How To Pitch Your Small Business & Secure Press Coverage
Photo credits: Tatiyanna Williams-Britton (TruCreates)
Why is PR important for your small businesses?
Implementing PR initiatives is essential for your business because it helps to tell your brand story, build credibility, attract new audiences, build customer loyalty, increase brand awareness, and much more!
One of the most successful ways to achieve these measures is to initiate media relations strategies, particularly pitching your small business to key media outlets and personnel. Whether you want to share a newsworthy business story, information about an upcoming event, a new product launch or simply share your brand, pitching your story to the eyes of the media can play a huge role in your business growth and overall success.
You may be wondering, "what are the steps I need to take to achieve this?" DRPR is here to help! Here are our 8 tried and true tips that have proven success to pitch your brand successfully and to secure media coverage.
Create an Editorial Calendar: To help you determine the perfect story, we recommend creating a quarterly editorial calendar that includes external and internal topic ideas. Potential topics to pitch include sharing about a new upcoming product/service, details about an upcoming event, your business story, your entrepreneurial journey and much more.
Identify Your Story: Once you've identified your story, you'll want to determine what makes your story so unique, different, and appealing to the media. Jot down what makes your story different than others and any important notes you’d like to mention.
Establish Your Reach: Determine, where your story, will best be shared? Is it at the local, national or global level? It is important to keep this in mind when you create your media list.
Build and Curate a Media List: Next, you'll want to create your media list and research contacts in your niche that you would be most interested in your story idea. Make sure you take note of important details such as their contact information, any recent articles they have written relating to your story topic as well as additional notes about the journalist.
Connect Before Pitching: Interact, connect and engage with the contacts on your list whether through social media or an in-person event to help you build a relationship. Your goal is to get your name in front of the eyes of your targeted media contacts so they can become familiar with you.
Craft your Pitch: Your pitch is all about, relevance, timing and sometimes luck. Keep your pitch concise, short, and include the 5 W’s in less than two paragraphs. Your pitch should be no longer than one page and include key points about your story. When pitching about your product/service a useful strategy is to offer the journalist a gift of your product/service so they can have the opportunity to try it first-hand.
Be Media Ready: Be prepared to follow-up, answer any questions the media may have, and have all your notes ready. It is essential to answer journalists in a quick and effective manner to keep your story in the minds of the journalists.
Track and Amplify your Coverage: Track your media placements and share them across important content marketing platforms including your email newsletter, social media, website, and more!
Get ready to emerge and grow your brand and secure media coverage! Use these 8 steps in your next PR pitch and achieve success sharing your brand story in key media placements. Looking for one-to-one support with your media pitching strategy? Contact us today to book a free consultation and get in touch with an expert.
