These past few months we’ve been doing a lot more media work than usual – planned campaigns plus jumping on urgent news opportunities for our clients. It’s been invigorating working towards deadlines and ensuring our clients coverage makes publication, but one of the first steps is ensuring you’ve done your due diligence on your pitch.
We’ve done hundreds of media pitches over our years working in PR, but I have three simple tips that can really help set your next media pitch up for success.
- Do your research
The most important part of any media pitch is to do the leg work early and make sure you know who the best person is to be sending your news story too. If you’ve got a business story, make sure you’re sending it to the business writer of that publication, not the health editor, and better yet, look at WHAT they’ve been reporting on lately. They could be a business writer that only reports on mergers and acquisitions, but your story is of a new opening that will provide jobs in the local community. Media monitoring tools, and especially Twitter is a great way to do a bit of digging on who is reporting on what and who should be on your list.
- Know your main targets
You’ve done your research, and have a list of 10 journalists you want to pitch your story to. First, know what your goal for the media coverage is. Is it broad exposure of the same story, or one deep media piece? Sometimes one piece of coverage can get syndicated to over 100 outlets, so know your goal for your coverage, and then pick your journalist target for that first win.
3. Be ready to act quick
If a journalist wants to run your story, they are usually working towards a (tight) deadline. So be ready to work with them to get the interview locked in, the images sent across or the quotes confirmed. Have as much of this prepared as you can, know your spokespersons availability when you are pitching, have all your image captions and quotes signed off and approved, and ensure you have talking points ready to go for your spokesperson so they are ready for their interview.
A lot goes into a media pitch, but when it all comes off, and the article or the TV spot lands, it’s a great feeling of accomplishment seeing your news story out in the world!
If you need some help with media pitching, drop us an email – [email protected]
Alex Williams