Sentinel InsightsA media relations strategythat earns real coverage.

A media relations strategy is a written plan that sets out who you want to reach through the press, which journalists and outlets serve those readers, what stories you can credibly offer and how you’ll judge what comes back. It fits on a few pages. Its job is to stop a team pitching whatever news turns up to whoever happens to be on a list.

Without one, outreach swings between long silences and a burst of press releases around a launch. With one, a founder or marketing lead can see each month which reporters you’re building ties with, which stories are in the queue and whether the coverage is reaching buyers. This guide sets out how to build that plan in six parts, from goals to measurement.

Why a media relations strategy matters

Journalists still rely on pitches. Muck Rack’s State of Journalism 2026 report, based on 897 journalist responses, found that 86% say at least some of their stories start with a PR pitch. The same report found that 88% immediately disregard pitches that miss their beat, and nearly half say they seldom receive pitches that match what they cover.

That gap is the case for a plan. Pitches are welcome when they fit and ignored when they don’t, and most of them don’t. A strategy that starts from each journalist’s beat and audience puts you on the right side of that line before anyone writes a word.

Start with business goals, then audiences

Coverage is a means to an end. Before choosing outlets, write down what the business needs over the next two or three quarters. Typical goals are trust with enterprise buyers ahead of a sales push, awareness in a new city or country, credibility with investors before a round, or a stronger presence in the sources AI assistants quote when people ask about your category.

Each goal points to a different audience, and each audience reads different things. A finance director buying software reads trade titles and business pages. A parent choosing a learning app listens to podcasts and reads parenting sites. Name two or three audiences at most, and for each one fill in four lines:

• Goal: what the business needs, in one sentence.
• Audience: who has to hear about you for that goal to move.
• Media diet: the outlets, newsletters, shows and creators that audience trusts.
• Proof needed: what that audience would want to see before believing you.

Keep this page short. If a goal can’t be tied to a named audience and a list of outlets, it isn’t ready for media work yet.

Build a short, researched media list

Large contact databases make it easy to email thousands of people. That’s also the fastest way to teach journalists to ignore your name. We suggest working from a short list of 20 to 40 people per audience, each chosen because of what they’ve written recently.

For every name, record the outlet, the beat, three recent stories, the formats they use and how they like to be contacted. Then split the list into tiers:

• Tier one: the handful of reporters whose coverage would move a goal on its own.
• Tier two: trade, regional and niche titles that reach buyers directly.
• Tier three: podcasts, newsletters and creators who reach the same people in a different format.

Review the list every quarter. Reporters change beats, outlets close sections and freelancers move on, and a stale list is where irrelevant pitches come from.

Plan the stories you can credibly tell

Most companies have more news than they think, and less than they hope. Map out what you could offer over the next six months, then be honest about which items a journalist would care about.

• Company news: launches, funding, senior hires and new markets. Useful for trade and business press when the facts are concrete.
• Data and research: original findings from your product, a survey or public data. Reporters value numbers they can’t get anywhere else.
• Expert commentary: your founder or senior people reacting quickly and usefully to news in your field.
• Customer and community stories: told with permission, and only when they’re true and checkable.
• Bylines and guest spots: articles and podcast appearances where your leaders share what they know.

Line those stories up against your tiers and the calendar. Trade titles plan features months ahead, while news desks want things today. A good plan holds a mix, so there’s always something worth sending without inventing a reason. Data-led stories are the centre of our Digital PR work for exactly this reason: they give journalists something new.

Put the result in a simple shared calendar: one row per story, with the target tier, the outlets you’ll offer it to first, the spokesperson, the date it goes out and what proof you can attach. When a quiet month shows up on that calendar in advance, you have time to commission a small piece of research or line up commentary, instead of scrambling for news the week before.

Set house rules for working with journalists

Relationships with the press are built on small, repeated behaviour. A strategy should write that behaviour down so everyone on the team follows it, including the founder.

1. Pitch one person at a time, by name, with a reason the story fits their readers now.
2. Keep pitches short and put the news in the first two lines.
3. Follow up once, with something new, then let it go.
4. Answer press requests within the hour where you can.
5. Never send a figure you can’t source, and never ask to approve a reporter’s copy.
6. Agree who can speak on the record, and brief them before every interview.

If your founder is the main voice, give them real preparation. Our Founder and Executive PR service covers media training, bylines and podcast appearances because journalists usually want to hear from the person who made the decision.

Decide where earned, placed and paid media fit

Some goals can’t wait for an editor to say yes. A launch date is fixed, or a buyer audience sits mainly in one trade title that sells sponsored features. A strategy should say plainly where you’ll rely on earned coverage, where you’ll pay for a placement, and how each paid item will be labelled.

Using both is fine. Blurring the difference isn’t. At Sentinel we plan paid, placed and earned media as one campaign, judge every opportunity on audience, relevance, credibility, positioning and business goal, and record each item in a single live coverage log labelled earned, placed or paid. You can read the detail in how we work.

Measure what your media relations strategy is doing

Clip counts tell you very little. Ten mentions on sites your buyers never read are worth less than one interview in the trade title they open every week. Pick a few measures tied to the goals you wrote at the start and review them monthly.

After three months, the log shows which stories land, which reporters respond and which audiences you’re still missing. Adjust the plan from that evidence, and drop outlets that never reach your buyers even if they’re happy to run your news.

A media relations strategy is only as good as the work done each week to follow it. If you’d like a team to research journalists, pitch stories and look after those relationships for you, see our Strategic Outreach service, or start with our plain guide to what media relations is.