This guide is all about how you can get press coverage for your business.
If you have a business and want to get:
- Other blogs to write articles about your product / app / service / business
- Featured as a guest on podcasts
- Related businesses and affiliates to partner with you
This guide is for you.
Specifically, we are going to break down:
- The process for getting press coverage
- Having the right pitch
- Finding relevant blogs to write up your business
- Getting relevant podcast guest spots
- Forming partnerships
So, with that, let’s get started.
How to Get Press Coverage for Your Business
The process for getting press coverage is going to be pretty straightforward, whether you are looking for product reviews, podcast guest spots, or partnerships.
We are going to do some cold outreach.
Yes.
We are going to find the right people and pitch them.
Why?
It works. That’s why.
I recently ran an outreach campaign for a music industry-related app and within two weeks was able to secure 10 reviews on prominent industry blogs and 3 podcast guest spots.
Not too shabby.
How? Here’s what the process looks like:
First, we have to find relevant websites to pitch.
The process is going to look a bit different for review blogs, podcasts, and partnerships, but the same general concept. We’re going to find websites relevant to the audience we want to reach.
Then, we’re going to find the right contact people at these websites.
Then, we’re going to get their email addresses.
And then we’re going to send them a personalized pitch email.
Next, let’s break down each of these.
Finding Relevant Websites
The first step in our journey to get press coverage is finding relevant websites to pitch.
You can do this a few different ways. The first is with a search engine of your choice and advanced search operators.
For example, if you have a blog on, I dunno, user onboarding, you might want to find customer service blogs.
So, you can use the Google, and search for “customer service blog”
Now, you might come across a relevant blog, but you also might come across an article that lists blogs in your target market.
That’s perfect too!
They’ve done the work for you and curated a list.
So, you can go to that article, and grab the URLs from that list.
Now, this method is a bit manual. There are other ways you can do this to build your list.
One example, using a research tool like Ahrefs.
With Ahrefs you can do your research, build a list, and export it as a spreadsheet.
Also, one other tool I’d recommend is Postaga, which can help with this entire process of finding websites, getting contacts, and building personalized outreach emails. (Full disclosure: I am a founder at Postaga).
Postaga has different campaign types geared towards your different outreach goals, and can help you build your campaigns easily.
Once you have the websites you want to reach out to, the next step is to find out who you should be getting in touch with.
Finding Contacts and Validating Emails
So, finding contacts.
Finding an email address is a multi-step process.
First, you need to find the right person at the website to reach.
If you don’t, and you just reach out to a generic mailbox like an info@ or contact@, you’ll be less likely to get a reply, and that’s not good.
So, we need to find a human in the right department at that website.
Then, once we know the name of the person, we need their email address.
And then, once we have that, we need to make sure that their email address that we have actually works! If you think you have their email address, but the email you send to them bounces (i.e. doesn’t reach their inbox and is undeliverable) because the email address you have isn’t real (this is a very common thing that happens with outreach), that’s not good.
If too many of your outreach emails bounce, then your email can get blacklisted as spam. So, getting email addresses right is important.
So, how are we going to find the right contacts?
There are a few methods.
First, the tedious method – LinkedIn.
You can manually go to LinkedIn to search for the company and find the right person in the relevant department.
This process can take a lot of time if you have a big list, but can be worth it.
From my experience, people that do this method often outsource this task to a VA, send them a spreadsheet, and pay them to find the right people.
Otherwise, Postaga can help with this, which automatically tries to find the right person in the relevant department, along with getting their email address and validating it.
Another way to get and validate email addresses is by using an email finding tool like Hunter.io.
In addition to finding email addresses, Hunter can validate them as well.
Now that you’ve got your contacts, it’s time to send personalized outreach emails.
Creating a Pitch
The pitch is the hard part.
The pitch will vary depending on your goal – getting a review, podcast spot, etc. – but there are common themes you should have:
1- Personalize
Make sure your recipient knows that you know who they are.
