new brand get noticed. Whether you're doing an in person event for all the editors, influencers, or freelance writers to attend, or creating materials that really explain your story, or investing in research that tell your story and provide backup for all the science that you're providing the editors to think about, these are all investments that I think brands need to continue to make. So whether you ultimately use the recognition that you get from influencers and celebrities and hairstylists and makeup artists and magazine editors as a tool to market your products or not is your choice. There are a lot of brands who, for example, do not license any credentialing seals for their website and only have their own kind of brand identity on their website. And they don't talk about the press that they receive.
Ahu Terzi
07:49
There are brands who don't work with influencers. There are brands who only advertise in print magazines. So everybody's tactic is different. But ultimately we all still have to think about brand awareness. You still have to have a brand identity. And I know you talk about brand a lot, brand identity a lot on this podcast. You still have to have a brand identity and create awareness around that brand story and brand identity. And you still have to think about all the tactics. Right. If you don't have a strategic approach to all the tactics you're going to use, you're not going to be successful in converting those people who are curious into buyers and users of your brand.
Lara Schmoisman
08:38
When we're talking about omnichannel, that we talk a lot. This is another part of the omnichannel. It's not that it's a completely different strategy. When you create omnichannel strategies, you need to keep in consideration these partnerships that can be partnerships, collaborations. There are so many different names to give.
Ahu Terzi
08:59
Yeah, for sure. I mean, we have products, we have programs, for example, where we do not require any participation fee. If you have a product that you are trying to promote and we want to get it in the hands of consumers, you give us a certain quantity of that and we have different packages, we can put it in and offer you a sampling opportunity to beauty consumers who are more likely to try new products than any other average beauty consumer. And we require no participation fee. Right. So the beauty of it is you have product in hand, but you may not have marketing dollars. You bring the product. We help you bring the product to a very qualified beauty consumer. They win, we win, you win. Understanding of brand partnership.
Lara Schmoisman
09:54
Yeah. There are opportunities there for everyone. You just need to make sure that you know the industry. And this is what I see with a lot of brands right now, that they think that do marketing takes huge budget. Today I came from a meeting actually that were talking about performance marketing and brand marketing and how to work together with both. That's what I do as an agency, integrated marketing. But you need to be very conscious who you are as a brand and where you're standing. Because if you're a new brand, if you start putting performance money in ads, it will completely go to trash if you don't have a goal for those campaigns.
Ahu Terzi
10:35
Yeah, for sure.
Lara Schmoisman
10:37
So you need to make sure that you are very strategic of where you put their money and what are you going to be getting your return of investment. As you said before, brand awareness is everything for a new brand and for an old brand as well.
Ahu Terzi
10:51
Yeah. And I think this is one of the reasons why we enjoyed each other so much when we first met, because we both have this consultant way about us and we really care about the industries that we're in. We're very passionate about beauty and beauty branding and we want to see everyone be successful. Right? Like everyone who thinks that they have a great product or a service and want to target a beauty consumer who's interested in finding out about new products and services. We want to help in any way we can. But you're so right. Without objectives, without people telling me, this is my objective, this is the goal at hand, this is what I'm trying to achieve. I am willing to spend money on X, I am not willing to spend money on Y. And what are some ideas you can together?
Ahu Terzi
11:48
For me, that's the kind of consultant behavior that I naturally have and I think that's what you have too. I love working in our industry with that mindset.
Lara Schmoisman
11:59
Yeah, exactly. But when you work with a consultant mindset like me or like you need to make sure that first of all, you feel comfortable talking to that person and second, that otherwise it's not the person for you. And second, that you could be transparent. If you're not going to be transparent, don't even try it, because you need to make sure that you talk to that person to be aligned and to create a strategy. If they are not transparency in the numbers and or you are holding back information that it happened to me working with clients, they held back information that I didn't know that. We will have a new product to launch. So how I can strategize for that?
Ahu Terzi
12:39
Yeah, for sure. You want to be able to have transparent conversations. That's a really good point, actually. I think for years I was in advertising sales. That was my title. Right? Like for many years. Like I said, it was church and state, editorial teams at their jobs, the marketing teams at their jobs. And I went out and sold advertising space in magazines or at one point it became digital media and in digital media and there's usually a barrier for most people when they hear a sales title, they think they're going to have to spend so much money to get what they need to get done. And I'm so glad at one point in my career I had the opportunity to go to Turkey and launch Vogue, GQ, Kandinas, Traveler and Glamour in Turkey with a publishing company there.
Ahu Terzi
13:31
And I got to work in a very small team environment where everybody sat together.
