The PR Pitch & Media Tracker

Free PR pitch tracker: test each story without your company's name, pick three right reporters, keep pitches under 200 words, and know when to follow up once.

Excel + Google Sheets · Free

What this resource helps you do

Pitch stories, not announcements: a story bank, a reporter list, a pitch writer and a log that says when to stop.

Get the tracker from AAJ's free marketing templates library.

Who the PR Pitch & Media Tracker is for

I wrote this for founders and small teams who do their own PR and have no agency. The first pitches I sent went nowhere because they were announcements: they told a reporter that something had happened at my company and assumed that was interesting to somebody else.

The tracker keeps a small PR effort honest. The story bank tests every story before it is pitched, the reporter list keeps you to three people who actually cover the problem, and the log tells you when to follow up once and when to stop. Every number you offer has to be one you can produce, and every customer you name has to have agreed in writing.

It will not get you coverage. Coverage is largely outside your control, so the scorecard counts what you can influence: replies, relationships that continue, and stories that get used, including by you.

Read how to pitch a journalist when nobody has heard of your startup, plan the wider effort with the Earned Media Playbook, and borrow a partner's audience with the Partner Co-Marketing Playbook. Or Run it in your agent.

What's inside

Start here
The story bank
The reporters
The pitch writer
The pitch log
The scorecard

Frequently Asked Questions

How many reporters should I pitch per story?

Three, chosen from the articles your buyers already read. A pitch sent to thirty people reads like one sent to thirty people. If two of the three pass, the story needs rewriting, not a longer list.

How long should a press pitch be?

Under two hundred words. The subject line states the story, the first sentence says why it matters now, the second says what you can bring that nobody else has, and the third makes the ask small.

When should I follow up on a pitch?

Once, about five days after sending, and then stop. The tracker works out the follow-up date and tells you when to stop and publish the material yourself. These timings are AAJ's rules of thumb, not published standards.

Is the template free, and what format is it?

Free, in exchange for an email address. It is an Excel .xlsx with the formulas in place, and it opens in Excel, Google Sheets and LibreOffice.