Start out with a line like “Hey {first name},”
And mention their blog / podcast / website name.
“I found The User Onboarding Blog when searching for articles on user onboarding and loved this article you wrote {url}.”
2- Have a clear ask
Don’t be coy about what you want. Be clear.
“If you have availability in the next month or so, I’d love to be a guest on your podcast.”
3- What’s in it for them
Remember, this person has no idea who you are and wants to do you no favors.
“Since your blog covers user onboarding, I thought this app would be interesting to your audience. Happy to share a walkthrough and free access if you’re interested!”
4- Use humor, if you can
Having a witty opening to the conversation can get your recipient to keep reading your email.
Something like:
“Hey, not sure if you’re the right person to reach, or if this is actually several cats stacked in a trenchcoat pretending to be an adult human. If not, can you point me in the right direction?”
Is it hilarious? No.
But, it’s worked well enough for me.
And that’s kinda the basics.
For your outreach emails, you will want to not just have one email, but also have follow-ups.
People won’t necessarily respond to your first email, so having a follow-up increases the likelihood you get a response.
The follow-up can be simple. Something like “Hey, just wanted to see what you thought about my first email?”
And, you might not want just one follow-up, but possibly two or three. This increases the likelihood you get that response if they missed your first email.
Next up, let’s talk about a few different types of press coverage.
Product Reviews
For product reviews, there are two ways I like to find them:
- Searching for competitors’ reviews
- Searching for complementary product reviews
- Searching for articles in my industry
Searching for other product reviews or articles in my industry helps you find relevant blogs because they are already writing about topics relevant to your business.
It can be a straightforward pitch –
“I saw you wrote this article about {competitor}, but I was surprised to see you don’t have an article about {our company}.
Since your audience is interested in {topic}, I thought you might be interested in writing about it. {Insert short pitch on why your product is good}.
I would be happy to share with you a free account if you are interested.”
For your process, first I would make a list of all your biggest direct and indirect competitors, as well as other related companies in your industry. Then, I would list topics related to your business. For example, if you have a product that helps with user onboarding, “user onboarding” or “customer service” might be good topics.
Then, you should do the research and find the right contacts as outlined above.
Podcasts
For finding podcasts, this can be a bit tricky…
The thing is:
There are a lot of podcasts that are not currently in production.
There is a massive graveyard of podcasts no longer in existence, yet they can often show up when you search for podcasts on a given topic. If you pitch a dead podcast, you’re either not going to get a reply or gonna get a “Sorry, we haven’t made an episode in years.”
So, that could end up being a big waste of time.
For this, make sure that your podcast has had an episode published in the last month.
For the pitch, you need to establish a few things:
- You know what this podcast is about
- Topic(s) to talk about relevant to their audience
- Why are you the right person to talk about these topics
Here is a sample of one of my successful pitches:
I recommend having bullet points with a few different topic ideas (you can use the same topics for multiple pitches).
In addition, I also recommend having several bullet points that show your relevant expertise.
For a lengthier write-up on getting on podcasts, there are some longer helpful resources.
Partnerships
With partnerships, there are a few angles you can take, depending on what you are looking for.
You might be looking for:
- Affiliates
- Getting a guest post on another relevant website
- Co-marketing with webinars
These are just some ideas, but your business or industry may have other opportunities.
For finding partner websites, I would recommend a similar strategy to finding relevant websites for reviews:
Find companies and blogs in your target industry or that complement what your business does, and get in touch with them.
The pitch for a partnership is going to be varied, but, like the others, you will need to:
- Demonstrate that you know who they are
- Show what’s in it for them and why a partnership is a win-win
Conclusion
So, that’s the process.
- Research relevant websites
- Find the right person
- Get and validate their email address
- Build and send them a personalized email
With these different PR outreach strategies, you can easily find relevant websites, blogs, and podcasts to get press coverage for your business.
If you have any questions about this at all, feel free to reach out to me!
