How to Write a PR Pitch: Step-by-Step Guide

Let me walk you through how to write a PR pitch.

Should you call or email the journalist? 

Calling or email­ing is a hot potato that most journ­al­ists and many pub­lic rela­tions pro­fes­sion­als will recom­mend — email­ing. Still, this doesn’t mean that mak­ing a phone call won’t some­times work bet­ter. ¹Among digit­al PR pro­fes­sion­als sur­veyed, 94% said indi­vidu­al emails are still the most effect­ive pitch­ing to journ­al­ists. Among journ­al­ists sur­veyed, 93% said 1:1 emails are the best way to pitch.

Put it like this: If you know that the journ­al­ist is a “phone per­son,” that the tim­ing is good, and that your pitch is urgent enough, by all means, go ahead and make a call instead.

In any case, you should write your pitch down.
Aim for no more than half a page in length.

Here we go:

How To Write a PR Pitch

Start simple: Always intro­duce your­self, cla­ri­fy your affil­i­ation, and ask per­mis­sion to state your business.

My name is Jerry Silfwer, I work at Spin Factory, and I’m [calling/​writing] on behalf of ACME Chemicals. I have a news story about chem­ic­al plants fail­ing to meet envir­on­ment­al- and safety reg­u­la­tions. Would this be a good time to hear me out?

Already at the get-go, I’m clearly stat­ing that I will pitch a news story.

My object­ive is to bring atten­tion to the fact that my cli­ent has gone to great lengths to com­ply with gov­ern­ment reg­u­la­tions. This is, how­ever, not news.

However, what does this imply if my cli­ent is the only chem­ic­al com­pany to com­ply with the new reg­u­la­tions? It means that all of their com­pet­it­ors are non-com­pli­ant. And that is news.

If the journ­al­ists agree to hear you out, go ahead and frame the conflict:

Two hun­dred forty-one chem­ic­al plants are oper­at­ing in Sweden. According to an unpub­lished paper here in my hand, only 62 are liv­ing up to the government’s new envir­on­ment­al reg­u­la­tions last year. In oth­er words: 3 of 4 of all chem­ic­al plants in Sweden might be haz­ard­ous to the people liv­ing or work­ing near them.

At this point, the journ­al­ist might be ready to jump in. How haz­ard­ous are these plants? Why are they dan­ger­ous? What kind of evid­ence do I have to back my claim up?

In any case, it’s time to pos­i­tion your spokesperson:

In light of these dis­turb­ing fig­ures, would you be inter­ested in get­ting your hands on these doc­u­ments and talk­ing exclus­ively with Dr Mary Samsonite at ACME Chemicals about:

— How haz­ard­ous are these plants?
— Where are these poten­tially haz­ard­ous plants situ­ated?
— Why is there no gov­ern­ment­al over­sight to force them to comply?

Once again, the focus is 100% on the news story still. 

Sometimes you can offer exclus­iv­ity; some­times, you can’t. Even though I could come up with 20 rel­ev­ant ques­tions to sug­gest, I kept it to three to cla­ri­fy the pitch.

If you get a straight no, then that’s fine. It hap­pens. If you get a yes or a maybe, you move on with the final part of your writ­ten pitch:

If you’re inter­ested, Dr Mary Samsonite has agreed to meet with you and a pho­to­graph­er on Wednesday at 2 pm or Thursday at 10 am this week. Would any of those slots work for you?

I’m aggress­ively sug­gest­ing a phys­ic­al meet­ing in this fic­ti­tious example, but it depends on the pitch and the con­text. In times of Covid-19, for instance, I’m more likely to pro­pose a Zoom interview.

Now, let’s look at the writ­ten PR pitch as a whole:

My name is Jerry Silfwer. I work at Spin Factory and am [calling/​writing] on behalf of ACME Chemicals. I have a news story about chem­ic­al plants fail­ing to meet envir­on­ment­al- and safety reg­u­la­tions. Would this be a good time to hear me out?

Two hun­dred forty-one chem­ic­al plants are oper­at­ing in Sweden. According to an unpub­lished paper in my hand, only 62 are liv­ing up to the government’s new envir­on­ment­al reg­u­la­tions last year: 3 of 4 of all chem­ic­al plants in Sweden might be haz­ard­ous to the people liv­ing or work­ing near them.

In light of these dis­turb­ing fig­ures, would you be inter­ested in get­ting your hands on these doc­u­ments and talk­ing exclus­ively with Dr Mary Samsonite at ACME Chemicals about:

— How haz­ard­ous are these plants?
— Where are these poten­tially haz­ard­ous plants situ­ated?
— Why is there no gov­ern­ment­al over­sight to force them to com­ply?

If you’re inter­ested, Dr Mary Samsonite has agreed to meet with you and a pho­to­graph­er on Wednesday at 2 pm or Thursday at 10 am this week. Would any of those slots work for you?

At this point, allow me to take a step back and appre­ci­ate what’s going on here from the per­spect­ive of the PR client:

Preparing Your PR Pitch

No, ACME Chemicals prob­ably nev­er asked me to pitch a story about poten­tially dan­ger­ous chem­ic­al plants in Sweden: 

This whole thing prob­ably star­ted in a con­fer­ence room where the CEO bragged to me about how they “ran the only chem­ic­al plants in the coun­try in com­pli­ance with the government’s new stricter regulations.”

So, before pitch­ing the report­er, here’s some of the work that I had to do to get the PR pitch into usable shape:

Step 1. When I signed an NDA (non-dis­clos­ure agree­ment), I had to explain to the CEO that ACME Chemical’s reg­u­lat­ory excel­lence is excel­lent but not news.

