Five Common Frustrations When Pitching to Media

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Public relations professionals often go through various ups and downs throughout the media outreach process. It takes a lot of research and creativity to find an angle that is inline with the client’s objectives, while ensuring it will grab the attention of journalists. It also takes time to develop a list of strategic media contacts who could be interested in the story.

 

When pitching to the media for earned opportunities, there’s no greater feeling than getting a response from a journalist that they’re interested in pursuing an interview or story. It’s always a win! However, behind-the-scenes, pitching isn’t always glamorous. It takes a lot of strategic work and collaboration between the journalist and PR professionals to get a story successfully published.

 

We’ve outlined our top five common pitching challenges:

 

Ghosting – Anyone there? 

When a journalist responds with interest in taking next steps, sometimes they’ll just disappear. This could mean many things: a crucial timely news story pops up, they abruptly leave the media outlet, or their editor rejects the pitch. Also, if the interview happens and the story doesn’t follow, there’s a chance that the journalist didn’t quite get the angle they were looking for. This doesn’t mean the spokesperson did a bad job, it just means the journalist wasn’t sure how to approach the angle in the first place, and needed a bit more information before further developing the story. In any case, it’s always a good practice to run through a media interviewing process with the client beforehand.

 

Fast Interview turnaround

Sometimes you’ll receive interest from a journalist who is super eager and needs to set up the interview before the end of day. Why does this happen? If it’s a print opportunity, they need to pitch the story to the editor that same day and meet the deadline for publication. If it’s a timely story, they also want to make sure to publish or broadcast it in the appropriate timeframe so it’s still relevant to their audience. Sometimes, even hours mean everything! If the spokesperson isn’t available, it risks the opportunity. That’s why it’s always a good idea to have a backup spokesperson to step in if needed.

 

Breaking news

You have a great pitch to send to a select list of media outlets and you can’t wait to get their attention, but then a breaking news story hits and bumps your topic. In the world of journalism, this happens and that’s okay. It’s worth managing your expectations – and the client’s – and when the situation arises, develop another timeline for the pitch.

 

Paid Content 

On occasion, when trying to secure earned media opportunities, the media outlet may respond with a sponsored opportunity instead. Sometimes it’s worth pursuing and other times it may not be a good fit at that time. Organize these opportunities for review later as successful public relations typically involves a multifaceted approach with a variety of tactics.

 

Please, unsubscribe

Sometimes you’ll receive a response asking to be removed from receiving further emails. Though it may sting, it’s really okay. Just apologize and move on, as there are many journalists out there who may be interested in your pitch.

 

In order to bring a timely and newsworthy story to life, there’s a lot of collaboration involved between the PR professionals and media outlets. We know clients are the experts in their field and have a lot to say about their respective industries, but it takes a thoughtful pitch, good relationships and an appropriate timeline to successfully get attention from national and local media.

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