How To Pitch An ‘All-Hitter’

It's difficult for an unknown company to get coverage in national business publications. PR pitches help a business grow and expand.

It’s a competitive world where everyone is vying for spots in TV, radio, and magazine. A well-aimed pitch can open the door to local and regional newspapers. Clips from those newspapers, in turn, can be used as collateral when approaching bigger papers and magazines.

With the right combination, a pitch can make a company stand out amongst the rest of the pack.

Here are some tips to write a PR pitch that will knock it out of the park:

• If you can’t get the basic idea across in one page, you don’t understand what you’re pitching. A journalist can always ask for more information. This also keeps a pitch from droning on.

• Know the audience. Ideally, there should be a different letter - with a different story angle - for every publication. In today’s business world, mass marketing is out.

• Try to put yourself in the journalist’s shoes and consider what is actually newsworthy, not what the client thinks is newsworthy. Yes, you work for the client, but you have to interest the reporter. An angle is a must in every pitch. If there’s no well defined angle, then you’re wasting your time. An effective news hook is to be all about the audience, not the sponsor.

• Cut the buzzwords. They’re unnecessary. Period.

• While you’re at it, cut out the jargon.

• Only pitch when there’s something to pitch. Don’t ask a newspaper or a magazine to read a release that was created only as a billing exercise such as “John Jones Wins Award Outstanding Achievement in the Field of Excellence.”

• Don’t send big attachments without asking first.

• When writing a release, use the old inverted pyramid construction from traditional newspaper and wire reporting. First paragraph has the basic news. Additional ones expand off the first. Don’t try to come up with an enticing lead and leave the journalist in suspense for the rest of the release.

• If sending out something cold, quite frankly, don’t expect a response.

A pitch is not a work of literature. It is you selling a story. Simplify and never be boring.