Today, we’re going to look at two pitches that aren’t really bad. Just misunderstood. The pr reps who sent them just didn’t understand the basic principles of blogger relations: know your audience, be relevant, add value.
Because I also liked both products, I am going to make some suggestions on what they could have done instead.
The first was sent to me from the pr agency for New York Women in Communications. I apparently am on their emailing list as I get these announcements on a regular basis.
Not a total miss. I am in communications and write about gender issues from time to time, so I actually might be interested. If I lived in New York or wrote a calendar section for a blog or website. Which I do not.
It’s also just a press release with no cover note, which regular readers know is a practice I deplore.
However, the content is interesting. I wish I could go. How could they make this pitch relevant for me and more successful for them?
First, add a cover note that acknowledges that they know I am a Boston-area marketing blogger interested in gender issues and women in the workforce, so they thought I might be interested in the event should I be in NYC that week. Sending a cold pitch about an event that is not in the blogger’s region is a non-starter unless you plan to pay some or all of the expenses for the blogger to attend.
It’s different if you have a relationship with the blogger. You issue the invite, and the blogger makes his decision about whether it is worth it to him to foot the bill to attend. If New York Women in Communications isn’t planning on purchasing my train ticket and paying for my hotel room, it has to give me another good reason for caring about the event.
For example, ask me straight out if I know any women in the New York area who would be interested. This lets them grow their list by referral, if I reply, and even if I don’t, it may make me think to forward the news to friends and colleagues. The news about their event then becomes a value-added service I offer to my network. And, who knows I might even write about it on the blog.
Finally, give me an explicit option to opt-out of these notices. Sure I can figure out how to send email to the flack, but it is much classier for the organization to offer to remove me from its list.
Our second example was forwarded by a mom blogger friend.
Cute. Very cute shirts. My friend even said if she had little boys instead of little girls, she might be interested.
Once again, a promising product but the pitch is not relevant to the blogger. She writes a personal blog about her life, her family and her daughters.
Relevance. It truly is the secret sauce of blogger relations.
For a kids fashion or shopping blog, the pr person’s very minimalist approach would be appreciated. It’s already relevant. But it’s not enough for a personal blogger.
If agencies are going to continue purchasing broad parent blogger lists, which is clearly the case here, they must craft a pitch that adds value for the blogger even if the age range or genders of her children don’t match the product.
While my personal preference is that flacks would do a better job targeting and not send pitches for boys’ products to parents of girls or products for teen girls to parents of toddler boys, I realize that this is a longshot. Way too much work for the typical agency faced with deadlines and bottom line pressures.
So if you can’t be spot-on with relevance all the time, you’ve got to make sure you’ve added value. Here, there’s a simple solution — offer product to the blogger to giveaway on the blog. Even if a parent blogger doesn’t have a little boy, some of her readers will. This wouldn’t work for every product, but in this case, the shirts are organic and cute, two compelling attributes when combined with free product.
What else might these two groups do to improve their pitches? Please share your thoughts in the comments.