How to Get Press Coverage for Your Startup (My Method)

By Stefan Ciancio on 2026-03-12

TL;DR: Getting press coverage for your startup requires a newsworthy story angle that benefits a journalist's audience, not just a product announcement. Success comes from surgically targeted outreach to the right reporters with a concise, value-driven pitch, then building a long-term relationship.

Quick answers

What is press coverage for a startup?

Press coverage is any mention of your startup in media outlets like online news sites, blogs, podcasts, or print publications. It's earned media, meaning you don't pay for it like an advertisement. For a startup, it serves as powerful third-party validation that builds credibility, drives referral traffic, generates backlinks for SEO, and attracts potential customers, investors, and talent. It's about turning your startup's story into a story the media wants to tell.

Is press coverage still effective?

Absolutely. While the media landscape has changed, the power of a credible, third-party endorsement has not. A feature in a respected industry publication is more valuable than almost any ad. It builds trust that you can't buy. We saw a 30% jump in inbound demo requests for WebinarKit after a feature in a key marketing blog. It's not just about the initial traffic spike; it's about the lasting authority and SEO benefits.

How much does PR cost for a startup?

It can range from nearly zero to over $20,000 per month. Doing it yourself (DIY) costs your time plus a few hundred dollars for tools. A freelance PR consultant might cost $3,000-$5,000 per month. A full-service PR agency retainer for a startup typically starts at $10,000-$20,000 per month. I've always started with the DIY approach for my companies, including PressPitch AI, which is now a tool I built to solve this exact problem.

What makes a startup newsworthy?

It's rarely about your product launch. Newsworthiness comes from unique data (e.g., a report from your user base), a strong contrarian opinion on a trending topic, a significant milestone (e.g., $1M ARR, 100k users), a compelling human interest story (your unique founder journey), or a novel solution to a well-known problem. The key is to find an angle that extends beyond your company and speaks to a broader industry trend or audience interest.

How do you find journalist emails?

Start with the low-hanging fruit. Many journalists list their email in their Twitter bio or on the publication's website. If not, you can use tools like Hunter.io or RocketReach, though accuracy varies. Honestly, a common strategy is guessing simple formats like firstname@publication.com or first.last@publication.com. My tool, PressPitch AI, automates this discovery process, but manual verification is always a good final step.

Stop Thinking Like a Founder, Start Thinking Like a Journalist

The single biggest mistake founders make when seeking press is thinking anyone cares about their startup. They don't. A journalist for a major outlet gets hundreds of pitches a day. They are not a free advertising channel; they are gatekeepers for their audience. Their job is to find and write compelling stories that will get clicks, shares, and inform their readers. Your job is not to ask for a story, but to *give* them one.

You have to shift your entire mindset. Stop asking, "How can I get my startup featured?" and start asking, "What story can I provide that a journalist's audience would find fascinating?" My startup is just the vehicle for that story. When we launched a new automation sequence inside WebinarKit, we didn't pitch "WebinarKit Launches New Automation Feature." That's boring. Instead, we found a story. The pitch became, "New data shows small businesses are ditching complex funnels for 'just-in-time' automated webinars. Here's what they're doing." See the difference? The first is a product update. The second is a trend story. The journalist can write the trend story, and WebinarKit is the natural example to include. We did this, and it got us picked up by three different marketing blogs, driving over 5,000 targeted visitors in a week.

This mindset applies to every communication you have. Read the journalist's last five articles. Understand their beat, their tone, and the types of stories they write. Your pitch should feel like you're a helpful source continuing a conversation they're already having, not a stranger interrupting with a sales pitch.

Defining Your "Newsworthy" Angle (It's Not Just Your Launch)

"We just launched!" is not a story. Unless you're a former Google exec backed by $50 million from Sequoia, nobody cares. You need to manufacture your own newsworthiness. Over the years, I've found a few reliable angles that work for any startup, including my own which you can see in my portfolio.

