Cher Hale
Cher Hale is the founder and director of Ginkgo PR, an agency that hopes to use public relations to create a more equitable media landscape. As a Taiwanese-Black American woman, Cher is passionate about leveraging the power of the media to take back narratives that have been traditionally told for historically-excluded authors and entrepreneurs.
I wanted to talk to Cher because my own clients are increasingly finding podcast guesting to be a really important part of their author platform and book marketing plans, and this is an area she really specializes in - planning podcast book tours for authors.
We talked about:
why podcasting (as opposed to other forms of PR) is such a good fit for authors
how to go about finding aligned podcasts to pitch
how to make a cold pitch more compelling
and how important follow-up is.
You can listen to our interview here.
You can find out more about Cher and her services at ginkgopr.com and sign up for Pitch Slapped here.
Here’s an AI transcript of our interview, with apologies for the many errors in transcription:
Transcript
00:00:02 Sophy Dale
Welcome to today's interview with Cher Hale, for Behind The book launch.
00:00:07 Sophy Dale
Cher is the founder and director of Ginkgo PR, an agency that hopes to use public relations to create a more equitable media landscape.
00:00:15 Sophy Dale
As a Taiwanese Black American women Cher is passionate about leveraging the power of the media to take back narratives that have been traditionally told.
00:00:22 Sophy Dale
Were historically excluded authors and entrepreneurs, and I wanted to talk to Cher today because my own clients are increasingly finding podcast guesting to be a really important part of their author platform and their book marketing plans more general.
00:00:36 Sophy Dale
And this is an area that you totally specialise in, don't you? The the whole kind of planning podcast book tours for authors. So welcome Cher.
00:00:46 Cher Hale
Thank you for having me, Sophy.
00:00:48 Sophy Dale
So first of all, I wondered if you could talk a little bit about why you think podcasting as opposed to, you know, maybe getting people into print media or even onto TV is such a good fit for authors in particular?
00:01:03 Cher Hale
It's so much more intimate, right? So we're having this conversation through a podcasting medium, and we're able to, in a long form, get a feel for each other, which is what people really need before they purchase a book or make any kind of purchasing decision. They want to feel like they know the person they're buying it from.
00:01:24 Cher Hale
And they want to feel a connexion to them, and podcasting just offers us ample opportunity to make those connexion points.
00:01:32 Sophy Dale
I think that's so true. I think reading is such an intimate act because it it feels like it's 1 to 1, even though logically, you know that it's not the only copy in existence of the book. So yes, I do see what you mean. There's a real kind of parallel and and I know that you're very much somebody who thinks that it's not about making millions and millions of pitches or getting onto millions and millions of of podcasts. It's about finding the aligned podcasts. But I wondered if you could just talk a bit about that.
00:02:06 Cher Hale
Yeah, so when you ask somebody what makes a good pitch you're going to hear things like clarity of message.
00:02:14 Cher Hale
You're going to hear things like finding the right target audience, even things like making sure your pitch is short and succinct, like to the point.
00:02:21 Cher Hale
Right and I think all of those points are valid and necessary for making a strong pitch and I believe many of us, missed the point, the initial point which is, Do you like the person you're pitching? Do you feel a rapport with them when you listen to the show.
00:02:39 Cher Hale
Can you imagine yourself on that show having a conversation? Do you feel safe in that space?
00:02:46 Cher Hale
Right. There are all of these points about energy and intention that we often skip over in service of the transactional relationship and I really want us to pull back a bit and say let's do like a check in with ourselves first.
00:03:00 Cher Hale
And make sure that we are aligned with this platform before we decide to invest energy and time into pitching them.
00:03:07 Sophy Dale
I think that makes so much sense, and I think as well for authors, thinking about, you know, who are they ultimately trying to reach? If you don't feel that connexion with the host, it's unlikely that your ideal readers are going to feel a connexion with that podcast isn't it?
00:03:23 Cher Hale
Yes, because what I'm finding lately is that there's so much more competition to get onto podcasts that even when you get a spot on a podcast.
00:03:32 Cher Hale
Someone might not listen to the whole interview. They might skip over your interview entirely, so you really want to bring, like, your A-game to the conversation. And I think the a game starts with that connexion.
00:03:43 Sophy Dale
Absolutely. And I think another point that I wanted to make sure that we covered today was I know that when I start talking to authors about, you know, maybe they might want to be pitching podcasts as part of what they're they're doing.
00:03:56 Sophy Dale
Often the thing that concerns them is that they feel like they don't have great relationships with the hosts of the podcast that they want to pitch and and I know that one of the things that you talk about is cold pitching. The fact you don't need to have any prior relationship with the with the host.
