The Press Playbook: How to Get
Coverage That Converts

Emilie Gerber

Founder & CEO, Six Eastern (PR Agency)

MAR 2024

The Why

The Real Value of Press

B2B: Logo signals legitimacy to buyers, investors, and recruiters
B2C: Direct growth driver, especially for low-friction products
Second-order effects: Sales emails with stories perform better
The validation play: Buyers worry new tools will disappear

"Press validating the business through third-party coverage is really important. When that AE is sending sales emails and can link to a story, that really helps."

The Framework

Different Publications, Different Stories

TechCrunch: Funding rounds, product launches, founding stories. Highest traffic for startup coverage.
Wall Street Journal / NYT: Trend stories, founder profiles. Focus on broader impact or market shift.
CNBC: Business news angle. Position as market disruption or competitive threat.
Axios / The Verge: Breaking news, product updates. Shorter, newsy pieces.

The matching rule

Reporter covers FinTech? Pitch your FinTech story. Reporter covers HR? Pitch your HR story. No convoluted trend narratives.

Pitching tips

Keep it simple. Amount raised, investors, why it matters in one line. Follow up 3–4 times with new info. Respect the reporter's time.

The Tactics

How to Craft a Winning Pitch

Find the narrative angle: Don't say "we have a cool product." Say "we're taking on an incumbent with 2% market share."
Example (RAMP): Not "bill pay product launch," but "how RAMP can compete with Bill.com, the best-performing FinTech IPO."
Example (Column Tax): Not "partnership with Propel," but "embedded tax filing that serves low-income families TurboTax abandoned."
The human approach: Make it visual, fun, human. Include customer love over growth metrics if you're early stage.

What to pitch

The story isn't "your product is great." It's your market impact, who you're disrupting, what problem you're solving that matters to journalists' audiences.

The two-nugget rule

A guest pitch: "80–90% organic growth because we make customers fanatical," and "We're bigger than Coinbase." Two things that make reporters say "whoa."

Funding Playbook

How to Get Funding Coverage

Funding rounds almost always get covered if you pitch well
TechCrunch covers only 9 of 50+ weekly funding rounds, be one of the 9
Exclusive offer works: "We're offering this to you first, not pitching others"
Follow up 3–4 days later with new info (tweet, article, customer win)
Try 3–4 most relevant reporters before moving on

The mistakeFounders bury the lede. They write long problem statements and trend narratives when reporters just want: amount, investors, space, relevance.

Contrarian

PR Myths That Don't Work

✗Category creation is a PR strategyINSTEAD →✓ Position yourself as better than existing solutions. "Brings PowerPoint into the 21st Century" beats "creates new category."

✗Warm introductions to reporters matterINSTEAD →✓ Cold emails work fine. Pattern match the reporter's beat, be clear and direct, follow up respectfully.

✗Start with the full storyINSTEAD →✓ Start with a teaser. Everything you email is on the record. Share details only after they express interest.

✗Product news rarely gets coverageINSTEAD →✓ Product news gets covered when it has a competitive or market angle. Make it about disruption, not the feature.