Christopher Murphy · 13 August, 2020

Summary: When it comes to press releases, don't adopt a shotgun approach, randomly emailing press releases to editors left, right and centre. Instead, do your research. Find the right people to target and begin to cultivate connections. Send fewer, but better emails and you'll improve your hit rate.

Make a list of everyone who is potentially helpful for your marketing and press strategy. As I've noted in the summary, do your research and find the right people to target.

Here's a list for REDACTED, a design × technology × fashion startup, I'm mentoring.

My first piece of advice to the team at REDACTED, when we discussed their marketing campaign, was to:

1. make a list;
2. break the list down and categorise; and
3. find relevant writers to contact.

Who would be interested in this?

Often a product or a service will present multiple angles through which you can promote it.

One of the products that REDACTED is launching is a piece of 'connected jewellery', so we broke the list down into the following categories.

• Design
• Technology
• Fashion

In each of these categories, there will be writers we can target. It's important to do research and find them.

Design-Focused Publications (Magazines, Blogs)

I'd suggest further categorising here by type of publication, analogue and digital:

• Magazines