Products Between the Pages: Pitching Your Product to Magazine and Catalogue Editors

Products Between the Pages: Pitching Your Product to Magazine and Catalogue Editors
Products Between the Pages: Pitching Your Product to Magazine and Catalogue Editors

A national print magazine or catalogue is one of the best ways to get your product noticed. Once there, you and your company could be catapulted to success overnight. But where do you even start when you want to get your product featured in one of these magazines?

Don’t sit around and wait for editors to find your product; you need to get your product in front of them with a glitzy sales pitch that will make it irresistible. Here are just some of the ways in which you can get your product noticed by telling a story and getting invited to a face-to-face meeting.

Give Them Some Background

Everyone loves to know the story behind a brand and this is no less true for editors of global magazines. Share your story with them and describe how this will capture their readers’ attention. So many other companies will be sending press releases and generic statements, so you need to make yours stand out from the crowd.

Look at which magazines will suit your product and ones that you’d be happy for your product to appear in. Don’t forget to look further afield too at trade magazines, digital magazines and local publications as these could all help to add to the publicity of your product.

Research Publications

When you’re looking at the various publications that you think you want to work with, do some research into what they offer. For example, do they provide a downloadable version of their magazines and is their target audience suitable for your product?

A lot of magazine companies will have editorial sections that will allow you to see what themes they have for their upcoming issues, which should help to give you an idea as to whether it’s worth pitching your story to them.

If you think they are, look further into the background of the magazine, including the background of the editor and who they’ve worked with before.

When you’re sending your product to them you need to know that you’re going to grab their attention and it’s also worth trying to pitch directly to the editor or relevant staff member. If you can find their direct email address – this is a huge bonus!

Once you’ve located the magazines you want to target and you’ve pitched your product to them, you’ll hopefully find an influx of invitations start coming through to meet with editors. This could involve quite a bit of travelling and while it’s a great opportunity for you, it’s crucial you keep costs at a minimum.

Using services such as GoEuro in Italy will help to keep things in your budget and will also provide you with the professional travel you and your company need.

Screenshot of website goeuro.com
Screenshot of website goeuro.com

Be sure to pack everything you need for your journey to meet the publishers, taking a smart change of clothes, all of the relevant documentation, presentations etc., and of course, the product itself! Travelling to meet the publishers in person is one of the most effective ways to demonstrate what your product does. And, with a sales pitch that’s got the wow-factor, there’s no reason why you can’t be jetting around the world to meet these publishers!

Melissa McKenzie works as a retail fashion buyer and has past experience working for a fashion magazine. Mel is keen to see small businesses succeed, particularly when run by a woman and shares some of her business acumen in her articles.