A professional guide for the perfect press kit: how to wow the media world

PR as the cornerstone of external communication

Alongside marketing, public relations is essential for founders, established businesses, and large corporations to communicate externally. In contrast to product and brand campaigns, a press contact will want to see the company’s profile, portfolio, and offerings.

In this guide, we give you some practical tips on how to design an informative and appealing press kit, since it is and will always be a vital part of corporate communication. In the context of digitalization, the traditional press kit is also clearly undergoing a transformation now. The view shared by both companies and PR agencies is that a purely printed version is no longer considered to be modern. However, practice has shown that focusing exclusively on digital and online media is not always effective in PR management either.

You’ll be sure to win over journalists and PR editors by following our free professional guide “Digital and print: how to create the perfect press kit”.

Your company press kit needs to be relevant

A press kit is an important means of communication when it comes to the PR management of founders and companies of all sizes. Media representatives value it as a source of information, draw inspiration from the press releases to write their articles, and use the material for their research.

So, when compiling your press kit, it’s not just about satisfying your need to communicate as a founder or enterpriser, but also about meeting the needs and requirements of journalists. First and foremost, that means it needs to be practical. The easier it is to understand and process the information, the greater the likelihood of your kit being received well by the intended audience. At the same time, the quality of the content is a key factor. Journalists write with their own target group in mind, so the topic has to be relevant to it.

A press or corporate kit can also be geared towards customers, business partners, institutions, or investors. They all have different interests and should be provided with different material. Founders that have just entered the market will especially benefit from this.

Step by step to a professional press kit

Your press kit needs to reach the right people, so targeted planning should be your first step, otherwise your material will fall on deaf ears and not generate the media impact you want.

Our guide “Digital and print: how to create the perfect press kit” first asks the main introductory questions:

• When is a press kit worthwhile for your company?
• What target group are you addressing?
• Where will you be presenting your press kit?
• What content is of interest?
• Digital and print – what are the advantages of the different formats?

You can also expect plenty of tips on various design techniques and all relevant content-related aspects.

Self-made project or PR agency?

Big companies often outsource their PR to an agency, which then organizes press conferences and events, invites attendees, writes press releases, compiles information material, and updates the press mailing list. However, founders and smaller businesses in particular have to think about their budget. That’s where a dedicated in-house team can work wonders and create an engaging press kit.

Even if you get a PR agency to take care of your public relations, make sure you know what information your press kit contains and how you can draw attention to your company, product, or service. After all, no one knows your company better than you.

In our free guide, you’ll find all the need-to-know tips and step-by-step instructions for putting together an impactful press kit.

Design, content, and the aha effect

You’ve probably seen it yourself: companies and press representatives rushing past each other at trade shows or other events but not before swapping business cards and optimistically handing over press kits. There are of course journalists who directly approach a company because they have a certain topic in mind for one of their articles. However, that is rarely the case.

In reality, your press kit has to win over the media representatives – not the other way around. Obviously, you can do this by presenting a revolutionary product or business idea or even an interesting format that piques the recipient’s curiosity and promises more. Still, it’s important to keep in mind that every company is vying for attention, so it’s crucial to stand out from the large crowd of rival formats. You’ll hardly achieve that by simply handing over a USB stick. Instead, you have to package all your relevant digital information in a handy printed format that leaps out at people.

Our guide shares some tips on how to draw attention to yourself:

• The right look: is your cover an eye-catcher?
• Press releases, photos, graphics: what material should the press kit contain?
• Digital: USB stick, QR code, or download link?
• Pixels, dpi, and font size: what do you need to consider for different formats?

From press kit to communication tool: build rapport with journalists and boost media relevance

Once you’ve laid the groundwork for your press kit, you can keep building on it:

• Corporate design
• Company sheet
• Boilerplate (company description)
• Image stock (outside view of premises, production facilities, employees)
• Image film
• USB stick layout

You should invest enough time and an appropriate budget into these basics. Once you’ve made a positive impression on media representatives, it’s important to keep your corporate design consistent so that they immediately recognize it in the future. In contrast, it is worth modifying your press kit if it is not performing as you’d hoped.

What matters is successfully breaking the ice with your target group. Only then will you gain long-term media contacts and build lasting business relationships. The more your product and press material appeal to journalists, the more responsive they will be to subsequent press releases and any invitation you extend to them to exchange information. An impactful press kit is thus a future-oriented project that is part of your holistic PR management.