The key to an effective media relations strategy is to send the right pitches to the right people. Sending your pitch to an extra 50 reporters, just to meet a perceived quota, isn’t going to help you get more coverage especially if those extra contacts have a different beat. Many Public Relations (PR) teams have a minimum pitch count they require per day. This approach is not only wrong but damaging to the industry. When it comes to pitching, at The Cyphers Agency we say quality is more important than quantity, and we have found that is especially true when trying to build relationships and brand recognition with trade association media. Focusing on the quality of your content over quantity is a more effective strategy for several key reasons.
Reporters Are Already Tired Of Irrelevant Pitches
Cision’s 2022 State of the Media Report showed that 46% of reporters receive more than 50 pitches per week from PR professionals. 68% of reporters say that less than ¼ of those pitches are relevant to their beat. Sending a pitch to reporters that aren’t a true fit just to check a box only makes that problem worse. Sending an irrelevant pitch will make that reporter less likely to open your next pitch. It even makes that reporter less trusting of PR pitches as a whole, and less open to working with PR professionals on future stories.
The Right Pitch To The Right Reporter Can Get You Billions of Impressions (Seriously, Billions!)
The key to successful media outreach for your brand is to maximize the impressions and audience reach of the media hits you are able to land. Doing your homework and knowing which publications syndicate to major sites like Yahoo and MSN is a far better use of your time than sending those extra pitches just to check a box. If you take your time and find a reporter who writes about your trade, look at their recent articles, and reference one in your email to show them you are familiar with their beat. When you do that kind of personalized and intentional pitching, the reporter is so much more likely to give you that key media hit that you can secure your brand millions of impressions (see below screenshot) from syndication of that one hit.
Pitch Count Is A Meaningless Number That Can Paint A Misleading Picture
If you want to track how an PR employee is doing, or even track your own progress, tracking the number of pitches is simply not the way to do it. If one employee sends 20 mediocre pitches with little to no thought or planning, and another send 5 well thought out, personalized pitches to the right places, tracking their pitch count will tell a highly misleading story about which one was more productive. There are plenty of numbers you can look at that will better track your public relations success, such as impressions, media placements, views, and more.
The end goal of media pitching is brand awareness, and at the end of the day, brand awareness is about conversations, not numbers. You want people to see your brand as the authority within its trade industry. You want your target audience to know and respect you, and that takes valuing the quality of conversations over quantity.
If you would like help with public relations, feel free to contact us. We offer a variety of services like digital marketing & analytics, marketing & brand strategy, advertising and more to small and large companies.
