This is a guest post from Teresa Dankowski, Opportunities Supervisor at Cision. 

While opportunities can effectively be the cheat sheet for any media planning campaign, innumerable options can make it hard to settle on a handful of outlets to pitch. As the Opportunities Supervisor at Cision—with apparently a knack for referencing seven-year-old rap songs in blog posts, I’m so sorry—I can help you maximize search results and narrow down lists with four tips for strategic opportunities planning.

Be specific. When running searches, it’s important you act like PR Goldilocks—choose beats and regions that are just right. If you’re pitching a story related to consumer electronics, targeting Journalist X’s technology opportunity or Journalist Y’s home audio opportunity may be too broad or too niche to attract coverage. If you’re seeking press for a product with a limited distribution—for instance, a beer supplied only to Chicago sellers—make sure the outlets you’re targeting are in-bounds. You wouldn’t believe how many Canadian editors tell me they receive pitches for products not available in their country.

How? It’s best to hand-select your beats and regions. If you’re a CisionPoint customer, using the Search Topics function and toggling the appropriate Market, Location, Radius or GDA will do the trick.

Be timely. Perhaps the broken record rule, make sure you don’t miss your deadlines. Outlets are not created equally—magazines may plan features six months in advance, while newspapers may accept features a week before publication. Often the most missed deadlines are for holiday gift guides, as you may not be thinking about the end-of-year consumer frenzy when many outlets are testing and finalizing items for coveted holiday issues in the summer.

How? Timeliness is better achieved by focusing on lead times, rather than issue dates. CisionPoint allows you to specify ranges for Features, News and Advertising Lead Times. Overall, it’s better to contact early than risk an issue closing.

Be prepared. It doesn’t hurt to identify the opportunity you’re pitching by date and description when sending press releases. If you introduce the opportunity at the outset, an editor can easily see the relevance in your correspondence.

How? Mention the section or department associated with the opportunity. In CisionPoint, sections and departments are listed in the Description if available. This way the editor is left with little ambiguity and he or she can better route pitches to other editors or writers who may have been assigned to the story.

Be mindful. Just because your dream outlet has an opportunity that fits your pitch doesn’t mean it’s an occasion to ignore pitching preferences. If an editor prefers to be contacted in a certain medium, method or timeframe, the perfect pitch may go unnoticed.

How? After you’ve built an opportunities list, it’s best to remove the contacts who likely won’t read a release pitched outside of their specifications. Users of CisionPoint can parse through editors’ profiles by hovering over Contact Names with the cursor and delete editors from the list individually or all-at-once. Consideration may spare your reputation for the next time you want to send relevant media materials.

MadeUp3@cision.com'

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Cision invites PR and marketing professionals to share their best practices and advice with the Cision Blog audience. To share your story, contact blog.us@cision.com