What to Do When You’re Just Not Getting Through – Successful Media Pitching
You’re pitching to the media and no one is biting. It happens. Sometimes it’s just bad luck and unfortunate timing. Other times, there are very specific steps that you can take to get the success that you want from your pitching efforts. Let’s take a look at what to do when you’re not getting through, and we’ll answer the question, “what’s going on and how can you turn things around?”
- The very first step to any process is to evaluate and assess what’s working and what isn’t working for you. Take a look at your goals. Are they realistic goals? Assess each tactic.
For example, are you targeting the right media representatives? Are your pitches personalized? Is the timing of your pitch off? And, of course, are your pitches newsworthy? This is critical and deserves some truly honest review. A newsworthy story idea is imperative to your success; without it, you don’t stand a chance.
- From your assessment, put together a strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats evaluation. This will help you create a new plan to move forward. You can leverage your strengths, maneuver around or through your weakness, neutralize your threats, and of course take advantage of your opportunities. An example of each might be:
- Strength – good media relationships
- Weakness – ineffective story ideas
- Threat – your competition’s newsworthy content
- Opportunity – new press release writer
- Talk to Your Media Connections. When in doubt, reach out to your friends in the media. Ask them what is missing in your strategy and plan. Ask them why they passed on your last pitch, or two. Take advantage of any feedback that you might have access to.
- Crete a Plan. Moving forward with your assessment, SWOT, and any feedback creates a new plan. This new plan needs to include:
- Relevant media targets
- Quality media outreach strategy
- Media relationship-building
- Good pitch writing and composition (pitch the story, not the idea)
- Thorough media contact research
- Effective follow through
- Solid press release story or story idea
- Good media page (give media contacts a resource to learn more)
- Instead of waiting to re-evaluate at the end of the year, set mini-deadlines to evaluate the success of your new plan. Are you getting better results? Taking the time to evaluate and assess as you go can help you stop problems and mistakes before they become too big.
It’s likely that one or two small adjustments to your media pitching practices will get you the results that you want. However, you can’t know what those small fixes should be until you spend time evaluating what you’re doing now, what’s working and what isn’t.
Call us today to speak to one of our PR specialists: 1-800-713-7278
