Pitching to trade media requires surgical precision.
In B2B PR, you want to impact the decision-makers: executives, managers, C-suite… There’s no better feeling than proving to your stakeholders that your media placements shortened the sales cycle.
But breaking through is getting more and more difficult in the over-saturated market. To strategize better, learn the dos and don’ts of the quintessential trade media workflow:
- Task #1: Finding trade media contacts
- Task #2: Writing pitches to trade media
- Task #3: Maintaining the relationships
See how Prowly’s features live up to the challenge of hyper-targeting trade media.
Task #1: Finding trade media contacts
Sending generic pitches to segmented groups no longer cuts it. To actually get replies and build relationships, you need to hyper-target your Tier 1 journalists.
This means tracking down the perfect contacts for your story, researching them, and crafting individual pitches. But you can’t do that with hundreds or even dozens of recipients per campaign.
Do: Develop a screening system.
Narrow down your media lists. Here are the four steps to do this:
1. Take a broader look at the media landscape and your competitors.
Use Media Monitoring to create queries and set up alerts for competitor mentions, industry keywords, or thought leaders. Observe their activities in various media channels.
Who are the leading voices in your niche? Which channels best reach your target audience? Prowly enables you to monitor print, social media, broadcast, and online outlets.
Get instant access to print-only publications and licensed sources hidden behind paywalls. Alongside general news and business publications, Prowly's monitoring scans thousands of trade, industry, and specialist sources. Track any subject, from healthcare to engineering to politics to sports.
To find expert comments and thought leadership opportunities, create a query for #journorequest or #bloggerrequest. Narrow it down with your industry keyword to get more laser-focused results.
Wondering if you’ve missed some outlets? Monitoring your competitors helps track down journalists, freelancers, and contributors who might’ve skipped your attention. Create queries and set up alerts to see what industry people say, benchmark your narrative against competitors, and develop a unique perspective.
2. Filter the database to show only trade media outlets.
The old classics like searching by topic, region, or media type are not enough to trim your results to trade media only. That’s why we introduced the trade media filter in the Media Database.
Combined with detailed traffic data from Semrush, you can instantly zoom in on just the right outlets for your story.
3. Scour the database with your target audience in mind.
Finding the right contacts will be much easier once you understand who you’re trying to impact.
For example, in Prowly, you can filter your results by the audience’s exact interests, income distribution, occupation, or even household size. This way you’re narrowing down the search using your target demographics.
This feature is especially useful for targeting B2B bloggers, whose traffic and audience data are usually shrouded in mystery.
4. Expand your search using keywords suggested by AI.
The phrase “Mental health” might not instantly identify journalists writing about stress management. However, in the “Keywords search” tab in Prowly’s Media Database, the AI Assistant generates custom keywords for you to search by, polish your results, and find new lanes to expand your research.
Don’t: Guess who to pitch.
Adding contacts to your list based on a gut feeling can cost you great coverage opportunities. There isn’t enough time to hyper-personalize pitches to mismatched Tier 1 journalists.
PRO TIP: To make your lists more precise, you can group journalists and outlets by industry sector, technology, market, or region.
Data-based PR is the new reality. Trade journalists are seen as trusted sources of industry news. To ‘wow’ them, you need in-depth info, such as their recent publications, main beats, and audience profiles.
Use data to craft a story that’ll help their readers make better business decisions. Trade journalists can tell when you aren’t up-to-date with the latest market trends and numbers.
Task #2: Writing pitches to trade media
Trade media cycles are longer than for consumer outlets, so you should have the time to prepare hyper-targeted pitches. But do you have the right strategies and tools?
Do: Keep it simple and valuable.
B2B PR is all about building brand awareness and authority in the right trade publications.
Prowly’s Emails module offers a smart writing feature to help you immediately connect with trade journalists. These reporters appreciate comments from established experts and data from unbiased studies. In just a few seconds, the PR-trained AI drafts pitches such as:
- Expert comment suggestion
- Interview opportunity
- Sharing survey or research results
- Summary of your press release
A successful trade media pitch helps the journalist understand the bigger industry picture and your brand’s place in it. Use your product or service as an example of a trend or a solution to a problem.
PRO TIP: A great way to bring attention to your product is to get a review from a trade blogger or opinion leader. But make sure their audiences align with yours!
In other words, your pitch has to be useful. Unique POV doesn’t mean convoluted.
Don’t: Be simplistic and robotic.
Buzzwords, jargon, sales talk, data overload, and copy-pasted company descriptions are the fastest ways to kill your pitch. Trade reporters might be fact-oriented, but they’re still human.
- When offering an expert for a comment or interview, show how one-of-a-kind they are. Describe their interesting business case and the value they can bring to the readers.
- In a boilerplate, talk about the company’s unique business approach and give tangible proof. None of that “industry disruptor” fluff.
Being bold, contrarian, and funny is always better than being boring and stiff as a board. Novelty and surprise get the audience in their seats.
PRO TIP: You can brainstorm story angles with Prowly’s AI for press release creation. Just type in your key messages and watch the ideas unfold.
Task #3: Maintaining the relationships
Not all your messages to trade journalists have to be pitches. Reporters appreciate selfless help from time to time.
Once you become their trusted source, they might approach you for comments on various industry topics.
Do: Offer extra ideas and be proactive.
How can you be more helpful to a trade journalist?
If they’ve accepted your pitch, share additional content for publication like videos, graphs, and data visualization. If they’ve rejected it or haven’t replied, offer something else than your pitch. Maybe some expert insights on another topic?
PRO TIP: Prowly offers in-depth email analytics to track journalists’ engagement with each part of your pitch, including the attachments. Just use the Prowly inbox for your send-outs.
Remember that trade media is more deliberate than consumer outlets. Trade editors usually plan special issues and topics even a year in advance. To be more useful to them and stay timely and relevant, ask for their editorial calendar.
And, as a proactive PR professional, you can’t miss out on developing a LinkedIn presence. Networking skills always go a long way in B2B.
Don’t: Plug your brand all the time.
All reporters want their stories to be unbiased, but trade journalists care about it to a bigger extent. They want to establish themselves as experts in their niche.
Salesy pitches annoy both journalists and decision-makers and for a good reason. Stop tooting your own horn and start solving your target audience’s problems. For example:
- If you’re representing a SaaS company, offer an expert explaining a complex solution popular or new to the industry.
- Working for green energy? Create a purpose-driven campaign aiming to impact public policies.
- Doing PR for finance services? Offer a recent study with trend forecasts.
PRO TIP: If you want to keep up with news and trends in your B2B niche, use Prowly’s Media Monitoring. Stay updated about your industry with daily, weekly, and monthly mention digests.
Closing thoughts
As a B2B PR pro, your audience isn’t the general crowd. Your job is to find journalists and outlets whose readers could be your potential buyers.
Your brand has to appeal to key decision-makers, and they know the industry. Building authority is more complicated than generating coverage and audience engagement.
But there are ways to create pitches that resonate with your target audience. Focus on solving their problems and your thought leadership might just shorten your brand’s sales cycle. If not, simply growing your Share of Voice among people with budgets is great enough!
