Improving your Pitching (and We’re not Talking Baseball)
August 3, 2007 by Eric Eggertson
Filed under Marketing
You watch a competing company get media coverage that you would kill for. Why them? Why don’t reporters write about your company?
It’s probably the pitch.
Someone is reaching the right journalists with the right suggestion of a possible interview, or story. And it’s not you.
Marketing Sherpa does a good job exploring the logistics of reaching journalists with effective pitches. They regularly interview an editor of a publication, with details about how they prefer to receive pitches, what to do, what not to do (most Marketing Sherpa links go behind a paywall after a few weeks, so check their main page for the latest interview with a journalist about how to pitch to them).
There aren’t a lot of shortcuts in the pitching game. The greatest success seems to come from:
- Deep knowledge of the industry your organizations is in;
- Good understanding of your organization’s business goals, and its communications and marketing goals;
- Strong understanding of the issues and trends that affect your customers;
- Knowledge of past and current coverage, biases and interests of the various journalists and bloggers covering the field (bias, meaning preferences, not necessarily prejudices);
- Awareness of any editorial schedules, deadlines, or date-specific editorial specials (check a magazine’s media kit for advertisers for tips);
- Research of any stated or widely-understood preferences for being contacted with pitches and product/service information (check the website for information on the "Contact Us" page, or refer to sources like Bacon’s database of journalists and media outlets); and
- The brevity and usefulness of the pitch.
For a great discussion of the art of pitching, see this post by Owen Lystrup asking whether to phone after sending a news release or e-mail pitch, with several succinct and useful tips by some veterans. Kevin Dugan’s comment nails the key point:
"Generally, IMHO, if you are calling a reporter, you should add value—whether you are building on a pitch, an earlier email or giving them a tip that has nothing to do with your client."
A pitch, different from a news release in its focus on a single journalist, or "citizen journalist", has the best chance of resulting in meaningful coverage because it’s based on a strong story idea offered up to the ideal person reporting in the ideal medium.
There’s not much sense pitching weak stories to people who don’t typically cover the topic you’re pitching. There’s not much sense doing a bad pitch, but that’s another story.
Photo by René Mansi, iStock Photo.
Tags: pitch, business, journalists, news, coverage, earned media, owen lystrup, kevin dugan, bacon’s, promotion, publicity, reporters
Thanks Eric. Your post is dead on–pitching journalists is not rocket science. More than anything, I think the most important part of pitching is to realize on the other side of the phone or email is a person. They have bad days. They have deadlines. But most importantly, they don’t want to feel like they are the 75th person on your call or email list (even if it’s true). It’s all pretty simple; sometimes we need to just stick to the basics.
I completely agree with your post and with Chris. As writers, disseminators of information and journalists we are looking for interesting and sometimes fun spins on everyday issues. When we are treated like cookie cutter publishers or what not, then we lose our creative balance. As individuals we all need to empathize with the other person on the end of those emails and phone calls and want to feel valued, not like another chain in the link of phone calls and emails. As the receivers of those phone calls and emails, we need to send the empathy right back. It all comes down to common courtesy and understanding of what it takes to make that next truly great quip in print. :)
Knowledge of past coverage is my personal favorite from your list. It’s embarassing to get into a discussion during a pitch and not know they’ve touched on a certain topic already or — goodness forbid — already covered what you’re pitching. And I would even recommend more than just a web archive search if you’re pitching to magazine, television or radio reporters whose online archives may be limited.
Great post.