Developing Your Press Release and Media Kit

What You’ll Learn

You’ll master the art of crafting a compelling press release and assembling a professional media kit that journalists and bloggers actually want to cover. In Product Launch School, we teach you how these foundational PR materials become the cornerstone of your media outreach strategy, directly influencing which publications pick up your story and how your product launch narrative gets framed in the market.

Key Concepts

A press release is your official announcement to the media, structured to communicate newsworthy information about your product launch in a format journalists recognize and can quickly repurpose. Your media kit—also called a press kit—is a comprehensive folder containing your press release, company background, product images, executive bios, and relevant statistics that makes a journalist’s job easier when writing about your launch. Together, these materials establish credibility and provide journalists with pre-vetted information they can trust and use immediately. At Product Launch School, we emphasize that both pieces must balance promotional language with genuine news value, as journalists will ignore materials that read like pure marketing.

• Press Release Structure and Headline: Your headline must convey the most newsworthy element of your product launch in 10-15 words, using active voice and specific benefits rather than generic claims like “Company Launches New Product.” For example, “Product Launch School Releases AI-Powered Course Platform That Reduces Time-to-Market by 40% for SaaS Founders” immediately tells journalists why this matters to their readers.
• The Five-Paragraph Press Release Format: Lead with your most compelling news hook in the first paragraph, providing who, what, where, when, and why; develop your story with specific metrics and quotes from founders or executives in the second and third paragraphs; include relevant background about your company and product in the fourth paragraph; and close with boilerplate company information and clear contact details in the fifth. This inverted pyramid structure allows journalists to cut from the bottom without losing essential information.
• High-Quality Media Kit Assets: Your media kit must include 2-3 professional product images in multiple formats (high-resolution JPG and PNG), a 150-word company overview, individual executive headshots with short bios, a one-page product fact sheet with key features and pricing, and relevant launch statistics that support your newsworthy angle. At Product Launch School, we stress that poor-quality images or vague product descriptions cause journalists to skip your kit entirely and move to competitors with polished materials.
• Timeliness and News Angle Development: Your press release must identify what makes your product launch genuinely newsworthy—whether that’s a breakthrough technology, entry into an underserved market, strategic partnership, or significant funding milestone that enables the launch. Generic product announcements get ignored, but when you position your launch within industry trends or emerging customer pain points, journalists see a story worth covering.

Practical Application

Draft your product launch press release this week using the five-paragraph format, ensuring your headline captures the most newsworthy benefit and your quotes from founders add credibility rather than hype. Simultaneously, begin gathering or commissioning your media kit assets—product images, executive headshots, company background document, and fact sheet—so these materials are publication-ready before you begin journalist outreach.