How to Pitch a Story to a Journalist and Stand Out

For adtech, martech, and data marketers and communications professionals, pitching a story to a journalist is only getting harder. Editorial staffs are thin, communications teams and the tech sectors they serve are growing, and the proportion of pitches journalists can consider, much less respond to, is declining. Facing tough odds, marketers need to get savvy about pitching.

I would know — before breaking into communications and corporate content, I primarily made my living as a writer on the noble side of the journalism-PR divide. As the editor of the martech publication Street Fight, which I still manage, I receive dozens of pitches for coverage and bylines per day. I can only run a fraction of them, and even responding to all of them — a demand with which I greatly sympathize as a fellow comms practitioner — is impossible most days.

But working in both journalism and comms in the adtech, martech, and data industry has given me a solid sense of techniques that can help communications professionals stand out and reach journalists. Here are three: focusing on the big picture, demonstrating you’re familiar with the journalist and their publication, and offering original data.

Focus on the big picture when pitching stories to a journalist

The most common mistake marketers make when pitching a story to a journalist is to focus the story on their client, not the way the client’s news affects the rest of the industry. This is natural; marketers spend all their working time thinking about their company, its solutions, and how to position them in the market.

But journalists don’t care that much about any one company specifically — unless you’re representing Google or Meta. They care about your industry, for example ad tech, and its problems, for example the measurement of advertising’s efficacy.

By focusing on the way your company or client’s story advances a broader conversation about the state of the company’s industry, you give yourself a better chance to grab the journalist’s attention. For example, if I were pitching a new identity solution by a data privacy company, I wouldn’t focus on that solution but rather on the problem of identifying audiences in the post-cookie era, how the solution could ameliorate that problem, and what the solution reflects about ongoing challenges and opportunities in the identity space. 

Demonstrate you’re familiar with the journalist and publication

Some of the pitches a journalist receives do not address the journalist by name or mention their publication. Very few demonstrate even superficial familiarity with the journalist and their publication. Doing the former is a quick ticket to the journalist’s email trash bin. Doing the latter gives you a fighting chance to earn coverage.

There are easy tactics of which to take advantage here. For example, when pitching a story on holiday retail performance, link in your pitch to a previous story the journalist or their publication has written on that topic. Consider noting in your pitch a trend in the publication’s coverage, and tie your pitch to that trend, explaining how your story will complicate or advance the established narrative.

Offer original data when pitching a story

Journalists are culturally the opposite of salespeople. No offense to salespeople (ok, maybe a little offense), but their job is to disarm the scrutinizing prospect and get them to focus on all the benefits of the solution they’re selling. On the contrary, journalists love to scrutinize the nuances of narratives being pitched to them, and they’re likely to see overblown claims and self-promotion as unworthy of coverage.

One of the ways to get over this hurdle is to develop and offer original data that tells the journalist something novel and concrete about a problem relevant to their publication. The data does not need to be extremely complex; a simple survey of a couple hundred customers may be enough to warrant coverage or at least kick-start a conversation with a source who can dive further into the data. For comms pros, generating white papers that can drive a series of pitches and content opportunities is a strong way to lay the foundation for quarterly content and media strategy.

Too long; didn’t read

Pitching journalists on stories in adtech, martech, and data is not rocket science, and it does not wholly depend on relationships, either. Offer original information, show you’ve done your homework on the journalist and the publication, and focus on the big picture, and you’ll be on your way to generating meaningful relationships and content for your client or company.