How To Make a Stand-Out Media Kit (With Free Templates)
Partnering with other brands can easily take your business to the next level. It gets you access to a new audience and creates social proof that your brand is really legit. But sometimes, opportunities to collaborate can be just as competitive as sales. To prove that you’re the peanut butter to another brand’s jelly, you need a media kit that sets you apart.
Here’s everything you need to know about what a media kit is and how you can create one that stands out.
What Is a Media Kit?
A media kit is a public relations tool that compiles everything a potential collaborator may need to know about working with your brand. It’s an informational document, slideshow, or webpage that helps other businesses decide if they should work with you or not.
Once you both decide to partner up, your media kit also tells them how they can best promote your brand to their audience or what results they can expect, depending on the terms of the deal.
Media kits can help pretty much any brand prosper. They’re frequently used by:
- Social media influencers and bloggers to land brand sponsorships
- Bloggers and media outlets to gain advertisers
- Businesses to collaborate with other brands for a marketing campaign or new product launch
- Event companies to get sponsors or speakers
When you have a media kit ready for your potential partners before they ask—and major companies almost always will—it gives your brand a little more legitimacy right off the bat. And when they don’t ask for one, your media kit could be the reason your brand becomes the most memorable choice.
Media Kit vs. Press Kit
Though the terms are sometimes used interchangeably, a media kit is not a press kit.
A press kit does provide need-to-know information about your brand, but its ultimate goal is to get you press coverage. Electronic press kits—which often include fact sheets and images for media outlets to use—are usually sent to journalists along with timely press releases to assist with their reporting. Press kits help you sell a (positive) story, not the brand, while offering information about your business.
On the flip side, a media kit is sent to the people you’re planning to work with. In this case, you are trying to sell your brand and its longevity, not just its relevance for the moment. You want recipients to buy into your business and what you’re all about, so you can further your relationship.
What’s Included in a Media Kit?
Every media kit looks a little bit different—as they should, since this tool is to help you stand out. But what all the best ones have in common is all the information your collaborators may be looking for.
Put yourself into another brand’s shoes for a second. What are they hoping to achieve? How does working with you help them move toward that goal? What makes you different from your competitors? Your answers can help you shape your media kit template for the people you’re speaking to.
Here are some key elements of professional media kits that you may want to include in yours.
1. Introduction
When you’re first meeting someone, it’s custom to introduce yourself before chatting about anything else. Similarly, when a potential partner first considers working with you, they definitely want to know the basics of who you are before diving into the logistics of a brand deal.
Using your unique brand voice, write out a few sentences about what you do and what your values are. Tell a brief version of your brand story to draw your reader in. This section of your media kit is a good place to include a mission statement, as well.
If you’re an influencer, add a dash of authenticity to your media kit by including a high-quality headshot next to your introduction. This will make it clear that your words are coming straight from you (and provide an intro to your multimedia skills, too).
https://www.adobe.com/express/create/media-kit
If you’re a business, you’ll similarly want to include your company logo near your intro to give a taste of your brand’s look and feel.
2. Products or Services
Products and services aren’t relevant for every brand’s media kit. However, if you’re actually trying to sell something specific to a potential collaborator, rather than just furthering a conversation, consider adding in a concise list of what you’re offering—for example, if you’re a blogger, the types of ad placements available—and, if it makes sense, starting rates.
You don’t need to get into the specifics. Just pique their interest, so you can chat more later.
3. Target Audience
One of the most important things your collaborators will consider is whether or not your target audiences actually align. After all, a gym probably isn’t looking to work with just any foodie influencer, but if you’re all about healthy and nutritious foods, you may have an audience that your local fitness studio is looking to reach.
In your media kit, share your audience demographics to prove that you and your potential collaborator could be the dynamic duo to beat. What are their age ranges? Are they predominantly male or female? What are their income levels and interests? Provide the stats that you think your potential partners would be most interested in.
4. Metrics
Other marketers know that having the right target audience doesn’t mean you’re actually reaching them well. Highlighting key metrics is a must when convincing potential partners to work with you.
For social media campaigns, other brands may be interested in your follower count, average engagement rates, and average link clicks. Most social media platforms have built-in analytics tools that you can utilize to pull these numbers. When it comes to your website, some important metrics may include your monthly unique visitor count, page views, and even conversion rates—Google Analytics can help you get this data.
Here’s a media kit example that does a great job of highlighting metrics:
https://www.adobe.com/express/create/media-kit
Start from free media kit templates then add your own brand to make it match your style!
5. Brief Case Study
When you have proof that partnering with you leads to results, this is a huge win for your brand. You may designate a section of your media kit to mention major brands or influencers that you’ve worked with, as well as any impressive metrics from past campaigns. Show that it’s a win-win for both sides.
If you’re fairly new to partnerships, you can instead include testimonials from a brand you’ve promoted with a one-off post or even provide metrics and screenshots from your top recent Instagram posts in general.
6. Contact Information
Finally, make sure your media kit makes it easy for recipients to reach out to you. Offer a phone number and email for yourself or a designated team member.
Avoid sending recipients to generic inbox options like “hello@yourcompany.com,” so they know they’re a priority and they can reach out directly to the right person for faster responses.
If you haven’t already, provide links to your company’s website and profiles on relevant social media sites, so they can learn more just by exploring your brand themselves.
How To Design a Media Kit That Stands Out: 3 Tips
How your media kit is presented can make a huge difference in your brand’s memorability. If you want to make a great impression, you need a kit that not only includes the right information, but is also packaged well. Here are three tips we’ll leave you with to help you collaborate more and power up your PR strategy:
1. Follow Your Brand’s Visual Guidelines
One of the easiest ways to stand out from your competitors is by utilizing your brand’s unique look and feel. Implement your color palette, typography, and more to keep your design tight, consistent, and true to you.
Adobe Express’s Brandify feature makes it easy to customize our free media kit templates based on your visual guidelines in just a tap. Try it out by setting up your brand in Adobe Express then customizing one of the templates.
https://www.adobe.com/express/create/media-kit
2. Use Compelling Imagery
Adding visuals throughout your media kit is a great way to grab your reader’s attention and break up large chunks of text, making your kit as readable as possible. Choose high-resolution images that complement your brand’s aesthetic and evoke the right feelings.
When you use Adobe Express to design your media kit, you’ll have access to thousands of free-to-use images that you can implement into your designs effectively.
3. Choose the Right File Type
The importance of the right file type is often forgotten when building a media kit, but choosing the right file type is crucial for ensuring your kit can be viewed by your recipient, exactly as intended.
PDF format is ideal for media kits, because it limits losses in quality and ensures everything stays in place, no matter what device your file is viewed on. When you use Adobe Express to design your media kit, you’ll be able to export in PDF format (as well as JPG and PNG format). You can also use the PDFs you create in Express with other Adobe tools like Adobe Acrobat.
Get started with a free Adobe Express template and you can have a perfectly packaged media kit ready for your potential partners in minutes!