Holiday Gift Guide Pitching: Five Reasons We Start in... July
The biggest time of year for consumer spending is the holidays. Many of my retainer clients make the *majority* of their sales in the four weeks before Christmas. What’s interesting is how this trend trickles down into press opportunities… because the holidays are also when my team and I secure 3-5x the amount of press placements for our clients.
Why? Because holiday gift guides have more products per page than any other media features. But, to successfully secure these features you have to start holiday gift guide pitching early.
If you sell products and you’re still wondering if holiday gift guides should really be a priority amongst the trillion other things you have to do in your business… our answer is yes, absolutely.
Almost every magazine, blog, and newspaper you can think of publishes a least one holiday gift guide, and most publish several.
A quick “holiday gift guide” search in your favorite publications will reveal many guides from years past. Publications like Buzzfeed, for example, create dozens of holiday gift guides each year, and the guides cover a huge range of products — everything from beauty products, to consumables, to tech gear, to home goods, to pet products, and more.
Holiday gift guides are the biggest product PR opportunity of the year.
And since these shopping features coincide with the time of year when consumers spend the most money, holiday gift guide placements can have a big impact on your end-of-year sales goals.
One year, our sister firm, Wolf PR got so many gift guide placements for one of our clients, that they pulled their giftable products apart from their furniture line and started a whole new website! That’s why we put together a super niche free workshop all about how to build brand awareness with holiday gift guide press.
I know the holidays can feel really far away if you’re reading this post in March, April, or even July. But, from a media perspective, they’re actually much closer than you might imagine. Since I’ve been successfully securing gift guides placements for over ten years, I wanted to put together some tips about holiday gift guide pitching, specifically, how and why the timing for pitching for gift guides is so different than all other media outreach.
If you want the benefits of this great media opportunity you’ll want to get organized and get started early.
1. Holiday gift guide pitching research takes time
Holiday gift guides are unlike any other kind of product PR
Once a year, publications that typically don’t feature products or include shopping round-ups, like a fitness magazine, for example, open their pages for product coverage. You can find gift guides in niche titles you would normally not be able to work with.
For example, you wouldn’t typically think of a spa magazine as a great media opportunity for products. But, as you can see, organic spa magazine’s December cover prominently features their holiday gift guide, which includes products ranging from lighting, to an organic cotton apron, to a marble coaster, an essential-oil-based candle, and a vegan leather-covered ice bucket. This magazine is in fact a great media opportunity for businesses that make sustainable products.
Another example I always like to give. Men’s magazines will basically never feature home goods, beauty products, textiles, jewelry, etc., except around the holidays. 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.
To take advantage of all these media opportunities you’ll want to start researching publications sooner rather than later.
Gift guide pitching pro tip
If you don’t know where to start head over to the press pages of some of your competitors. Did they get holiday gift guide placements? Use this peer research to start making your targeted media list with the publications and editors that are a good fit for your products.
2. Print national magazines start working on holiday gift guides early
Exhibit A- to the left is a text correspondence between my team and I from March 17th. Literally March. The editor is already scouting holiday gift guide content and will start officially working on guides in June.
Print national magazines are the ones you can find anywhere in the United States, think Real Simple, Men’s Health, Cosmo, Better Homes & Gardens. If it’s in an airport newsstand, it’s probably a print national.
Gift guides have longer lead times
Did you know that print national magazines traditionally have a 3-4 month lead time? BUT when it comes to holiday gift guides, that lead time can extend to over 6 months?
Holiday gift guides are a big lift for publications. Editors have to source a much larger number of products than typical monthly features and these products have to cohesively fit into whatever theme or themes they are covering that year. This is why print national magazines typically start holiday gift guide work in July.
When to prep to pitch print nationals
That means if you want to be able to pitch for Real Simple’s gift guide, you need to know who to pitch and have great assets in… July. Which means you’ll be doing your prep work in May and June.
3. You may need to take new photos of your products
If you’re working on holiday gift guide pitching for the first time, the more time you have to prepare the better. As you research publications you’ll want to pay attention to the types of products that are featured, as well as also how they are featured. What does the photography and merchandising look like?
To successfully secure placements in holiday gift guides you have to have the right photos for the publications you’ve selected. This means you may need to plan some extra time to re-photograph or merchandise your products.
Holiday gift guides to the left:
Food & Wine - 18 Great Gifts for Coffee Lovers
Harpers Bazaar - The Best Luxury Gifts Form Women with Style
Vogue - 90 Gifts From Black-Owned Businesses to Give This Year
Merchandising pro tip
A lot of publications like to feature giftable sets, kits, and collections in their holiday gift guides. This is especially true for consumables, like a coffee-sets, a cheese board set, or cocktail kit.
4. Bizarrely, some digital outlets publish holiday gift guides in October and November too…
As big fans of fall holidays, like Halloween and Thanksgiving, we wish these holidays got to keep their months.
However, the reality is, digital publications have started publishing holiday gift guides as early as October. This is especially true for the digital versions of print magazines.
When to start digital outreach
If you want those sweet backlinks, you should start your holiday gift guide pitching well before October or November to be considered for early digital gift guide coverage. For well known blogs that publish early gift guides we start outreach in mid-September.
Holiday gift guides to the left:
5. Even if you start later, there are still SO. MANY. OPPORTUNITIES.
So this post is supposed to be about starting holiday gift guide pitching early… A lot of conventional wisdom (and my personal experience says) in order to make the most of all possible product placement opportunities you have to start early. Conventional wisdom also says you should have your pitching wrapped up by August for print and September for digital. AUGUST!
What to do if you start late
While starting early is ideal, there are still a lot of holiday gift guide opportunities late into the year. At Wolf PR, we’re often pitching digital publications right up until the week before Christmas. If you’re starting outreach later in the season look specifically for digital opportunities, especially ones with titles like “quick ship” or “last minute gifts.”
Holiday gift guides to the left:
CNN - Shop last-minute gifts that will arrive in time for Christmas
Country Living - These 45 Last-Minute Gifts Will Still Ship in Time for Christmas
Food52 - 13 Last-Minute Gifts You Can Still Get in Time for the Holidays
Pro tip to keep your holiday gift guide pitching organized
Make a calendar in a spreadsheet where you can keep track of all the timelines for each kind of publication you’re pitching, including when you’ll have photography that’s ready to send.
Bonus Reason… We’re holiday gift guide pitching pros
Okay, so tbh this reason is not about timing for holiday gift guide pitching, but more about who I am, which is an actively working publicist first.
Why I set out to share gift guide pitching tips with other small businesses
I make my money doing PR full time, not selling PR courses. But I’ve had a how to pitch holiday gift guide course living in my brain for two years leading up to launching Wolf Craft.
I wanted to build this very specific niche course because I’ve seen so many amazing designers and brands (and friends) get passed over during a time of year that could be really impactful for their small business and careers.
I’m also inclined to think this PR course (and my advice in general) is really good because I’m still doing the work. Literally every day.
Back when I went to art school, our professors were required to be working artists too. They brought a level of real world, up-to-date experience you couldn’t get from someone who was only teaching and not working. This made a big impact on me, and it’s the framework I kept in mind while designing this course. It is up to date, relevant, and translates exactly to what my team and I do every year.
If you want more info and tips before signing up for a full how to pitch gift guides course, check out my free on-demand digital workshop How to Build Brand Awareness With Holiday Gift Guide Press.
To learn more about the best PR opportunity for product-based businesses, you can sign up to watch the free workshop here.
