Christmas is the time of year when many businesses report most of their sales. Part of this is because their customers have plenty to spend on gifts but it’s also the time of year where their PR coverage can really ramp up too. Christmas gift guides, which are featured in everything from blogs to print and online media, help buyers find the perfect gift for their friends and family-thousands and thousands of gift guides are published at Christmas time and I’ve seen first hand just how powerful they can be to bring in businesses sales.
Many businesses don’t realise how to get into Christmas gift guides, or don’t think of their Christmas press coverage until it’s too late. Today, I wanted to share my top tips for getting your product in christmas gift guides this year.
Start now
The key with Christmas gift guides is to start early. Print publications work at least 3 months ahead so many start planning their christmas guides from July and August onwards. Even online publications will start to get organised around September-so if you leave it until December, you’re missing out on a lot of coverage. Make sure you’ve got everything ready: such as photos of your products, shopable links and product descriptions all ready to go. It really is never too early to prepare.
Get reading
If you have a product business, you may have done some research already as to where your ideal client hangs out. I always recommend to read as many publications as possible: if you’d love to be featured in Grazia, have you read it? Have you looked at back issues to see which gift guides they covered last year, the type of products and who wrote them? I always recommend using an app called Readly, which is a great way to read lots of publications at once (you can also search for keywords relating to your business to see which publications covered them previously).
Create a press release
Create a Christmas press release to showcase your gift guide offerings. This will save you time as you can include it each time you email a journalist and make their life easier with all the information in one email. I advise your press release to be around a page long and always think about the 5 key Ws – What is your product? Where can we find it? When is it on sale? Why should we buy it? (key USPs), Who is the business owner behind it?
Hang out on Twitter
One of the simplest tips I could give you is to hang out on Twitter. The hashtag #journorequest is full of journalists looking for businesses to feature as case studies, experts to comment and products to review. As we head towards Christmas, this hashtag also includes journalists seeking products for gift guides, so I always advise checking at least twice a day (morning time and then later in the afternoon). It’s a really great way to also find journalists to follow and get a feel for what types of products they’re looking for.
Preparing months ahead and spending time finding the right kind of journalists working on gift guides can maximise your chance of success. If you’d like to learn more about getting your product featured in christmas gift guides you can also attend my Get your products featured in Christmas gift guides in 10 simple steps workshop.