How to write a media pitch to promote your business

At some point, you want to get media coverage, yet it isn’t cost-effective to hire an agency or PR specialist for now. While personalizing dozens of media pitches to journalists may not be feasible for a founder or marketer wearing multiple hats. With HARO and similar platforms, you have to wait for questions from journalists to relate to your company.

Seeing the problem, we decided to highlight how one can balance quality and quantity in media pitches examples.

What a media pitch is

A media pitch is an email to a journalist, editor, blogger, or publisher with the goal they write about your story or feature in upcoming materials. The message briefly covers what valuable information you have, why they might be interested in writing about you, and your credibility.

How to pitch to the media in bulk

• Tip 1. Start with content.
• Tip 2. Segment recipients.
• Tip 3. Wait for the right time. 

Most PR experts that I talked to insist on that to get positive results out of your outreach campaign you should meticulously craft each email.

This advice, though, should be presented in context. Do you plan writing pitch examples to big media such as Forbes, Techcrunch, NY Times, etc., or less popular? Do you target niche outlets and bloggers or mainstream ones? Is it a senior reporter with an earned quality audience or a junior one? We also leave out of the scope paid publications.

Here are tips for balancing quality and quantity when pitching to the media:

Tip 1. Start with content. Great material will open many doors, even with poor outreach. It may be unique findings from your work or a data-driven content project.

Tip 2. Segment recipients by the topic they cover. 

Tip 3. Wait for the right time. Watch industry trends and news to know if your pitch is timely. If you bring great content at a relevant time, you may even send the message out without any personalization and still get outstanding results.

You will see the journalist pitch examples below where products and stories were covered by the major media and email was personalized just with the reporter’s publication.

Note: sometimes sending well-researched messages with exclusive information to one journalist from a relevant media might be enough for your goals. What is better for you depends on your marketing strategy.

Here is a press pitch example from Valentyna Podmazina, Communications manager with 9+ years of experience in tech: 

«So, it took me a couple of months to reach out to one of TechCrunch's authors. One of their journalists covered exactly our topics, so I went all in and didn't even focus on other reporters.

I sent a pitch and a follow-up. Btw, my company used its own mail, so adding Mailtrack or something like that to it was just impossible. I had no idea whether she received or opened my pitch. 

Having in mind thousands of incoming media pitches, I decided to try another channel and pitch once again. Fortunately, we have LinkedIn Inmail! In several hours, I received a long-awaited reply with her 'Yes'.

An article about our productivity app and its unique feature was live in less than a month, and our exposure and reputation greatly benefited. Note, it was an exclusive offer and no one had covered this upcoming feature.»

Essential steps before pitching to media

Choose a person to contact

There are several ways to do it. 

1) Use B2B database filters to locate writers specializing in your niche. You will also get their valid emails to launch your outreach campaign. Click the screenshot below to zoom it. 

2) Check the media website. «Some media publications provide a contact form to directly email the journalist you're interested in pitching to. Media publications also provide a general email address for press media. But rarely do they answer back to the proposed media pitch letter unless they're really interested.» — shares Simon Bacher, Co-Founder of the Ling App.

3) Use the email finder extension to get editors' individual emails from the website.

4) Google related topics and check their authors. And then get their email addresses with an email finder.

Be mindful of email deliverability

Your carefully crafted media pitch letter sample may bounce or end up in a spam folder. Especially if you are sending emails in bulk, you should be prepared technically too. Here are a few basic steps for safe emailing:

• Verify all emails just before sending to ensure they won’t bounce
• Limit visuals and links
• Use cold-emailing tools so your email makes it to the recipient's main inbox, not the Promotion folder.

Get more instructions in the guide.

How to write a media pitch email

• Pillar 1. Bring a unique story or angle
• Pillar 2. Follow the outlet guidelines
• Pillar 3. Care about value for the recipient
• Pillar 4. Back your authority
• Pillar 5. Personalize media pitch letter strategically
• Pillar 6. Structure like a sales pro

Pillar 1. Bring a unique story or angle

Take into account what reporters want and give them exactly this. They need an original story. At the same time, as a business, you want coverage in several media with the same content. The way-outs are:

• Expect just to be featured in the reporter materials, rather than the whole piece about your content or product

• Break content into smaller stories or tips

• Offer different angles, below is one of the media pitching strategies from Valentina

«Let’s say, your company releases a new innovative feature of an app, and you are up to get it covered by ten online magazines and make every piece original.

First, go with the feature itself and tell about its exclusiveness. Proceed with the story of its creation and key challenges with the second media. Tell the third magazine about current market analysis and how your feature is going to transform the way people use such apps.

Tell the fourth newspaper the story of the CTO who came to such an unusual decision. After all, set up your team for a brainstorming session and ideate, then add a bit more exclusiveness to an already personalized sample email pitch to a journalist by adding unique content ideas.»

Sometimes you will need to offer an exclusive story to get coverage, as in Valentina’s story with TechCrunch above. It means you outreach only one media or reporter, and nobody else will write about it.

