Hey .

There's a misconception that pitching the most prestigious media which have name, brand recognition, and large size of the audience is the best way to win with PR campaigns.

To put it bluntly, some argue that if you haven’t featured in the most influential publications, podcasts, blogs, or media, you’re missing out BIG.

But picture this:

You run a B2B marketing agency and you’re given the opportunity to pitch your PR to only one of these two podcasts:

Podcast A: very influential with an audience of 100,000 listeners but less than 1% of the audience really pays attention to marketing;

Podcast B: a niche podcast with a smaller audience of 20,000 listeners where about 95% of the audience have a keen interest in B2B marketing.

Before you even make a choice, there is an important question you need to ask yourself: “Which podcast is my audience really paying attention to?”

That brings us to our first point.

I- Find the right sources where your PR will have the most impact

If your goal is to make the most of your pitch and reach an audience that trusts and pays attention to your PR, here are 04 options you need to consider, as suggested by Rand Fishkin, our guest.

- Option 1: Survey your audience: if you have an email list of (potential) customers you can survey them and ask what they pay attention to and then take those sources as a list.

- Option 2: Interview people from your audience: this is relatively slow as it needs to be conducted one-on-one. Plus, you might not get perfect information because people just don't have perfect recall during surveys and interviews.

- Option 3: Do a manual audience search: run a social media background check on a bunch of your customers. Go visit their profiles and check what they collectively follow. This will provide you valuable insights into what your audience really pays attention to.

However, it’s manual and can appear to be time-consuming and daunting. Then again, it proves to be very effective because you're getting real data from real people's accounts. Try it out. You will only be sorry you didn’t start earlier.

- Option 4: Conduct an automated audience search: leverage the power of an audience research tool to crawl hundreds of millions of social profiles and aggregate the data together to find the most relevant sources for your PR. 

SparkToro can help you bring this home seamlessly. It shows you the newsletters your target audience subscribed to, the websites they visit, the hashtags they use, the YouTube channels and social accounts they follow, and many more.

II- How To Identify The Most Influential Sources For Your Audience Using SparkToro

Let’s assume we are to identify relevant sources for Fullfunnel.  

Strategy 1: Drop-down to “My Audience Follows The Social Account”

Here you can use your social profile as the search term. It can be a Twitter handle or a LinkedIn page.

If you don't have a big social following yet, you can take one of your competitors or take an industry-popular publication and roll with it.

Then SparkToro will show you attributes of the audience that follows the account you typed in. Basically, you’ll get to see what else that audience subscribes to, listens to, follows, visits, reads, and watches.

Strategy 2: Drop-down to “My Audience Uses These Words In Their Profile”

Here you can plug in popular words that your audience uses in their following sections: bio, about, job title, or topics of interest.

In the case of FullFunnel, let’s try B2B marketing and see what that audience mainly talks about:

That’s not the end of it. 

Here you can see the social accounts your audience follows most, the websites they visit, and some high engagement and hidden gems.

Strategy 3: Drop-down to “My Audience Frequently Uses The Hashtag”

When you use an industry-popular hashtag, SparkToro analyzes the profiles of those who used that hashtag over the last 3 to 4 months and provides you with traits and attributes about them.

Now that you’ve identified the most relevant sources for your PR, what is the best way to get your pitch accepted?

Key 1: Get a warm intro

Try as much as you can not to reach out directly to the source you want to pitch. Instead, go through your network and find someone who is connected to that person you want to pitch to or to an influential person who is somehow connected to the publication you want to pitch.

Make sure that contact is someone who trusts you, appreciates your work, and thinks highly of you. Then ask them to recommend and introduce you.

This approach is gold. It works almost all the time and that’s why we can’t stress enough the importance of networking.

But what happens in case you have no connection at all?

Key 2: Start a publication of your own

One of the best things you can possibly do if you’re not connected to anybody who could make you an intro is to start a publication of your own.

It could be a TikTok channel, a YouTube channel, a blog, a newsletter, a podcast, or a webinar series. Even if you got 07 subscribers and 02 of them are your mum and dad, KEEP GOING.

Case in point: Andrei started Full-Funnel Marketing podcast without an audience. His first guest was James Carbary, the author of content-based networking and B2B growth podcast. Then James helped Andrei get acquainted with other well-known B2B marketers like Gaetano Di Nardi.

