The best PR teams and the best sales teams are more alike than you might think. They avoid the “spray and pray” approach of emailing 500 prospects or reporters with the same pitch. Instead, they follow a similar path from discovery and qualifying through commitment and closing.
In the quest for top-tier earned media placements, how the best PR teams tackle discovery might be the most important step. For any particular piece of news, it requires a close familiarity with reporters and a question: What does this person care about? (A good story for their audience). What would make them pay attention? (Compelling story elements). What proof do we have? (Subject matter expertise, data, etc.) What can we uniquely give them? (No reporter wants old news). Top reporters get more than 300 pitches a day, so anything that is outside their beat or uninteresting is dismissed in seconds.
A good way to think about this is to envision a Venn diagram showing what a company wants to get out of a news story, and what a reporter wants. Some of the goals on the company side include: establishing category leadership, driving sales, controlling a narrative, or attracting talent and investment. None of those directly intersect with what reporters are after: an interesting story filled with tension, undocumented news, unexpected commentary and opinions.
The good news for everyone (and why PR exists in the first place) is that there’s significant overlap between the two. This regularly culminates in thought-provoking, real-world stories that satisfy companies, reporters and audiences every day.
Here are some examples of that in practice:
- The Wall Street Journal: For its audience of decision-makers, board members, and institutional investors, the Wall Street Journal wants to hear from a Fortune 500 company on how they saved millions of dollars. That means they’re not interested in product details. They want valuable insights into how a company solved a problem. This profile on Pringles is a perfect example that showcases Pringles as an industry leader in manufacturing technology innovation, while still telling a great story grounded in compelling details on how AI can deliver the perfect crispy chip.
- Bloomberg: The global financial nerve center has an audience that follows the money: M&A, market share, infrastructure spending, and public-market impacts. They want market-moving news and something that demonstrates the financial impact on a company’s customers and partners. A recent client story highlights an audacious telecom deal with unique industry insights and details on the business rationale and what market-watchers need to know.
- The Information: This is where Silicon Valley insiders, venture capitalists, and tech executives get their industry news. Landing a story there means offering something exclusive, whether that’s a financial update, a massive customer win unseating an incumbent, or proprietary data. In a recent exclusive, startup Micro1 committed $1 million as a goodwill initiative to train former Spirit Airlines employees with the AI skills they may need to re-enter the job market.
Once you have your story dialed in and the right reporters identified, the next step is to offer proof. That means asserting your industry expertise and insight to help our PR team develop and build compelling story ideas and pitches that will capture interest from journalists. Getting their attention means offering contrarian, unexpected takes—reporters are always on the hunt for informed, compelling sources.
Finally, and perhaps most importantly, bring third-party validation into any company story. Without an account of how your product or service helped someone, you’re left with self-serving marketing messages. Lean on your executives to leverage their personal relationships to lock in client participation, including details on how much they benefited from working with you. This is the close, just like a good sales pitch would do.
Interested in building a PR strategy that actually closes top-tier media? Drop us a line at newbiz@treblepr.com.