The Data Angle

This is the most powerful angle for a SaaS company. You're sitting on a goldmine of anonymous user data. Turn it into a report. At WebinarKit, we could analyze thousands of webinars to find trends. A headline like "Report: Tuesday at 2 PM is no longer the best time to host a webinar" is instant news. It's original research that provides value to the entire industry. Journalists love data because it's concrete, defensible, and makes for great headlines. It's shareable and positions you as a thought leader. We use my content tool, Maker AI, to help draft these data reports and blog posts around them.

The Contrarian Angle

Find a popular industry belief and argue against it. "Why 'growth hacking' is a waste of time for early-stage startups." "The SEO advice everyone follows is actually hurting your site." A strong, well-argued contrarian take is a lightning rod for attention. It shows you're a critical thinker, not just another follower. Be prepared to back it up, but a spicy take will always get more clicks than a safe one. This is exactly how I promoted my book, Sell More With Webinars, by arguing against the common wisdom of long, drawn-out webinar formats.

The Human-Interest Angle

Did you pivot from a failed business? Are you solving a problem you experienced firsthand in a dramatic way? Did you build your company while working a full-time job? These personal stories resonate. People connect with people, not with corporate entities. This angle is particularly effective for founder profiles in publications like Forbes or Entrepreneur. It's less about your product and more about your journey, which can be an equally powerful way to build a brand.

The Piggyback Angle (Newsjacking)

This requires speed. When a big piece of news breaks in your industry- a Google algorithm update, a major company's fumble, a new regulation- you can jump on it. Pitch journalists with your expert take: "As a founder in the [X] space, here's my take on the OpenAI announcement and what it means for small businesses." You are providing them with an immediate expert source for a story they are already writing. It's one of the fastest ways to get quoted.

The Three Tiers of Media Targets

A common mistake is to email your pitch to every journalist at TechCrunch and call it a day. This is a losing strategy. A structured, tiered approach yields much better results. I break media outlets into three tiers.

Tier 1: The Holy Grail (Forbes, TechCrunch, WSJ)

These are the big national and international publications. Getting featured here feels great and can cause a massive traffic spike. However, they are the hardest to break into. The journalists are flooded, and the bar for what constitutes "news" is incredibly high. For an early-stage startup, the ROI on your time is often low. Pitching them relentlessly is usually a waste of effort until you have a major announcement like a Series A funding round or a massive user milestone. Don't start here. The goal is to work your way up to this tier.

Tier 2: The Sweet Spot (Industry Trade Publications)

This is where you should focus 80% of your energy. These are the blogs, online magazines, and news sites dedicated to your specific industry. For WebinarKit, this was MarTech Series, MarketingProfs, and Social Media Examiner. The audience is highly targeted, and the journalists are hungry for relevant stories. A feature here might send less traffic than the Wall Street Journal, but it will be 100x more qualified. These are your future customers. When we got coverage for our payment processing comparison tool, ProcessingScoop, in a fintech trade journal, it drove fewer than 1,000 visitors, but our conversion rate from that traffic was over 10%. That's an incredible return.

Tier 3: The Foundation (Niche Blogs, Podcasts, Local News)

These are smaller blogs, up-and-coming podcasts, and your local city's business journal. These are your easiest "wins." They are often actively looking for content and guests. While the audience for any single outlet is small, the cumulative effect is significant. These placements are perfect for building social proof (the "As Seen On" logos for your website), generating your first backlinks for SEO, and practicing your pitch. I've had several smaller podcast appearances lead directly to invitations to larger ones because the host heard me on another show.

Building Your Media List: The Grunt Work That Pays Off

Your goal is not a massive list of 1,000 journalists. It's a hyper-targeted list of 25 perfect contacts who cover your specific niche. Quality over quantity, always. Sending a generic blast is a fast-track to getting your domain blacklisted.

So how do you build this list? It starts manually. Go to your Tier 2 and Tier 3 target publications. Find articles about topics similar to your company or angle. Who wrote them? That's your person. Don't just find the editor-in-chief; find the specific staff writer or contributor who lives on this beat. Put them in a simple spreadsheet with columns for Name, Publication, Beat/Topics, Link to Recent Article, and Twitter/LinkedIn URL.

