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James Inc wrote:

miscea wrote:We've been going back and forth on this one a bit and we're still undecided on whether to use a PR agency or not.

On the one hand if you do it yourself, you need to find journalists, find out what they write about, contact each one of them, and develop rapport with them. There's also those PR distribution sites where you can just submit your press release and then hopefully it gets picked up by journalists. Then you also have to monitor whether all your hard PR work is getting somewhere. It's a fair bit of work if you think about it.

PR agencies do all of that for you so you can focus on other aspects of your project. They'll have a list of journalists they know well, so they'll know how to pitch your story to them to get them to write about your project. Plus, they'll be able to call on favours if they've been in the industry long enough.

We've contacted a few agencies and all of them either said they'll only jump in if you're already there or half way there with your funding goal, or to contact them closer to when your campaign launches. Their prices are pretty steep though. They'll usually offer a fixed fee that you have to pay upfront, then on top of that they have some variable fees that are calculated after the campaign is over. I think some have a cap on the variable fees, but best to ask as it varies from agency to agency.

Our campaign isn't due to launch until September this year, so we'll be doing the PR ourselves from now until maybe a month or so before the campaign starts. Then we'll re-evaluate and see whether we will use a PR agency to help us further. But the main thing putting us off using a PR agency is the cost and uncertainty of how successful they will be.

If anyone here has advice, we'd love to hear.

Did you end up doing it all yourself?

We're doing it ourselves at the moment, but will probabl hire the pros to give us a boost a little later.

No, you don't necessarily need an agency to do your PR for you. It's something you can do yourself too.

Here are the exact 9 steps to getting media coverage for your crowdfunding campaign:

Step 1: Identify Relevant Niches
Keep in mind that building a reporter list doesn’t mean that you should include the name of everyone who’s ever written anything. That’s a complete no-no.

You need to get specific.

Come up with at least ten online niches to increase your chances of success.

Broad niche examples include music, technology, fashion, parenting, pet care, travel, health & wellness, book reviews, cooking, and parenting.

For your project, drill down even further and identify sub-niches that focus your outreach even more.

The more niche the better, especially if you’re able to clearly articulate how your project relates to that journalist, the publication or their viewers.

If you’re launching a new toothbrush for dogs, sure you’ll be reaching out to people who write about “pets” in general, but get more specific.

Look for people who write about dental hygiene in small dogs.

Look for people who write about taking care of geriatric dogs.

Look for people who write about the best things new dog-parents can take care of their pups.

Again, the more niche the better.

Journalists get pitches and releases every single day that they can’t write about or don’t have interest for.

You need a compelling reason for people to cover you, otherwise all you’ll get is wasted effort while adding annoyance to someone’s day.

What qualifies as a compelling reason?

The writer has written previously on other crowdfunding campaigns.
Your product is in exactly the industry that the writer covers.
Your product builds on the writer’s previous coverage.
Your product is something their readers are interested in.
By getting a niche and telling the journalist exactly how your new project will impact their readers, you’re giving them the most compelling reason of all.

Step 2: Find Your Journalists
Rule number one is you should not be emailing the generic press@outletname.com email or using the website’s generic contact form.

Take the time to find the journalists that have shown an interest in you, your cause or related topics before. These include:

Journalists who have featured you or your company before. They already know you so bonus points!
Journalists of your Local Press / in the city where you or your company are based, or where the project is happening. These guys want to know what is happening in their local area and are often overlooked for “national press”.
Journalists of your National Press who have featured a similar campaign or cause before. They’re the ones already talking about issues relating to your project and are the most likely to want to publish your story.
There are some great free tools online to help you access the right journalists and their contact details. An effective way of doing this:

Head to https://news.google.com/
Click on ‘Advanced search’ and fill out the relevant search terms to find at least 5 contacts for each of the 3 categories above and build a list of articles and journalist names, grouping them by journal.
Do a Google Search for ‘Journalist’s Name + contact details’ or go to the contact page of the journal or newspaper to find out the email format the company is using.
If you REALLY can’t find their details you can also email the editor or use the online contact form, but this should be your last choice.
Limit your search to articles published in the last 1–2 years to make sure it’s still relevant.