Every time Andrei recorded an episode, he would ask for an intro. As a result, he was able to quickly grow his audience and book top-notch speakers like Jon Miller, Rand Fishkin, Chris Walker, Matt Heinz, and many more.

Key 3: Ensure the idea you’re pitching is worth it

Having a powerful network is great.

Getting a warm intro is even greater.

But if the idea you’re pitching sucks, it just won’t cut it.

If your product is of good quality, you’ll grab people’s attention and the pitch will sell itself.

“I was so excited about his idea that at the end of the call, I went and talked to Geraldine my wife and we made an investment worth our whole investment budget for like two years.” Rand Fishkin, Co-founder of SparkToro

That’s what it is when your pitch is worth it.

If you find these strategies useful, then maybe someone out there struggling with the same issues will also do. Help them by sharing this on LinkedIn or Twitter.

P.S. If you are interested in the full interview with Rand Fishkin, tune in here https://youtu.be/TFNc5tQ0SBU

Upcoming community events

Below is the list of the scheduled events. Click on the events you are interested in to save your spot. You're very welcome to join the conversations, ask your questions live, or share your experience.

• Buying triggers and full-funnel marketing with Katelyn Bourgoin - Thu, 27 Jan, 5 pm CET - 11 am EST
• 3 Enterprise Sales Strategies That Took us From $0 to $30mil with Ryan Staley - Thu, 3 Feb, 4 pm CET - 10 am EST

Full-Funnel Summit (29th -31st March)

You can attend and learn from the best B2B marketers for free.

Save your spot here.

Questions from fellow Trenchers

Let's help each other. If you can contribute or answer any question below, just click the link and share your thoughts.

• How do you guys go about analyzing your ads to inform future campaigns?
• How to leverage paid channels for 1:few ABM campaigns?
• What tech are you building your newsletters on?
• Hey all! My team is in the final stages of selecting an ABM Orchestration tool. Any thoughts or recommendations?
• Does anybody here use Drift? Is it worth the cost?
• How big of an impact can the name of a company have on the companies' activities?

Post Of The Week

Here's how to "build the plane while flying" ✈️

Use the 1-1-1-1-10 principle as you switch to "less leads, more revenue" model:

(a.k.a. full-funnel marketing operations)

1. One vertical

Stack the odds in your favor by selecting a vertical with:

- Your best case studies

- Good relationships with the customers (you can ask for an interview and potentially, a referral)

- With high revenue potential

- With more accessible buyers

Additional advantages of a well-connected vertical is that it's easier to:

- Reach a good buyer-message fit

- Partner with industry influencers, communities or associations

- Get the word of mouth to spread

2. One geographical location

Similarly, stack the odds in your favor and get easier traction, by focusing on a single location.

Depending on the industry, this could be a city, state or a (small) country.

3. One marketer

You don't need the whole team for the first pilot campaign.

You need a minimal viable skill set:

- Focus on execution

- Project management (orchestration)

- Copywriting

- Interviewing (customers and buyers)

4. One SDR

You cannot have a full-funnel play without closing the loop with sales.

But, as with marketing, you can start small: with a single SDR who'll help with

- List building

- Outreach

- Account research

- Opportunity discovery conversations and follow-up

5. Ten target accounts

It's always best to start small and without automation.

Remember your first driving lessons. You didn't start at high speeds on a highway.

As you're building your playbook, you want to:

- Make sure you're targeting the right accounts and buyers

- Can do proper research, warm-up and activation

- Can refine your playbook based on 1-1 feedback from buyers

*

Once you've proven a playbook, you can gradually introduce it to the rest of the revenue team — while the plane is flying.

It's easier to get a buy-in for a proven play, than to convince people using slideware.

By Vladimir Blagojević

Best Shares From Trenches Community

• What is the FASTEST, surefire way to execute an account-based marketing strategy? Hint: it’s not a sexy, trendy thing. by Daniel Zsolt Rényi
• Why copywriting tanks all other skills by Stefan Conic
• Demand generation vs account-based marketing by Andrei Zinkevich
• How To Write A Follow Up After No Response [With Templates] by Kristina Jovanovic
• If you are writing your follow-ups like Stan from Eminem's song you have to stop that right away by Relja Denic
• What the buyer wants by Vladimir Blagojevic

See you in Trenches 😉

Andrei Zinkevich