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Pippa Goulden (00:43)
welcome back to another episode of PR Made Simple. Right, I am sorry, I'm apologizing in advance, I'm dropping the C-bomb, I'm mentioning the C-word, I'm gonna talk about Christmas. I know, there's a heat wave out there, nobody wants to do any work, it's too hot to be thinking about colder times, but Q4 is around the corner.

And here's the thing, your Q4 self is going to be very grateful that July you listen to this episode because in PR land, Christmas starts now, not in September when it feels urgent, not in October when everyone starts panicking, now. And I have been working on Christmas PR for more than two decades. I mean, my God, do you think I need to get a new job?

I've been doing Christmas PR with founders, small business owners specifically, inside the PR set for This Will Be Our Sixth Christmas. So what I want to do today is not give you a standard checklist of what to put in your Christmas press release. I've

done that before. You can go back and listen to the episode from last Christmas. What I want to do today is tell you about what I see actually making a difference, what the founders who have brilliant Q4s do differently, and what I would do if I was starting my Christmas PR today.

So before we get to the practical stuff, let's just have a think about why Christmas PR is worth your time because I know some of you are listening to this thinking, is this really for me? Is my business Christmasy enough? Is it worth the effort? Should I just focus on some Facebook ads? And the key is, well, my answer is always gonna be yes. If you have a business where Q4 is important to you,

either from a sales perspective or from a messaging perspective, then 100 % it is worth looking at what PR opportunities are there for your business and cracking on and doing it. And here's why. The first thing I want you to remember is that PR creates opportunities that you could never have planned for even in the most shiniest of marketing plans. This is one of my favorite things about PR. There was a great example of this a few Christmases ago.

one of our DIYPR members, she had a business that offered children's clothes rentals and she got a piece in the Daily Telegraph in the build-up to Christmas. It wasn't a gift guide, it was a piece about her business and where she did. I think it was a roundup of where to get Christmas jumpers from, something like that. Anyway, the producers of BBC Morning Live read about her in the Telegraph and she was then invited onto the show to talk about it. They went to her...

They filmed them, they talked about rental, they talked about the eco-friendliness of it all, the cost of savings, all of that kind of stuff. And she was on BBC Morning Live talking about her business. Now that would never have appeared in any marketing plan. You cannot predict that kind of thing. But it happened because she put herself out there. She got featured and one opportunity led to something that she could never have planned for. And that's...

about Christmas PR, the way that I approach it, you are not just pitching for a gift guide spot. You are getting your business in front of new people in new places at a time of year when people are actively looking to discover new brands, to discover new experts, to get help with whatever situations they have going on at Christmas. You never know who is reading, who is watching, who is going to see your name, your business, your brand and think I need that in my life or I need to reach out to that person.

you have to be in it to win it. And when it works, it really works. I've had members on this morning, we got Father's Day admittedly, not Christmas gift guide, but you know, who absolutely sold out of their entire product range. Not even Christmas, That was just a seasonal gift guide moment. The sales impact was enormous.

We've had Priya, I've talked about her a bit on this podcast from Pri Pri. We have actually done a whole episode where we've talked about her Christmas PR approach. So I will link that in the show notes. She's one of my DIY PR members who makes beautiful home accessories from Pri Love Saris. Her Christmas wreath has been featured in the press for the last few years in lots and lots of places, multiple places every year.

It's quite amazing. I flicked through the Christmas issues of the magazines and like, look, there you are again, Priya. There you are again. There's Pri Pri. And that has led to her being stocked in John Lewis, the National Trust, the V &A. Her products ended up in the John Lewis Christmas advert. This is what happens when you do this work consistently and strategically year after year.

And here's the thing that I just want you to sit with. Christmas PR is not just about sales. I know that's hard for a lot of you who are focusing on Q4 sales, but it's about trust, it's about authority, it's about getting your business seen by the right people at the moment that they are most open to discovering something new. The trust recession that I've been talking about a lot on this podcast means that people are not just seeing something on Instagram and buying it anymore.

