How to Pitch Holiday Gift Guides + Free Training!
Before Wolf Craft had a name, before it had a structure, a full two years before it was anything, it was an idea.
Just one simple, practical idea.
It wasn’t the multi-service company that we’ve created. The idea was to create a PR course to help you pitch your products to holiday gift guides.
In my mind’s eye I saw the structure. I saw the usefulness. I saw a need that hadn’t been met. And I figured after getting so many holiday gift guide hits year after year, the course would nearly write itself.
Y’all, as it turned out, that last part was not true. Putting together a PR course was harrdddd.
I wanted to create something actionable and impactful for businesses who make great products, but can’t afford monthly PR retainers. For people like you that don’t have all the right tools to do PR for yourself.
Before signing up for a course, you may want more info and tips about pitching your product to holiday gift guides. So, I also put together a free workshop all about how to increase brand awareness with holiday gift guide press.
Is this stuff niche? Yes. Are holiday gift guides it the best media opportunity of the year for businesses that make products? Also yes.
In this blog, you'll see why holiday gift guides are such a great press opportunity, the impact gift guide placements have had on my retainer client’s businesses, and why starting early matters.
Read on to learn about holiday gift guides and how to pitch them.
What are holiday gift guides?
Holiday gift guides are product round-ups all about (surprise!) gifts.
From October through December, magazines, blogs, and newspapers publish a huge range of gift-giving round-ups like Handmade Items For Extra Special Gift Giving, A Holiday Gift Guide Featuring Black-Owned Businesses, or 42 Things From Small Businesses That Make Perfect Stocking Stuffers.
I really appreciated seeing how many publications featured BIPOC-owned brands and locally-made products in their 2020 gift guides.
Why are holiday gift guides such a great press opportunity if you sell products?
They’re unlike any other kind of product placement PR, because once a year, publications that typically don’t feature products or include shopping round-ups, like a fitness magazine, open their pages for product coverage.
You can find holiday gift guides in niche titles you would normally not be able to work with. This vastly increases the amount of PR opportunities.
Men’s magazines will cover everything from beauty products to jewelry
Here’s an example I always like to give- men’s magazines will basically never feature home goods, beauty products, textiles, jewelry, etc., except around the holidays.
Why?
Because during the holiday season men are often giving gifts to their wives, girlfriends, mothers, and daughters. This means that in order for a men’s magazine to give their readers tips on what types of gifts to purchase for the “women in their life” they’ll feature products typically associated with women.
Here’s an example article: The 55 Best Christmas Gifts Ideas for Her to Unwrap This Holiday Season published by Men’s Health includes 55 product placement opportunities, and this isn’t their only gift guide.
Outlets that do feature products include even more during the holidays
Publications that feature products year-round, like Buzzfeed, for example, create literally dozens of gift guide round-ups during the holidays on everything from gifts for parents, for cocktail lovers, for twentysomethings, for plant parents, for people who love beauty products, for pet owners….and that’s just a start.
A quick “holiday gift guide” search in your favorite publications will reveal many guides from years past.
How do holiday gift guide press placements increase brand awareness?
Below are four examples of holiday gift guide press placements I’ve secured and the readership statistics for each publication.
Sometimes we forget the sheer number of people who read magazines, either through subscriptions or by picking them up in line at the grocery store or airport.
This is why holiday gift guide press is so impactful for small businesses who are trying to increase awareness for their brand. One or two placements could mean millions of new eyes on your products.
Millions of people also read digital gift guides
These million plus reader numbers are true for many blogs and the digital versions of print magazines, too.
The digital version of Self Magazine, for example, has 10.6 million unique visitors to their website per month, while the digital version of Men’s Health Magazine has 15.3 million unique visitors per month.
When should you start holiday gift guide pitching?
“When do I start holiday gift guide pitching?”
This is one of the most common questions I get.
I know the holidays can feel really far away if you’re reading this post in March, April, or even July. But, editors at large national publications start working on gift guides in the early summer -- think Cosmo, Vogue, Outside, Wired, etc.
Regional publications like Time Out, Southern Living, and Colorado Homes, start this work late summer.
If you’re learning how to pitch holiday gift guides for the first time, the more time you have to prepare the better.
If you want to see your product featured in holiday gift guides, NOW is the time to start researching to find out which publications are the best fit. And to make sure you have the right photos, merchandising, and samples so your pitch is successful.
If you want to read a bit more about our holiday gift guide pitching timeline, I wrote a whole blog post dedicated to just that.
Why holiday gift guide pitching is great way to get started if you're new to PR
PR is hard, and it’s a lot of work. DIY PR is even harder!
