One action leads to cascade of pitching success

Last week I dropped in on a hidden gem of a training webinar.

Chris Cline was sharing with his fellow members of the PRSA chapter in central Missouri how he and his team at mortgage lender Veterans United had pulled in $33 million in earned media during this pandemic. Before that, they broke their company’s record with more than 300 media placements in 2019.

How did they do it? Briefly:

• Targeted pitching
• Using internal data to create new story angles
• Tying into news of the day
• Persistence – they follow up on every pitch, often by phone (yes, by phone)

At the end of his presentation, Chris recalled when he started his current job back at the beginning of 2017, when he had all of one media placement to his name. And then, he said, he attended my Secrets of Media Relations Masters workshop that spring, and that experience kickstarted the cascade of success that followed.

I’ve repackaged that workshop and optimized it for virtual delivery. PRSA and I are offering it on Sept. 23, when you’ll get a live session where I walk you through how to select the most impactful media and influencers to pitch amidst the upheaval in the media landscape. And then you get my online media pitching course, which retails for $799. To top it off, you get a week of digital access to me for additional questions, via private message board for the event.

Here’s what Chris said after his workshop:

As a former newspaper reporter, a communications director for two state agencies and now a media relations specialist for a mortgage lender whose main objective is to get earned media, I thought I knew it all. Then I attended Michael Smart’s workshop and quickly realized Michael could take my skill set to a whole new level. The knowledge I learned from him helped me score a holy grail placement in the Washington Post along with a link back to our company’s website. And we scored coverage in 11 of the 13 cities we targeted for our annual giving campaign.

Check out all the details via PRSA here, and I’d love for you to be the next Chris Cline. 🙂