Media Pitching 102: The Art of the Perfect Pitch

by | Mar 30, 2017 | Book Marketing Basics, Getting More Media Coverage

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We recently looked at media, and more importantly how to KNOW your media. Now that you have that under your belt, it’s time to create the perfect pitch.

The Spin/Pitch and the HUH Factor

How you pitch is almost as important as what you pitch and when it comes to pitching media, less is truly more. Imagine if you were working the CBS Evening News and you had to ferret through 1,000 pitches a week. That’s not an exaggeration and often these numbers are considerably higher. How would you manage to sift through that much email and still run a show? Well, you’d probably start by looking at the subject lines.

As you develop the perfect pitch, keep in mind that your subject lines are often more important than your pitch. If your email subject line doesn’t get people to open your email, then what’s the point of the pitch, right? Keep it short and snappy and most of all, relevant.

Back Up Your Statements

Now that the email is open, whatever statements you are making need something weighty to support it. So how do you do this? Cite studies if you have access to them, or cite other stories that have been done on this (if your story is a follow up piece). In order to lend credibility to what you are saying, or offering as a topic idea, you’ll need to substantiate it with some facts so make sure that if you share statistics or X percent or whatever, you provide a way to back it up. Need to find some statistics? Take a look at trade publications you subscribe to. Gallup polls are another great resource. You are the expert, so you should have basic back up at your fingertips.

Think HUH: Hip, Unique, and Helpful

The perfect pitches should always, always be helpful, because that’s what the media is going to be looking for (i.e. how will this help my audience?). Keeping in mind that help could be: inspiring, educating, entertaining. It doesn’t always have to be “help” in the general sense.

Keep it short

If you can’t share your idea in a paragraph, then keep reworking it till you can. There’s an old media term called ‘above the fold.’ This means, essentially, anything that’s above the newspaper fold is important and the first thing readers see when looking at a paper. Your email should be no different. Keep it short, do not make the media person scroll. If they like the pitch, they’ll no doubt ask for more information and that’s when you can load them up with anything else you’ve got to share.

Don’t send attachments ever on your first pitch. With thousands of pitches, the media has to sort through each week, you don’t want yours getting lost in a spam filter because of an attachment. Provide the link so they can easily access more information.

Finally, remember that most of us (and this includes media) looks at emails on their phone and often in preview form so in addition to your subject line, consider adding a teaser at the top, or an enhanced subject line, before you get to the Dear such and such portion of your pitch. I’ve found this to be super helpful to media, especially if you want to use that one sentence to elaborate even further on your subject line.

How to tie your perfect pitch into what’s trending.

The media is always anchored to what’s going on right now or, what might be coming up for them so whenever there’s a news story you can comment on, or a looming holiday or some other kind of “thing” that’s out there, make sure you have a pitch that’s tight, targeted, and ready to go.

Figuring out how to pitch or what to pitch or how to phrase it isn’t always easy but there’s a good school you can go to learn about this and it’s called the evening news and the news stand. So, when you’re watching your nightly news broadcast watch how they tease stories before they go to commercial (this is called the “Bridge) and watch how news casts often start out by teasing stories that are coming up later on in the broadcast. These teasers will give you a good sense of how the media likes to get their pitches and the more your pitch can align with these preferences, the quicker you could make it into the national news.

Next, stop by your local newsstand and just take a look at the teasers on the front of magazines. All of them are short, sweet and enticing you to open the covers and see more. As with national news, these are another great way to start getting a sense of how the “spin” works.

Trends, Hot News Stories, and Seasonal Stuff

To give you a sampling of some pitches we’ve done in the past for our indie authors, have a look at these topics, the holiday tie-in around them and what the pitch was about.

Holiday: Valentine’s Day
Hook: Did You Know You Could Meet Mr. Right in a Soup Kitchen?
The story behind the hook: Our volunteerism author commented on how singletons are meeting their significant others while volunteering. While her book did not focus on singles and volunteerism, she knew enough about this topic to comment on it. Once we did our research we found that single volunteer organizations were springing up all across the country.

Holiday: Christmas
Hook: Give Your Kids the Gift of Laughter This Holiday Season!
The story behind the hook: We were working with an author who specialized in the importance of humor and children. He offered ways to give kids the gift of a lifetime: laughter.

