By Courtney Rose
Running media relations and social media campaigns for consumer products are one of our favorite things to work on—it’s our bread and butter! We’ve worked with so many different consumer products—fashion, both apparel and accessory brands; subscription boxes—health & wellness and foodie ones; nutritional products—protein powders and juices; beauty products; skin care lines and so much more.
Launching a consumer product public relations strategy is simple and we’ve created this handy checklist for brands to review when they are thinking to themselves, “Do we have everything we need to start getting the word out there about our product?” The answer is usually “YES!” It’s not rocket science, you’re probably ready to go right now!
Check out the short list below of everything you should have prior to launching your public relations campaign.
- Website| Ensure your website is easy to navigate so your visitor can add items to their shopping cart with ease. The site should showcase your brand visually—with beautiful imagery and content that’ll engage your customer to stay and explore the site as long as possible. Your website should also be optimized to help your brand get discovered through online searches. In addition, your website should be ready to handle an influx of visitors – you don’t want it crashing when the media hits start rolling.
- Hi-res images| Photos are a must. Before kicking off a media relations or social media campaign, you must have hi-res images to share with writers, editors and reporters to consider including in media features and imagery that will captivate your social media audience!
- Inventory with samples| Get ready to fulfill those sample requests. Media contacts will want to see, feel, touch and taste (when applicable) your product to see the quality and uniqueness for themselves—especially when they are endorsing your product to their readers and viewers. Also, what comes with successful public relations campaigns are national TV spots which require you to have a large inventory. Why? The producers want to ensure that once the TV spot airs all viewers will have no problem purchasing a product from you, so get those units up!
- Social media pages—Pretty simple—secure your handles, prepare those short bios and start curating social media content that will attract your audience. Also, don’t forget to engage with them too to create a loyal customer base.
- Lookbook—Having a lookbook is especially important for fashion products—accessories and apparel. You should have a catalog with beautiful lifestyle images of your products and descriptions about each product, along with price points that can be passed along to a media contact so they can easily access everything!
- Positive Mindset–When consumer products are getting ready to launch a public relations campaign, one thing we always like to be transparent about is how much time it takes to secure these top-tier media hits. These outlets are working five to six months out and as hard as it might be to have patience, it’s a must! It also helps to stay optimistic and have an open mind to receiving feedback from your publicist and editors about your product.
- Confidence and courage—It’s time and you have to be ready to put yourself and your brand out there. You’re here for a reason so keep standing behind what you believe in—that’s what it takes to have a successful public relations campaign.
- Get a kickass PR firm, like us!—Now it’s time to put all of this together, prepare some press materials led by your public relations firm and shift things into high gear!
Are you ready? Email us at info@olivecreativestrategies.com!