Premier Consulting & Integration, LLC

Your Partner In Success

Deltek WorkBook

How to Email Pitch Your Story Idea to a Journalist

In a recent blog, we outlined how to identify if your marketing campaign is newsworthy. This blog will outline best practices and tips on how to pitch your story idea to a journalist. 

Understanding the art of email pitching can make the difference between getting coverage and getting ignored. However, it’s essential to approach this process strategically and professionally to increase your chances of success. 

Let’s dive into the key steps and strategies to successfully pitch a story idea to a journalist.

Research the Journalist and the Publication

Preparation is key. Ahead of reaching out to any journalists or media outlets, take the time to research the outlet’s audience, the journalist’s beat, and their recent coverage. If their audience is interested in your topic and it fits under the umbrella of what the journalist covers, you will increase the likelihood of capturing their attention. 

Develop a Compelling Yet Succint Pitch

A good media pitch is direct, interesting, and engaging. Journalists receive countless emails and pitches each day, so it’s important to put together a compelling, yet succinct, pitch. Grab their attention with a subject line that excites them and highlights the newsworthiness of your story idea. Explain why the story matters and how it would be of interest to the journalist’s audience. Always offer a subject matter expert who can speak to the journalist should they have more questions.

Provide Supporting Data, Sources or Information

Always include relevant background information, data, statistics, or expert quotes that strengthen your pitch idea. You want to make it as easy as possible for the journalist to see the value and potential of your story.

Provide a Timely Hook or Offer Exclusivity 

If you want it on the news, it better be newsworthy! Make your story idea more appealing by offering exclusivity to the journalist or highlighting its timeliness. Journalists are often looking for unique and timely stories that will interest their audience. 

Tailor Every Single Pitch

Never, ever send the same exact pitch to more than one journalist. Take the time to personalize each pitch by addressing the journalist by name and explaining why it fits their specific beat.  Reference their previous relevant articles to establish a connection and show that you are familiar with their coverage. By personalizing your pitch, you will show that you have taken the time to understand and respect their work.

Follow Up Strategically

Remember – journalists receive countless pitches each day, so it’s essential to follow up without being overly persistent. You don’t want to annoy them. If you don’t receive an immediate response, it’s okay to follow up after a week or so. Keep your follow-up concise and reiterate the key points of your pitch. However, avoid being pushy or aggressive.

Build Long-Term Relationships

Public relations is all about relationships – so pitching a story idea shouldn’t be a one-off interaction. Once you’ve made contact with a journalist, you can do things like engaging with their social media channels and sharing their articles. By nurturing press relationships, you will establish yourself as a reliable source and increase your chances for future coverage.

By strategically using a combination of research, preparation, and effective communication, you can substantially enhance your chances of capturing a journalist’s attention and successfully getting your story published. Happy pitching!

You Might Also Like:

Operations Transformation: Three Agency Success Stories

One of the first steps on the path to growth for agencies is to look for opportunities to increase efficiencies. These three agencies below discovered that Deltek WorkBook helped provide an integrated system that improved reporting and collaboration. Ultimately, Deltek WorkBook has helped all three succeed on their growth journey.

Reducing Manual Processes and Improving Financial Reporting

Award-winning communications consulting firm Taft Communications spent hours reconciling financial data from multiple systems, making it difficult to analyze KPIs to understand the agency’s overall financial state. They implemented Deltek WorkBook to deliver more accurate performance reports that leverage approval workflows, which required team members to take accountability for data entered into the system. This has resulted in less time spent reconciling reports, greater confidence in the data, and the ability to see numbers in real-time.

Chief Financial Offer for Taft Communications Mark McNulty shared: “By the time I get to the month-end and am looking at the financials, I spend very little time scrubbing the numbers, because I know fundamentally they’re sound, which allows me to focus on analyzing the various key performance indicators in that particular month.” Get the full details from Taft Communications here.

Using an Agency Management System to Optimize Growth

Employee-owned performance marketing agency Collective Measures found that their systems weren’t providing the insights they needed, particularly as the size of their employee base was growing rapidly. Managing workflows had become grueling, and scope creep was becoming a problem. After bringing in Deltek WorkBook, it became possible to more accurately project upcoming work and optimize workflows to focus on improved delivery for their clients.

Luke Schlegel, Executive Vice President of Operations and Analytics at Collective Measures, commented that “the growth that we’ve experienced with Deltek WorkBook has allowed us to gain better insights into our entire workflow of projects; we understand what our people are doing now and what they’re going to need in the future. This data makes it possible to optimize our project delivery based on clients’ needs.” Read the full story from Collective Measures here.

Instant Benefits from Using Deltek WorkBook and Deltek ConceptShare

As independent agency Knock, Inc. started an accelerated growth trajectory, the team realized they were struggling with inefficient workflows and a lack of visibility. This made it challenging to pinpoint overall agency performance. So, they turned to Deltek WorkBook and Deltek ConceptShare to improve reporting and collaboration. Implementing WorkBook improved tracking projects and profitability, saving time with automated reporting and planning, even as their team shifted to work from home. ConceptShare added to the increased efficiency, reducing production costs and giving the agency more time to focus on generating revenue.