Step 2. I had to run a study for data or find a way to extract fac­tu­al evid­ence to sup­port and con­firm the claim that zero oth­er chem­ic­al plants in Sweden com­ply with the regulations.

Step 3. With con­firm­a­tion, I had to talk to an expert to learn what non-com­pli­ance in this con­text means regard­ing real risks.

Step 4. I had to vet and pre­pare an in-house expert spokes­per­son — the CEO is cred­ible when it comes to busi­ness mat­ters but not mat­ters of advanced chemistry.

Step 5. I wrote the PR pitch (and often a press release) and got cli­ent approv­al. And yes, cli­ent approv­al can some­times take weeks!

In media rela­tions, pitch­ing the story to a journ­al­ist is not a cru­cial part of the job. The essen­tial part of the job is to identi­fy rel­ev­ant cor­por­ate stor­ies and turn them into the news. That’s where most of my effort is spent.

As for writ­ing the pitch, per­son­al­isa­tion is vital. Your pit should nev­er sound like a tem­plate. ²The most cited reas­on among journ­al­ists for reject­ing a pitch was the lack of per­son­al­isa­tion (Muck Rack, 2020).

Some organ­isa­tions find the concept of news­wor­thi­ness uncom­fort­able. If they’re adam­ant about only brag­ging about their great­ness, politely sug­gest they remove an ad. In an ad, they’ll get to say whatever they want.

Or — which is often an excel­lent option for cor­por­ate suc­cess stor­ies — con­vince the organ­isa­tion to tar­get a trade- or busi­ness ver­tic­al instead.

PR Resource: Free Toolbox PR Course

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Doctor Spin’s PR School: Free Toolbox PR Course

Get ahead in your pub­lic rela­tions career with this free Toolbox PR Course. Learn from seasoned industry pro­fes­sion­als and elev­ate your skills for free!

• The 1‑Page PR Strategy
• The Media Kit: What To Include
• The Press Release Template
• How to Write a PR Pitch: Step-by-Step Guide
• Derek Halpern’s “Perfect Blog Post” Template
• How To Write a Blogger Outreach Email (Including Two Scripts)

“Either write some­thing worth read­ing or do some­thing worth writ­ing.”
— Benjamin Franklin

Learn more: All Free PR Courses

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PR Resource: Free Writing PR Course

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Doctor Spin’s PR School: Free Writing PR Course

Discover the power of effect­ive PR writ­ing with this free Writing PR Course. Find tips and inspir­a­tion. Boost your skills and boost your career pro­spects today.

• Write Well, Write Fast
• Never Use the Word ‘Unique’ in Your PR Writing
• How to Write a PR Pitch: Step-by-Step Guide
• The Platitude Sickness: The Trash of Corporate Writing
• The Stoic Tonality: Rise Above With Integrity
• Corporate Cringe
• How To Write About AI: A Beginner’s Guide
• The PAS Formula for PR Writers

PR Writing Inspiration

• William Faulkner on Writing From the Heart
• How Nick Cave Turned Down MTV With Some Classy Writing
• The Things That Do Attain
• Existentialism for PR Advisers

Learn more: All Free PR Courses

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PR Resource: Drafting

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Communication Skill: Drafting

Drafting, cre­at­ing, and refin­ing writ­ten doc­u­ments are fun­da­ment­al com­mu­nic­a­tion skills cru­cial in every­day life. From com­pos­ing emails and writ­ing reports to craft­ing per­son­al let­ters or social media posts, the abil­ity to draft and edit doc­u­ments ensures clar­ity, coher­ence, and effect­ive­ness in con­vey­ing messages. 

“The first draft of any­thing is shit.”
— Ernest Hemingway

Many indi­vidu­als struggle with writ­ing not because they lack ideas but because they under­es­tim­ate the power of revi­sion. The ini­tial draft is rarely per­fect; it’s through revis­ing this draft — trans­form­ing it into a second, third, or even fourth draft — that one hones the mes­sage, sharpens the lan­guage, and strengthens the over­all communication. 

Developing a habit of draft­ing and edit­ing allows for explor­ing ideas, refin­ing thought, and elim­in­at­ing ambi­gu­ity, mak­ing the final product more impact­ful and under­stood by its inten­ded audience.

To become bet­ter at draft­ing, con­sider these five tips:

• Embrace the pro­cess. Accept that draft­ing is a pro­cess that involves writ­ing, revis­it­ing, and revis­ing. Your first draft is just the begin­ning, not the end product.
• Separate writ­ing from edit­ing. Allow your­self to write freely in the ini­tial draft without wor­ry­ing about per­fec­tion. Focus on get­ting your ideas down, then shift to edit­ing mode to refine your work.
• Read aloud. Reading your draft aloud can help you catch errors, awk­ward phras­ing, and unclear areas. This prac­tice can also improve the rhythm and flow of your writing.
• Seek feed­back. Don’t hes­it­ate to share your drafts with oth­ers. Feedback can provide new per­spect­ives and insights that you might have overlooked.
• Use tools wisely. Use writ­ing and edit­ing tools (such as large lan­guage mod­els, gram­mar check­ers, or style guides) to help identi­fy areas for improve­ment. However, always apply your judg­ment to ensure sug­ges­tions align with your inten­ded mes­sage and voice.

Incorporating these strategies into your writ­ing routine can elev­ate your draft­ing skills, lead­ing to pre­cise, com­pel­ling, and effect­ive writ­ten com­mu­nic­a­tion in every aspect of your life.

Learn more: Communication Skills (That Everyone Should Learn)

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