When Should I Send This Pitch?

Any good PR person lives with this question daily. Timing is everything in media relations.

So, when is the best time to send your pitch?

The answer requires research before anything else. Here are some helpful hints to make sure your pitch lands at the right time, and what to do if it is too late to send:

• Print magazines and similar outlets likely work 60 to 90 days in advance. Have a Halloween pitch to send? If it is Sept. 28, be smart and steer clear of sending to magazine media. Why? They wrote the October issue in August (and likely sourced in July!). Also, October clearly already went to be physically printed in early to mid-September. Rather than pitch late, use the pitch you would have sent to talk about what they are working on now and how you might get onto their regular source email list.
• Live television remotes need one to two weeks, more if a large-scale event or something in connection to a large-scale event or holiday. Now, this is not spot news or breaking news. These are those fun morning segments where the reporter or weather person spends time – likely a few segments – at one locale. When pitching, be prepared to pitch multiple interviews, visuals and ideas to increase the chances of booking.
• Seeking an in-studio guest spot? First, be transparent about vaccination status. Many television bookers must now ask the question if the person being pitched is vaccinated. Don’t make it political. Just be transparent and always try to pitch a week in advance, more if it relates to an observance or holiday as there will be 50 other folks pitching similar guests based on similar timing.

Also, a good rule of thumb: it may be tempting to mass-pitch the same idea to 50 media members at once, but now most talk, collaborate and are working with the same editors. If doing this, be transparent. And if you can, just customize it. Show the story matters. Show the media member matters. Show it is important. Show your skills.