How to Figure Out What's Wrong with Your PR Pitches

Not getting the results you want from your pitches? 

That can be SO frustrating. (I know, I’ve been there!)

To truly master your pitching strategy, you need to figure out what is going wrong.

The good news is that there is a solution — no matter which part of the process you may be struggling with!

Here are my best tips to help you figure out what’s wrong with your PR pitches. 

Use A Pitch Tracker

A pitch tracker will help you know what to look for and how to solve the problem.

The pitch tracker keeps track of when you’re pitching to certain outlets and tracks each step you take along the way. As you keep track you start to see patterns emerge.

You track when you send a pitch and how many days you waited before you followed up. When you review your tracker, you can decide whether you want to follow up again or tweak your pitch and send it to somebody else. 

With a pitch tracker, you don’t have to guess or search your email and your sent folder and try to figure out when you did certain things. 

The tracker also helps you identify where you may be going wrong in the process. 

We have a template for a pitch tracker inside the Pitch Lab which is our monthly membership program. The pitch tracker template can be used with Google docs making it easy to use and keep track of everything. 

Keep Track Of Your Emails

Track to see if people have opened your emails. That part of your strategy may not always be super strong. 

If you create a link for a certain publication and the link is clicked, then you know they’ve opened your pitch. (We show you how to create links in the Pitch Lab!)

If your links aren’t being clicked, check to see if your subject lines are compelling enough. 

Also, the date and time you’ve sent the emails could mean you might get fewer clicks. 

One of the shocking things I discovered while doing research is the day that is most likely to get a response is Friday. Everyone thinks they should pitch Tuesday to Thursday, so there’s no competition on Fridays. Generally, people aren’t getting many pitches on Fridays, so your pitches will most likely stand out more. 

Review Your Pitches and Contacts

Another reason people don’t respond to your emails is that the pitch itself could have something not quite right in it. 

For example, it could be that the angle isn’t right for that contact.

Or it could be that you're not pitching the right contact with the right idea. You could be pitching something that isn’t the type of thing they would typically cover. It could be a great idea you’re submitting, but you’re pitching the wrong contact.

You might want to try someone else or it could be the pitch itself. If it’s the pitch itself, you can tweak your pitch a bit before resubmitting.

Related: 1 Easy Way You Can Achieve Success with Your PR Agency

Have Everything In Order

Another problem could be that people are responding but it doesn’t convert to a media feature. 

This could happen if you don’t have your assets in order. You want everything ready so you can respond quickly to the contact. 

Your assets have to be a high enough quality for the contacts to use. If they’re not, your pitch will not convert into a media feature. 

Your first step is to ask your clients to give you all the assets so you’re completely set up for success in your pitching. Check them over to make sure they’re high quality.

This will help your pitches be more effective. 

Respond Quickly

If you don’t respond fast enough, you can miss the feature.

Try not to miss a deadline. If you do, you’ve lost your pitch.

And if you’re not packaging the information in a way that the editor can take it and run with it, you’ll lose that feature.

Ask Someone For Help

Another extremely useful thing to do is get another set of professional eyes on your PR pitches. Have them check to see if your pitch is compelling and has a strong call to action.

You want to check if it’s targeted, timely, and tantalizing. Those are the 3 Ts that we teach inside of The Pitch Lab.

Another pair of eyes can sometimes see your blind spots better than you can. Inside our community in the Facebook group created for The Pitch Lab, you can find and ask for support. Everyone is helpful and gives great feedback and recommendations. 

It’s easy for someone to share on your Google Doc and make comments and suggestions.

Master The Followup

Sometimes everything is right but we don’t land those features until the followup. The timing has to be right for those too. 

It’s easy to give up before you follow up, but you could be so close to landing that feature and all you need to do is a great follow up. 

Don’t give up too soon!

Take Time To Fix Your Pitch

Once you’ve identified which part of the process you’re struggling with, then you can figure out what it would take to fix it.

Use these tips to help you nail your PR pitch.

Inside The Pitch Lab, we share all the strategies for nailing every aspect of your PR pitches. We help with troubleshooting every step. Sometimes it could be the pre-work you’re doing for your overall strategy that is causing a problem. There’s so much that goes into creating a great pitch.

If you have any specific questions, let me know. I’m happy to answer all your questions.