Lara Schmoisman
13:36
What an amazing experience.
Ahu Terzi
13:38
Yeah, it was. It really was incredible. And it was a team that was super small and we all sat together, we all collaborated. I brought my special projects expertise to the table. I was not selling ads for the first time. I was literally going to meetings and saying, what do you need? The needs would be everything from find us influencers and let's do videos together to we need a PR event and we'd love to host some socialites and celebrities at a luncheon. Can you help us do that? We want to sponsor an event that you're doing. What can you do for us that's special and unique? And one of the projects was putting together a supplement for sex in the City when the movie came out and one of our partners sponsored that.
Ahu Terzi
14:32
And it was just so much fun to work in that environment. I brought that back with me when I came back to the US after those launches and came back to the magazine industry. And luckily everything had changed, right? That brand partnerships, that consulting mindset had finally settled in and it was no longer taboo to be in sales trying to help you with your marketing goals.
Lara Schmoisman
15:03
Yeah, well, it was necessary. The industry changed so much. And I bet that your car will let you talk to the people from editorial at that point.
Ahu Terzi
15:12
Yeah, just the editorial need to come up with the best of the content that you can produce. Whether it's like the best storyline when you're interviewing a celebrity, best essence of that celebrity, best products and services that you want to feature. That's what magazines are all about. Whether digital or in print, magazines are all about giving you tools that you can use in real life and inspiration and inspire different behaviors in you, inspire change in you.
Lara Schmoisman
15:52
The other day I was thinking about it, remember when were teenagers, I have teen kids. You have teen kids. And I mean, they're online all the time, and they get their answers online all the time. But I remember getting answers from quizzes, from magazines. Yeah, of course, now I know better. Who knows who did those quizzes? And it's real or not, but that's how I would learn and get my answers many times.
Ahu Terzi
16:18
What's it about online? I'm on TikTok and Instagram all the time, too. So is my daughter, who just turned 21, so I don't knock it at all. But it is an algorithm, and you are stuck in what the app wants to show you. Right? However, when you are in a magazine environment, whether digital or print, or whether you're going after brands, Instagram handles or TikTok handles, you are reaching out and saying, I want travel content, I want workout content, I want cooking content. Right. You are saying, this is the kind of content I want. And then you can kind of get lost in the passion content that you're searching for. But when you're on social media, that's whatever the algorithm wants to show you. So I think there's still a lot of magic in what the editorial teams do.
Ahu Terzi
17:18
And what I love to be able to do at new beauty is, for the first time in my career, 100% beauty, 100% of the time. Right. I don't deviate from.
Lara Schmoisman
17:27
I do believe that there is a beauty in copywriting and ideas and storytelling that's the core of my business and my beliefs. And there is something about the written word still that, for me, is magic, and that can take you in a journey of wanting more and learning more. And with the digital world, we can create those links that takes you from one place to another.
Ahu Terzi
17:52
Yeah, for sure. Storytelling for brands is very important, too. And I love it when I see PR materials from a brand where they really go into the story of the research, of the inspiration of the ingredients. I love reading about ingredients and how they may have been used in the past in other cultures and traditions and purposes. Right. I think it's very important to get inspired from the story of a brand. And then obviously, you're also, especially in beauty, you're also measuring your brand's efficacy, its credentials, so to speak. I personally judge by scent. I want everything to be scented and beautifully fragrant. And, yeah, I think the editorial teams are masters at storytelling, and I now, see my job as promoting them rather than trying to sell something. Right.
Lara Schmoisman
18:58
You have a product.
Ahu Terzi
18:59
I have a product. And it's the editorial word.
Lara Schmoisman
19:01
Let me ask you a question, because I really like to give Lee more hands on examples. I love the example that you just gave us of what you were doing and that you can put the products in boxes and give it to people. But tell us about an exciting, something different, a partnership that you created that. Oh, my God, we did this. And it's so outside the box.
Ahu Terzi
19:27
Oh, wow. I wish I had prepared for this. Sounds like a job interview.
Lara Schmoisman
19:32
No pressure.
Ahu Terzi
19:36
That's a really good question. In a previous role, I was part of a team that came up with these unique ideas all the time, and we worked with a handful of really big brands in the country, and were so focused on their business as part of this corporate team that I had the privilege of being able to ideate around business opportunities that a media company may not necessarily always be in front of. And for one of our clients, who was a hair advertiser, a very well known mass hair advertiser, we came up with a series of master classes that we worked with our editors on. Our editors prepared based on data and insights that we had, plus their gut instinct and trend prediction capabilities. We came up with master classes that we created.
