Meticulous PR pitching popularizes your startup before a wider readership

It might be an easy task for any determinant individual to begin a startup and thus translate one’s dreams into realities. What matters the most is how effectively and systematically startups are being run to turn into success stories. Attaining that towering success requires one to do lots of planning and execution accordingly to achieve the goals. Recently held research has brought an alarming reality which needs to be understood that between 50-95 percent of start-ups fail within their first 18 months of inception itself. If you want to pitch a startup to the media, this post is great.

The research findings make one understand the proven reality and the niche factors that one of the primary reasons for such failures or the failing startups remains lack of market or wrong marketing strategies for products or services dealt in. It means that all those startups that have faced failure might have jumped into the startup bandwagon without doing prior research.

Social media marketing or content marketing might be at their peak nowadays, but they have not outdone the benefits you should receive from press coverage. Getting your business covered in reputed and famous web portals, newspapers, magazines and or websites can drastically boost your brand to cement a reputation to be admired while also improving the traffic therefore helping to enhance overall rankings. Media coverage can equally improve the interest of your potential customers, investors and even talent pools to take interest in your business as variegated stakeholders to join hands with you.

You May Also Like: Are Press Releases Dead?

Whether you are looking to create a small startup, improve the brand image of your company or plan to launch a new product or service, media coverage always plays a pivotal role. Such strategies would ensure that you get noticed at the right time and before the most appropriate people or audiences you are willing to reach out to. Rest factors are also crucial therefore they too play crucial roles. Apart from getting noticed, you start selling your products and services once you attain that recognition, and then trust is developed through your constant exposure.

Do you want suitable media coverage for your brand and look for avenues? Have you ever sent a press release pitch to any journalist or a media house? Did you receive the answers to pitches you might have sent to them? Probably, your answer would be naught. The proven fact is that 93% of the pitches won’t get a response in the general case. You need to be a fighter being in the rest 7% to get your pitch noticed, recognized, and appreciated as well.

How to Prepare Your PR Pitches?

Our experts have enlisted here some tips and tricks of PR pitch writing. They will definitely prove helpful for you to stand out among the flood of pitches that a large chunk of journalists and media houses receive almost every day.

1. Pitch ideas, not your company profiles

Journalists and media houses receive uncountable emails every day. Chances are high that they would hardly be interested in knowing your company profiles and or the products/services you offer to your specific target audiences. Rather than self-eulogization, you must find out the most interesting angle from your company or organization through the products/services you deal in and share that noticeable angle thereafter as a pitch to be noticed and accepted.

It will definitely appeal to media houses to at least assess your pitch. If you want an advertisement to be published in their publications, then you should opt for the best ways they have already prescribed for the said purpose. It is crucial that you do your research extensively to tell an interesting story by offering to present a few angles that could be worked out well.

2. Keep it short & simple

Since journalists receive a large volume of emails throughout the day, they usually don’t find enough time to read out long emails. Even if you can have developed any connection or rapport with some of them, they would keep yours saved for future reading. Your press release pitches should therefore remain comparatively shorter and at the same juncture scannable too. You must explain in that why the story you have presented to them remains newsworthy and thoroughly different from the rest to be considered by them.

You May Also Like: Write Actionable Content for Improved Engagement

3. Unveil the story’s potential

Journalists and media house representatives would get bored or distracted and probably won’t care much about a story you said in an email if it lacks potentiality. You are advised to keep your story shorter, to the point, and of course, unveil that story into a potential one to be appreciated. Once you start getting their attention, they would approach you to have more information from you, if needed. At the end of the pitch, while concluding, you may provide your website URL, video, etc., to let them take your points across from there.

4. Follow-ups

Don’t forget or assume your role ends the moment you send a pitch to journalists. Follow-ups usually ensure up to 30% more replies than first-time emails. They might forget to reply to your first email. Once they get a follow-up email from your side, they start reading that and so do they reply thereafter. While writing follow-up emails, you should also ensure your language remains thoroughly polite and humble to let them impress to listen to your side of the story.

5. Identify your target audience

Investors would always want to know what your product and target audience is, but they are equally interested to understand by whom the product will be used. Investors will be convinced that there is enough demand for your startup’s product to justify their investment if you successfully use information about your target market to portray a picture of your ideal customer.

It is immaterial for your startup whether it focuses on a service or a product; there is unanimity on this point that you need to have a target audience if you want to make money. Using demographic data and psychographic features helps a lot to highlight your target audience. It will remain an added benefit if you go on explaining what makes these individuals your target audience. If you meticulously go on using relevant data points to back up your claims and show the benefits of targeting the specific group, you will be in a win-win situation.

You May Also Like: Digital Marketing Strategies for Startups

6. Use the insight to market your startup’s societal value

It has been noticed that many startups have a significant social contribution and this commitment of power in giving back acts as a highly resilient impetus for investors. However, while promoting social good has always been an essential and valuable venture, consideration should be presented to your startup’s social mission to investors. It should always be kept in mind not to tie your business too closely to a divisive cause, which can be counterproductive and alienate a chunk of specific investors.

But the power of giving back need not be underestimated. We are not living in a Neolithic or Paleolithic age; we live in an age where giving back is an important place in professional and personal settings. There seems to be a sort of healthy competition between startups to embrace the power of social good by getting connected with significant social or community causes.

There must be a direct correlation between your product or service and the cause supported by you. Maker’s Kit and Thrive Market is a glaring example of giving back to causes directly associated with their works. The former supports arts programs in public schools and gives kids the supplies they need to be creative. At the same time, the latter donates $5 in groceries to low-income families for every post shared on Twitter, Instagram, or Facebook with the hashtag #ThriveMarket.

7. Refine your startup pitch and presentation by hiring a professional

Having expertise in one particular business area doesn’t guarantee anyone naturally knows how to pitch his or her startup to investors. While to your advantage, the onus to create the core business ideas lie with you, hiring a professional to systematize and better align your pitch can seemingly help you better get your business conveyed to others in a better way. Take, for example, a graphic designer; a good one can be of great help to you in making your pitch deck more organized and visually appealing, paving the way for you to communicate in a bold and impactful way with your prospective customer and a speech coach can help you steal the limelight.

You May Also Like: Interesting Facts to Know Before Investing in a Startup

Have Your Say – Pitch Startup to the Media

We have already discussed the most important or crucial tips that can greatly help increase the chances of getting a reply to PR pitches from the respective journalists or media house representatives. We hope that you must have evaluated and understood now how such prudent approaches can bring drastic change.

What would you like to say or convey in quid pro quo now? Shouldn’t you write down in the below comment box your own thoughts or experiences on this topic? Once your PR pitch is approved, hire a reputed press release writing company to create exceptional, readable, and informative content as a final draft for submission.

Probably hiring a content outsourcing agency would suffice your requirements. Besides PRs, such reputed companies can equally help you in generating content for speeches, etc.

You May Also Like: Why Do 90% of Indian Startups Fail