How to Craft The Perfect Media Pitch
Crafting the perfect media pitch to ensure that your story gets picked up by journalists or influencers takes some time to get just right. Just having a good story isn’t a good enough reason to have it picked up for general consumption. It’s all about the pitch for that story.
First: Create Your Pitch
The first step is to make sure that you have a great list built for your contacts in the media, different news outlets, and influencers.
Consider:
- Have they written stories like yours in the past?
- Who is their audience? Are they people you want your company associated with?
Once you’ve built your list, make sure you keep it tailored. You want to make sure you’re removing outdated contacts and updating to new ones on a regular basis.
Second: Practice Your Pitch
You want to make sure your pitch is succinct and clear. While a pitch may take more than a normal press release page, you still want to keep your pitch to-the-point and on-target.
In addition to providing your ideas in a concise manner, make sure your ideas will work for that specific contact. Does that mean you can’t send out a blanket media pitch? That’s correct! Each pitch needs to be tailored to the contact you are reaching out to.
Your chances of your story idea being picked up goes up greatly when you tailor these pitches to each person you are sending it out to.
Since most pitches come in the form of email, do not include attachments in your email. Put the entire pitch in the email message itself. Make it as easy as possible for your contact to skim the information and get back to you.
Third: Ensure All Information Needed is Included
Granted, you may leave out some of the more detailed pieces, but include all of the journalistic pieces in your proposal: Who, What, Where, When, Why, & How.
Most importantly, you’ll want to include why you want them to write the piece. What makes them uniquely suitable for writing this? You may be sending this pitch out to more than one contact, but you should be able to give them a reason why they are the best to do it.
Fourth (and final!): Call to Action – CTA
We’ve seen pitches, excellent pitches at that, who fail to drive their “ask” home to the reader. What do you want your contact to do next? You want them to write a story about you, specifically the story you’re pitching. Don’t forget to ask for that in your copy!
Call us today to speak to one of our PR specialists: 1-800-713-7278
Don’t forget to follow up with that contact. Once you’ve given them some time to review your pitch, make sure you follow up. It’s great if they accept your pitch and write the piece, but sometimes they don’t. In the case of those who would be willing, ask for feedback as to why they might be rejecting your pitch.