Once you have a name, your next job is to become a person to them, not just another email. Follow them on Twitter or LinkedIn. Don't just be a silent follower. If they share an article (theirs or someone else's), read it and leave a thoughtful comment. Share their work with your own network. Do this for a week or two *before* you ever pitch them. When your email finally lands in their inbox, you want a flicker of recognition, not a blank stare. It's the difference between "Jane Doe from [outlet]" and "Jane, loved your take on the new Salesforce acquisition last week." This is the relationship-building that 99% of founders skip. When we were launching my live event brand, Epic Marketing Events, the media partners we secured came from relationships I had built over months, not from cold outreach.

Crafting the Perfect Pitch: My A-B-C Formula

I've sent thousands of pitch emails and seen every mistake in the book. Most are too long, too self-promotional, and completely miss the point. A great pitch is short, sharp, and all about the journalist. I use a simple A-B-C formula.

A - Angle in the Subject Line

Your subject line is your one and only shot at getting a click. It should not be "Pitch: My Awesome Startup." It needs to be a headline. Pique their curiosity and show them the story immediately. Good examples:

Data: [Your Company] report finds 78% of remote workers...
Contrarian: Pitch: Why the 4-day work week is failing
Newsjack: Re: Google's recent update- expert take for you

Never bait-and-switch. The subject must accurately reflect the email content. It's a headline, not clickbait.

B - Brevity in the Body

Keep your email to five sentences, max. Structure it like this:

Personalization: "Hi [Name], loved your recent piece on [Topic]." This must be genuine. If you can't find anything to comment on, you're pitching the wrong person.
The Story: "I'm writing because I have some new data that suggests [The Main Point]. We found [Surprising Stat]." Get straight to the hook.
Relevance: "This seems relevant for your audience of [Audience Type] because [Reason]." Explicitly connect the dots for them. Don't make them work.
The Offer/Asset: "You can see the full report here [Link to your blog post/data], and I've attached a one-page summary with key stats." Give them everything they need.

C - Clear Call to Action

End with a simple, low-friction ask. Don't say, "Would love to tell you more about my company." That's a sales pitch. Instead:

"Happy to provide more context or connect you with one of our analysts."
"Does this sound like a potential story for you?"
"Let me know if you'd like an exclusive on this data before we release it widely."

Make it easy for them to say yes. The entire process from opening the email to understanding the story should take them less than 30 seconds.

Automate Your PR Outreach

Finding journalists and crafting pitches is time-consuming. I built PressPitch AI to automate the discovery and outreach process, letting you focus on the story. Find verified contacts, use AI-assisted pitch writing, and track your campaigns in one place. Stop the grunt work and start getting featured.

Discover PressPitch AI

The Press Release is Dead (Except When It's Not)

Let me be blunt: paying hundreds or thousands of dollars to blast a generic press release over a wire service like PR Newswire or Business Wire is one of the biggest wastes of money for a startup. I made this mistake once, years ago. Paid $700+ for a release that was "syndicated" to hundreds of phantom websites no human has ever visited. It generated zero real coverage and zero leads. The truth is, journalists don't read the wire to find stories. They find stories in their inbox, on Twitter, and from sources they trust.

So, is the press release completely dead? No. It has just one or two specific use cases for a startup:

Major Funding or M&A: If you've raised a significant round of funding (think $5M+) or are being acquired, your investors or legal team might require a wire release for formal disclosure purposes. In this scenario, it's a box-ticking exercise, not a media outreach strategy.
Your Own Digital Asset: The "press release" format is still a useful way to organize information. Write your announcement in that formal style, but instead of sending it to a wire, publish it on your own company blog. Then, you use that URL as the asset you link to in your targeted, personal email pitches. This is infinitely more effective. It gives the journalist all the facts in a neat package, drives traffic to your own website, and costs you nothing.

Do not spend your limited startup budget on a press release wire service. Write a great announcement, post it on your blog, and then focus your energy on the personalized pitching I outlined above. You will get a 100x better return.

Tools of the Trade: My PR Tech Stack

You can start with nothing but a Gmail account and a spreadsheet. But if you have a small budget, a few tools can dramatically increase your efficiency. Here are the tools I use and recommend, from free to premium. Be sure to check my full marketing tools list for more.

