What Assets Do You Need To Get Your Brand Into Publications?
When pitching a brand or product to publications, one of the main objectives is to make the journalist’s job as simple as possible. Making their job easier, by providing quality assets for them to use at their disposal, can increase the likeliness of the product being featured within their publication. So, what are these quality assets?
Lifestyle Imagery
National digital publications will usually only share your product if you have an eye-catching stand-out piece of lifestyle imagery to go alongside it. This imagery will grab the journalist’s attention from the start of your pitch and will help them determine whether they think your brand is something their readers will want to see.
If you’re a fashion brand, a lifestyle image could be an influencer styling the piece. If you’re a homeware brand, the product will need to be somewhere in a room-set. If you want to push an amazing new beauty product, try shooting it on a dressing table.
Cut-out Product Imagery
Print publications love lifestyle imagery too, but if you want consistent features on product pages you’ll need to provide some cut-out product imagery. This way, they can edit your image into beautifully styled trend features, offer pages, or even ‘Get The Look’ spreads.
Cut-out imagery, alternatively known as e-commerce imagery or ‘on-white’ shots, is a product shot on a plain white background. This background shouldn’t include any shadows or marks and the lighting should be used to focus entirely on the product.
A Tailor-able Product Description
Just like you would include a good product description on your website, you need a good product description for journalists. The difference is, where on your website you might be focusing on SEO, for journalists you need to focus on engaging and trending terms that cater specifically to their target reader. Highlight the aspects of your product that you think would best suit their publication. You should always tailor your product description to the publication you are contacting.
However, never over-tailer your product description. Everything you write about your product must be true. To help with this, why not work out three key features or USPs of your product and develop each description around these points?
A Professional and User-Friendly Website
Your pitches and press releases should link to your website and, if the journalist has never heard of your brand, this may be the first place they look to discover who you are. Make sure your website is clear about what products you sell, shows off your memorable on-trend branding, has no spelling or grammatical mistakes, and is professional and user-friendly.
Active and Attractive Social Media
Much like your website, your social media accounts will be one of the first places a journalist visits to find out more about your brand. Believe it or not, it’s not all about follower count. If you’re posting great content that fits with your brand aesthetic and promotes your product clearly, journalists will be much more likely to push your product over a brand with 1 million followers, average imagery and no clarity on what their business is selling.
Make sure you’re active on social media, posting at least once a day if you’re able, visibly engaging with customers in the comments, and providing value with the content you share.
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