Lesson Info
4. Headline-Worthy Product Descriptions
Lessons
Welcome to PR for Your Product
06:42 2How to Get Media Coverage for Your Products
27:05 3Techniques for Building Your Media List
18:08 4Headline-Worthy Product Descriptions
07:41 5Craft a Pitch Perfect Email Submission
20:50 6Hot Seat: Email Submission
09:50 7Why Create a Digital Media Kit?
14:14 8What Kind of Product Photography Do You Need?
12:07Lesson Info
Headline-Worthy Product Descriptions
Now we're gonna learn how to create headline worthy practice descriptions were going to go back to what we did in the very first lesson and we're going to mix it up a little bit we're going to learn some techniques for creating your headline worthy proud descriptions so these product descriptions are an essential tool for demonstrating your fit to a blogger and editor if you can talk in their language so it's not just that aesthetic match it's also about tone so you can talk in their language it helps them visualize you it helps them see you in their publication so they want to see does this look right because your product is this product look right is a photography match but also you know does it sound right to you just how can I describe this and if you can show that to them you make their job so much easier you know you take some work off their plate do you give it to them all ready to go and they're going to use it so the first thing you want to do on this this is a process a littl...
e bit is you want to think about what our three showcase products and maybe just one but I like to recommend three so what are three products that you want to say? These are the products that I really want to be pitching out to the media so these could be three products in a new line that's how you can organize it that's a really great way to do it they can be around a theme so a theme might be a color so for instance pantone does their color guides their color reports the color of the year so one great weight organized the products you're going to pitch to a magazine are actually to use the colors of the year and organize them around that theme because you know you know that they're looking for colors in marsala or whatever they're called of the year is going to be right yeah those colors of the year I mean I would google it can tell in color the year google it it'll come up right away yeah and if you look at magazine coverage everything like they and they release those months so the color of the year for twenty fifteen I think was released in october and november so you can plan that stuff way in advance and they also have seasonal trend reports so the team can also be like material help people use it so going back to what people love about it just thinking about how you might you organize it is you want to give them some options you want to eat them you know you can do this the third way price point here's a splurge here's a steel you know give them a couple of different options you can offer the next step is to play with some of those techniques that the editors are always using to write compelling copy so these air copy editors you know their tricks of the trade that you can use so the six techniques that I really recommend our compare and contrast you can use a liberation I love using a little mission in fact I apply a liberation I use it on your slide challenging expectations so there's something about your product that is a little bit different than in the marketplace we worked with this woman win mccormick and she makes something she calls the anti tiara and their crowns for adults and they have these really saucy messages on it so when you think of a tiara you think princesses you think sparkles so that's the way you can challenge expectation of what a tiara is and that's really fun seasonal inspiration so you know if you can tie your product into a season that's one of the best and easiest things to dio course he talked about sports or seal and then thinking of trends so that pantone report or like anything that's happening if there's a hot tv show and you can think about a way to tie your product into a theme of that tv show let's look at some examples of this so this is a line of jewelry ah ferial designs actually out of australia chess fan tan you might be familiar with her and so she worked to be a a program and get a pitch where she really came to paired and contrasted the elements of a product so this is made out of recycled surveilling ste silver and scrap jewelry and industrial products right you've got this old product but it's made new it's mei knew for wedding bands so here's she's comparing contrasting it's a really simple right it's like it's fun it's creative it's not rocket science like but just knowing those techniques you can apply them and make your product that much more appealing another one meghan almonds so she when we worked on helping her pitch around of trade show you know we helped to put some things together and she ended up having l decor included her pillows in here and so this is one words trends you know they were doing brushstrokes is a trend now I don't think meghan pitched brushstrokes as a trend in fact we were doing comparing to contrast with like steal jewelry and now doing soft textiles so they came up with this idea because they were seeing a trend but if you're seeing something in the media you can use it and in fact if you see something like a trend report and like here local like a local magazine you can pitch that to a national that's something that I call stealing like a journalist there's something that journalists actually do to get their ideas as they look at other media and then they take a spin on it so that's an idea so these are different kinds of techniques you can use to actually play with your product descriptions so this is the action that I want you to take here which is to rip inspiration straight from the headlines and play up your products so your task you could do a little bit of brainstorming but actually what I think is even better is going out and looking at actual the media outlets that you're putting on your list and looking at their headlines so pull together maybe five different headlines and kind of cross out you know some of the words and play mad libs with them play meant lives in them so if it says something like you know ten gifts for new couples on valentine's day ten gifts for new couples on valentine's day cross out new couples and valentine's day you know and and play with whatever holiday you think is right and whoever you think is your customer right or if they say the the top ten restaurants to try out in san francisco or something like that you know like how can you cross out like what they have in their headlines and fill in something that's relevant to your product and play with some of those techniques another thing you might do is actually start an inspiration file so this is something I'll do a lot where if I see a headline that I'm like that headline is really good that would totally catch my customers I or or that would work so well for one of my clients customers I'll create a file of those fun headlines so that I can play my own mad libs with them later so that could be really helpful when you're writing your pitch is doing that tiffany it's there a place on line I mean I know obviously you can google that but is there something like specific online that showing what's trending now is there a good web site you like to go to to see those hot lines yeah the some of the places I like to go to or you can go to google trends which will show you what are the top trending google search is happening on a daily basis and so you can go it's just google I don't I think you could just google google trends invited another thing you can do that is really effective is actually to look at like today dot com for instance and they have a new speed that's constantly updating and then you can see and actually look at what's trending right now tio play up some of those ideas and if you see something in a magazine you know and you're like oh I missed it magazines usually work on a six month lead time so we'll talk about this a little bit later but just put that in your calendar, you know make a note of it in your spreadsheet, like, oh, they're doing something right now that I should have been in. So, you know, you can pitch it because they always repeat their coverage. So whatever they're pitching in may and june and july, like their big, big buckets, you know, not the little things, but like the cover themes, those will happen the next year.
Class Materials
bonus material
Ratings and Reviews
NAtalie CArlson
This class is SO HELPFUL! How can there not be other reviews? Very clear and specific insights for marketing and media kits. This was done in 2015 - would be great to bring her back and do a 2021 version, although this info seems timeless and still worth watching. Merci, Bridgitte!