Heads up High Point Market exhibitors! The High Point Market Authority and the American Home Furnishings Alliance (AHFA) are offering two free webinars to help home furnishings companies prepare more effective press materials for the upcoming fall High Point Market.

“Press Kits 101” will be offered at 2 p.m. EST Tuesday, August 26. This one-hour session will cover press kit basics, including key elements to include in a market press release, product photography advice and common pitfalls to avoid.

“An effective press kit can help drive media traffic to your showroom during Market and help generate media inquiries long after Market concludes,” says presenter Pat Bowling, AHFA’s vice president of communications. Bowling has managed the High Point Market Media Center since 2000 and offers marketers practical tips gleaned from years of working one-on-one with journalists who cover the home furnishings industry.

Those interested in participating in this free webinar can register by typing the following URL into their browser: https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/930739228.

A second session is planned for 2 p.m. EST on Tuesday, September 9. Titled “Better Market Press Kits,” this free webinar is designed for more experienced marketing and PR executives/managers who want to take their market press kits from “good” to “great.”

“This webinar is not about how to spend more money on your press kits. On the contrary, it’s designed to help executives focus on the challenges of this particular home furnishings market – the largest in the world – and how today’s journalists use press kits to make their job of covering the High Point Market more manageable,” says Bowling.

“Journalists are very candid in the Media Center about the press kits they find useful and those they consider a waste of money,” she continues. “If you’re not sure into which camp they would place your company’s press kit, you need to devote an hour of your time for this webinar.”

Those interested in participating in “Better Market Press Kits” can register by typing the following into their browser: https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/382855014.

For both webinars, attendees will be given a telephone number to call in order to hear the audio portion of the webinar and a web address for viewing the Power Point. Throughout the webinars, attendees will have the ability to email specific questions to Bowling for a Q&A session at the end of the presentation.