Find journalists to pitch your business

Last Updated / Reviewed: Jan 10th, 2023

Execution Time: ~30 Mins

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Goal: Run an outreach campaign to find journalists in your niche to promote your product or service

Ideal Outcome: Successfully send your outreach emails to a list of journalists covering news in your niche/industry.

Prerequisites or requirements: N/A.

Why this is important: Journalist in popular publications can help you reach massive audience and bring awareness to your to products and service.

Where this is done: Google Doc.

When this is done: After you’ve set the goals for your outreach campaign.

Who does this: Outreach specialist, PR/marketing consultant, or any person responsible for outreach strategy for your business.

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Build a journalist outreach list in your niche

1. Make a copy of this outreach template before you start.
2. Head to Google News and type in the product category or niche for your business. In this SOP, we’ll use “meditation” as an example.
   
   
   
   Note: Alternatively, enter the name of your competitors or business similar to yours to get relevant news site.
3. You will get a list of outlets, news sites and blogs that cover news about your industry.
   
   
4. Right click on each of the the articles on the search results and open them in a new tab.
   
   
5. Identify the URL of the article and add them to the outreach template under “URL”.
   
   
6. Next, get the blog contact information. To do this, download the http://Hunter.io extension (Chrome, Firefox).
7. Once downloaded, click on the http://Hunter.io logo to activate the it.
   
   
8. Note down the contact information and the name of the author and add them to the outreach template under “Contact” and “Name”.
   
   
9. Once you’ve filled in the URL, contact information, and name of the contact, your template should look like this:
   
   
10. Repeat step 2-9 until you have at least 50 contacts.

Send outreach emails to journalists

1. First, fill out the following questions:
   1. Name of your product:
      Example: MeditationX.
   2. The problem that your product/service/company is trying to solve.
      Example: Meditation audio app that help you improve focus and reduce stress, featuring world-renowned mindfulness experts.
   3. What is a newsworthy insight in your industry
      Example: Studies show that guided meditation help users develop mindfulness habits for longer periods of time.
2. Then make a copy of this template (Cold email to journalists for media pitch and replace the text highlighted in blue for your outreach email.
   Here’s a completed example:
   
   
   
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3. Send this email to every contact in your outreach template. Make sure to personalize the email by addressign them by their first name.
4. Repeat this process until you’ve hit secured a feature for your business or once you’ve accomplished your outreach goal.