Ahu Terzi
20:36
We scripted, we wrote with our editors in collaboration with our editors. We recorded them, and then we presented these findings, along with updates and recordings from our editors to sellers at retailers. So if you were a Walgreens or a CVS or a Kroger beauty seller, like an associate at a retailer. Right. You had the opportunity to attend a webinar hosted by the media experts in collaboration with a brand. Right. Hearing directly from this national legacy media brands editors about what consumers want, what are they looking for in shampoo and conditioner products? What are some hair trends that are coming up? How to recognize different hair content, whether the hair needs moisture, whether the hair needs color care, and what are some of the innovations that are happening in the place?
Ahu Terzi
21:44
And you got to attend a webinar, and this was all a benefit that our advertiser or partner got in partnership with us. Right. It was a partnership benefit that we packaged that had never really been dumb before.
Lara Schmoisman
22:00
That's so interesting. Fascinating.
Ahu Terzi
22:03
Yeah. So we trained retailers basically for them.
Lara Schmoisman
22:07
That's awesome. Because that's something that smaller brands, they don't know how important it is that in the moment that you partner with a retailer, you need to be ready to train the team, too, on your part.
Ahu Terzi
22:19
Yeah. And you need to be able to say things that are unique to your product and is inclusive of different kinds of consumers needs and does your product justice. Right. You don't necessarily want to be reiterating your entire marketing PR release. You want to be saying like one, two, three. These are the top three things that you need to remember about this product. So when a consumer comes to you, for example, under eye bags, this is the kind of product, this is why you can recommend this product. Yeah. You need to be able to tell the retailer as much as possible about why it's important to have this product on the shelf and to be able to recommend this product to the consumer.
Lara Schmoisman
23:08
Absolutely. So today, if a smaller brand with not a lot of money for advertising come to you, what will be your recommendation?
Ahu Terzi
23:20
The first thing I would ask is if they've done any work on determining who their target audience is. That is so important.
Lara Schmoisman
23:30
So important. And let me say something to determine your target audience. We always start from a gut feeling or what you believe that is intention or will fit the product that you created. But then you need to go to the mattress and find out really who is your target audience. And many times it fears that the ones that you believe it is.
Ahu Terzi
23:55
Yeah. And while creating the product, especially if you're a beauty brand, I'm assuming that you have done some research, right? Like let's say you're creating a vitamin C product. You've decided that you're going to create a vitamin C product and you came up with your brand and your packaging with the target consumer in mind. Right? Like maybe it's colorful and has a unique application technique for a younger audience. Or maybe it's in a dropper serum type glass bottle. For an audience that's more mature and sophisticated, you probably have done this work, but you need to tell me what that is. Like, who that audience is. I think that is the most important first step. I need to know exactly who your target audience is. Who are you trying to convert to be buyers of your product?
Ahu Terzi
24:49
Because then and only then, I can tell you, okay, in our experience, we find this audience on these various different tactics that we have in reaching them. For our editorial. Right. We may recommend social retargeting is an easy way of matching your audience or your target audience. Explain a little bit what new beauty, for example, let's give us as an example if new beauty is the media company that you want to partner with, because your target audience and new beauty's target audience, where new beauty is strong in matches, right. You want to work with new beauty to do some social retargeting, finding users that match on Instagram or Facebook or even TikTok. But with NewBeauty's help, you're not necessarily going out and looking for audiences on your own.
Ahu Terzi
25:50
You're looking for audiences through the new beauty handle so that you have the kind of halo effect of the new beauty brand that is pushing out your content amidst other new beauty content on social. Right. And you're finding the new beauty audience that is already consuming similar type content. And media companies expertise in social stories and feed posts is also very important for a small brand because what you're going to as a small brand going to gravitate towards is probably packaging, right? Or you're going to send some of your products to influencers and hope that you get some creative out of them and you're going to boost that content on social. Right. But when you work with a media company with very small budgets, we can do some social retargeting.
Lara Schmoisman
26:45
What are you talking about, small budgets? Give me a ballpark if possible.
Ahu Terzi
26:51
Well, on social, you can really work with any budget, right? And it depends on the media company. And some media companies have minimums. You can do some really great social targeting for $10,000 over the course of a few months and get a lot of conversion and benefit from it. But then you'll find different media companies that have minimums and you won't be able to work with them until you have enough to invest in what they're doing out in the marketplace. Right. So aligning on social with a media brand is one of the things you can do. Sampling, I think, is huge in beauty, especially for fragrance, for skincare, I think sampling is very important. Color cosmetics. We've come a long way with color cosmetics and being able to sample at new beauty, we have test tube, which is a subscription, four times a year.
