Media Mentions + Cold Pitches

One of the best ways to accelerate your company’s reach is the power of free media coverage, whether national or local, or online, in print, radio/podcast, or TV/video.

Journalists, producers, and professional bloggers are always on the hunt for expert sources, valuable offerings, and human interest stories. If you can explain how your products or services benefit people, your business could be featured in the media. That’s a potential reach of thousands to millions of people.

In addition to potential exposure, media coverage also helps establish credibility through your “As Seen In” media section on your website, and also produces quality backlinks to your website, an important factor in improving your search ranking (SEO).

Media coverage can occur in a variety of forms:

• Mention: You’re referenced (mentioned) as an expert source in an online and/or print article, typically with a few other sources.

• Feature: An article is largely focused around you and/or your business.

• Show Guest: You’re interviewed in a live or pre-recorded segment for a radio show, podcast, TV show, or other video show.

• Guest Speaker: You’re invited to speak at a gathering, paid or unpaid.

Our service focuses on the first two types, Mentions and Features. These can be a starting point for those who also want to appear on shows or do speaking engagements.

Our Service:

With this service, we do two things: 1) Monitor HARO (Help a Reporter Out) 5 days/week to match your offerings with journalist/producer/blogger requests for sources (for stories they're working on), and 2) Cold-pitch a feature about your offering(s) on a monthly basis.

Why invest in this service vs. DIY it? Yes, you could just do the monitoring and cold-pitching yourself, but the reality for most of our clients is that while they intend to do this with great ambition, it quickly gets lost in the shuffle of actually running the business.

The pursuit of free media coverage requires persistence. Since we're looking at HARO daily with several clients in mind, it’s not a task that falls by the wayside. We're true champions for your success.

Also, having a media representative can signal to the media your commitment to your business.

Details:

Throughout your term, we will:

• Review HARO 5 days/week and alert you via text or email when we see a potential match for your expertise or what you offer

• Craft a short pitch for you to use/edit and send to the journalist, specific to their story

• Separately, we'll email 1 cold pitch (email) per month to a national and/or local media outlet with an angle about your business

  • The 6 or 12 cold pitches (depending on your term) can be spaced out as you wish (eg. if you want 3 at once, for example).

  • It will be sent from our Austen Agency email address as your media representative.

  • We only use media outlets' verified, published story/tip line and/or specific editor/producer email addresses.

  • The national media outlets we cold-pitch to are the top-read news sources in the US. This list can be customized. (For more local-only businesses, we’ll select local and regional media as appropriate.)

    • People Magazine

    • Parade Magazine

    • Yahoo! News

    • CNN (Online)

    • Fox (Online)

    • NBC/Today Show

    • CBS/CBS Mornings

    • ABC/Good Morning America

    • USA Today

    • New York Times

    • LA Times

    • Washington Post

    • NPR

    • And/or your local media or other specialty media, eg. AARP

Important:

• As with any agency service, getting a response or coverage is never guaranteed. Getting just one opportunity per year can be considered successful, especially if the media source is used by thousands or millions of people.

• This is not a full PR (public relations) service, which is much more expensive. It’s a subset of what a PR team does. Full PR services are ideal for businesses with more controversial offerings or other factors.

How Pricing Works:

Our flexible marketing services are perfect and extremely well-priced for small and solo businesses.

Rates: Our Media Monitoring & Cold Pitch Plan is sold in a 6 or 12-month term for $25/month.

Renewals: Renewals are purposely not automatic, because we know things change. Toward the end of the term, we’ll ask whether or not you want to renew. If you choose not to renew your Plan, you can always sign up again in the future. There are no penalties, attitudes, or weird hidden fees.

Payment: Payment for your term of choice is due before service begins.

Prerequisites:

• Clear offerings (products, services) listed on your website.

• If you’re not a current Austen Agency client, please schedule a free consultation so that we can get familiar with your offerings.

• After payment, we’ll meet to create a HARO response template and also assess cold pitch angles.