Tool	Purpose	Cost	My Take
Google Alerts / Mention	Media Monitoring	Free / $49+ mo	Set these up for your brand name, competitors, and key industry terms. Google Alerts is free and decent. Mention is more powerful and provides real-time alerts so you can newsjack stories as they break.
Hunter / RocketReach	Email Finding	Freemium / $49+ mo	Good for finding email addresses when a journalist's contact info isn't public. The free tiers are often enough to get started. Be aware that accuracy can be around 70-80%, so some bounces are expected.
PressPitch AI	Database & Outreach	$49+ mo	Full disclosure, this is my tool. I built it because the alternatives were too expensive or inefficient. It combines a journalist database with AI pitch writing and campaign tracking, designed specifically for founders doing their own PR. It's the integrated solution I always wanted.
Cision / Muck Rack	Enterprise PR Suite	$7k - $25k+ per year	This is the software that PR agencies use. It's incredibly powerful, with massive databases and analytics. It's also complete overkill and far too expensive for 99% of startups. Don't even consider this until you have a dedicated internal PR team.
GMass / Mailshake	Email Campaigning	$20 - $60 mo	These tools allow you to send small, personalized email sequences and track opens/clicks. They are better than sending from your personal Gmail because they handle follow-ups automatically. Only use this for your highly curated list of 20-30 journalists, not for a blast.

Leveraging the "Yes": What to Do After You Get Coverage

You did it. You landed a feature. The work isn't over; it's just beginning. Getting the press is only half the battle. The other half is milking that placement for every ounce of value.

First, the simple stuff. As soon as the article goes live, share it across every single one of your channels: your personal LinkedIn, your company's LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, and your email newsletter. Don't just drop the link; add context. Tag the journalist and the publication and thank them. This shows gratitude and exposes their work to your audience, which they appreciate.

Next, merchandise it on your website. Immediately add the publication's logo to your "As Seen On" banner on your homepage. This is instant social proof for every new visitor. If the article is substantial, consider writing a companion post on your own blog that expands on a quote or idea from the piece, then link back to the original article. This creates more content for you and sends a positive SEO signal.

Internally, this is a huge moral victory. Share it with your team in Slack. Share it with your investors in your next update. This kind of external validation is rocket fuel for team morale and investor confidence. Add the link and logo to your sales decks and pitch materials. Every sales call and investor conversation from now on is buttressed by this third-party credibility.

Finally, use it as a stepping stone. When you pitch your next (higher tier) journalist, you can now say, "As recently featured in [Previous Publication] for our insights on..." This shows you're not a nobody; you're a recognized expert. Each placement builds on the last, creating a snowball of momentum.

The Power of HARO (and How Not to Screw It Up)

HARO, or Help a Reporter Out, is a free service that sends you three emails a day with queries from journalists looking for sources. It is, without a doubt, one of the most high-leverage, low-cost PR tools available to a startup. Some of my first major features, including mentions that helped get my book 'Sell More With Webinars' on the map, came directly from HARO.

But most people use it wrong. They send lazy, self-promotional answers and get ignored. Here's how to win at HARO:

Scan Fast: The emails are long. Use Ctrl+F (or Cmd+F) to search for keywords relevant to your expertise ("marketing," "SaaS," "founder," "webinar"). You should be able to scan each email in under 60 seconds.
Act Fast: Journalists on HARO are on a deadline. The first few high-quality responses often get the spot. If you see a good query, aim to respond within the hour.
Answer EXACTLY What They Ask: Read the query carefully. If they ask for a 50-word tip, don't send them 500 words. If they ask for 3 examples, give them 3 examples. Do not try to pivot their query to your company's talking points.
Give Them a Copy-Paste Quote: Don't say, "I'd be happy to talk about this." Give them the full quote, ready to go, right in the email. Make it insightful, concise, and non-promotional. Your goal is to make their job as easy as possible.

Your response structure should be simple: Your full, copy-pasteable quote first. Then, underneath, your name, title, company (with a hyperlink), and a brief one-sentence bio. That's it. No fluff, no attachments, no sales pitch. It's a numbers game, but if you respond to 2-3 relevant queries a week with high-quality answers, you'll start landing placements in outlets you'd never get through cold pitching.