They are researching consumer habits, but the way that we spend has changed. They're looking for brands that come recommended. They're looking for experts who keep popping up in the right places, who are getting talked about by the right people in the right places, a press feature, a podcast interview, a speaking slot. These are the things that build trust that a social media post just cannot. And this year, AI search makes it even more important. It's going to be so interesting.

to see how AI influences purchasing decisions this Christmas. Because if someone types into an AI tool, know, what's the best gifts for women who loves fitness in her 40s, AI isn't pulling from social media. It's pulling from credible third-party sources, press features, podcast appearances, content that other people have referenced and shared. And you want to be included in those recommendations, right? So the founders who are doing this work now,

who are building discoverability that will work for them, not just this Christmas, but for years to come. They're doing that work now. They're not just waiting until Q4 to get in a shiny gift guide. So yes, do the Christmas PR, but actually starting your PR as early as you possibly can is key to getting this going. So.

2026 does feel different and I do want to name why. know, like I've said, buyers are more skeptical than ever. They're doing the research before they spend. They're looking for proof that the brand or the expert is the real deal. And that means the founders who I think are gonna win this Q4 are not the ones who pitched to a gift guide in October. They're the ones who've been building their authority and their presence consistently from now, from earlier than now, but let's just look at from now because that's where we are.

So when their ideal customer or their ideal customer's husband or their ideal customer's daughter goes looking, they already know who they are. Start now, that is your competitive advantage. And 20 whatever Christmas is in, six Christmases working with founders in the small business space. Here is what I think works for small business owners, for the founders who look back on Q4 and go, yeah, I did it.

versus the ones who look back and go, I really wish I'd started this earlier. So number one, and this is like the fundamental rule of the PR sets approach to Christmas PR, they do not put all their eggs in the gift guide basket. I say this every year and I will keep saying it, gift guides can be great.

We absolutely want you to be pitching for them. But I've had clients in the Sunday Time Style gift guide who barely saw any sales from it. And I've had members who got into tiny niche brand gift guides and had their biggest sales week of the year. They're so unpredictable. You don't know the impact that they're going to have on your business. And so I want you to be doing them, but I want you to be doing them as a layered approach. And I want you to be doing them strategically, right?

you just don't know if, A, if you're gonna get in the gift guide and B, if it's gonna do anything for you in terms of what you want it to do, which is sales. So because we don't know that, I believe you can't afford to make gift guides your entire Christmas PR strategy. So think layered, think other PR routes. It might be other press routes, it might be podcasts, it might be collaborations, speaking opportunities, expert commentary, influencer activity, your own network.

Think of gift guides as the star on the top of the Christmas tree. They are not the whole Christmas tree with all the baubles and the lights and the hanging decorations, okay? They're just one part of your PR approach in incorporating your marketing, The next thing the founders who do this really well do is they know exactly who they're pitching to and why.

Your target audience shifts slightly at Christmas? Absolutely. If you're a female-focused business, you suddenly need to think about the person buying gifts for that woman too, husbands, daughters, friends. Publications that never write about your type of product or your business will be running gift guides that will include it. know, a men's magazine might feature your candles or your jewelry, for example. The world of opportunity opens up at Christmas if you think about it strategically. The other thing that these founders who get it right do is that

they start early and they stay consistent. So building relationships through the year so that a journalist might come to you in October looking for a last minute present for something or an expert for a feature that they're writing about because you're already on their radar, you're already a trusted source. That doesn't happen if you only start pitching in November in a blind panic, right? It happens when you have been doing this work consistently. And the last piece, which is...

Often the piece that people forget is that they amplify everything. Every piece of Christmas PR you're getting should be working hard across the rest of your comms, your email marketing, your social content, your website, your conversations for months, not days, not one story going, woo, look, we were featured here. Make it work really hard for you. A piece that you get in October should still be working hard for you in December and beyond.

The Christmas press coverage you get this year becomes part of your authority ecosystem for next year too. This is a long game guys, right? So what would I actually be doing if I was starting today? If I was a small business owner, here we go. Number one, I'd get completely clear on two things. What I want to achieve and who needs to find me. Not vague goals, very specific. Look at what you want to be in.

Look at what publications are right for you. Look at what PR routes are going to be right for you. Give yourself targets. I want to secure three gift guides, two speaking ops, and a partridge in a pear tree. Whatever it is in terms of your own strategy for your business, but specific goals will give you specific actions. Rather than just staring at a big long list of hundreds of different magazines, you absolutely don't need to be pitching to absolutely everything. Number two.