Calendar hook: Fire Prevention Week
Hook: How to Get Organized Without Resorting to Arson
The story behind the hook: Our author had a book about organization but the title pulled right into Fire Prevention Week so while promoting it around other dates that supported organization, we also pushed it during Fire Prevention Week!

Calendar hook: Holidays
Hook: When Airplanes and Relatives Don’t Leave on Time
The story behind the hook: This was a humor-based book about family dynamics around the holidays. The media loved this, we got tons of radio, print and TV for this hook! We also had the good luck (or bad, depending on your perspective) of a massive snowstorm that shut down the east coast and ground most transportation right after Thanksgiving so it was a great local tie-in.

These are some subject lines we’ve used very recently to pitch national media, with very relevant and timely tie-ins to current news.

  • Will Technology Vaporize Your Job?
  • Is Fake News Making You Sick?
  • Is Post-Election Stress Disorder Killing Us?
  • Is Your “Cold” More Than Just a Virus?

The final piece of this, much like I talked about in week 1 is that you can’t do all of this in a vacuum, you must be out there and blogging, tweeting, and sharing this stuff on social media. Making yourself attractive to the media is sort of like applying for a job. Your resume is polished, you show up and have your expertise ready to share. Getting media attention is no different, it’s a job interview and it’s the job of getting into a national audience. Do it right, and you won’t be able to keep up with the interview requests. Next week, we’ll be focusing on best pitching practices, so tune in!

6 Comments

  1. David Gierke

    Dear Penny,
    As a subscriber I have been following your helpful and well written marketing columns for quite some time. As a first time indie author who has published traditionally (3 technical books), I am at a critical point in my journey toward publishing my first historical novel. Everything that I can possibly do (short of obtaining a web site – which I am in the process of doing) to prepare for my eBook, softcover and hardcover versions (multiple layers of rewriting and professional editing, along with copyright permissions, cover design, etc.) has been taken care of.
    Your suggestions for a marketing strategy makes great sense, and I’d like to work with you … however, I’m having trouble pulling the trigger with any of my possible publishers (IngramSpark and/or CreateSpace, along with Smashwords). I have many unanswered questions (CS and especially IS are very poor communicators), and I refuse to make a stupid, uninformed and possibly fatal mistake. Eg., CS and IS are reluctant to explain the specifics of their operations unless I sign-on with them! Please understand, it’s not the money that I’m worried about … it’s the process; they all emphasize how fast they can get me published, while I’m interested in doing the job right – my story can wait a bit longer!
    I don’t mind purchasing advice from a professional who will effectively help me navigate this swamp, but who out there is honest, competent, and will spend the time necessary to explain the ramifications of this publishing business?
    I’ve been reading about and investigating this aspect of indie publishing for months and I’m not about to sign on with some scam artist. You may have heard these concerns from other first time indie authors, so perhaps you might have a suggestion or two …

    Thanks for reading.
    Dave Gierke

    Reply
    • Penny Sansevieri

      David hi there, yes there are a lot of options and a lot of not-great things out there. Good for you for doing your due diligence. Too often authors just pick an option without researching it. I’d be happy to coach you on some of these options if you’d like. Email me? penny@new.amarketingexpert.com – Thanks!

      Reply
    • Penny Sansevieri

      Thanks for checking in!

      Reply
  2. Young Ran Kim, Ph.D. (Retired Scientist)

    Many useful information and good writing! You have been very helpful. I launched my paperback in February of this year on Amazon.com. I has been selling steadily every month at moderate rate. I also created colored version of paperback and converted the interior to Kindle and released. I entered StorytellerUK2017 contest as well. I also sold some copies directly to my friends and at some local bookstores but those units are not included in the Amazon Book Seller statistics. I am also invited to give a seminar at the Oakmont Village Sunday Symposium where over 4000 homes are located in September on the title ” Are we expecting the repeat of Korean War or a nuclear disaster in Korean peninsula?” This topic directly related to the story in my book. However, it’s important to break into the media circle by booking radio and TV interviews on the topic in order to promote my book in a large scale. Could you book me for media interviews?

    Reply
    • Penny Sansevieri

      Young hello, wow you’ve done some fun stuff with the book! I’ll for sure reach out to you. Thanks for the note!

      Reply

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