The PR industry has an interest in making this look harder than it is. It is not easy — it takes time and a tolerance for being ignored — but there is no gate, no secret list, and no requirement to pay a retainer before anyone will publish you.
Here is the whole process.
Step one: find the story you already have
Most businesses conclude they have no news because they are comparing themselves to national headlines. Wrong benchmark. Trade publications, specialist sites and regional titles run on a constant shortage of material.
Things that are genuinely publishable and that you probably already have:
- Data you collect anyway. An installer who does 300 jobs a year knows things nobody has written down. "A third of home EV chargers are fitted in the wrong place" is a story, and it came from a job sheet.
- A contrarian position you can defend. Something your industry believes that you think is wrong, with reasons. Editors like these because readers argue about them.
- A milestone with a number attached. Not "we're celebrating our anniversary" but "we've fitted 4,000 kitchens in fifteen years and the biggest change is X".
- Hiring and skills. Apprenticeships and skills shortages are a permanent story in UK trade and regional press.
- A seasonal angle. What your customers get wrong every October. Pitch it in August.
The test: would someone outside your company repeat it to a colleague? If not, it is internal news, and no pitch will fix that.
Step two: build a small, specific target list
Twenty publications you have actually read beats two hundred scraped from a database.
For each one, note: who writes about your subject (check recent bylines), whether they run contributed articles, and what their pieces look like — length, tone, whether they use data, whether they quote sources. Ten minutes per publication. This is the step that separates pitches that land from pitches that get deleted.
Prioritise trade and specialist titles over national consumer press. They are more likely to publish you, their readers are more likely to be your buyers, and the link is more relevant. National coverage is flattering; trade coverage converts.
Step three: write a pitch that takes four seconds to evaluate
Under 150 words, three paragraphs.
Open with the angle, not yourself. State the specific article and why their readers would care. Then one sentence on why you can write it — the credential that makes it yours rather than anyone's. Then the ask: what you want, when, and whether you are writing it.
Do not attach a finished 1,200-word article. Do not send a list of ten possible titles. Do not open with "I came across your website and was impressed" — it is the single clearest signal of a mass mailout and it appears in roughly half of everything editors receive.
We have written the long version of this, with a worked example, in how to pitch a guest post that doesn't get deleted.
Step four: use journalist request services
The most underused route for small businesses. Several services distribute daily lists of journalists actively looking for sources on specific stories. Responding to a live request converts far better than cold pitching, because the demand already exists.
Two rules. Answer fast — within a couple of hours, because journalists work to deadlines measured in hours. And answer only requests you can genuinely address; padding your relevance to squeeze in gets you blacklisted quickly and correctly.
Cold pitching is asking someone to want your story. Answering a request is handing someone the thing they already said they needed.
Step five: follow up once
One follow-up, five to seven working days later, two lines. If there is no reply after that, move on. Journalists are not ignoring you out of rudeness — they receive hundreds of pitches and answer the ones they can use.
A useful reframe: a no is a result. It tells you the angle or the target was wrong, which is information you can act on. Silence is the only genuinely useless outcome, and repeated chasing is how you convert a maybe into a permanent no.
What this realistically costs you
Nothing in cash, and a great deal in time. Building a target list, researching contacts, writing tailored pitches and following up is comfortably a day a month if you do it properly — and the hit rate for cold pitching, even done well, sits in the low single digits.
That maths is exactly why agencies exist, and also why they are expensive. If your time is worth more than the coverage, outsourcing is rational. If you are early and time-rich, do it yourself for six months — you will learn more about your own market than any agency report will tell you.
The honest alternative
We should declare an interest here: our whole model exists because this process is slow. We own the publications, so there is no pitching, no waiting, and no hit rate — you buy the placement and it publishes, from £95.
That is a genuinely different trade-off, not a better one. Earned national coverage carries a credibility that a paid placement does not, and if that is what your brief needs, this article is the right route and we would tell you so.
For most businesses, the right answer is both: do the free version for the stories that deserve national attention, and use paid placement for the steady baseline of visibility that nobody is ever going to write about you for free.
Frequently asked
Can a small business get press coverage without an agency?
Yes, routinely. The barriers are time and knowing the format, not access. Trade publications and specialist sites in particular are chronically short of good contributed material and respond well to a direct, specific approach.
What makes a story newsworthy?
Novelty, data, conflict, human interest, timeliness or genuine local relevance. A useful test is whether someone outside your company would repeat it to a colleague. If not, the announcement is internal news rather than a story.
How do I find journalist contact details?
Start with the publication itself — most list section editors and contribution addresses. Recent bylines tell you who covers your subject. Journalist request services such as media enquiry lists are also worth monitoring for briefs you can genuinely answer.
Want this done rather than explained? We own 38 UK publications and place editorial articles and links on them from £65. Send the target page and we'll come back within one working day with a plan.