Ahu Terzi
27:51
We have the VIP luxury box, which is a huge box that's worth $1,300 worth of full size products. And if you can get into one of these boxes, you're writing alongside of mega brands like Skinceuticals and Kiehl's and Alastin. You usually get category or product exclusivity and you get to promote your brand amidst all of these very legacy brands in the beauty space. Right. That's also another interesting way to start out.
Lara Schmoisman
28:29
That's really good advice. Very good advice.
Ahu Terzi
28:32
Yeah, I would say so. Sampling and social retargeting is probably the two easiest ways to make the most of your investment, because again, we're going.
Lara Schmoisman
28:42
All about, and we talk about this all the time. You need the social proof. You need people talking about your products, influencer, non influencers. But sometimes you even trust more your friend who's trying it because you know that you like the same products. I personally trust more friends than someone that I see online because I know that they know me and they know me. What I would like.
Ahu Terzi
29:06
Yeah. It's a layered approach, though. No, I know you probably trust a friend's recommendation to make that purchase, but until you get to that point, there are different ways to recognize or to become aware of a product. Right. I have three friends that I exchange beauty information with all the time, and one of them is a makeup artist. The other two have consumed many subscriptions like I have in the beauty space. And we're constantly seeing things and buying and trying it out. And what I've noticed we do is we have a text message chain and we'll screenshot something that we might have seen online, whether it's on social or an ad, maybe on something that we're reading, and we'll screenshot it, send it to each other and ask, what do you think? Have you used it?
Lara Schmoisman
30:08
I want to leave that chat change.
Ahu Terzi
30:11
And we'll comment if we have any ideas. Yes, I've used it. No, I haven't tried, but I've been meaning to. I saw it too. Right? Like, oh, I saw that too. One of us will buy, one of us will try and then we'll still be talking about it in a few months and maybe everyone will finally buy it and try it. So it's a layered approach. You need to see the advertising. You have to. You have to be able to see the product somewhere. It can't just be influencers and celebrities. You need brand to show up as the brand itself.
Lara Schmoisman
30:45
Absolutely. I love this. I'm taking notes, the layer approach, because I really love this approach and I think that everyone should be using it. It's omnichannel, but at the same time, it's a little bit at a time and not trying to conquer all at the same time because it's impossible. I see a lot of brands that they go and they spend new brands that they are not even in market yet, but they go and spend a lot of money. And we had this conversation in being in trade shows that the customer, but they're not ready for Rachel to place a big order for them. You need to start small and really understand where do you fit as a.
Ahu Terzi
31:28
Yeah, yeah, I agree. Omnichannel is extremely important. Even if you're a small brand, even if you have a small budget. With that budget, I think you should try to dabble in different things and just test them. Test where you're getting the brand awareness that you need. Test where you're getting the conversion that you need. Test where you're getting the future purchase intent that you need. Right. You need to be able to develop all of these simultaneously. You need to be able to acquire new customers who will try your product. You need to be able to convert those customers to regular buyers, whether they've sampled or just tried, from a trial size. And you need to be able to consistently tell your brand story to new people out there in the audience.
Lara Schmoisman
32:20
Yeah, absolutely. So important. And like I always say, I always talk to my team about this every time we are talking about any client. What is the buyer intention? You need to understand what's the intention. What's a problem that we're going to be resolving for our buyer? We are not the hero here. The hero is our buyer and we are resolving a problem for them.
Ahu Terzi
32:47
Yeah, for sure. And beauty is such an exciting industry because it is projected to continue to grow in the next five years. Right. Continuously growing at a minimum of 6% to 8% every year. We have adopted the wardrobe approach to everything. Right. You have a wardrobe for clothes. You have a wardrobe for fragrances. You have a wardrobe for skincare. You have a wardrobe for makeup. It's okay. Nobody's judging you. You can have as many products as you'd like.
Lara Schmoisman
33:21
Yes. And one of the things that I notice that people, that when they really love a product, you're loyal to that product, and it's hard to try something new.
Ahu Terzi
33:35
Do you have one? Recommend one to me.
Lara Schmoisman
33:38
No, I cannot do few. I have a few. But when I really love a product, or I like, for example, I went to Italy and they lost my luggage. I lost all my makeup and everything. And so I went to Sephora and they have different products. I couldn't find my products. And I was like, I ended up buying products and they were great products. And then I was like, how can I get those now? But anyway, it was stressful for me to have to get out of my comfort zone because I know how I do my makeup fast every day because I know my products. You know your wardrobe, you know what you're going to go and get and how you feel.