00:04:13 Sophy Dale
But I think I certainly kind of meet some resistance to that idea when I start talking to people about it. So could you expand?
00:04:23 Cher Hale
Yes, yes, I will say that I was not always a publicist, right? I started just like everyone else does, which is with no contacts and no experience.
00:04:32 Cher Hale
And so I was a very green publicist. Cold pitching was the only way that I could build a network. And I found that if you have elements of warmth and you do your research.
00:04:44 Cher Hale
You can turn any cold pitch into a lukewarm pitch, which is all you really need to start a conversation, and that's how we make friends, right? Like I go to library every Tuesday with my daughter for.
00:04:56 Cher Hale
Every time when we're there, I meet other moms by saying hello. How are you? How old is your? How is your child?
00:05:03 Cher Hale
And that's a similar approach. What we're doing and pitching, but we're just saying hello here I am. Here is my business and I think that I have something of value to offer to your listeners and to you as a platform owner so we we put a lot of stock in like, they don't know me and it's gonna feel like spammy or it's going to feel uncomfortable. And it is right. It isn't comfortable to put yourself out there for rejection, and I have seen it time and time again. How many fruitful, beautiful, magical Connexions happen when you just make the ask.
00:05:35 Sophy Dale
I think that's so true. And I think when we, when all of us think about everybody who we didn't know originally who we now consider to be a good friend or close colleague or or whatever.
00:05:46 Sophy Dale
Somebody at some point made the first move to make that happen, so it's it's all cold pitching in the end.
00:05:53 Sophy Dale
I guess if you take it back far enough, and would you say or what, what proportion would you say of the ultimately successful pitches that you work with?
00:06:06 Sophy Dale
What proportion would you say come from the follow up versus getting yes?
00:06:12 Sophy Dale
Relatively soon after sending the original pitch.
00:06:16
So this is a tough question for me specifically because I'm not the kind of publicist who sends a full pitch immediately. I always and maybe you experienced this in our workshop, actually, but I always send an an inquiry pitch first, where I listen to the show. I do my research and then I say, are you even taking pitches right now?
00:06:35 Cher Hale
And so I get a lot of yeses for taking pitches. But maybe they don't turn into yeses for that specific client.
00:06:43 Cher Hale
So what I'll say though, is that right now most publicity agencies in the podcasting space are seeing about a 12% conversion rate overall. So whether it's initial pitch or a follow-up pitch. That's not what it was like 5 years ago. We were seeing like a solid, beautiful 20% conversion rate, which was wonderful.
00:07:06 Cher Hale
You'll find that on your own without someone third party or something you you might get better results because you are your own speaker, right?
00:07:16 Cher Hale
That sometimes it it holds more weight, so there is some benefit to pitching yourself there, even if it takes more time up front, I understand.
00:07:24 Sophy Dale
I I mean, I guess there's it's a bit sort of six of one 1/2 a dozen of the other because as an established publicist, you have a relationship and rapport with the hosts, and I imagine that if you are introducing somebody where you have previously pitched successfully and the guest has been great and they've had a good relationship, I imagine that that can't do any harm when you pitch the next person.
00:07:50 Sophy Dale
So on the one hand, as you say, there's a benefit to pitching yourself and speaking in your own voice and and so on. But on the other hand, there's that that benefit to the professional relationships that you've built up.
00:08:04 Cher Hale
Yeah. And I will give you 1 tip because I think what you were asking before is how important is following up? and I would say, Very important. It is critical to the process and I have a rule of two.
00:08:14 Cher Hale
So I always send one follow up one week after and then a final follow up one week after that and in that last e-mail, I always say I'm following up one final time, in the event that you are interested, but have been too slammed. If I don't hear back, I'll take that as a not interested and I give them space to never answer my e-mail because I know how busy all of us are and how full all of our inboxes are and so for me, that's like cutting an energetic cord. I could say thank you, bye. And everybody gets to go. Life got free.
00:08:46 Sophy Dale
I think that's a really great tip and I think part of what people find draining about the pitching process is that kind of energetic drain if you're sending so much energy out there into the universe, pitching, pitching, pitching, and not having that kind of clean cut, this is the moment where effectively it's a no, even if I haven't heard anything one way or the other, I think I can really see the benefit just purely from your own energy management point of view to having that kind of policy, I think that could be really helpful. I must remember that for the authors out there who are struggling and of course pitching for authors is something that they've already, unless they're self-publishing, they've been through this whole process of pitching for agents and then their agents have been pitching for a publisher. So by the time they get to the pitching for the podcast book.
00:09:34 Sophy Dale
And they're like, seriously, more rejection? How can you be bringing this on my head? So yes, and anything that helps them to to manage that process from the kind of emotional roller coaster point of view I think is extremely helpful.
