By ROOT Marketing & PR
In early fall, while the rest of the U.S. are visiting pumpkin patches and thinking about ways to decorate for Halloween, journalists are eating, breathing and sleeping the holidays, largely in part to Holiday Gift Guides (or “HGG”.)
If you’re an e-commerce brand, gift guides are huge sales drivers, especially if:
- you ship nationwide
- you’re on Amazon
- you have a non-perishable product
- your products are particularly giftable
Digital holiday gift guides often publish in November right before the holiday shopping season really heats up, and the media are working on them right now.
On October 8, journalist Alice Dubin wrote in her Substack, “We’re well into October now, so if you’re a publicist pitching holiday gift guides, you’ve probably sent a lot of pitches by now. (I know I have been receiving hundreds of them every single day!)”
As a CPG brand with a giftable product, if you have ~10 hours this October, we advise you to allocate that time to pursuing gift guides. Though you’ll be putting in the heavy work right now, in November and December, you’ll be toasting your success with spiked eggnog. This blog gives you the when, who, what, why and how to get into holiday gift guides, as well as gift guides that publish all year long.
OK so… When Should I Pitch?
Top national lifestyle publications (“long lead” magazines) work on their Holiday Gift Guide issues six months in advance. Make a note for yourself for next year to reach out early summer to glossies like Bon Appetit, Food & Wine, and Saveur.
Smaller, more regional publications (like Sunset Magazine and Denver’s 5280 Magazine) typically plan their issues 3-4 months out, so reach out by August.
However, many digital gift guides are still putting together their HGG right now – in mid-October. HGGs do need more lead time than a typical online story. A standard web piece may only need a couple of weeks, but gift guide editors receive thousands of pitches each season, so we recommend reaching out ASAP. It’s worth it: digital guides usually draw the most readers, and because they generate affiliate revenue for publications (see below), they far outnumber print guides.
And if you were on top of it and sent out your pitches to the longer lead media outlets in July, great news – there’s no need to reinvent the wheel. Reuse that pitch, updating any changed facts and adding seasonal language.
PRO TIP – Here’s what makes action all the more urgent: in your pitch email, you’ll want to offer photos for your products. Gone are the days where every publication had a number of photographers on staff. It is necessary to have stunning product and lifestyle shots in your media library. Not only is it essential in catching the eyes of writers and editors, the usability of your photos in publications very well could be the difference between your product being included vs. not included.
What/Where Should I Pitch?
You may be surprised at how many gift guides there are and how many topics and themes they cover – everything from the New York Post’s “Best 57 Christmas Gifts for Moms” to ultra-niche ones like Men’s Health’s “52 Best Star Wars Gifts.”
The winter holiday gift guides aren’t the only gift guides to pitch – don’t forget other big gift giving holidays such as Valentine’s Day (pitch long leads in September and short leads in December,) Mother’s Day (pitch long leads in December and short leads in March) and Father’s Day (pitch long leads in February and short leads in April.)
In fact, think outside of the box when pitching your gift box – does your product have a “national awareness day”? For example, we’ve secured national coverage for Bubbies’ pickles gift box for National Pickle Day, including on TODAY online and Newsweek. Make sure you research that “national day” thoroughly to make sure it’s widely recognized as the official day before trying to persuade the media to cover it! If there isn’t an existing holiday, you can consider submitting an application to a registry like National Day Calendar, writing a compelling story about why the day should be chosen and how it would be celebrated. The process is competitive: National Day Calendar receives about 20,000 applications a year but approves only 25 to 30 through an internal committee, and it charges a fee to proclaim the day, add it to the calendar, and send an alert to media outlets nationwide. Keep in mind these aren’t legally official holidays, since formal national days have to be approved and introduced by a legislature or government entity.
PRO TIP – Set up an affiliate marketing program for an even stronger chance to be included in digital gift guides. Affiliate marketing is a performance-based model where creators, publishers, and deal sites earn a commission when they drive a sale of your product through a unique tracking link. For CPG brands, it’s a low-risk way to turn product reviews, gift guides, and recipe roundups into measurable revenue, because you only pay when someone actually buys.
