RESOURCE FOR ARCHITECTS, INTERIOR DESIGNERS & GENERAL CONTRACTORS
Part 1 of a series
As a leading smart technology integrator to many of South Florida’s top architects, interior designers and general contractors, Premium Digital Control & Automation has seen many of the local talents’ work to know how their work simply stands out – and we wished there were more articles written about you. We started our own series called On the Spotlight, with Ivey Design Build’s Kirk Ivy, a key partner in the smart technology project at the elegant Turnberry Ocean Club. Ivy’s team provided the interior design while Premium Digital Control & Automation.
Why do you need this piece when you can contact a magazine editor directly? It’s good to be reminded that most of these magazines have an Editorial Calendar already planned for an entire year, with topics already mapped out for their typical monthly releases. Your content creator will need to plan around these topics – and be prepared 3 months ahead of time.
While you may initially think that a topic may not be for you, your content creator should be able to suggest some complementary angles to fit a magazine’s topic. If the magazine is going full blast on fashion, suggest having their model use one of your projects as the location spot. You could have them posing in every part of the house you built or designed.
This is just one way of leveraging your company or service. A feature story can also boost traffic to your site, as Google optimizes publications with high domain authority. Publications have domain authority compared to corporate sites. The media exposure is a good jump-off point for your digital marketing strategies – among them being search engine marketing, social media advertising, programmatic ads, remarketing, and many more.
All these initiatives should get you the media mileage you need to grow your business and make you see how a collaboration with Premium Digital Control can also help you get more exposure to different types of clients as well as attention in underrated trade publications, which are read by industry professionals looking for partnerships. Or better yet, win an award with us like how we won for Kirk Ivy and other architects and interior designers.
Here are the top glossy lifestyle publications in South Florida (in alphabetical order).
Photo credit: Fort Lauderdale Illustrated
Fort Lauderdale Illustrated
Headed by editor Kristen Desmond LeFevre, Fort Lauderdale Illustrated features content about city life, captivating personalities, art and entertainment, style and beauty trends, yachts, and the best places to dine in Fort Lauderdale. Each issue showcases what Broward County has to offer. Fort Lauderdale Illustrated is part of the Palm Beach Media Group family of publications with more than 69 years of publishing excellence. If your business extends beyond Fort Lauderdale, you have 27 magazines and nine websites to choose from. That’s how many magazines they carry, borne from 69 years of publishing experience.
Photo credit: Boca Raton Observer
Boca Raton Observer
Awarded Best Overall Magazine by the Florida Magazine Association, Boca Raton Observer, is a lifestyle magazine that acts as an authority on top personalities and design trends. It has been known to feature doctors and lawyers, but it should not deter you from pitching stories here, especially since it has released a 2023 Editorial Calendar, with its March issue focused on creative designs. You can start pitching now for next year.
Editor Alona Abbady Martinez, editor of Boca Raton Observer, is open to story pitches, even putting her pitching requirement on Muck Rack, a great web resource for people looking for writers to write about them. Martinez prefers pitches via email and says she will even respond if “I’m not going to cover the story you pitch me.” Strive for 2 to 3 sentences when writing and make sure to follow with emails. Try her on her Twitter, Instagram or at the magazine. Editors and writers actually do research to find stories to write but by reaching out to her, you’ve done half of her work. Just make sure you have a good story angle for her to pursue.
Photo credit: Brickell Magazine
Brickell Magazine & Key Biscayne Magazine
Brickell Magazine & Key Biscayne Magazine may be the most flexible when it comes to media coverage, depending on your deal and support for the magazine. You could get more than a 4-page editorial feature, plus posts on relevant social media, among others. They call this a fully integrated marketing program with a mix of editorial and advertising support.
Most of the publications in our list distribute the print versions but Brickell and Key Biscayne glossies are reportedly displayed at The Four Seasons, Intercontinental Miami, W Hotel, Conrad Hotel, Novotel Business Hotel and The Biltmore in Coral Gables. Tracy Coco, associate publisher, is hands-on the most enthusiastic we’ve talked so far in customizing an ideal media coverage for your specific needs.
Photo credit: Luxe Interiors + Design
Luxe Interior Design
Pamela Lerner Jaccarino, vice president and editor in chief of Luxe Interiors + Design, spearheads one of the largest architecture and design brands. For more than 15 years, it has planted deep roots in major markets across the country with 14 regional editions, a national edition and 2 seasonal editions in the Hamptons and Naples + Sarasota. For your business in South Florida, it has Miami and Palm Beach editions targeting affluent consumers.
This magazine has reportedly featured 20,000 loading design professionals and companies, honoring the best in their Gold List and Red Awards sections. Many of these architects and interior designers get the full coverage – a cornucopia of powerful photography and compelling stories that capture the essence of home as the greatest luxury.
It claims to host more than 18,000 face-to-face meetings with leading design professionals across the nation each year as well as in creating over 200 local networking events each year across the country. A magazine issue prints nearly 300 pages.
Photo credit: South Florida Business & Wealth
SFBW or South Florida Business & Wealth
With Drew Limsky as its editor in chief, South Florida Business & Wealth has repackaged the magazine as a cross between Forbes and Robb Report, but with a dash of GQ and Vogue into it to address South Florida’s increasingly sophisticated and dynamic business and cultural landscape.
Getting Limsky and his magazine writers to write about you will have more journalistic breadth, as he has written for The New York Times and Washington Post, to name a few of the dozens of publications he has written for. The magazine is ideal for high-profile features which may mean less focus on your work and more of you, your business acumen and philosophy.
Outside of his journalistic work, Limsky’s clients include The Four Seasons and Acqualina.
Conclusion
Magazines are the best platforms for displaying your best works, but you have to find out their print circulation and onsite traffic on top of relevance before you pitch to these glossies. Consider that you may be asked to advertise for you to be featured in these publications. If so, make sure that you consider the fact that one advertisement may not cut it.
For any of your ad campaigns to work, one-time publication or one ad is not sufficient. A minimum of 3 months is good to start, but for your ads to work, they need to appear at least 6 months. If you don’t have an ad budget, there are other ways of going about it using digital marketing tools. You’ll need to hit different emotional touchpoints to get noticed.
If need be, cover all the bases and see if you can repurpose your article or ad campaign for other media outlets, including newspapers such as Miami Herald and Sun Sentinel. They are also good to pitch to if you have some big news to promote your business. Having an event is one good example. While it’s tempting to go for TV stations, it’s harder to get coverage on TV.
Getting media on a national mainstream outlet such as Architectural Digest, Dwell or any of those publications requires developing relationships with the editors and writers of those publications. By relationship, it doesn’t mean you have to meet them but having someone following up with them is crucial. They received hundreds of emails everyday.
Another way of getting media attention is via influential vloggers in a relevant field. But here’s one very important lesson you have to learn: If you don’t respond to them within 24 hours and (they’re already willing to do things with you for free), they’ll move on without responding to you again. That means that your letter gave them an idea.
Just hope they didn’t reach out to your competition.
If you would like to be featured in our blog post, which we also share on our social media accounts, please email Premium Digital Control & Automation at info@premiumdigitalcontrol.com or talk to us at (954) 637 1361. Premium Digital Control & Automation plans, designs, installs and programs personal spaces, commercial establishments, yachts, and hospitality outlets.