6 Tips to Increase Your Chances of Getting Holiday Gift Guide Coverage

Midsummer is here and if you think your product would make a great gift guide for the holidays, now is the time to take your chances. From finding the perfect outlet for your pitch, down to writing a standout and uniquely different pitch that will pique the interest of the recipient, we’ll be looking at some tips that can help you get your share of media coverage to boost your brand during the holiday periods.

Identifying the perfect outlet for your audience

It is one thing to get featured and it is another thing for the feature to make real impacts. You’ll be better off starting the pitching process first by identifying where you’ll be better served. Does your audience have an inclination to prints or online media? Do you see them reading blogs or would they be better served through the social media? Answering these questions right will help you identify the best outlets so you can know the best outlets where you can then channel your resources to where the impact will be best felt.

Identify the right person to pitch

Most media outlets would usually have designated gift guide editors and these are the persons through which your pitch may receive consideration. Pitching the wrong person may as well be like not pitching at all. You’ll have to find out bloggers and the editors in charge of this in the various outlets of your interest while also keeping an eye out for other pitching information.

Remember the deadlines

Along with finding the right person to pitch, you’ll have to be wary of missing deadlines. Most media outlets have a long lead time and if you’ll be featured for December, you’ll have to start now. To further understand why you should be concerned about deadlines, you may check out our article on Why July is The Perfect Time to Pitch the Media for Holiday Gift Guides.

Know the ins and outs of your product

You don’t want to end up confused while trying to convince the journalists on why your product deserves a feature. If you don’t know the product in its entirety, selling it to a journalist may seem an uphill task. Along with understanding the product, you should also be flexible with pricing as many outlets often break down their gift guides into price categories.

Make your pitch stand out

You don’t want to bore the journalist with the same generic pitch over and over again. You really want to get their attention as they sort through the multiple requests and if you really do not send in a unique pitch, the getting this attention may prove difficult. Send in with your pitch high-resolution images if there’s need for this.

Do some follow-up

You can also do some follow up as it doesn’t cost anything to check in with a note to confirm if they’d seen the pitch or would need some other things.

Conclusively, it’s better to keep your pitch short and concise. Don’t make the work harder for the journalist who would have to sort their way through several other multiple pitches. Remember too that the competition to get placements for holiday gift guide features is high and so is the rejection rate too. So don’t feel bad if your pitch is rejected today, it may still work later in the future.

Do you want me to develop your holiday media pitching strategy? Do you need a content and public relations strategy? Schedule a complimentary strategy session with me here.