How PR Helps Your Small Business Sell More on Black Friday
With one week left, are you the kind of person to start planning your Thanksgiving dinner or Black Friday shopping?
Sure, sure, preparing a full Thanksgiving dinner is a lot of work, but if you are hoping to know where to find the best deals and beat the lines, that takes some planning too!
Black Friday is a big deal in the world of retail, which also means that it is a big deal for the publicists of those retailers too. Anticipating that people are going to search for the best Black Friday and Cyber Monday deals, publicists work ahead of time to make sure their clients are featured in the best gift guides and product roundups.
Then, when people plan out all their Black Friday and Cyber Monday shopping (and probably a lot of spontaneous shopping too) they look to these product roundups to help them find what is available. Basically, if you can land your product in one of these articles, more people will know about it and buy it.
But what if my small business doesn't have a publicist for Black Friday?
The good news is that you don't have to have a publicist for your business to have a shot at getting the right kind of PR for Black Friday and Cyber Monday.
You just need to know a little bit about how the media works to be your own publicist.
Certainly, a publicist can help a ton. They have more practice, connections, and time to get the job done. But I've seen a lot of small businesses have tremendous results just from knowing the basics.
If you are interested in learning how to be your own publicist, you can visit my online shop for small business PR resources or reach out to learn more about my course.
3 tips to land your small business in a Black Friday gift guide
For now, let's go over a few tips that can help your media outreach stand out.
Pitch your local media and tell them about your small business deal
You already know the importance of shopping local so it shouldn't be too much of a stretch to see that the local media will want to tell the story of all the local small businesses people should shop at and support on Black Friday.
Make it clear in your pitch that you are a local business. I recommend starting it in the subject line. This would something like "Local Artist Shares Black Friday Discounts" or "Town Brewery has Black Friday Lunch Special."
(Obviously, those subject lines would be more interesting if they were more detailed with the specific city, so take liberty with that.)
But the important point here is to start with your local media. Find the neighborhood, city, and regional publications and reach out to the TV and radio stations for your area too. Ask them if they're doing any Black Friday deal roundups and let them know about what you have to offer.
Write a simple and straightforward pitch
Your first interaction with the media ought to be via email. It's the standard.
But if you are looking forward to sending your life story to introduce yourself and your business, I'm going to have to encourage you to think twice about that.
Assume that everyone in the media has a full inbox with more than a thousand unread emails and another hundred they meant to respond to yesterday.
In this frame, it's easy to see that you need to keep everything concise. Less is always more when it comes to pitching the media.
Don't beat around the bush or add any frills. Include the important details, like what your deal is and how people can redeem it, and that's about it. If they are interested and need more information or have questions, they'll ask.
Look for Black Friday writers
Finally, my last tip is to find writers who have already written about Black Friday and Cyber Monday deals. These are going to be the people you contact that have the highest probability of featuring your products in their latest gift guides.
To find these dynamos, do a Google search such as "Black Friday Deals 2018" and look at the authors of these articles. Add in keywords for your local area, write up a concise pitch, and you're good to go!