Pillar 2. Follow the outlet guidelines

Media and even journalists share what they expect from the email pitching examples. It will show your respect and increase your chances of «Yes». So at least review their website and social media profiles.

Pillar 3. Care about value for the recipient

Always think about why the publisher needs your story in the first place. Examples:

• unique data, 
• a free trial to test the product, 
• an interview with CEO, 
• you have a decent audience reach, and their article will see extra thousands of eyes,
• your story is tied to smth people who already demonstrate an interest in, etc.

Pillar 4. Back your authority

Explain in media pitch letter why you are worth telling about the subject. Share your experience, achievements, cases, portfolio, popular clients or employers, number of users, or media you were already mentioned in. 

Pillar 5. Personalize media pitch letter strategically

To send your media pitches in bulk, your personalization efforts will be focused on segmentation. You will group reporters by topic or other common characteristics. 

If you want coverage in specific media that is known as problematic to get in, dedicate more time to research and individual personalization:

• Go through their pieces to get an idea of their style, and add phrases they commonly use.
• Check what topics they’ve already covered, and don’t pitch similar stories
• Read their Twitter and other socials to find a hook for the subject line for media pitch emails. For instance, I heard about a person who saw a journalist looking for a lemon pie recipe and sent the recipe with the media pitch :)
• Engage with them on social media to warm up your communication

Pillar 6. Structure like a sales pro

Journalists are usually on a deadline. Cut the media pitch letter as much as possible, delivering only the essence of your offering. Leave small details for their following questions. 

Start the media pitch structure with something intriguing, don’t open your email with «hope you are doing well» or telling your name. Add what you expect from them, so-called CTA. Follow with value for them and then explain why you are a credible source. 

Examples and types of a media pitch

• Type 1. «Unique research» media pitch letter sample
• Type 2. «Product to be featured» sample media pitch
• Type 3. «Contributed content» sample media pitch template

Type 1. «Unique research» media pitch letter sample

1st example from Natalia Brzezinska, Marketing & Outreach Manager at PhotoAiD. The PhotoAid team creates linkable assets to improve SEO and acquire valuable backlinks + enhance brand awareness. 

One of their most successful cases is «how the profile picture’s quality affects hireability» article. In the piece, they surveyed 200+ HR pros, business owners, and managers. As a result of journalists' and bloggers' outreach, the material gained over 1.8K backlinks, also from high authority sites like Social Media Today and Forbes. 

To achieve it, they were pitching to media niche writers who usually cover something about AI and social media.

The results they’ve achieved with the template above: are 60% open rate and a 4,7% reply rate out of 500 recipients.

Type 2. «Product to be featured» sample media pitch 

Example from Ilija Sekulov, Marketing & SEO at Mailbutler. They reached out to consumer technology editors at major online publications and offered them exclusive access to the product for review as a benefit in return.

To catch their attention, Mailbutler team emphasized the unique features and benefits of the product and provided high-quality images and video assets. Look, this is really about sales :) This pitching to media strategy resulted in a number of positive product reviews and feature articles on websites such as Forbes and TechCrunch.

Type 3. «Contributed content» sample media pitch template

Template from Preston Powell, CEO of Webserv. They outreach niche media and blogs that accept guest posts. Their strategy was to increase brand awareness.

He also personalizes with publishers’ content in the email opener to catch their attention. Preston makes it easier to start a collaboration by offering possible topics and setting a deadline. The recipient just needs to pick the topic. In the end, he explains the value the media can get from collaboration.

Summary

• Selling your story in media pitches is pretty similar to selling your product.
• Segment journalists by the article they wrote to personalize your outreach at scale.
• Sometimes you will win more from personalizing and pitching one journalist with an exclusive story. It depends on the outlet, their audience and your strategy.
• Make a point of picking the right people for pitching to media since almost all journalists have specialization and won’t write about what is out of the scope.
• Your concise email to a reporter typically includes: hook, call-to-action, value, your credentials.
• Next steps: follow-up after your first pitch (at least once), make a list of relevant journalists for future collaboration, maintain relationships by engaging with them on social media.

Frequently asked questions 

What is the difference between a media pitch and press release?

The main difference is in the goal of the writing. In preparing a press release, your goal is to describe the story in detail so a writer can prepare an article. While the goal of media pitch examples is to provoke reporter's interest in the story.

What's the best way to create a media pitch?

The best way is to open your email with something catchy related to your story and their specialization. Clarify what you want from them, why they should be interested, and add proof that you are a trustworthy source.

How do I find out when a brand is ready for a media pitch?

• Your brand has a story
• You have time to do outreach yourself or hire an agency or individual
• You understand your strategy and goal behind media pitching
• You have enough internal expertise to share with the media

What are some tips for writing an effective media pitch?

• Pitch to reporters that specialize in a relevant topic
• Think from the journalist's shoes — what story they’d cover
• Follow media guidelines and journalists' checklists
• Include only the essence of your offer and leave details for further chat