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A media kit provides a quick snapshot of your brand that can help you increase collaborations with influencers, other brands, media companies and more.
In this post, we’re going to walk you through what a media kit looks like, a few examples of why you might need one, as well as how to make a media kit.
Let’s get started.
What Should Be in Your Media Kit?
A media kit is a document or packet that contains essential information about a business/brand, influencer, organization or other entity, to share with potential partners and collaborators.
Your brand’s media kit could be in PDF format, a Microsoft Word document, a zip file of portfolio items the company has worked on or even a page on your website.
As another option, Zapier houses their media kit information in a shareable Google Folder:
But we recommend creating your media kit in an interactive or downloadable PDF like the one below that allows you to easily showcase your brand at a glance.
Having a media kit on file for your business makes it easier to pitch collaborations, find investors and reach out to potential partners. Including visuals only helps to tell your story in a more powerful way.
There are times that your brand might want to reach out to complementary businesses in your industry for a partnership or collaboration, pitch investors for funding for your business or reach out to the media about a new venture within the company.
Those that you reach out to will likely want to know more about your business before agreeing, and the perfect way to introduce your brand to others is with a media kit.
It isn’t necessary to create an entirely new media kit from scratch with every pitch. Instead, creating a single media kit to cater to each pitch is much more time efficient.
There are three primary types of media kits: those created by a business, those created by an influencer and those created by a nonprofit organization. And there are different uses for each of these types of media kits as well.
Many businesses create and send media kits in pitch efforts to partner with another business. This partnership could come in many different forms, such as a guest post, a social media collaboration, a case study or a product collaboration.
Here are a few great examples of business-to-business collaborations.
Buffer is a social media marketing SaaS (software-as-a-service) that offers social scheduling, analytics, and more. Unsplash is a stock photo resource library.
Because stock photos can be extremely helpful in social media content creation, this collaboration makes perfect sense, and it brought about an incredibly informative Buffer blog post on The Complete Guide to Using Stock Photos in Your Marketing.
We all enjoy listening to music on our commute, right?
The Spotify and Waze collaboration has linked the two apps so that users can easily browse their playlists from the Waze app (but only while stopped) and still hear their Waze driving instructions while in the Spotify app.
These two companies have worked together for a while, creating various Apple Watch specific apps and features. They’ve now introduced even more updates like an Apple Watch Nike+ product with a runner-friendly sports band.
When businesses are just starting out, when they’re working to launch new products/services, etc., they may need to secure extra funding to help with their ventures.
Some businesses will go the crowdfunding route and create a Kickstarter, but it’s much more common to go after investors with your business idea.
Creating a media kit or even a pitch deck that introduces them to your business, tells them why they should be interested and showcases proven stats that help to create trust with your business is a great way to entice potential investors.
Businesses might also send a media kit to a media outlet/reporter/blogger asking them to cover their company in an article or work together on a sponsored post. This is a great way to increase brand recognition and introduce a business to a new audience.
Here are a few examples of businesses collaborating with media publications.
Macy’s hosted a giveaway on digital publication Refinery29 to reach their massive audience. Together, they’re looking for summer stories from Refinery29’s readers as a way to enter the contest, but also potentially be shared as its own story on the site.
The prize in this collaboration includes gifts from both Macy’s and Refinery29.
The Incredible Egg is a consumer-focused website that helps increase demand for the egg. They partnered with Apartment Therapy just before Easter to share fun and modern egg designs for more unique egg dying.
This entire post on Digital Trends is sponsored content by Qualcomm to introduce the Digital Trends readers to 5G phones powered by the company.
They’re reaching out to a new and tech savvy audience by sharing sponsored content on the tech site.
Influencers, like Instagram influencers and bloggers, often send out media kit pitches to companies they’re interested in partnering with. This is how influencers are able to generate income from their social media platforms and blogs.
Especially nano- and micro-influencers, who don’t have huge followings and aren’t extremely well known. They’re known to use media kits often when reaching out to brands for collaborations.
Working with these types of influencers, while they may have smaller followings, can still be a great decision if they have an incredibly engaged audience.
Nonprofit organizations will often send media kits to media publications as well. This is to generate awareness about their organization, entice the publication to write a story about the nonprofit, and essentially increase donations.
Here are a couple of examples of what this could lead to.
Sometimes the collaboration is just a small mention or tidbit of information within a larger article. This health-focused article on reading nutrition labels includes a link to the American Heart Association plus their recommendations.
Suicide prevention for LGBTQ+ teens nonprofit The Trevor Project reached out to Out for coverage of their partnership with Macy’s.
Nonprofit organizations also have to make outreach to potential donors occasionally.
Sending out a media kit including how the organization helps the community/world, why donors should contribute, etc., can help to increase the number of charitable contributions the organization receives.
Every media kit will be different, but there are a few items that should be seen in every media kit table of contents. After all, the gist of any media kit is still the same.
If you’re getting started creating your business’s first media kit, here are a few must-haves.
First and foremost, you want to make sure the people you’re sending your media kit to know exactly who to contact to learn more about the business and/or the opportunity.
This is likely to change based on who the media kit is being sent to, so always make sure it includes the most up-to-date contact information.
Introduce the recipient to your business by providing a section at the beginning of your media kit explaining who you are and what you do.
This area will include the company’s history, leadership team, information on the founder/CEO, brand story and more.
