What Makes an Effective Pitch?
While working as the media relations intern at Come Recommended, I’ve been introduced to some PR tactics that I didn’t learn about in my program. One of them: the pitch. Dictionary.com defines a pitch as: “Informal. to attempt to sell or win approval for; promote; advertise.”
I never learned what a “pitch” was in formal classes. But when I worked with Program Board, we received tons of these daily: some snail mail, but mostly through e-mail and phone calls. PB receives a generous budget to bring entertainment and educational events to CMU’s campus. But sometimes, the people pitching event ideas did not know when to stop.
I was not a programming chair, but we all had to answer the phone at one point or another, and I learned quickly why some people dread doing it. There were a few companies that continued to call every week, pitching their products or services. The problem was… they didn’t relate to anything we were doing, or the salesperson was just plain annoying.
The bottom line? They weren’t pitching effectively. They were wasting their time and ours. This leads to a few things I took out of the situation…
Things you should do when pitching:
- Connect with the person or group! Some of the best acts we’ve had at CMU come back every year, and that’s because they know us, know the types of programs we run and have built a good relationship with the groups on campus.
- Make it short. No one wants to read a lengthy, 12-paragraph e-mail about your company/product. Along with that, most people do not have the time to talk on the phone with you for an hour about your catalog. Keeping it short, but still figuring out what will be best for them, tends to work the best. On PB, the best phone calls we got were pitching acts within our budget where we could find more information online. Easy, quick and simple!
Things you shouldn’t do when pitching:
- Appear “spammy”. This goes along with a lengthy pitch. Also, anything automated, not personalized, has typos in it, or bad/broken English.
- Mass mail your messages. Most people can tell when an e-mail has been BCC’ed to tons of others. It’s generic and not personal. It makes it easier to not feel guilty about deleting without reading it. It also makes getting in touch with a “real person” seem difficult (these messages typically come from a different e-mail address than a “real person”).
What are some other tips for effective pitching? What is the best pitch you’ve received?
These are all great tips! Thank you for sharing. My only question is in regards to sending an email pitch. I agree you should always make an attempt to personalize the pitch, find an actual person to send the email. What about if you’ve got a media list with over 100 contacts?? It can be a tedious task to individually email 100 people.
Any suggestions? As an independent PR/Media Relations Consultant, I’m always happy to hear if someone has a more effective and efficient way of doing something!
Thanks!
Sinu,
Thanks for your comment! From my experience, it’s always better to try and tailor the message if you can. It probably would be too tedious to do this with a list of 100 people, but maybe try to tailor it to those you are already have a relationship with. Or at the very least, address them by name instead of sending a mass mail with “To Whom it May Concern” or something similar.
And if anyone else has suggestions on this topic, I’d love to hear them!
Katie
Great tips! I agree making a pitch is something not discussed in the classroom (strange isn’t it?) Anyway I just have one quick question when your sending a News Release to a media outlet, do you typically have a mini pitch with the news release pasted below the pitch?
Again very useful article thanks for sharing your experience.
Amy,
It is strange — it seems like a pitch would be a important part of learning about communications and public relations.
As far as your question, (I hope I’m understanding it correctly) I would write a pitch or at least something that catches their interest. When I have e-mailed releases to media in the past, I called beforehand to ask how they would prefer receiving the information (fax, phone, e-mail, attachment). Some people don’t look at attachments if they don’t know who they are from, and others prefer a separate document over a lengthy e-mail. Asking is probably your best bet, and then you can tailor it from there! Good luck!
Katie