Being media-ready is being ready to pitch your product, business, or services to relevant media outlets.
I thought it was a myth to be media-ready, but I didn’t realize how important great PR was.
It doesn’t mean you always have the right words or answers. It’s about having the right story and knowing how to pitch the right story.
A media pitch is an email or a message about a business, event, or product. They are sent to journalists for media houses to give information about the company or product.
The goal is public awareness, and a lot of times it reinforces credibility.
Being media-ready helps your business because it puts you in a position to always show up.
Why is media pitching important?
- Featuring your brand or your story helps increase brand awareness.
- Media pitching can help you to focus on the valuable parts of your brand since you’ll need to highlight them in the pitch.
- Media pitching can help you to analyze your brand and improve growth.
- Featured news increases the search engine optimization of your website, especially if the reporter includes a link to your website.
- When a reporter features your brand alongside a story of societal relevance, it emphasizes that your brand stands for a cause. This helps you connect better with your target audience.
Tips for effective media pitching
Have a media kit.
What is a media kit?
A media kit is also known as a press kit and simply consists of materials that enable the media or journalists to feature your brand or tell your story. This may be online, called an electronic media kit.
A media kit should consist of everything the journalist needs to represent your bag. This may include pictures and signatories.
Make sure to always leave a link to your high-quality headshot in the media kit.
It is important to check the items of the media kit to ensure that they are things you’ll want to share and are relevant to your brand and your audience.
The media kit should also include a little blurb of who you are. Make sure the blurb is aligned to whatever publication you’re pitching to.
Make sure to ask questions and make the process easy for the reporter.
Then you are set to start pitching
Be Cohesive
You should have a clear view of what you’ll be talking about in the pitch, and you have to be cohesive across all publications. Make sure that your message is aligned. Many journalists do their research, and they like finding a track record that is cohesive.
Give relevant statistics.
Being media-ready is about being ready to pitch. You’ll go after publications that you think align with you. Therefore, it is important to give relevant persuasive statistics of your business to influence decision-making.
Build Relationships
You need to develop relationships with the media and know who the right person to pitch to is. Nothing helps in the long run as much as interpersonal relationships with media personnel.
Tailor your message
Don’t copy and paste the same pitch. Do your research and make sure that when you contact someone, you contact them with the right message tailored for their company. Don’t write generic pitches or it will get your email lost among the many spam emails that these reporters receive.
Start small
Start with pitching to smaller media agencies because those links and SEO will eventually come through for you. Don’t be afraid of pitching to small publications. They’ll give you the credibility to be featured in even bigger publications.
Do you want a guide to perfect pitching? Start here.