Another clever trick is to do a reverse image search of similar campaigns.

If you’re launching a new product targeted towards those who need help focusing and concentrating, grab images from a campaign like Fidget Cube and drop it into Google image search.

You’ll find a large database of outlets that covered that exact campaign.

Clicking into each of these articles will allow you to find the journalist. Voila!

Now let’s go a little deeper and look for bloggers in the same niche you’re looking for.

A simple Google Search will turn up blogs and other influencers in your identified niches.

If you’re not sure how to do this, just type the following into the Google search bar

“TOPIC” + Blog

Once you review each blog, you will become more acquainted with who contributes to it, comments on it, and reads it.

To get an even deeper sense of the blogs target audience, look at their Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram, G+ and Twitter communities.

This will help you decide if the blog is right for you and if you should reach out to the blogger.

Step 3: Check Website Rankings
Yes you’re interested in getting coverage.

But you’re more interested in getting meaningful coverage and making good use of your time.

When you arrive at a website, be sure to do three things to figure out if you should add this to your outreach list:

1. Check the website’s Alexa Ranking
Check to see that the outlet has a high Alexa Ranking. This means that the website is relevant and indexed by Google, with significant traffic.

To do this, go to Alexa at https://www.alexa.com and type / copy the URL of the blog or site.

You want to check for the following:

The result is less than 1,000,000. The smaller the better in this case.
Information about the website pops up.
It has traffic going to it.
2. Check the website’s traffic
Check to see that there’s significant traffic going to the website. It’s sometimes difficult to determine what “significant” traffic means so we’ll use a tool called Similar Web.

Go to https://www.similarweb.com/ and type/copy the URL of the blog or site.

If the Traffic Overview section is nonexistent because there’s not enough data, you might want to move on. Websites with significant traffic typically have a considerable following and will be able to make an impact on the bottom line for you.

3. Check the website’s social media numbers
The site may not have a high Alexa ranking but it could very well have some strong social media numbers.

Look at their social links to be sure if you should scrap or keep the website on your list.

Key channels to take a look at our Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and Pinterest.

Check to see follower count, engagement metrics and comments.

As a final note for this point, if they don’t have any of these three things going for them, quickly move on and find the outlets that do.

The possibilities of more people seeing your posts need to be strong in order to make this PR effort worthwhile.

Step 4: Hone down on the compelling reason
Creating great content that is not only about your campaign.

It’s also about getting something that is beneficial to the journalists’ community.

Sure you think your product is oh-so-fascinating and incredibly earth-shattering. But you need to spin it in a way that readers will also want to know about your product.

Their readers need to want to read about your content.

To succeed, you must understand what will motivate the journalists’ readership.

Offer the journalist that compelling reason to write about you and your campaign.

This is one of the most difficult parts to execute. You have to put yourself into the shoes of the readership. Look at what type of content they’ve been reading and pitch your campaign in a similar way.

Approach each journalist individually. Explain to them what you’re doing. Offer a compelling reason. Create exclusive articles or content that would appeal to each of their individual readerships.

Step 5: Engage with the journalist before you pitch
Never underestimate the importance of connections.

Again, take this opportunity to start a conversation before you pitch your campaign.

Create that relationship before you become a giant billboard for your own crowdfunding campaign.

Take the time to engage with the journalists on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook and wherever else they are present.

Get on their radar by liking, commenting on and sharing their posts.

Get to know what your key journalists want and how they work by following them on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, blogs and any other social networks they may have.

Get examples of what they’ve written so you can reference them later.

Step 6: Create the perfect story
If you’ve been following these steps you’ll now know the needs of your journalist and their readership.

Tweak your story so that it also includes the compelling reason in mind.

Put yourself in the journalists’ shoes and think about what aspects of the story are the most newsworthy for their readers.

What makes this story interesting? Is it the cause that drives it, the current affairs that link it, the emotion it brings up, the large amount you have already raised or the fact that this product will revolutionize the coffee making experience for the everyday Joe?

