Most PR pitches ‘slightly’ or ‘not valuable’

CEOs and CMOs know that a well-placed story in the right publication can do wonders for your business.

In the best-case scenario, your story is so cutting-edge that publishers knock on your door to hear about it. Yet how many of us truly have opportunities like that?

The reason PR can be so tough, whether you do it in-house or hire an agency, is that media outlets—the ones you want to be in—aren’t all that interested in cold pitches from PR people. According to a recent survey of 1,300 publishers from Fractl via MarketingProfs, 73 percent of editors and journalists at top-tier publications (and 62 percent at other sites) find pitches slightly valuable or not valuable.

That’s a lot of time, money and effort wasted on a task that provides very little ROI most of the time. The problem is that so many people, both in-house and at agencies, commit common errors when pitching stories to journalists:

1. They don’t do their research. Are you pitching the right reporter and the right beat? If your story has nothing to do with their interest or their editorial calendar, you’ll come across as annoying and incompetent.