How we got mentioned in Washington Post, The Telegraph, MSN, Forbes, and many more with €0 press budget.

Today, we talk about PR.

Getting mentions in major press publications is a great way to build credibility for your brand, get backlinks, generate traffic, etc. You could buy an article, but that will cost you thousands of $$$ (the New York Times charges approx. $50K per paid article). The good thing is there are many effective ways to do it for free.

We started our Ratepunk pitching marathon a year ago. It yielded no significant results until April 2023, when we got mentioned in 19 articles (around 1.5B monthly traffic combined), costing us literally nothing. Here's how's it going:

- 2023 April - 19 Articles, around 1.5B combined traffic in all the publications.

- 2023 May - 46 Articles, around 6.1B combined monthly traffic in all the publications.

- 2023 June (as of June 20th) - 36 Articles and counting, around 4.1B combined monthly traffic in all the publications.

And here's how we are doing it:

Pitching. The most obvious choice to get mentions in publications - classic outreach towards journalists with proposals for potential articles, with you suggesting a collaboration idea where you would potentially help out with insights that only you have and make a compelling article. We did this for months on end with no significant results, but then we invited NordVPN's press manager to come over to our office for a coffee and just tell us how their team is being featured on NYT/Washington Post/Bloomberg, etc. She inspired, motivated us, and gave us numerous invaluable tips and professional advice. This list will be a mix of our strategies and the tips we got from her.

Don't look for journalists; look for quote opportunities

This is where we pitch:

- Use Qwoted to pitch specific quote requests. Create a PR account and add your HR manager, CEO, Marketing manager, etc., as people you represent and provide quotes to various pitching requests. The most consistent way to get mentions so far. This works.

- Use Woodpecker to organize and send out cold emailing campaigns. Finding emails to email is hard work, though. Here's a screenshot of a sheet our PR manager made, over 1900 press contacts, all found by hand and manual googling. This may work, but be ready for 80% of emails back to be automatic maternity leave notifications.

- Terkel.io for quick and easy quotes. We haven't tested this platform's full extent but have had 50% of our answers published. This probably works.

- HARO is another query platform. Well-known worldwide. But let's agree it's super old-schooled (don't let me get started on designs and user experience there :D ). We sent out 200+ answers with a maximum response rate of 0.01%. I'm not saying it won't work for you - but it didn't for my team.

- Cold Emailing. The old-school method of just picking a journalist and sending them an email with your proposal for an article. The problem is, you can never know what the journalist needs at the moment, and you're just shooting blindly. Total waste of time; at the moment, only 5% of our PR focus is cold emailing. This doesn't work.

How to pitch

- Do not cold sell. This is probably the #1 tip. Nobody wants to read a wall of text that's just a big fat advertisement. Provide value to them just as you provide value with your product. Make it pop.

- Make a connection. You're both people; you both (probably) enjoy humor, sarcasm and can find common ground. Remember this. Try to have a conversation and inspire them to see your company from your point of view. You can do this by researching what they're writing about/what they are passionate about writing about by reading their previous articles. Perfect segway into the next point ->

- Do your research about the journalist. Who is this person you're writing to? Why do they write? What do they like to write about? See if they have any previous collaborations like yours and see what made them work. I'm not saying find out where they live (although that could be an aggressive but dangerous strategy) but try to do your best and get acquainted with their style. Learn what they need and expect from you (this comes with time, trial and error kind of thing)

don't let this happen too often :)

- Be quotable and personable. The number one thing that journalists are looking for is personal and unique experiences that they won't find anywhere else.

- Don't work alone. Get the much-needed personal experience stories from your team. Great way to involve your team in the process and learn more about them while doing it ;).

the replies I got from asking my team about this are what got the answer published

- Use Linkedin to make real connections. Linkedin is a great way to make connections with journalists. You can message them directly and have a really big chance at making that connection.

- Stand out. Don't waste the journalist's time. Just get to the point but find a way to intrigue them.

- ChatGPT. Perfect for gathering information about topics you know nothing about fast. Please rewrite your information and double check, though. Journalists are not stupid and will notice if AI has written the text. Use several AI checkers.

- Google and research. Find interesting facts and information that AI couldn't and mix it up in your proposed pitch.

- Follow the rules. If a journalist says, "Don't pitch on Twitter", then don't pitch to him on Twitter. Easy.

- Don't be afraid to get told "no" Not every quote or pitch you send out is gonna get published. Be super ready for that.

- Seek topics that are relevant to you. For example, we're a travel hacking app, so we prioritize travel-related queries. You can talk about whatever, though, but prioritize.

all I gotta say is... NYT soon, baby👀👀