People who are successful at PR understand the science behind it. If you want your pitch for your small business to get some love from journalists, editors and bloggers, you must be able to draw them in instantly and sell your story to them.
You can construct better PR pitches using these 7 proven tips…
1. Personalise it
Capturing the attention of the editor goes beyond doing copy and paste of your PR into an email. Personalising your pitch is critical. Try addressing the editor by their name and letting them know you’ve gone through their previous articles and you rate their work highly. If possible, try to relate your story with some of their work as a way of proving that it perfectly fits their publication.
2. Be as brief as possible
Editors have to deal with hundreds of pitches every week, and this can be a daunting task for them. Make sure your pitch is as concise as possible. Go straight to the point and pass the main message of the pitch across within the first few seconds. Try to capture the message of your press release in one sentence, if possible.
3. Avoid sending your media releases as email attachments
Attaching your press releases to emails is not good enough, and there are a couple of reasons for that. First, there might be compatibility issues with the word processor of the editor. Second, it takes lots of time to open an attachment. Third, emails with attachments could get caught by spam filters, resulting in a low delivery rate. You should paste the text into the body of the email instead.
4. Send email right time
Figuring out the right time of day to send your email cannot be overemphasised. Don’t forget that editors and journalists are constantly battling to meet deadlines. That’s the reason it’s important to ensure they receive your email in the early hours of the day before the rush against deadlines. More importantly, every editor has their preferences, so it would make a whole lot of sense to ask what their “best time” is.
5. Craft a subject line that’s hard to resist
Your subject line is crucial to your success because: 1) it grabs the attention of the reporter and gets them interested in opening your email. 2) It determines whether your email will end up in the spam folder or not. Concerning the first point, your subject line should be crafted in such a way that they don’t sound too salesy or boring. Your subject lines should be good enough to be used as headlines in the publication of the editor.
To ensure that your email is not filtered as spam, avoid excessive use of ALL CAPS or punctuations as they will appear spammy.
6. Try connecting your pitch with a current event
When your story is linked to an industry trend or a current event, it stirs up more interest in journalists. This increases the newsworthiness of your pitch, which means it’s more likely to get picked up.
7. Expect to answer some questions
It seems like everyone should know this already, but it’s a surprise that lots of PR people aren’t prepared for questions most of the time. Before initiating contact, it’s important to ensure you have confidence in the material. You should be prepared to answer any possible questions that reporters might ask concisely.
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Contact us today to find out how your business can benefit with a PR consultation. We also have some great Public Relations packages to help your small business really make some impact with both print and digital media.
One of our friendly marketing consultants will ask questions about your business, industry, target audience and current marketing activities to see if our services are a good fit.
