With newsrooms continuing to shrink every year and journalists being stretched thin, pitching stories for earned media coverage for clients comes with challenges for those of us in PR. The 2024 Muck Rack State of Journalism reports that 49% of respondents said they seldom or never respond to email pitches.
“There’s another side of PR that we have found extremely rewarding for both journalists and clients.”
So how do we cut through the clutter and get our clients noticed by journalists with limited time to consider our pitch – and the countless other pitches from other PR professionals vying for their attention? While no magic formula exists, there are benefits to focusing on relationship building rather than simply reaching out to journalists only when we have a new pitch.
We fully recognize the value of responding to queries, when a journalist is working on an existing story and needs help by, oh, yesterday…
But there’s another side of PR that we have found extremely rewarding for both journalists and clients. One way we build relationships with journalists is to simply introduce them to our client – ideally before we start sending them individual pitches. For example, we typically draft an introductory letter that might start off with a topic that is currently in the news and relevant to their beat. Then we can introduce our client and how their business relates to this topic and the expertise they can provide in this area.
This segues into the big ask – inviting journalists to take some time out of their busy day to participate in a virtual introductory meeting (aka deskside meetings, back in the day!). We know journalists are busy, so how do you make this meeting worth their while? Offering them a list of topics that your spokesperson can discuss that relates to their beat is the proverbial dangling carrot. You’re essentially banking on the fact that journalists may eventually foresee covering one of these topics in the near future and the fact that they also like cultivating new sources.
While this strategy may not result in an immediate placement, we are building a ‘savings account’ that a journalist may tap into when they need an expert resource. This was the case for one CS-Effect client who did an introductory meeting with a journalist at The Wall Street Journal. The client shared information with the journalist on a range of topics, and a month later the journalist contacted us for a subject matter expert affiliated with our client for a story he was working on. Without investing time in this initial introductory meeting, the journalist likely would never have approached our client as a resource for his story.
So, what happens if the introductory meeting invite doesn’t result in a meeting with our client? At a minimum, we’ve given journalists another resource to consider for future stories. You never know when they might come calling, which is why it’s worth making this initial investment for our clients.
Check out more examples of our effective communications strategies.