Common Mistakes and Pitfalls When Pitching

In 2009, when I was still working in the medical device industry, I didn't know what a "pitch" was.

What I did know was that April and I were planning our honeymoon, and I was desperate to get some travel discounts in exchange for promotion on our social media accounts.

April was pretty skeptical but (bless her heart) said, "Knock yourself out."

Picture this: It's my lunch break. I'm hunkered down in my little cubicle. Earbuds in, office chatter tuned out. Probably listening to metal.

I've got a self-satisfied smirk on my face as I draft this pitch:

Subject line: Marketing/Business Opportunity for The Paradise Koh Yao Resort

Hello,

My name is Justin Moore, and my fiancée, April, has a YouTube channel with over 2,000,000 total views and over 29,000 subscribers (youtube.com/aprilathena7). We will be getting married in August and going on our honeymoon to the Phuket area shortly thereafter. We would love to stay at The Paradise Koh Yao Resort as we have heard many good things about the hotel on TripAdvisor. We would like to stay in the Hilltop Pool Villa from August 15-19, 2011. We were wondering if you might be interested in discussing a possible business opportunity. In return for complimentary or discounted room rates at your hotel, we will do a "sponsored" video on April's YouTube channel and will talk about the wonderful amenities of The Paradise Koh Yao Resort and also feature video footage of the hotel (with permission).

We believe it would be a great opportunity for The Paradise Koh Yao Resort to promote the excellent services and room options it has to offer and also gain exposure in the social media community (YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, etc.). It would be much appreciated if you could pass along this message to the appropriate individual at your hotel (perhaps anyone in the Marketing, Public Relations or Customer Outreach departments).

Thank you for your kind consideration!

Sincerely,

Justin and April

"It's not so bad," you're thinking.

I appreciate the pat on the head, but it's terrible for a few reasons:

1. I didn't even bother to look up the name of the person I was emailing. Just hit them with the classic, "Hello." It's not like first impressions count or anything, right?

2. The first three sentences were all about me, me, me. The company doesn't know who I am and probably doesn't care about our social media reach!

3. I asked for complementary OR discounted rooms in the same breath. Great job negotiating against yourself before they even replied, genius.

Worst yet, I decided, "Gee, that was enough hard work for one day…" and proceeded to copy and paste this exact pitch to hundreds of hotels in Asia, simply swapping out the name in the subject line and body.

I sense that you're face-palming but you're going to feel so silly when I tell you all the awesome replies I started getting:

"Undeliverable."

"Please remove my email address from your list."

"Thanks, but no thanks."

OK…the replies weren't ideal.

I quickly learned there are two critical components of every successful pitch:

• What you say

• Who you send it to

If you screw either of those up, your chances of getting ghosted or rejected skyrocket.

And you'll probably convince yourself that pitching doesn't work (it does).

Common Mistakes and Pitfalls When Pitching

❌ Making your pitch too "you" focused

❌ Direct-messaging the brand on social media

❌ Emailing the wrong person