Wolf Craft - My simple pitching dos & don'ts.

Using two examples from real businesses, this month’s edition covers essential pitch writing tips and how to be ready for press outreach.  

Q: What are your top two or three tips for writing the actual pitch email?

A:  Empathy. Always keep the email receiver in mind. Editors can receive 100+ emails a day. Give them an email that is short and sweet and helps them do their jobs. What does this mean?

Don't include attachments.

Embed low res images that load quickly.

State (quickly) how what you’re pitching relates to what they write about.

And of course, introduce yourself.

Approach it from the perspective of being helpful: “I have something that I think your readers would be interested in because I noticed X, Y, Z themes in your articles. I have images ready and here's two or three things you might want to know about…” Now, you're much more likely to get featured because you've helped them.

The number one thing is not to say: “Hey, it would be really great if you wrote about me because it would help me.” An editor's job is not to help you. Their job is to help their readers and put together a beautiful publication. If you can help them do their job more easily, you’re more likely to be included in this editor’s coverage.

Useful tools to help you get started

Our most popular PR tool is our $15 Pitch the Media Mini Course.

9 Tips to Improve Your Website Design

Are you investing in your businesses to grow brand awareness?
We’ll build you a custom PR strategy without the commitment of a monthly retainer fee.

Q: When do I have enough to get started? I want to start reaching out to publications, but should I wait until I've got it all together.

A: Short answer, you can start with just one thing. Caveat—your one thing has to be photographed really well and be useful to a specific audience.

If you have one widget that you're selling, get all the information organized and make sure your website is optimized to talk about that widget. Find the publications that will write about this type of widget. They're the publications that have written about similar products. So, if you don't know where to get started, look at the press pages of brands that sell similar widgets.

You may find this surprising but more than a few design companies have gotten wide press coverage with just one or two products.

What's their secret??? Again, it's excellent photography that really fits the point of view of the publications they pitched. And a simple beautiful website that is optimized to show off that one single product.

If you're launching one piece of furniture, for example, and you want placements in higher tier design publications you'll need to have images of it in a beautiful space with great styling.

I know of a company that launched with one high end stool. They had dozens of pictures of it in different colors. The photos were very well thought out. What they did not do was slap it in the spare room in their home with dog hair on the floor. They made the investment and it paid off.

For inspiration- check out the homepage before & after for a single product brand we recently worked with.