Ahu Terzi
34:23
Yeah. Especially with color cosmetics, you don't always achieve the same look that you want to achieve when the shade is slightly different or the texture I do a lot of eye makeup and the texture of the pencil is just so important to me. It has to be crayon like. Crayon like. Right.
Lara Schmoisman
34:44
So let's not even start talking about mascaras.
Ahu Terzi
34:49
Yes, mascaras. So I'm looking forward to. I'm going to go visit my daughter in Italy this year in April, and I have been googling like crazy. There are all these sub channels on Reddit that talk about the products that you need to get in Europe. Either they're not available here, they have different ingredients. All I'm hearing is sPf, sPF. So even if it's a brand that's already available here, getting the SPF coverage of these brands in Europe is a very different experience. They're more mineral like, they sit better under makeup. And I'm really looking forward to playing with all the.
Lara Schmoisman
35:32
Oh, my God. I want to hear more about that later.
Ahu Terzi
35:34
Yes, for sure.
Lara Schmoisman
35:36
Well, thank you so much for being here today. And, before we wrap this up as a small brand, I want to reiterate something really important. It's about consistency. Whatever you do in media, you need to have a plan for media. You cannot start and say, this month I do, this, next month I'll do something else. You need to be consistent. What is your recommendation? Like you say we do social media, or how long you think we need to have a plan for working with a media company?
Ahu Terzi
36:13
That's a very good question. I think PR needs to be always on. I think getting a good PR plan and having an outreach calendar throughout the year is extremely important. Contact management is extremely important. When you're a small brand, put together an excel sheet of everybody that you want to talk to, wish would know about your product. Create almost a vision board of contacts. Right. These could be celebrities, it could be influencers, it could be marketing companies, it could be PR companies, it could be magazines, it could be people in the industry. It could be people you follow on LinkedIn, having a good contact management, finding these people in the world and getting them your information about your product should be part of your PR strategy. It shouldn't be just magazines and journalists out in the open.
Lara Schmoisman
37:14
Absolutely. And again, I'm going to repeat, you need to find and work with people that you feel comfortable with and then build a relationship. The relationship of whoever you're going to be working with. It hopefully needs to be a long one. At least six months, in my experience, to see.
Ahu Terzi
37:30
Oh, for sure, yeah. Well, in media, you have to have at least a year out. Right? Like you need to have pulses. You can't be one and done. You need to have at least two pulses throughout the year where you're putting money in social media. Maybe it's around a launch, right? Or maybe it's about rebranding, or maybe it's about an exciting announcement, but you have to have at least two pulses throughout the year. And I think pulsing custom content, whether it's custom content you're publishing in the form of a long form article, right, about your brand, about your product, about the efficacy, is a way to get the word out and balancing the custom content, the long form content with quick sales driving offers is going to be very important.
Ahu Terzi
38:27
You want to be able to do both, but you have to layer them, right? You need to get the content out first and then shortly after the content, you need to get the offer out.
Lara Schmoisman
38:37
Yes, I was saying before, you need to start with your branding and then.
Ahu Terzi
38:43
The person and then you get the offer out. Yeah. And you can do this in all of them. You can do this in email marketing. You can do this with SMS marketing. Don't just send me an offer. Right? If I signed up for SMS, don't just send me an offer, tell me about the product first. Tell me.
Lara Schmoisman
39:00
Create a better nurture the relationship with your tell about the brand story, the ingredients, the founder, why people need to choose because like I just said before, people get comfortable with their products, even sometimes if they are not working great for them. So you need to make sure that you're giving them the incentive to make the change. And not only an offer.
Ahu Terzi
39:26
Yeah, for sure. So always on PR approach, always on communications, but twice a year you're doing this pulsed approach to content plus offer. Content plus offer. I think that's ideal. We're still in the US, we still look at March and April and October, November as key moments in beauty shopping. And that's when the shelves turn over. That's when you get new product on shelves. It's an exciting time to be in beauty in March and April and end of September through early November. So I think you want to be able to catch those, if you're a beauty brand, you want to be able to catch those exciting moments in time.
Lara Schmoisman
40:12
Absolutely. Well, Ahu, thank you so much for being here and having coffee with me today.
Ahu Terzi
40:17
So good to see you again and we'll talk soon. Okay.
Lara Schmoisman
40:20
And to you guys, I will see you next week with more Coffee Number Five. Find everything you need at LaraSchmoisman.com Or in the episode notes right below. Don't forget to subscribe. It was so good to have you here today. See you next time. Catch you on the flip side. Ciao. Ciao.