00:09:50 Sophy Dale
UM, so you. You've actually already kind of answered this question in terms of the percentage that people should kind of anticipate in terms of successful pitching?
00:10:02 Sophy Dale
Because what I was going to say is if somebody has got a launch coming up and they really want to go big on podcasting as the the main channel, uh for PR.
00:10:13 Sophy Dale
What kind of number of pitches would you expect to do? Or if, if you're managing somebody's podcast book tour?
00:10:21 Sophy Dale
Roughly speaking, how many pitches would you do in order to generate a a serious book tour?
00:10:28 Cher Hale
So when you are self-publishing or even your hybrid publishing, I recommend that you create a list of between 100 to 150 podcasts to pitch.
00:10:38 Cher Hale
You might not pitch all of those, and that's totally fine. You need somebody else to help support you. There's a lot of pitches to send, but one of my clients that I supported like as a done with you client, she we had a list of 100 podcasts for her to pitch, and she's landed 30. So 30 seconds. And that's amazing conversion rate. And that's in the entrepreneurship/self-help spaces, so what you'll find is that in each individual niche there's a slightly different kind of version, right, because there's more or less competition.
00:11:06 Sophy Dale
Of course. And also, although we were saying earlier that cold pitching can absolutely 100% work equally, if somebody is really well placed in the sense that they have a really big network of people who they've done lots of favours for and know well and so on. And a lot of those people are podcast hosts, then that's going to up their conversion rate.
00:11:27 Sophy Dale
At least at the beginning of the process, isn't it because they can start with the people who they don't have to totally cold pitch and whether they have a warm relationship already.
00:11:37 Cher Hale
Yeah. And that client, just for context, is someone who has a podcast.
00:11:41 Cher Hale
So she was able to offer podcasts swaps as a part of her strategy. I think is really smart. And if you don't have podcast, that's fine. You can offer Instagram live, Facebook live or or like LinkedIn Lives right. Any kind of like swap that you have that you own an asset that can be used for a an exchange of currency or?
00:11:59 Sophy Dale
Yeah. No, I think that's a really good point. Would you, so you wouldn't necessarily recommend somebody starts a podcast for that purpose, but more that they if they have it, they should make the most use of it.
00:12:14 Cher Hale
Yes. And of course, like make sure that the person that you are swapping with is aligned right. You don't want to start to inundate your podcast content with like something doesn't make sense. Sort of. It feel good. So just make pick well.
00:12:26 Cher Hale
If you're going to follow that approach.
00:12:42 Sophy Dale
Yeah. And so you mentioned earlier the workshops that you do given that obviously some of the people who are listening to this podcast might be able to go for full service support, but some of them may well not. And can you talk a little bit about what you do and how you do it so that people can get a taste of it?
00:12:49 Cher Hale
So do you mean like how I host a workshop?
00:12:51 Sophy Dale
Yeah, just just what the other options are to to work with you. So the workshops and and your newsletter as well.
00:12:59 Cher Hale
Yeah. So at the most accessible level, I have pitch slapped, which is an e-mail subscription service every other week you get about 12 podcast suggestions that you can put yourself for.
00:13:10 Cher Hale
And it includes things like how to contact pitch tips and past topics so you have an idea of like what they've already covered.
00:13:18 Cher Hale
And then from on that same level you have workshops or networking events that I host maybe once a month or once every other month just to help give you some like on demand support, because I know that pitching yourself it's so easy to get into your head, right?
00:13:33 Cher Hale
So as you're like, workshopping or refining or tweaking, I want to be with the person to help you say that's fine. Or actually we can improve it this way and then by the end of each workshop, my goal is to have each person send out one pitch.
00:13:45 Cher Hale
And the next level we do like done with you consultations, we kind of like helping you create your media list, helping you craft your pitch templates, helping you understand a strategic approach to pitching or get organised around pitching.
00:13:57 Cher Hale
And then at the very top level, we have done for you pitching. So kind of like that boutique retainer service where I am your.
00:14:05 Sophy Dale
Perfect. Thank you. I think that's really helpful for people and I've certainly found pitch slapped and the workshops super helpful for my own purposes, so I strongly recommend anybody who's listening who even wants to just dip a toe in the water and and see how it all works.I would say it's a really great introduction. So Cher, if people want to get in touch with you, where's the best place for them to find you?
00:14:31 Cher Hale
The best place is GINKGOPR.com.
00:14:37 Sophy Dale
Perfect. OK. Well, thank you so much for sharing your wisdom with us today. And I think it will be really helpful because I do strongly believe that podcasting is such such an important thing for people to do as part of building out their or the platform in the 1st place to even get a book deal and then to support the launch of the book. So thank you for talking to us today.