Seat at the Table

The Chris Anderson story (posting emails of PR pros that pitched him without knowing who he is) centers on the friction between media relations people that send out generic, untargeted pitches to long lists of very annoyed journalists.

But what about the clients?

Agency clients can both drive the solution and have the most to gain if they focused on the target to success ratio.   To put it in budget terms, the fewer reporters the media relations people have to work with to get effective stories published, the higher the ROI on the media relations budget. 

I’ve worked with a lot of companies that valued this approach.  I’ve also worked with a lot of companies that simply wanted to see long lists of media contacts.  Needless to say, it was the latter that not only saw higher ROI, but saw more effective results.

From a PR agency management perspective it also makes sens e.  In addition to happier clients (those list pushing clients never work out anyway), it’s more efficient for your staff.  That means a happier, more profitable staff turning out better work for clients.

So if this is so obvious why isn’t it done?  A deadly combination of laziness and ignorance (a poisonous formula in any situation). 

I would ask any company who reads this to do two simple things:

1) Ask for a list of journalists but also details as to why that journalist is appropriate.

2) Make it clear that you want to see the number of pitches that go out as the success rate of those pitches. 

3) Clients be shown how to pitch a few reporters chosen at random (or at least see responses).  They can they see for themselves if the targeting and guidance given by the agency is on target.  In other words, introduce a little transparency into the system.

Bottom line: The better the targeting to success ration (the number of journalists you reach out to compared to the number that see covering the company or story as appropriate) the higher the program ROI on a tactical basis.

Technorati tags: chris anderson, media relations, spam