How to Plan for Holiday Pitching

The holidays are finally upon us, but for media professionals, this time of year has been on their minds for months. Both publicists and journalists need to start planning holiday coverage fairly early – usually around mid-October.

So, how do you plan for holiday pitching? There are a few things you need to consider first:

Be sure to communicate with your client about their plans. Find out if they’re doing a special event for the holidays or if they have certain products that would fit into a gift guide. The sooner you get this information, the sooner you can start pitching it to outlets. Plan a meeting at least 6 weeks in advance to ensure you are ahead of the game!

Decide if you are pitching to print or online outlets. This will determine your lead time. If you want to place a client in a print magazine, you need to start pitching those outlets even earlier. Say you are pitching a “Holiday Gift Guide” for print, you want to be sure to get that out in September. For online outlets, you can start pitching in mid-October all the way up until a couple of weeks before the holidays, depending on what you’re pitching.

Make sure you have all assets for your client’s holiday event or products. There’s going to be a ton of holiday pitches going out at once, so it’s important to have all the information from your client. If a writer wants to feature your client, you can follow up with more information and photos immediately and efficiently.