Episode 79: 2 MUST-HAVES in Every Cold Pitch
To communicate your brand to journalists and your target audience, you should include these 2 PR must-haves in every cold pitch you send.
With that said, the two must-haves in your cold pitch you must lean on are specificity and relevance.
Specificity and relevance are really tied together because these allow people to know what you’re saying is important.
For one, specificity is about peeling your message until you get to the juiciest core of what you’re trying to offer to the journalists and their audience.
On the other hand, relevance makes you connect your specific message to a certain season and reason.
And being specific and relevant is a proven way to stand out from the crowded inboxes of many journalists.
These are the exact magic ingredients that continue to help business founders in the Small Business PR community land media features.
So, if you’ve been looking for a way for your pitch to be noticed and valued, you’ve come to the right place.
In this episode, I’ll share with you the reasons why you need to be specific and relevant in pitching before journalists. Most importantly, you’ll hear straight from me the exact steps you can do to demonstrate these two must-haves whenever you pitch.
“PR is knowing how to communicate your brand, so that everyone listening leans all the way in and says, 'Hell yes!' It's knowing how to communicate so that you can make quantum leaps in your business. That's why the CPR method exists. It's a way of structuring a valued-given conversation.”
-Gloria Chou
Discover the two must-haves you should include in every cold pitch you make. Join me in this episode as I go through the importance of specificity and relevance in pitching so you can finally make the journalist on the other side decide and say that “Yes!” that you truly deserve.
Topics We Cover in This Episode:
Why pitching requires you to peel the layers of your business
The two must-haves that make your cold pitch stand out
How to test if you are specific and relevant enough in your pitch
Making the subject lines of your pitch really matter
The whole point of pitching—making journalists respond
Putting out to the world the puzzles of your small business
If you want to land your first feature for free without any connections, I want to invite you to watch my PR Secrets Masterclass where I reveal the exact methods thousands of bootstrapping small businesses use to hack their own PR and go from unknown to being a credible and sought-after industry expert. Register now at www.gloriachou.com/masterclass.
Resources Mentioned:
Join Gloria Chou's PR Community: Small Biz Pros: By Gloria Chou
Listen to Small Business PR Podcast: Episode # 2-The CPR Method
Additional Resources:
Join the Small Biz PR Pros FB group
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Here’s a glance at this episode…
[02:03] It's all about communicating in a fewer amount of sentences, so that you can capture that person's attention.
[03:48] The more specific you get with your communication and your subject line in the subject of your pitch, the better it will be. The higher your chances are of getting that “Hell, yes!” from the other person.
[04:57] A great litmus test to see if you're being specific or relevant enough, is looking at your pitch and thinking: does this pitch apply five years into the future? Will it work five years maybe into the past?
[07:25] Without your little puzzle piece, that puzzle landscape of your industry will not be complete. It is your sacred duty to put in your little puzzle piece no matter how small or weird looking. It's how can we just get that one little angle to get the journalist to look up and say, 'Tell me more.'
[07:54] Remember, in order for you to get through to someone's inbox, it's all about positioning you as an industry expert, someone with a point of view, because experts have point of view.
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Gloria Chou 0:00
Now you've heard me talk so many times on the show about how PR is not just about getting featured, right? It's so much more than that. It's not even just about getting onto podcasts, or growing your business. To me, PR is knowing how to communicate your brand, so that everyone listening leans all the way in and says, hell yes, it's knowing how to communicate so that you can make quantum leaps in your business. And that's why the CPR method exists, is a way of structuring a valued given conversation. We've had people use these skills to not only pitch for PR to grow their business, but get their stuff into retailers to pitch to that really scary panel speaking opportunity to be able to get the hell yes from that person, so that they can expose their business to so many people. So on today's show, I want to talk about the two ingredients to make every pitch standout. Now, if you haven't listened to the episode about my proprietary CPR method, which stands for credibility, point of view and relevance. This is a cold pitching method that I created from literally throwing spaghetti on the wall and cold, pitching 1000s of times without any PR experience. When I started, I started to pick up on what worked and what didn't, and I put it into a framework called CPR. And if you haven't listened to that, definitely go listen to that episode right now, after this, and you can listen to it at Gloria Chow npr.com/two Hey, friends, I'm Gloria Chao, small business PR expert, award winning pitch writer and your unofficial hype woman. Nothing makes me happier than seeing people get the recognition they deserve. And that starts with feeling more confident to go bigger with your message. So on this podcast, I will share with you the untraditional, yet proven strategies for PR marketing and creating more opportunity in your business. If you are ready to take control of your narrative and be your most unapologetic and confident self, you're in the right place. This is a small business PR podcast.
