5 tips for PR pros working with trade press

Tailoring your pitch to an audience you know is crucial.

Tailoring your pitch to an audience you know is crucial

As a freelance journalist for the professional audiovisual (AV) industry, I have a unique vantage point when it comes to marketing and PR campaigns. I get to cover the major trends and technology in our industry. But there is a downside to having my name and e-mail floating around, and that comes in the form of an endless stream of press releases.

Ahhh, press releases … the tip of the spear for most PR people and the bane of my existence as a writer.

Prior to joining the AV industry, I spent years working in agency PR, pumping out those same press releases. But that was over a decade ago and we’re in a new marketing age—one that requires more adept skills than “leading-edge, best-of-breed solutions provider” as a descriptor for a client.

So, if you want to get the attention of writers and editors in this industry, heed the following tips:

1. Make a personal connection

Many of the people who send me these press releases have never reached out to me in any other way than a release. How can they know I am remotely interested in their client? So, want to know what happens to those releases? They get dumped into a subfolder in my e-mail client, a folder I revisit infrequently.

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