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Building Relationships Before You Need Them

Cold outreach works. But warm outreach works ten times better. The ultimate PR strategy is to transform your key media contacts from strangers into professional acquaintances, and a few even into industry friends. This is the long game, and it pays massive dividends.

The work starts on social media, primarily Twitter and LinkedIn, where journalists are most active. As you build your media list, follow every single target. Create a private Twitter List called "Journalists" so you can see a dedicated feed of what they're talking about without the noise. Your goal is to become a familiar name by adding value to their conversations. Don't be creepy or sycophantic. Engage like an intelligent peer.

Did a reporter you follow post a question to their audience? Be the first to give a helpful, non-promotional answer. Did they share a new article they wrote? Read it, and if you genuinely liked it, share it with your own audience, tagging them and adding your own brief insight. If you have a unique data point that's relevant to a topic they frequently cover, send them a friendly, no-ask DM: "Hey, saw you write about e-commerce trends a lot. My company just pulled some data showing X. Thought you'd find it interesting. No story needed, just an FYI." This positions you as a helpful source, not a pitch-bot. When you build this foundation of goodwill, your future pitches won't be cold emails; they'll be messages to someone who already knows and respects you. This was instrumental in getting speakers and media for Epic Marketing Events; the relationships were already there.

FAQ

How long should a press release be?

A press release should be concise, ideally 400-500 words. It should start with a strong headline and sub-headline, followed by a first paragraph that summarizes the entire story (who, what, when, where, why). The body should provide supporting details and quotes, and it should end with a boilerplate about your company and contact information. Brevity is key; respect the journalist's time.

What is a media kit and do I need one?

A media kit is a digital folder with basic information about your company. It typically includes your logo (in various formats), founder headshots, product screenshots, a company overview (boilerplate), and links to past press. You don't need one to start, but it's helpful to have ready. When a journalist says yes, you can send them a single link with everything they need, making their job easier.

How do you measure the ROI of PR?

Measuring PR ROI can be tricky. Key metrics include referral traffic from the article (via Google Analytics), the number of leads or sign-ups attributed to that traffic, changes in Domain Authority/Rating from the backlink, and social media mentions/shares. Also, consider the qualitative value: improved investor confidence, easier sales conversations, and the ability to leverage the feature for future PR wins.

Can I pay a journalist to write about me?

No. Paying a journalist for a story is unethical and violates journalistic standards. What you're describing is an advertorial or sponsored content, which is a form of advertising and must be clearly labeled as such. Trying to pay for an editorial piece will damage your reputation and get you blacklisted. Focus on earning media through a compelling story.

What if a journalist writes something negative?

First, don't panic. If the information is factually incorrect, reach out calmly and politely with documentation to request a correction. Do not get into a public argument on social media. If the piece is opinion-based but negative, it's often best to ignore it. Engaging can pour fuel on the fire. Use it as a learning experience to see how your messaging is being perceived and adjust if necessary.

How often should I send follow-up emails?

One follow-up is appropriate. Wait 3-5 business days after your initial pitch, then reply to your original email with a brief, polite nudge. Something like, "Just wanted to bump this to the top of your inbox. Let me know if it's of interest!" If you don't hear back after that, assume it's a no and move on. Pestering a journalist is a surefire way to burn a bridge.

What's the best day to send a pitch email?

Conventional wisdom says Tuesday, Wednesday, or Thursday mid-morning. The theory is that Mondays are for catching up and Fridays are for wrapping up. In my experience, a great pitch with a great subject line will get opened regardless of when it's sent. I've had success on a Sunday night because it's at the top of the inbox Monday morning. Focus more on the quality of your pitch than the timing.

Is it worth hiring a PR agency for a startup?

For most early-stage startups, no. Agencies are expensive (often $10k+/month) and require a lot of your time to manage them effectively. You'll get a better ROI by learning to do it yourself first. Once you have product-market fit, a consistent story to tell, and the budget, a good agency or freelancer can help you scale your efforts, but don't outsource it from day one.

FAQ