A press kit is designed to help media outlets, including journalists, feature your business with ease.
Also known as a media kit, a well-built press kit can be one of the most useful assets for your business. If you invest time, money and energy into building a press kit, you will be able to use it over and over again throughout the life of your business.
Even with the required information, one of the challenges that startups face is having a hard time making an efficient press kit. We are going to be looking at the parts that make up a press kit and how you should build one that will help give your service or product the best chance of publicity. If your press kit gets your product or service on print media outlets, online write-ups, or even airtime on news stations, you will see a great return on your initial investment.
What Does a Press Kit Accomplish?
A good press kit will give any bloggers or journalist materials to use when they are writing about your business, their readers will be more informed about who you are and what you do so they will be more likely to talk about you. When a journalist is writing about your small business it is more likely that they will use any photos or videos of your business in their news coverage.
What Format to Use
Traditionally, press kits have been a physical format that you can hand out in a branded package or folder. A printed press kit can be very expensive, especially when you include any customizations. While it’s not necessary, business owners have been known to add gold foil, special glossy effects, and custom bindings.
We recommend creating a digital press kit that is stored online for small businesses to keep costs low. You can save a large amount of money on the costs that are involved with printing and shipping a press kit while also having them look just as nice as a printed version. Also, at the click of a button, you can make any necessary updates. More importantly, anyone that requests the information doesn’t have to spend too much time looking for any physical copies.
Where to Host Your Press Kit
Easy access to your press kit is what makes it valuable. Having a dedicated “Press Kit” page on your company website may be ideal, however, sometimes that isn’t very feasible.
You should consider creating a folder that holds all of your press kit components on Dropbox and make sure that it is properly labelled and all you have to do is place a link to the folder on the footer of your site. Be sure that these files allow people to download them, but not make any changes to them.
How To Make Your Own Press Kit
There is no set of rules that determines what needs to be in a press kit. Depending on what you’re promoting your press kit can vary.
What you include in your press kit is very important and should be a simple way to showcase you or your business. You can think of it as your business’s greatest hits because this is where the media will get to know your company in one nice and neat package.
A press kit can be as unique as you want it to be, it should consider answering the questions “Who, What, When, Where, and Why,” but there are several key components that should be included.
Here is what your small business should have in its press kit:
Company Background
Having your company background in your press kit can be very beneficial. This details how your business started and where it is going. Any awards and major accomplishments should be included. Be sure not to forget any plans that you have for product development and expansion. On an annual basis, you should update the company background and include any new accomplishments and benchmarks.
You should also include any social media handles that you have for your business. This will help any journalist easily find your social media accounts and tag you when they publish any coverage.
Products and Services
This section of your press kit should have information that you may already have, such as brochures or pamphlets about your products or services.
You can easily create a one-pager for each of your products or services if you don’t have any marketing assets. Use these to give an easy-to-understand description of what your service or product is, the pricing, the value proposition that makes you unique, and how it works.
Frequently Asked Questions
A great way to share any information that doesn’t easily fit into the other sections of your press kit is to have a frequently asked questions (FAQ) document.
This document could have information about where your products can be bought, care details, return policy, etc. You can start collecting these by looking over your social media accounts where any users have asked questions if you don’t already have a list of frequently asked questions. You can also ask anyone on your customer service team, who interacts with your customers or clients directly, to give you a list of questions that they have had to answer repeatedly. A journalist is probably going to ask these same questions if your customers are asking.
Corporate Biographies
People love to know who is the one that is running the show. A great way for journalists and bloggers to get to know more about the company’s team members is by including biographical information about the subject matter experts, executive team, and founders.
Including bios is to show your company’s credibility and provide a background of who works at your business. A bio should include the person’s first name, title, role in the business with a full description, any relevant degrees or certifications, and any achievements or awards. Including a professional headshot, the bio should be less than a page in length.
Headshots are important no matter what stage your business is in. It is probably one of the most requested assets and can be used in several ways.
Visual elements
Be sure to include any high-resolution images or logos in your press kit. If you don’t, you will leave no other option but to have the visuals picked by someone who is not associated with your business to look and find whatever they think works best. To prevent this from happening, your press kit should include Photos of your sales team or product and variations of your logo with varying sizes and ones with transparent backgrounds.
Contact Information
Your contact information is one of the most important components of your press kit. Additional information may be needed by any journalists that are working on a story about your business, this will also give them a way to contact you if they want to do an interview. So you want to make your contact information easy to find.
If you decided to have a dedicated page on your website to host your press release, you should display your phone number or email address for where anyone can contact you for any press inquiries.
Otherwise, you can add a “Contact Us” folder if you decided to host your press kit on a file-sharing program. In this folder, include a file that has the email address, phone number and the name of the person in your company that a journalist can speak to if they have any questions.
You can also create a separate email specifically for any media to reach you if you are concerned about having your email published or on a sharing site. “[email protected]” is good enough. If this is a route that you decide to take be sure to have the email address set up for you to start receiving emails in an inbox that you check repeatedly.
Remember, creating a press kit for your business doesn’t guarantee that your company will be featured in the press or social media. It will, however, increase your chances that any media coverage will include the proper information about your company along with your branded assets. If you’re looking to build a press release kit or need help with any other aspect of starting your business, sign up for a membership and use all of our resources and speak with our business experts to guide you in the right direction.
