Nail fashion and lifestyle PR: Our tips from Start Up 2019
On Saturday the 19th, our very own community manager Martha, and our PR expert Kam joined Enterprise Nation’s Start Up Fashion 2019 to bring all the do’s and don’t of fashion and lifestyle PR. They talked about everything from where to find magazine contacts to how to PR your PR. Don’t worry if you couldn’t make it, we’ve rounded up our tops tips from the talk.
PLAN AHEAD
Planning ahead is a must! You need to ensure you know your lead times and well as your 3 key times of the year for pitching to the press, depending on your brand and product. Lead times are very important and this is how you’ll start seeing progress in your coverage.
HAVE YOUR ASSETS IN ORDER BEFORE PITCHING TO THE PRESS
Assets are key to getting the coverage you deserve, and you should have these before you spend money on PR. Your assets include: Look book, press release, website, imagery, line sheet and much more. When it comes to PR, understanding your priorities is key, such as knowing when and where you should be spending your time and money. Once you’ve done this you can start pitching to the press, but not beforehand.
CREATING A RECOGNISABLE BRAND
Once you’ve got your assets, this is when you can start working fully on your branding and social. Our top tips for this is to ensure you don’t rush or create branding that doesn’t speak to your audience! It needs to be representative of your brand, brand values and be consistent throughout all your channels and platforms - this is how you create a strong brand identity that is recognisable. Glossier and Five Dot Botanics are really good examples of this.
KNOW YOUR PUBLICATIONS
Just like your branding, the publications you’re pitching to need to be right for your audience. As a high end menswear brand, you wouldn’t pitch to Stella Loves, would you? You need to know what publication your audience are reading, and then you can start looking at the different press spaces you can pitch to.
MAKE EDITOR’S LIVES EASIER
Once you’ve done all of the above; you’ve planned your key times, you’ve got your assets and your branding and social nailed and you know which publications are right for your brand, you can start pitching. Our key bit of advice for emailing the press is to keep it short, sweet and simple. If you make their life easier, they’ll thank you for it (hopefully in coverage) so don’t tell them your life story, don’t attach large files that’ll clog up their inbox (unless requested) and don’t hound them. Emailing the press is something which new brands find the most challenging, what to say, how to say it, how often to email - these are important questions! We have created email templates which take you through, step by step, on how to send your pitch email, with examples.
GET COVERAGE, SHOUT ABOUT IT
You’ve worked hard and you’ve got the coverage you deserve, now shout about it. Optimise the exposure, on social media, your website, email newsletter or on a blog post.
DON’T PAY FOR COVERAGE, PLEASE
This one speaks for itself. Advertorial and advertising spaces, this is not real PR, and it’s also not credible for your brand.
Thanks to everyone who attended our talk - we hope it was useful and inspired you to begin your DIY PR journey!
Ready for more PR? We’re here to give you the contacts, community, advice & support you need to get the coverage you deserve. You can find out more about our memberships here.