Adjust your story to each journalist and their audience (that compelling reason!) and remember to include the 5 W’s of journalism:

Who
What
Where
When
Why
Be sure to include clear links to your landing page and/or your crowdfunding campaign page.

Step 7: Write a compelling pitch email
Your subject line is crucial in drawing the journalist’s attention.

There are 2 types of subject lines that work particularly well:

The Straight Pitch.
Label the subject line as ‘STORY IDEA’ or ‘PITCH’, followed by a concise heading that summarizes your story.

By writing the subject line in this way, the journalist knows what to expect when they open the email. This also can pique their interest in the most concise manner.

The Related Pitch.
Refer to their previous article in the subject line. For example: ‘Following up on [Previous Article Title]’

They’ll recognize their own article in the subject line and appreciate that you’ve read something they wrote.

Get those brownie points to go towards building that relationship.

From email marketing best practices, we know that on mobile, 50 characters is the sweet spot.

Remember that you’ll want to constantly be testing and modifying your subject line for the best opens and response rates.

In the body of the email, make sure to refer to the journalist by name! This builds on that personalization we talked about earlier. It also says that you took the time to write to them individually.

After that, get straight to the point in the first couple of lines. As a reminder, a journalist gets hundreds of pitches a day. Getting to “good relationship” status is step 1 in securing your story, step 2 is diving straight to the compelling reason and not wasting their time.

Explain who you are (if you’ve built up the relationship enough, they should recognize you right off the bat!), the topic of the press release and why you thought it would be of interest to them.

Include a clear link to your landing page or crowdfunding campaign page. Either attach your press release or paste the press release at the bottom of the email.

Be sure to include clear contact details and make sure you are available to respond and help meet their deadlines.

It’s quick, clean, and to the point.

Here’s a good place to start:

Paragraph 1: Introduce yourself, give them a link to your company, and show them you’ve done your research by offering that compelling reason

Paragraph 2: Give them the news (link), tell them you have more to offer, give them another compelling reason in case the first one just doesn’t jive with them at the moment.

Paragraph 3: Offer your phone number or email address. Let them know when you’ll be available to talk and that you’re here to answer any questions.

Paragraph 4: Thank them and be sure to use their name again. People love seeing and hearing their name.

Remember that this is a high-level introduction to your project so a few lines is enough.

If they’re interested you’ve opened the door to continuing the conversation in much more detail.

Step 8: Follow up
After sending your pitch, give it at least 1–2 days before taking more action.

If you hear back straight away — you’re in luck!

Make sure to respond to any questions as soon as possible.

Journalists are working towards tight deadlines. Whether or not they can feature your story will depend on how fast they can put it together for the next impending deadline.

If you don’t hear back, the next step is a follow-up email. Test out a different subject line this time.

Mention your earlier email and offer a third compelling reason.

If at this time the journalist decides it isn’t right for them, that’s OK. Accept defeat, but be sure to ask for some positive feedback, so you can take it to your next journalist target.

This next one is important: don’t follow up more than once, you don’t want to come across as pushy or impatient.

Remember that journalists work towards very tight publishing deadlines and have only limited time available to explore new stories.

Usually, it takes a few days for them to respond, so don’t worry if you don’t hear back immediately.

Sometimes, they may even feature your story without responding to your email. They just have that little time.

Aim for a 10-20% success rate with contacting the right journalist with a story that is relevant to them and their readership. This means the more you research the better your chances!

Step 9: Thank the journalist
If the journalist releases an article about you, be sure to thank them for their time and effort! Show them that their support is greatly appreciated.

Do them a favor too and share the resulting article with your community on your social channels, and in your crowdfunding updates.

If the journalist features your story, they’re more likely to cover you again in the future (yes!).

Make sure you keep them in the loop as you hit milestones throughout your campaign. They have the power to go back to update their original article and release new content about your campaign.

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In the extended blog post, I also wrote about what NOT to do when outreaching to journalists, the type of PR you should focus on, and different strategies to get PR exposure for your campaign: https://crushcrowdfunding.com/the-crowdfunding-pr-strategy-that-works-2019-and-beyond/

Best of luck out there!
- Nalin

Yes if you have 8/10.000$.