Gloria Chou 1:54
So now that you know about the CPR method, you might be wondering how can I get my communications my message my DM, whatever it may be more dialed in, right? It's all about communicating in a fewer amount of sentences, so that you can capture that person's attention. So the two ingredients that I want you to know is specificity and relevance, specificity and relevance the two magic ingredients to make any communication resonate, resonating, relevant and appealing to the other person. Right. So I'll start with the first one, which is specificity. Now on my PR masterclass, and on my monthly calls with my PR students, I always talk about pitching anything in life, like peeling away the layers of an onion. So imagine an onion, right, it's got many different layers. If you just go for the outside the outside layers, it's not very flavorful, it isn't pack a powerful punch, it's not really going to flavor that dish, right, it's not really usable. But if you really do the work of peeling away the layers of the onion, like peeling away the layers of your message to get very specific, you will be able to get to that juicy core, which is going to take your dish so much further. Same thing goes with pitching. So think about your message like peeling away the layers of an onion, you might have you might start with like a, you know a draft that is very fluffy, right? It might be about a very general thing about health and fitness. How can we peel away that layer and talk about what specific aspects of health and fitness? So it might be something about Pilates? How can we peel away that layer even more? It could be about Pilates tips for a certain demographic, let's say women, right? Let's peel away one more layer. It might be Pilates for women who are recovering from various surgeries, or it might be postpartum Pilates or might be low impact Pilates for women over 60 or 70. Do you see how the layers of the onion has been peeled here? So the more specific you get with your communication and your subject line in the subject of your pitch, the better it will be, the higher your chances are of getting that hell yes from the other person. And this applies to any kind of communication as well, right? It could be a LinkedIn DM, it could be an email, it could be an Instagram DM. But remember, in communication, you want to practice specificity. I'll give you another example of what I mean by specificity. One of the things that our PRs or PAC members knows is that subject lines of any email is so important because your subject lines determine whether or not that email communication gets opened. So the first thing that we need to we need to solve is how do we get that subject line, super punchy, super concise, and super specific. One of the things I love to do actually is in the subject line write in something that is very specific, such as the time or the date. So if I was pitching a meal planning thing for New Year new you, I wouldn't put for the new year I would put for 2023 or 2024. If you're doing something for a season like a gift guide or a product guide, I want to put in exactly the holiday that you're pitching for. Right that is specific. And that leads me to my second point which is relevant specificity and relevance really tied together. Because it's allowing that person to quickly grasp why you're what you're saying is important. Because if you lose them, and let's be honest, everyone has the attention span of a goldfish, right? If you're starting your email with pleasantries, how the weather is how you both went to the same high school, blah, blah, blah, you're losing them, right? You're competing for the journalist attention. So that means that every single sentence needs to be specific and relevant, starting with the subject line. Now in the email body, the CPR pitch outlines how you should write about it. But if you're thinking about how can I make my pitch even better, always ask yourself, Is this specific enough? Is this relevant to the holiday or the season or the weather or the year or the time or whatever breaking news trend you're trying to ride the coattails of, right? A great litmus test to see if you're being specific or relevant enough, is looking at your pitch and and thinking, Hmm, does this pitch apply five years into the future? Will it work five years maybe into the past? If the answer is yes, then you need to peel away layers of the onion to get it more specific, and more relevant. I think a lot of times as founders, we're afraid to be very specific and relevant, because one, we want one size fits all. We want one email to be able to cast a wide net and get everyone to say yes, but it's not going to happen like that, right? You know that even in sales, if you appeal to everyone, you appeal to no one, so shouldn't the same thing apply to pitch writing. And I know it's scary, right? Because a lot of times, you have so many things you want to talk about whether it's your product, or your business, or the things that you've done, it's so hard to narrow it down to just one specific thing. But remember, the more specific and relevant you can get, the more that person is likely to say yes. So we'll work on