For companies on Amazon, brands are automatically enrolled into Amazon Associates affiliate marketing program, which is what many publications prefer these days. With a standard Amazon Associates link, Amazon pays the commission out of its own referral revenue, so nothing is taken from the seller’s payout. The brand pays its usual Amazon selling fees either way, and nothing extra when an outlet links to its listing.
Brands that sell through their own website can join an affiliate network like Awin, Impact, Rakuten, or CJ, which handles tracking, payouts, and access to thousands of established publishers. Brands on Shopify can also run a program directly through apps like Refersion or UpPromote, setting their own commission rates and recruiting creators who already love the product.
Our affiliate marketing guide can be found here.
Who Should I Pitch?
Gift guide pitching has a unique set of rules/deadlines, and you’re often working with media you’ve never worked with before. It’s essential that you send your pitch to the right people. Some gift guides are a team effort and attributed to “staff” or multiple writers on staff, such as this HGG from The Skimm or this one from The Newsette. Others – like this gift guide on subscription boxes from New York Magazine – are written by one person. Regardless, it’s never guaranteed that these writers will develop another gift guide next year – we see new names every year. To get the right contact, we recommend researching writers of previous years’ gift guides, researching publications’ “e-commerce writers,” and even better, developing mutually beneficial relationships with writers year-round, so you can ask them who is crafting their gift guide(s) this/next year.
PRO TIP: Sign up for journalists’ Substacks, an often free subscription-based email newsletter. Writers will include in their Substacks the gift guides they’re working on and what exactly they need for their specific guide (usually MSRP, a high-res image, a quote on why it’s the perfect gift, etc.) Substacks are incredibly helpful year-round and beyond gift guide season. They’ll put out source requests like “I’m working on a camping travel guide – does anyone have a freeze-dried food source source to pitch me?” or “I’m looking to hear from chefs on their favorite airfryers.”
Some of our favorites for gift guides include Aly Walansky, aforementioned Alice Dubin and Jill Schildhouse.
Which Gift(s) Should I Pitch?
You may have just a few, or dozens of items that you would like to be included in gift guides. However, we recommend highlighting no more than 3-4 products in your pitch. To narrow it down, ask yourself:
- What’s “new/cool?” Data-driven pitches are often more appealing to writers. Utilize Google Trends or your own research to back up why your selected products will resonate with audiences. For example, when deciding which of our client Savory Spice’s hundreds of products to choose, we narrowed it down to four items, including a popcorn seasoning set and spice subscription box, after finding out that popcorn-related sales were up 11% year-over-year and subscription boxes were slated to be a $65 billion industry by 2027. Using these insights, ROOT crafted a PR plan that highlighted these types of products and the stories around them. Our pitches got picked up by Rachael Ray, Food Network, New York Times’ Wirecutter and other outlets.
- Which items are the most profitable? Of the items you can produce quickly and easily on short notice (if needed), which ones make you the most money?
- Which items make the best gifts? Which ones do people crave in the wintertime? Do they feel special enough to be a gift? Do they have a cozy, warm, seasonal and/or nostalgic feel?
When drafting your email to writers, be specific on who would benefit from the gift. A recent HGG-focused Substack from journalist Aly Walansky read, “Your product isn’t ‘perfect for everyone on your list.’ And that’s actually a good thing … The narrower you make the recipient, the easier it becomes for me to picture the product in a story. Specificity doesn’t necessarily eliminate editorial opportunities. Actually, sometimes specificity creates them.”
Should I Send Samples?
While some writers will write about products they’ve never personally experienced, many won’t. Go into the holiday gift guide pitching process assuming that you’ll need to send a few samples out to writers who explicitly request them for coverage consideration. Don’t worry about sending more than one sample to each writer, or making the gift box overly fancy.
Sometimes, you can offer a gift card to media to shop for the product themselves online or at major retailers, though it’s not as ideal as a box conveniently delivered to their door. If products being sent to the media are perishable, make sure to get their permission first, in case they aren’t planning to be home when the package is delivered.
PRO TIP FOR NEXT YEAR: When creating next year’s budget, don’t forget to include a decent budget to ship gift guide samples to media (perhaps pick your favorite 10-15 outlets as top targets to pursue by offering samples.)
Landing an inclusion in a prominent gift guide feels like Santa came to visit. If you’d like to leave securing gift guide inclusions to the professionals, call us or drop us a line (but make it quick!)
