The next time you pitch a journalist, will he read your pitch and know that you know who he is, what he covers, and why his audience should care about your story?
He will if you customize it.
That means sending a pitch that you can’t send to any other journalist because it’s unique to his media outlet, his beat or his audience. Those kinds of pitches prompt a journalist to think, “This is perfect for us!”
During the webinar I’m hosting at 3 p.m. Eastern Time today, Aug. 18, on “A Simple 5-Part Formula for Delivering the Perfect Media Pitch and Hitting it Out of the Park,” I’ll discuss how to customize a pitch. Here are three approaches:
- Piggyback off a previous story the media outlet covered and pitch it as a “follow up.” That’s media lingo, and it will attract his attention. I gave an example in this post I wrote earlier this week about a candy shop in a mall.
- Pitch a story idea for a specific section of his newspaper, a specific department in his magazine, or a certain portion of a radio show. Example: “This story is a perfect fit for the Consumer News Round-up segment of your show.”)
- Pitch a story that appeals to a personal hobby or interest that ties into his beat. Let’s say you sell decorative corks and stoppers for wine bottles, and you’re pitching the food and wine editor of a magazine. His Twitter profile mentions he’s a wine collector. You could add this to your pitch: “Your wine collection will be as pleasing to the eye as it is to the pallet with a selection of wine stoppers from whimsical to elegant.”
If the time is inconvenient, register anyway because I’ll send you the link for the page where you can download the video replay, the handouts, and all the other materials.
If you can convince a journalist to advertise your product or service on his or her show for free, more power to you! The rest of us poor saps have to pay for advertising…