How to Create a Media Kit

Media Kits – How To

A media kit is an important asset for a brand, especially for digital publishers, and provides valuable marketing and revenue opportunities. In this post, we discuss what media kits are, their benefits, and how to create your own media kit.

A media kit is a known promotional public relations tool; it contains specific information about a product or service that you can present to advertisers, brands, and media outlets. This guide will walk you through the key elements required to put together an informative kit for your target advertisers. The media kit will allow them to understand what makes your magazine unique and the benefits of advertising with you rather than your competition.

Benefits, Benefits, Benefits

What are the promotional benefits of a media kit? As a powerful marketing tool, a media kit provides a starting point for marketing and PR campaigns, establishes credibility, provides opportunities for potential partnerships, and promotes the brand awareness, or growth opportunities.

Gather Your Resources

Here’s what you need to consider as resources for creating your media kit:

Mission Statement
Magazine’s Logo
Details about what kind of content and features your magazine offers
Editorial Calendar (Yearly overview with concepts and themes by month for each issue)
Staff List (Founder, editor-in-chief, writers, photographers, contributors, etc.)
Mechanical specifications: page size, bleed, and trim size; Requirements: file type, embedded color space, resolution, printing method, marks, and proofs

Present Your Statistics

For any business, brands and advertisers will want to know the kinds of results they can expect from working with you. Your current statistics will provide some indication about the size of your audience and reach, which your potential brands and advertisers have the right to know. The statistics include the following:

Reader Demographics (age range, gender, education level, median household income, etc.)
Subscribers (Mailing list, Facebook fans, Twitter followers, Instagram followers, etc.)
Circulation (Includes issuu stats, which covers sales, frequency, readership etc.)
Distribution (Through email, digital and/or print, stocklists)

Time to Design

A cohesive design and layout for your media kit will do wonders for your magazine’s branding. A cohesive design layout can be created in Adobe InDesign, Photoshop, or Apple Keynote. You can make it more visually appealing by using interesting photos or images from your magazine; including covers and feature spreads is essential. You can incorporate different fonts, color schemes, and other forms of art like illustrations and graphics. Whether you hire a graphic designer or purchase a media kit template, make sure your media kit looks professional and represents your brand in an authentic way.

Advertising Opportunities

Brands are looking for fresh, fun, and creative ways to market themselves. In the advertising section of your media kit, you can outline your ad dimensions, rates, technical specifications, and standard formatting guidelines, so brands and advertisers can see which ones fit their budget. You can provide a production schedule that includes ad material deadlines/closing and on-sale dates. To boost your credibility, you can provide relevant tables and charts with comparison of ad options as it can help the ad buying decision for potential advertisers.

Testimonials & Collaborations

If you already have some collaborations under your belt with brands, then you should definitely consider listing them by sharing their logo or a case study by showing the campaign’s results. If your magazine has been featured in press, media outlets, or awards, here’s where to tell about it. This will give more credibility to your magazine and provides a better idea of what to expect if they work or collaborate with you. To help seal the deal, testimonials from your past brands and clients creates a more meaningful touch. If you don’t yet have testimonials, it’s your turn to put your best foot forward and reach out and ask for testimonials. It does get easier with practice!

Call to Action

With all this good work going into your media kit, don’t forget to include the call to action at the end. Make sure to read your media kit out loud to catch any errors; proofreading several times is a must. Don’t forget to provide your contact information so that the potential brand or advertiser can easily reach out to you. The best format for a media kit is most commonly as PDF. Even better, upload it to issuu for a more interesting and interactive experience, which you can easily embed on your website. issuu publishers Afar Magazine, DuJour Media, and Locale Magazine showcase their media kits on the issuu platform. Sharing your media kit through issuu will help your magazine stand out from the competition far more than a simple email attachment.

When you have checked and double-checked, it’s time for the final step: share and send your well-done media kit!