Anyone can successfully pitch a guest for a broadcast segment! Learn how…

One of the highlights of our job is working with experts from all walks of life. Experts in retail, experts on the art of building an app without knowing how to code, experts on predicting the future, the list marches on.

One of our experts is a life coach who deals in the art of personal transformation. Dr.Karin Luise helps her clients dig themselves out of those ruts we tend to find ourselves in once in awhile over the course of life’s adventures. And she is goooood. As someone with her own regional talk show, our team knew we had to showcase her strengths and get her on-air as much as possible. We decided to build her PR campaign around a regional morning show broadcast tour in a variety of networks in cities spanning the country.

So far we’ve built guest segments for our expert on over 10 shows including: Great Day Washington, NBC Roanoake, Talk of Alabama, Hallmark’s Home and Family, Houston Life, Let’s Talk Live in DC, Fox 4 Dallas, AZ Family and more in Georgia, Ohio, New York, Myrtle Beach.

Great, but how did we do it? Here’s five quick, easy and effective tips when building a campaign around guest segments:

  • When reaching out with your pitch, after explaining why your guest would be a great fit for their audience, offer to work with the producer or host to build out the segment. This allows you to have creative control on behalf of your client and helps out a busy producer by taking the work off their plate.
  • Broadcast pitching is often timely. We recently took the angle of ‘spring cleaning your self-care routine’ when pitching our potential guest. Right away it helps us build a theme from the idea of spring cleaning that is timely and relevant.
  • Include clips of your client doing previous on-air interviews or speaking at a conference; send broll if you have it. If you or your client have never done a morning show before, provide clips of a Facebook Live talk or a highly engaging Instagram video. Producers want to get a feel of how potential guests will appear on the screen.
  • Beware network rivalries. Don’t pitch the Today Show by sending a clip of your client on Good Morning America. In the same token, if you are pitching ABC’s regional morning show in Dallas, don’t send a clip of your client on Fox Dallas because they are directly competing for audience share. You can however send ABC Dallas a clip of your client as a guest on Fox in another region.
  • One trick of the trade when pitching a national guest segment, the whale of all broadcast opps: do send clips of regional affiliates when pitching national morning shows. For example when pitching Today, do send your clips of your client or yourself on regional NBC morning shows. This strategy works wonders!