I started an indie organic hair care brand in 2015. Because I had previous experience in copywriting, press outreach and a budget of exactly 0, I “decided” to take on PR myself. The first few months, I decided to start small both on the business and PR sides of things. I did get nice results. Then I decided it was time to grow but I felt like there was too much to do. I know you can identify, right?

Being based in Paris, I outsourced my French PR to a local agency. Meanwhile, I would take care of the PR on other markets: the United Kingdom, Germany, Scandinavia… My experience with the French agency was really bad. They knew I had a small budget so they made me an inexpensive offer. In theory it was the same as their other plans. I would simply not get one on one interviews with journalists. That was fine with me. I’m an introvert. In reality however, a low budget plan means a “low time invested” service. Bigger budgets get more time. As you can imagine, it was a failure. As I was getting featured in ELLE in Denmark or Glamour and Vogue in Germany, the agency was getting me on blogs nobody really reads.

Later, I tried with another PR agency then with an independent PR person and it was always the same. I would not exactly say they were not honest but they were either not as connected as they had presented themselves to be ; or once again, because I was a small client, they would not spend time on me and my brand preferring to spend more time on their more lucrative contracts.

What they failed to understand is that it is always too expensive when you do not get the service you were promised!

I was wasting thousands on professionals when I was getting much better results on my own. I decided it was enough! So I worked harder on my media list. I expanded it. I updated it with every campaign. I made it work.

Of course as a small business owner, I had other things to do. I tried to expand my list by purchasing contacts from a large international media database in the UK. It cost me €500 but it was a scam. Some magazines no longer existed. Some journalists had changed magazines or groups 2 to 3 times since the last update. Some hadn’t been journalists any more in years. Most of the contact information was outdated and useless. That is what those “send your press releases online” websites are selling you... the possibility to send your emails to people who will never get them.

Still wanting to skip the research part and still willing to pay for it, I went ahead and contacted more prominent media databases. All of them would try to sell me on a yearly subscription where I would get an impressive 80 000 contacts or more from all over the world. The thing is, I am in the beauty industry. I do not need thousands of contacts. I simply need beauty contacts. So I would ask them key questions: 1. How many beauty editors, beauty journalists, beauty assistants, etc. did they have on their lists. 2. And were they able to give me the count per country? Most were reluctant to say. But when they did, I always had more beauty contacts in my own list.

I had not realized that my countless hours of researching and constant updating had actually paid already. I was doubting myself and thought that I needed to have more experience to get more results. Except… I was already getting the results. My products have been featured internationally in many of the most prominent magazines like Harper’s Bazaar and Vogue. I have had beautiful features in local press as well.

What I am offering you here, is to skip all of this nonsense and go straight to your results. Only get the contacts you actually need. Craft messages that sound like you. And create valuable connections with beauty editors and beauty journalists who care. Drop the middleman. Do not waste any more time. Instead, spend more time creating amazing products that make your customers happy and that make you proud.