Between figuring out what story you want to tell and what outlets would actually tell it, it can feel really overwhelming and mysterious. That’s what’s so great about holiday gift guides.
There’s a set formula and the editorial calendar is the same every year. It’s super straightforward product PR, a great way to get started.
Another holiday gift guide pitching bonus- almost all of the editors who write holiday gift guides work on year-round product round-ups, so pitching holiday gift guides is a great way to start building relationships with the editors at your favorite publications.
Gift guide pitching pro tip
If you want to get the most out of your new relationships with editors, keep in mind that your job is always to make their life as easy as possible. Show them that you understand the publication they write for and why you think your product is a good fit.
Have they done guides in the past about sustainable products?
Do they like to source locally-made items?
Be sure you give editors easy access to product images
We create separate and super-organized Dropbox folders for every editor we pitch. (Never send an editor a zip file!)
What types of products are typically featured in holiday gift guides?
Basically anything small and “giftable.” The types of products include:
Home Goods
Small Décor
Tech Products
Gadgets
Jewelry
Consumables
Small Electronics
Ceramics
Stationary
Books
Beauty & Self-care Products
Accessories
... the list goes on and on.
Oftentimes brands create giftable kits, sets, or mini collections specifically for holiday gift guides, like cheese board sets, drink-making kits, coffee-themed sets, and bath or self-care sets.
Gift guide pitching pro tip
A lot of holiday gift guides are put together around a theme, like:
gifts for the home,
gifts for co-workers,
gifts under $50,
gifts for people who love to entertain…
When you start to research publications that may be a good fit for your product pay attention to these themes so you have a better idea of which publications your product may be a good fit for.
What images will I need to pitch holiday gift guides?
When photographing products for media outreach including holiday gift guides, you must produce images that meet industry standards.
Editors will select images that meet their publications criteria and pass over images that don’t fit within the publications established point of view, no matter how great the product or how artistic the photos.
As you look through the holiday gift guides of the publications you may want to pitch, pay attention to the quality and type of photography that are in the guides. Do all the products have a white or transparent background? If so you’ll need silhouette images.
I sell on Etsy, can I still pitch holiday gift guides?
YES!
It is important to know that not all gift guides will include products that are only sold on Etsy or Amazon, particularly guides in large print national publications.
However, many smaller print regional publications and a lot of digital publications will include these products.
Additionally, if your product is available at a local retailer you should definitely pitch to local publications.
If you are a growing business this is a great way to start small, the process will be the same next year and you can always work to build a stand-alone sales platform next year!
Holiday gift guide pitching with Wolf PR
I’ve worked in PR my entire professional life and have been running my boutique public relations shop Wolf PR since 2011.
Because holiday gift guides are such a stellar PR opportunity, every year Wolf PR sets the goal to get more gift guide features than last year.
And if I’m humble bragging (or maybe just normal bragging?) I’ve gotten really good at gift guide pitching. All of the holiday gift guide images in this post are from placements Wolf PR has secured.
One year we got so many gift guide placements, one of our clients pulled their giftable products apart from their furniture line and started a whole new brand and website!
Another client we took on in mid-summer 2020 relayed the ultimate compliment,
“Our product has been featured in so many gift guides this year! We’ve never had this much publicity, even after working with other PR firms.”
All this to say, gift guide placements make a big bottom-line difference, and we know our stuff.
Free live gift guide pitching workshop
I’ve also watched so many amazing designers and brands (and friends) get passed over during a time of year that could be really impactful for their careers.
Have you noticed your peers getting great gift guide coverage and wondered what they’re doing?
As you may have noticed… most holiday gift guide advice available online is very surface-level and doesn’t go in-depth at all.
That’s why I set out to make this very niche free on-demand workshop to help you better understand how to pitch your products holiday gift guides.
During this free workshop you’ll learn:
why holiday gift guides have 5x the amount of press opportunities
how these great placements can lead to millions of new eyes on your products
when you should start pitching so you don’t miss out on this great press opportunity.
PLUS, you’ll also learn 5 gift guide pitching tips that I’ve perfected over the years so you’ll know *exactly* what makes a product ready for press outreach.
I hate, hate, hate, fluffy advice. I hate spinning wheels. I hate all those surface level “how to grow your biz” workshops that leave you with no actionable information and nothing that’s actually useful to your business.
I made sure this workshop was super useful for businesses that sell products. I’m not in the business of wasting other people’s time.
If you’re still curious about how to pitch holiday gift guides and this FAQ didn’t answer your question, drop us a line hello@wolf-craft.com.
Want to learn what it takes to get your products into holiday gift guide?
Watch our free on-demand Holiday Gift Guide PR workshop here.