Look backwards before you start, right? Go on to Readly or Press Reader. Spend an hour going through last year's Christmas issues, or you've got all the back issues of the Christmas magazines on those. Look at the publications you want to be in. Look at what they featured, what themes came up, what type of products, what expertise they included, what the imagery looked like. That one hour of research is going to save you months of wasted pitching in the wrong direction. It's also going to give you some great ideas, especially if you are

an expert is gonna help you see exactly what the opportunities are for you and also for product gifting, what other opportunities there might be for you in those magazines. The third thing I want you to do is to sort your assets now. So for product businesses, that means getting your imagery right, clean cutout shots on white backgrounds, labeled with the product name, price, website in a shareable folder that doesn't expire. I'm sorry, it's not very glamorous. It's really dull.

but it is the work that makes the difference potentially between a journalist using your product or moving on to somebody who's made their life a lot easier. For service businesses, it means getting clear on your Christmas angles. What expertise do you have that's relevant for this time of year? What are the conversations your audience will be having in Q4 that you can contribute to? Think about the features that appear in those magazines that your audience reads, There will be something for you.

so many different opportunities from money experts to health and wellbeing to nutrition to fashion, to emotional wellbeing, family relations, all sorts of things. But I want you to be really, really objective here. do you have that Christmas expertise? I am not gonna be pitching myself in the PR set as an expert for Q4 issues.

you know, there's not really much going on. There are B2B opportunities, especially if you have insight on retail, on what's going on out there, AI experts, I imagine, will be called upon this Christmas. But try and be a bit discerning. Like, is it actually a Christmas gift, for example? I'm not gonna be pitching membership to the PR set for Christmas gift guides, although, however, side note, Christmas gift vouchers are available for the PR set, so get in touch if you want to...

to buy any for a loved one or you want somebody that loves you to buy them for you. Anyway, the next thing that I want you to do is to build a layered plan. What gift guides are you pitching? What podcast would you appear on with a seasonal angle? What collaborations could you explore with complimentary businesses? What expert commentary could you offer? What speaking or panels opportunities exist in your industry in Q4? It doesn't have to happen all at once, but having a plan

means you're not scrambling around in October wondering what to do. I worked with a brilliant, beautiful Christmas brand last year. They were very Christmas-focused. it's called April and White, the whole business was about gifts from stocking fillers, advent decorations, and they were also the middleman between Father Christmas and children. So they would help Father Christmas to write letters. And

I got, lots of PR opportunities for them in lots of different ways because I really use this layered approach. So we profiled the founder in Red Magazine because she had a Christmas business, know, she was, her business was at the heart of Christmas. So finding those opportunities, if you are a really Christmas-centric business, there are some great PR opportunities for you out there. We got her podcast interviews.

We got some really nice write-ups on the business, not just the product placement. So really looking at the layers and the different ways that you can approach your Christmas PR. And the fifth thing that I would do if I was a small business owner focusing on Christmas is to start pitching Send the fucking email peeps. The long lead monthly magazines are working on their Christmas issues from July, Those titles start now, those monthly glossy titles.

From about September, October onwards, you start seeing the shorter lead, the mid leads, which is your like weekly magazines, all that kind of stuff. But really, if you want to be in those monthly glossy magazines, you need to start doing this now. And even if the publication you're targeting doesn't start Christmas planning until a bit later, I would start doing this work now. Start relationship building, start getting on people's radar, start showing them.

what you have and what is available because there are also opportunities for you that aren't just Christmas ops as well. So that is what I would do. Get clear on your goals, do your research, sort your assets, build a layer plan and start pitching today. Your Q4Self is gonna be very grateful to you that you started this work in July. and if you want to do this work with the right support behind you,

Everything Christmas PR related is happening inside the PR set, inside my DIY PR membership, the media opportunities, the meet the media sessions with journalists, the Christmas PR surgeries, the accountability sessions, all of it from now until December. The link is in the show notes. And as always, let's get on and send the fucking email. And I will see you again next week for another episode of PR Made Simple.