PR Playbook: How to Hyper-Target the Media and Get More Replies to Your Pitches

This is a step-by-step guide with expert tips from Sandra Torres, the Head of On Air, on how to find the right contacts for your campaigns through hyper-targeting.

Background

Surviving as a media outlet in today’s fast-paced, fragmented media world filled with newsertainment is easier said than done. Receiving irrelevant PR stories makes journalists’ lives even harder.

The expectations towards pitches are growing while traditional PR software is always a few steps behind. Good research is the key to a journalist’s heart, yet few PR pros have the time or proper tools to do it. 

The tactics from the olden days (“spray and pray”, press releases) are on their way out, while data-based, targeted pitches are taking over.

But, as new niche journalists and outlets pop up every day, finding the right recipients for pitches has become an uphill battle. Here’s how Sandra Torres has dealt with this problem.

Problem

Meet Sandra Torres, the Head of On Air, a bilingual (English and Spanish) broadcast group under the communications firm, Avoq. Over the years, she has seen a tremendous shift and blend of broadcast and digital media. On Air is a project that evolves alongside this new cultural reality. Sandra’s clients want to reach very specific audiences across traditional and new media.

As a pro with 15 years of experience, Sandra knows that hyper-targeting local and niche outlets is way more effective than:

• mass send-outs, because they annoy journalists and damage relations,
• pitching major but irrelevant news outlets, because it’s a waste of time, and
• badly-researched pitches, because they have low engagement rates.

But hyper-targeting and deeply researching niche outlets takes a lot of time and not many PR tools are of any help.

“We had been using other platforms to get contacts and figure out who we wanted to reach, but they were very general. A lot of [journalists] were not there anymore, and a lot of the outlets weren't even on air anymore,” says Sandra.

She wanted to find a new, effective way to create insightful, well-researched, and timely pitches. Her goal was to reach hyper-local and niche audiences for her clients.

Solution

The answer: an evolved media targeting workflow inside a single, advanced PR platform. Just follow Prowly’s simple 3-step process for better targeting accuracy:

“Just in the couple of months that we've been using Prowly, we've had huge success,” says Sandra.

Step 1. AI keyword research

Sandra and her team find a lot of their contacts through the keyword search functionality in Prowly’s Media Database. They type in any word or phrase in the browser and only get results containing these keywords.

What's the best way to use this feature? Here's Sandra’s tip for beginners in keyword search:

“Playing around with it is number one (...). Once I discovered it I spent probably two days just playing around. Start small, use one or two filters, and see how the results change.”

The team’s research flow got even more in-depth with AI keyword suggestions. As they type in generic keywords, Prowly’s AI generates related phrases, niches, or areas of the industry. The engine scans articles, tweets, and posts and automatically suggests keywords that are similar or connected to the topic in any way to make the search more thorough.

This way, Sandra and her team broaden their scope with new story angles, ideas, and niches.

“The AI keyword feature has definitely been the most helpful just to figure out what people are talking about and if they're talking about your story or the specific topic where your story would be relevant,” she says.

Sandra gets to discover new lanes without losing time on dead ends. She can sort and scan through all her results using the filters below the browser bar.

Step 2. Browse the latest publications

When she picks a journalist or an outlet she’s interested in, Sandra can check their latest articles and tweets. To make things easier, recent online activity, location, and main topics are shown right there, in every search result.

“It has been a game changer for us. We're able to target journalists who have recently talked about the topic. We follow up and usually get a response whether they need something extra or not,” says Sandra. 

Sandra doesn’t have to click away from Prowly to get an understanding of what the journalist or outlet is all about. At this stage of research, it’s a major time-saver.

“We've gotten so many ideas just by using Prowly’s research and data. We're blending in broadcast with digital and the tool has helped us a lot to widen our view of what media is and where we can go with it.”

Having seen or read a few pieces by a particular outlet or journalist, you can conduct an in-depth audience-focus analysis. Here’s the recipe:

• Pay close attention to storytelling patterns.
• Look at how they cover your competitors or your industry.
• Detect what format they use–is it features? Roundups? Editorials?
• Understand what angles they take to get the audience’s attention.

Step 3. Check audience stats

To find journalists or outlets that might be a match, Sandra asks: “Who are we trying to reach and why?” She prioritizes outlets whose audience profiles align with her client’s target demographics.

In Prowly, she can get this information instantly in two ways:

1. By clicking on “Details” under any search result and browsing through outlet details and audience insights. It’s where she can see a comprehensive overview of the outlet profile.
2. By searching in the “People” or “Media outlet” tab and using the “Audience insights” filter. This way all her results will be on point right away.

“Before [Prowly,] we were just pulling all broadcast local newsrooms and the top producers, but we couldn’t figure out who their audiences were. Now we can really zone into what our client wants and strategically reach out to the right audiences.”

Thanks to Prowly’s partnership with Semrush, the leading audience and traffic data provider, all insights are reliable and up-to-date.

This feature provides Sandra and her team with sought-after information such as:

• audience location, interests, age & gender, income, occupation, education level, and household size,
• domain visits, unique visitors, pages per visit, and time spent on the site.

These metrics help construct a data-backed PR strategy. But most of all, they are the key to knowing who you’re addressing.

“Understand your audience. This is what [Prowly] helps us do. Be very intentional about who you're reaching out to. That's how relationships grow and that's how your stories are credible.”

Each journalist and media hub has a specific mission and audience. Your success story only matters if it resonates with the viewers, their problems, and their interests.

Bonus Step: Organize everything in the CRM

Once you pick a journalist or outlet, you can add them to one or more media lists right away. Prowly’s CRM allows you to create numerous media lists per topic, angle, location, or any other category. 

For example, since On Air is a bilingual agency, the team can create media lists based on outlet location and language used. The list name can also reflect their current campaign or pitch focus.

“[Prowly] has helped us categorize every single story and every single sector and every audience that we're trying to reach.”

Targeted media lists help organize your campaigns. You can also easily sort contacts by existing media lists, contact information, location, email engagement, social media profiles, or even the time of being added to your directory.

To remember all the journalist information gathered during research, Prowly has a special feature called the Journalist Card. It’s a place to add notes and reminders, write contact descriptions, and log emails, calls, and meetings. What for?

• Tags let you differentiate Tier 1 contacts, label journalists, categorize outlets & more.
• Tags and notes can be used to filter through media lists faster. 
• Notes and reminders keep all your information in one place so you never leave important info out of your pitch.

All notes are available not only in the CRM but also while writing personalized emails in Prowly’s email writing module.

Pitch personalization is crucial for every successful campaign.

“We like to customize pitches based on reporter niche. For instance, if we're pitching a big report that covers health, a consumer, or politics, we would write up different targeted pitches for each of those journalists that match the type of content they typically cover,” says Sandra.