This is also a great area to include quotes for the press, especially from the founder and other members of the leadership team.
Make it easy for the reporter covering your business by including all the relevant information at the front and center of your media kit.
Naturally, you want to let the recipient of your media kit know what your business actually creates/sells/does.
Share specifics about what the company sells as well as a product/service review. Consider including a brochure or mini sales kit to further cover your business offerings.
Here’s a template that includes a section for you to list out your top products or services.
If you’re looking to collaborate with a business or publication, posting your audience demographics upfront can be helpful. After all, it’s essential for audiences to mesh well in order for a collaboration or partnership to work.
A business’s marketers should be well versed in their audience demographics as they regularly create targeted content and ad campaigns. Be sure to put bite-sized audience information within your media kit.
Here’s a great example of what your audience demographics can look like in your media kit:
You want your recipients to see that you have happy customers, especially if they’re potential investors. This helps any investors or partners to feel more secure about your business.
This section can cover anything that you think is relevant or pertains to your pitch.
It could be annual revenue, year-over-year growth, website/social/email stats, or even all three of these. Any metrics or analytics that can be measured can potentially be included within your media kit’s annual report.
Here’s a template that allows you to easily slot in your website and social media stats within your media kit:
Showcasing any awards you or your brand may have won or any major press coverage can be a great way to prove that your brand is worth collaborating with.
Demonstrating that your brand is legitimate will help grab attention of anyone you're pitching to work with, increasing the chances they get back in touch with you for a collaboration.
Have you worked with other companies that are likely to raise an eyebrow? Share them! Knowing that you’ve worked with high caliber clients in the past increases the chances that another business will want to work with you.
Case studies are documents that include proven results that your business has done for a client or customer. These are also great to include within a media kit, or anything that you use to promote your business. That’s because they illustrate real life, concrete results that you and your business have obtained.
This can be useful in more obscure industries. If you know there are common questions that your customers, the media, and others even within your industry often ask, include the answers directly within your media kit. Your recipients won’t even need to ask.
Finally, you want to be sure that you use strong visuals throughout your media kit. As we mentioned at the beginning of this article, a visually appealing resume is more powerful than a standard Microsoft Word resume.
The same goes for your media kit. The more effort you put into it to design it, include hi-res photos and logos, and add graphics for your recipient(s) to look at, the more it’s going to stick out and result in a call-back.
Now that we’ve covered everything your media kit needs to include, let’s walk through the step-by-step process of creating your media kit.
Your first step when making your media kit is to gather all the information you need to include – your contact information, statistics, press coverage and more. Everything you want to share, make sure you have it compiled in a document.
This will make the creation process much easier, so all you have to do is paste your info directly onto your media kit pages.
The next step is to start with a template. When you use a professionally created template to start your media kit design, you’re sure to end up with a visually appealing press kit that grabs attention.
At Visme, we have a variety of media kit templates fit for many different industries to help you get started. Start browsing our template library below.
It’s important for your media kit to match your brand identity to strengthen recognition of your branding elements.
This means you need to adapt the template to incorporate your brand colors, fonts, logo, photo style and more.
By taking advantage of Visme’s brand kit feature, you can easily input the hex codes for your colors, upload brand fonts and ensure they’re easily accessible in the editor for all of your content and creations.
You could create a packet of text-heavy documents in your media kit to send out to media, brands, donors, and more, but how likely is that to jump out at someone?
Short answer: it’s not. Instead, focus on strong visuals throughout your media kit.
If you’re not sure what the best visuals to include within your media kit are, we’ve put together a list to help you get started.
If you’re sharing your media kit with media outlets and other businesses, you want to ensure they have access to the best logos possible.
Including your hi-res logos within your media kit is a great way to ensure they’ve got the best assets for your company right in their palms.
An infographic is a visual chart or diagram used to represent information. They’re popular for use within all types of marketing, but especially to represent stats, analytics, and data you’re including within your media kit.
Consider visualizing your audience demographics or your annual report with charts and infographics instead of basic numbers and paragraphs.
Check out 101 different infographic examples here to get a better idea of how to use these visual elements within your media kit.
And take a look at what this could look like in your own media kit.
There are many online stock photo libraries, both free and paid. They’re all incredible resources for your marketing needs. However, it’s a great idea to try taking your own stock photography.
Not only do you own those photos, and no one else online will have access to them, it makes it easier to showcase your specific products, business, team members, office space and more.
Here’s an example of a media kit that includes photography.
Visualize your text by using high-quality icons and illustrations that represent your brand and what it does. You can easily search through a selection of icons and illustrations in Visme’s editor to find the perfect ones for your media kit.
Visme’s software provides you with several different ways to share your media kit, depending on how the brands, media, influencers, etc., want to receive it.
First, you can download your media kit in a variety of formats, from the more standard PDF to a high-quality image file or even an offline interactive HTML5.
Visme also provides you with an HTML code if you want to embed it directly on a web page for your audience to interact with directly on your website.
Third, you might decide to publish it and give your audience access via an online link hosted by Visme. Enterprise users can even create their own subdomain for sharing their projects online.
And when you send a public link, you can also view analytics in the Data section of your Visme dashboard and see how long users are spending on your media kit and which pages get the most engagement.
Ready to get started building your own media kit? Sign up for a free account with Visme and choose a template you love. Customize it and send it on its merry way to the brands and influencers you want to collaborate with!
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