Changing up the promised order a bit because I want to do justice to the Jim Beam social media pitch and haven’t had the time to really dig into the program itself the way I’d like before commenting. So today I’m going to share some ways good pitches go bad, and what you can do to fix it.
The first comes via Twitter pal and environmental blogger Chris Baskind who tweeted the other day about a bad pitch. Never shy, I asked if he would share. Here’s the scoop.
Chris got a product pitch that interested him for EcoTech Daily, but there was no link to pictures. Strike one: if you are pitching a product to someone who covers products, it’s a good idea to include a link to some pictures. No images made an otherwise interesting pitch a failure for Chris.
Why do PR people do this? Often it is because they want to control access to images and additional resources. Know who is getting what. Old school, my friends, do not do it.
Chris asked the PR rep for images, and got… two shots that looked like they’d been taken with a cameraphone. Strike two: poor quality artwork.
Eventually, he did get some decent images and wrote the story. But this PR person was lucky. Chris gave him more than one chance. Not everyone will .
How did this good pitch almost fail? By not giving the writer the information he needed in the form he needed. First no pictures, then bad pictures. How do you avoid it? Find out what the blogger wants. EcoTech Daily covers "green technology, gadgets and news." Product pitches without good pictures are pretty useless.
Word of caution: Do not attach the pictures to your email pitch. Include a link. If a blogger needs you to send them in email, he’ll ask.
The second is the meandering pitch that wanders around, here there and everywhere, but never quite seems to get to the point. For example, this one.
This is well-intentioned, and gets good marks for its opening paragraph. And then it falls apart. Instead of telling the blogger quickly and succinctly how they might work together and the benefit to the blogger, the email goes into the message points for the web series. Then it sort of wanders around how the blogger might work with the show but there’s nothing specific.
Too long, no specifics, no benefits.
9×1 does not equal 3×3. It’s a well understood communications concept. In any given conversation, sharing nine different ideas one time each will never have the same impact that repeating three core ideas three times each has. Modern PR practice is pretty much based on this idea; develop three messages and repeat repeat repeat. These messages are about the company, its products and sometimes why the customer needs/wants it. But they are rarely about the customer.
And that’s why so many blog pitches fail. Because they are based on the standard messages about the products and how the blogger can promote them. Not the blogger and how the products can help her.
What’s the fix?
Do your blogger relations math. Write your pitch. Count the number of times you mention your company, product and what you’d like the blogger to do for you. Then count the number of times you mention the customer and what she gets from the deal. First time through, you’ll probably have far more mentions of YOU than of HER. That’s what you fix. Go back through it, and make sure you’ve got at least as much about your customer as you do about your products, and please, do not fool yourself that the privilege of buying your products is about the customer. It’s still about you.
The pitch above could have been done in two paragraphs:
- Introduction, one sentence about the show and a specific offer about a way the blogger could engage with the show with clear benefit to the blogger
- Indication that the show was open to other ideas from bloggers and close
Finally, for another perspective on what makes a good pitch, check out this post from Chris Brogan. Make sure you read the comments. Quite a variety of opinions.