All You Need to Get Your Product Featured in a Gift Guide or Product Roundup
Getting your product featured in a magazine or online publication can be a massive benefit for any business, especially a new one. It’s one of the most effective ways to drive brand awareness, and it can lead directly to sales, customer acquisition, and new opportunities.
Over the years, we’ve worked with numerous clients to secure product placements in publications including The Wall Street Journal, New York Magazine, Vogue, Real Simple, Southern Living, Domino, Forbes, and Glamour, to name a few.
Product placements can range from seasonal product roundups, such as a fall fashion shopping guide, holiday gift guide, or what to buy mom for Mother’s Day, and include an array of products from fashion and home to beauty, tech, food, fitness, and more.
Traditionally, these placements are considered editorial coverage or earned media – meaning there is no monetary exchange between your business and the outlet. The editors of the publication cherry pick which products are most relevant and exciting for their readers. Securing these placements is competitive and takes time, relationship building, and, oftentimes, sending your product to an editor to try out firsthand.
Read on below for 5 steps to get you started and sign up for our DIY PR workshop on Tuesday, March 21, 2023.
1.) Get your materials ready
Before you reach out to any media outlet about your brand or product, it’s important to make sure that your brand foundation is in place. This includes knowing who your target audience is, how you’re differentiating your business, what you stand for, as well as your brand aesthetic. Think of introducing your brand and product to editors as a first impression: you want to put your best foot forward and capture their attention. You also want to make sure that you’re making their job as easy as possible – this means having quality photography on file as well as specific details on your product like the materials, price point, where to purchase, etc.
Pro tip: Editors are always looking for new products that have been released in the past 6 months to a year and have not been covered extensively, as well as products that are timely and relevant. For example, last year holiday gift guides revolved around spending time at home during the pandemic. This year, we anticipate that gift guides will focus on getting back to entertaining, traveling, socializing, etc.
Here is a quick checklist of materials you should be ready to share with the media:
Messaging about your company and product
Fact sheet including detailed product information, price point, materials, where to purchase
High resolution JPG images on a white seamless background and, lifestyle photography, which shows your product in an environmental setting
Extra product samples to gift or to send to editors to try out (usually you do not get these back so you want to make sure you plan for this in advance of outreach)
2.) Research and make your dream list
One of the most important steps in securing media coverage for your product is making a well-researched target media list. Start by making a list of your dream publications. Learn and familiarize yourself with them by reading through previous issues or articles to make sure your product or company is a good fit for the publication.
Once you have your list, figure out the right editor or contact to direct your pitch. A good starting point is to research who wrote gift guides last year, who frequently covers product roundups online, and “market editors” at magazines – which you can find by Googling a specific magazine’s masthead (this gives an overview of the editorial team at the publications and their role/title).
Last but not least, organize your list into a document (we like using Google Docs Spreadsheets) where all of the editor contacts and publications or blogs you identified via your research are in one place. You list should grow and evolve. As you come across new outlets that are relevant for your product or business, add to your list. Have fun with it!
Pro tip #1: We like to organize our lists with the following columns: First Name, Last Name, Email Address, Title, Link to Recent Article, and Status (to keep track of emails sent, received responses, etc.). To track down email addresses for contacts, look at their Instagram and LinkedIn bios, personal websites, and author bios listed on their respective publications. Keep in mind that once you find an email format for a specific publication, chances are other contacts at the same publication have an email address that follows the same format. Also, many publications are owned by the same media company, such as Conde Nast, Meredith, and Hearst, and the editors who work at publications owned by the same media company usually have email addresses that follow the same format. For example, Vogue and Architectural Digest are both owned by Conde Nast, which typically has the email format of firstname_lastname@condenast.com.
Pro tip #2: Be honest with yourself about who would and wouldn’t be interested in your product based on what they have covered in the past. It is better to curate a smaller list of editors who are focused on your industry, and publications that have a similar target audience as you, rather than casting a wide net to anyone and everyone who has covered products in the past.
3.) Think like an editor
Now that you have your dream media list created, you need to get in the mindset of the editors you will be pitching and figure out how your product fits into the editorial calendar or schedule of their publication. Every magazine approaches product roundups and gift guides in their own way. Some will publish a monthly list or feature on their favorite monthly finds, or some will just run on specific holidays or key moments in time during the year.
One way to get a head start on learning about a magazine’s timing is to Google their editorial calendar. You will be able to see what topics a magazine focuses on each month and get a better idea of how your product could fit in. For instance, September issues are often dedicated to back to school and new fall fashion, December issues are focused on holiday gift guides, April issues on spring cleaning, and so on.
Many magazines follow the same formula when it comes to their editorial calendar, so you can predict what they may want ahead of time. Here’s a quick guide:
January: New Year resolutions, wellness
February: Valentine’s day
March: Spring style, spring cleaning
April: Earth Day, sustainable shopping
May: Mother’s Day, summer fashion
June: Father’s Day, graduation
July: Outdoor entertaining, Fourth of July, summer travel
August: Back to school
September: Fall fashion
October: Halloween, fall entertaining
November: Thanksgiving, recipes, holiday gifts
December: Holiday gifts, entertaining,
Pro tip: One thing to keep in mind is lead times, which are different for every publication. A good rule of thumb is that most print - or what we call “long lead” magazines - work 3-4 months in advance. For example, editors are working on their holiday gift guide issues in July & August that will be published in November and December. Online editorial teams typically have a shorter lead time, but it always takes more time than you think, so the earlier you can get on their radar, the better. If you are looking to get in an online Father’s Day gift guide that would run in June, you would want to get your pitch in early May.
4.) Set up affiliate links
There is no question the lines between traditional PR, digital marketing, and social media have blurred over the past decade and continue to intertwine in new ways. At the intersection of PR and digital marketing is a term you should get to know as a small business owner - affiliate marketing or affiliate-driven PR.
To simplify, affiliate driven PR is when you set up an affiliate link through a third party provider that will track the analytics and purchases of your product from a feature in an online publication or post. This allows a publication to receive a percentage of each sale as a result of the feature.
Online product roundups and gift guides still must first and foremost meet the criteria of the editorial team, but providing an affiliate link is becoming industry standard for coverage consideration.
An easy way to get started is to reach out to ShareaSale to set up an account. Once your brand is set up, you can include this information in your pitches. Depending on the publishing company of the magazine, there might be an e-commerce team that manages affiliate link set up.
Make sure to communicate with editors in your outreach that you are associated with an affiliate link platform. So in your pitches you can say something like” “we are currently affiliated through ShareaSale and would be happy to connect with the right person on your team to ensure we are set up in your system.”
5.) Pitch your product
You are now ready to pitch your product! Get excited because this is where the magic happens.
Here are a few best practices for writing your email pitch.
Personalize your outreach and send individual emails. Do not do a bcc blast.
Start by introducing yourself and your business. Keep it short and sweet, no more than in 2-3 short sentences. Be friendly but direct. Avoid jargon language or marketing taglines — you want to come across as professional and authentic.
Be thoughtful. Share why you are reaching out and why your product is relevant.
Include images and a fact sheet if you have one. You can also hyperlink to your website, social media handles and additional information/images in Dropbox.
Offer to send or gift product — oftentimes the editor would like to test, touch, and feel before endorsing.
Share which affiliate link platform you are set up on.