peeling with the onion, always see how you can make it even more specific to a certain demographic, a certain age group, a certain type of person, a customer, whatever it is, right? The pitches that I've seen work really well from our PR students, they get them featured over and over and over again, they talk about one specific thing. It's not an encyclopedia of the history of Pilates is just one very specific angle, right. And if you think about it as a metaphor, think about your story angle as pieces of a puzzle, right, you're going to have many different pieces, and everyone's going to be able to have different pieces to contribute. Now, some of the big well known companies might have a really big puzzle piece. But without your little little puzzle piece, that puzzle landscape of your industry will not be complete. So it is your sacred duty to put in your little puzzle piece piece no matter how small or weird looking right. So that's really what I mean about pitching is how can we just get that one little angle to get the journalist to look up and say, Tell me more, right, the point of the pitch is not to write the story for them, the only thing that pitch is doing is giving them one idea, or one perspective so that they can say, Okay, tell me more. That's it. I think a lot of times as founders, we make PR and writing into this huge thing that's like, there's no way I'm ever going to be able to fit everything I want to say in one email. And that's good, because you should never send an email with everything you want to say. The point of the pitch is just to get the journalists to respond with a simple yes, tell me more or no, it's not for me right now. That's it. So let's just take the burden and pressure off of our shoulders and realize that anytime we're doing any type of pitching, it's just to get the person on the other side to make a decision. Yes, tell me more or no, this is not for me. It's really not to stuff the entire history of your business, and how you found it, and what your co founder did, and your unpublished autobiography, the more it starts to sound like that, the less effective it will be. So my friends, two things I want you to remember is specificity and relevance. And anytime you're doing any kind of communication, I don't care if it's verbal. Or if it's on a video on a podcast, or in someone's DMS, think about the layers of an onion. What layer are you on? Are you on the top layer? We're talking very fluffy, about something general that doesn't really add the conversation or give a specific point of view? Or are you able to peel away the layers of an onion to give something very specific and juicy. Remember, in order for you to get through to someone's inbox, it's all about positioning you as an industry expert, someone with a point of view, because experts have point of view. And that's where the specificity comes in. So I encourage you, my friend, to not get bogged down by all the different things that you want to talk about. And just go really laser focus on what's that one angle, start from there. Instead of starting from trying to fit everything into one pitch. Start with one specific angle because if you can get good at drafting just one angle, and knowing the structure of that specificity, you can apply that to so many different angles. So that was just a little tidbit I thought I wanted to share because this topic came up on our recent monthly PR starter pack member call where I go live and I review our pitches and we brainstorm and we talk about angles and I do a live trade Reading and this always happens when someone submits their pitch. It's usually the first or second draft, which usually is the first or second layer of the onion. And, and very common, I will say on the call, how can we peel away this a little bit more? And then there, I can see them kind of, you know, their, their brains are working under like, oh more that like this and like this. So sometimes you just need to remember, how can I peel away the layers of an onion? Alright, well, that was all for today. And if you know anyone who could benefit from what I've shared today, anyone who has a small business, who's a product maker or a founder or a coach, let them know about this podcast. Thank you so much for listening. Hey, small business hero. Did you know that you can get featured for free on outlets like Forbes, The New York Times, Marie Claire Pop Sugar and so many more, even if you're not yet launched? Or if you don't have any connection? That's right. That's why I invite you to watch my PR Secrets masterclass, where I reveal the exact methods 1000s of bootstrapping small businesses use to have their own PR and go from unknown to being a credible and sought after industry expert. Now if you want to land your first press feature, get on a podcast, secure a VIP speaking gig or just reach out to that very intimidating editor. This class will show you exactly how to do it. Register now at gloriachoupr.com/masterclass. That's Gloria Chou c-h-o-u pr.com/masterclass. So you can get featured in 30 days without spending a penny on ads or agencies. Best of all, this is completely free. So get in there and let's get you featured.