A hunting product review is a great way to spread the word about your new product.
The key benefits of a hunting gear review are:
- Hunting gear reviews are often used by consumers when determining which product to purchase.
- A hunting product review provides a credible third-party endorsement.
- Product reviews offer new product marketing opportunities at a low cost.
- Field testing results are often printed in high circulation magazines, reaching hundreds of thousands of potential consumers.
- Retail buyers read product reviews to learn about the latest new products to add to their stores.
To get your product placed in a hunting product review, you’ll want to first create a press release that includes all the pertinent facts and details about your product. You may want to include specifications including size, weight, color, material description, and manufacturer’s suggested retail price. It’s important that your press release is written in the standard format. Use spellcheck and proofread your press release carefully for typographical errors, grammar and punctuation. A professional presentation is expected and will increase your chances of being successfully included in a hunting product review. If you need help creating a press release in the correct format, you can hire a public relations firm to create the document for you or handle the entire process for you.
The next step seems obvious, but some people skip over this important step. You should field test your hunting gear yourself. You don’t want to submit a flawed product to a magazine, have it fail and have a critical product review written. Test your gear under rigorous conditions, appropriate terrain and over a lengthy duration of time. If you’re promoting your product as waterproof, know that the testers will test the product for that particular attribute. If you have any question about the quality of your product after your own field test, make adjustments to remedy the product issue before you provide product for testing by experienced hunting gear reviewers. If your product is available in a variety of sizes, make sure you have production samples in the size range of potential testers.
Next, you or your publicist need to contact the editors or writers at hunting publications. A pr firm, like Firefly Publicity, that specializes in the hunting market will already have relationships with publications and their staff. Don’t expect that writers or editors will immediately return your call or email. They are busy with existing assignments and are inundated with similar calls and emails from other companies – including your competitors.
It’s important to manage your expectations. You or your pr firm will not get instant results. Even after your call or email is returned, many publications have editorial calendars and stick to that schedule for hunting gear reviews, i.e. Scopes in November. You also need to allow time for shipping the product or products to testers. The testers have to use the product during realistic conditions and write up their results. The article is usually written and submitted to the editor 3-4 months prior to the issue date.
When your product is featured in a hunting product review, buy copies of the magazine for your sales team to show retailers or email links to the on-line article. It’s just as important to leverage the press coverage as it is to obtain it in the first place. Tell your retailers the circulation of the publication so they know how many people are seeing your hunting product review.
A public relations firm can also provide media coverage values so you can see the approximate dollar value of the hunting gear review. When you hire a pr firm, you’ll see that the press coverage value you receive from their efforts will be greater than the fees or retainer that you pay them. If the coverage value is greater than their fees, either the pr firm isn’t doing a good job or your product isn’t a good fit for a public relations effort.
“You should check your inventory levels on the products that receive a positive hunting product review,” says Kim Emery of Firefly Publicity. “In many cases, the review leads to increased sales and demand for product.”
