Why Spray-and-Pray Media Pitching is a No-Go
Want to know the best way to alienate your media contacts? All it takes is sending one-too-many untailored pitches, and you might just receive an angry email (or the silent treatment), terminating the relationship altogether.
In our latest data report, the Q4 Propel Media Barometer, we saw such unfortunate effects play out…
After analyzing over 1.4 million real pitches to journalists, we arrived at an alarming industry average:
The average journalist response rate to media pitches this year was 24% worse than it was last year:
These stats, among others, tell us that PR peoples’ pitches are generally becoming less effective in scoring media coverage.
Why? Check out what an expert has to say...
“When deploying ‘Spray & Pray’ strategies, PR people are viewed akin to telemarketers,” said Earned Media Relations Specialist Ryan Smith, Riverbed Media Partners CEO.
“‘Quality over Quantity’ is advice we know and aspire to, but as an industry we revert to "Quantity over Quality" more times than not in our daily pitching routines; earning the bad reputation and low response rates we receive from reporter targets. If you want to change the outcome, you need to be open to reevaluating the process,” Smith said.
Five High-Performing Agencies Beat the Odds
If you read the Q2 Media Barometer, you’ll remember that we used a smaller sample set of high-performing agency clients to be able to share focused stats on agency performance, beyond the performance of our entire user base.
While gathering this data at-large is great for determining industry averages, we are able to share agency-focused open & response rates by studying smaller samples...
Here, we studied the average journalist open & response rates of five high-performing agency teams to see how these numbers compare to the wider rates. These agencies will remain anonymous, but they are publicly recognized as reputable, strong agencies that are leaders in the industry.
Take a look at the Q3 response rates we found:
Seeing that these rates remained virtually the same with a minimal, much less concerning drop, we can be certain that focusing on quality of your pitches, and using best-of-breed technology to help you find the right targets and engage, can lead to great results.
To learn more about our latest research findings, download the Q4 Propel Media Barometer here.