Creighton King, VP of Creative Execution at Knock, Inc. shared: “We saw instant benefits. We still get to feel very collaborative and we are able to hold on to our culture because we can still have these conversations, all in one place. It’s very cool that we were able to hold onto the culture and work from home through WorkBook and ConceptShare.” Watch the full story from Knock, Inc. here.

Transform Your Agency’s Operations

Want to find out if Deltek WorkBook is right for your agency? Our industry experts would be happy to walk through a demo with you.

You Might Also Like:

Marketing Agency Insights: Is Your Campaign Newsworthy?

Marketing campaigns play a crucial role in promoting products, services, and brands, and the success of those campaigns is most often determined by the number of leads or sales generated. But marketing isn’t the only way to get a message out – public relations (PR) news pitching tactics can be used to earn media coverage on your campaigns, a great way to increase awareness of your campaign without adding extra spend to your budget.

Although often grouped together, marketing and PR are different disciplines – marketing works to drive leads for the company or product; PR works to develop or maintain a positive reputation for the company or product. However, both aim to build stronger relationships with target audiences using varying tactics and strategies. 

So, how do you identify if your marketing campaign is worth pitching to the media? Evaluate your campaign to see if it meet the following parameters. If so, there’s a good chance it’s newsworthy! 

General Interest

Does your campaign have elements that make it interesting, relevant, and valuable to the general public? A new marketing slogan, product feature, or promotion likely won’t cut it – news outlets and journalists seek information and stories that will benefit, educate or interest their publication’s readers. 

Timeliness

News cycles change quickly, and journalists are usually seeking stories or information around what is happening at the current time or what is to come. Campaigns are much more likely to gain news coverage when they address relevant issues, resonate with ongoing news coverage, or align with current trends or themes.

Non-Promotional

One of the big areas where marketing and PR differ is promotional language or copy. Marketing campaigns typically use promotional and commercial content, whereas PR is completely non-promotional. If you are using promotional language in your marketing campaign, make sure to tweak it to be more educational when pitching it to the media.

Research & Data

If your campaign presents or is backed up by compelling data, research, or surveys, there’s a good chance it can be newsworthy – as long as there is general interest. Journalists and media outlets are often attracted to academic and scientific research from trustworthy sources when it offers new information to their readers.

Subject Matter Expert 

When pitching anything to the media, it’s imperative that you have a subject matter expert at your organization who can speak to the campaign or related news story. Journalists look to subject matter experts as a trusted authority who can provide accurate information on the given topic, and they often quote the subject matter experts they interviewed in their related stories. If your campaign is based on research, pitching the head of the research as a subject matter expert is a great way to get media attention. Just make sure the subject matter expert is aware, prepared, and available!

Partners and Integrations 

Are you partnering with another organization for your campaign, or does the campaign introduce a new integration that has general use and interest? Campaigns involving partnerships with other notable organizations and brands demonstrate collaboration and mutual support for the same cause, and tend to be of interest to the media.

Social Impact or Philanthropic

Campaigns that support or highlight a social cause, promote sustainability, or address big social issues can be quite newsworthy. Media outlets like to share good news when it is largely impactful; however, it must be genuine effort – just donating money to a organization likely won’t cut it.

Although marketing and PR serve distinct roles, they often work together in an integrated communication strategy to reinforce each other’s efforts and achieve the organization’s overall goals. 

Next time you kick off a marketing campaign, take a moment to consider if it’s worth pitching to the news. 

You Might Also Like:

Agency Resource Management Essentials: Rightsizing and Hiring

We’ve reached Part 3 of our three-part series on agency resource management essentials. In Part 1, we covered tips on resourcing current projects, and in Part 2, we looked at the reports and forecasts to improve profitability. Now in Part 3, we’ll shift our focus to the future – how to help your agency rightsize and hire to match the current workload and meet the needs of your future caseload. By focusing on managing freelancers and hiring the right people at the right time, you’re setting your agency up to scale and grow.

Carefully Planning Your Agency’s Growth

Before you start hiring or even looking at freelancers, it’s important to start with the data. Review your forecasts and plans, and let them inform you when is the right time to hire. This is why accurate revenue forecasting is so important, as it combines both short-term and long-term planning to help you make hiring decisions. In addition to revenue data, consider your capacity planning to assess the resources needed for current and upcoming work. Once you’ve reviewed your forecasts and your plans, you’ll be in a position to hire strategically.

Preparing for Agency Growth by Tracking Pipeline

As mentioned in the planning section above, revenue forecasting is an important piece of the puzzle to scaling your agency while remaining profitable. You should review and update your pipeline forecast monthly to have accurate data to update your capacity forecast. If you don’t have probable work for a specific skillset beyond three months, it’s probably better to rely on freelancers to fill the gap rather than invest in hiring. To rightsize your agency for the work in your pipeline, you need to balance both your backlog of current work and probable opportunities with a long-term overview of your resource capacity. This is a tricky but critical balance to get right.

Finding the Right People to Support Agency Growth

You’ve reviewed your short-term and long-term plans, and you’ve crunched the numbers forecasting revenue, when is the right time to start hiring? There’s no black-and-white answer, but in general, if your agency has steady revenue, strong client retention, and a healthy pipeline, you’re likely in a good position to hire additional talent. Consider starting with freelancers until you consistently need certain skills for projects. Freelancers will bring additional flexibility and productivity and enable you to access top talent without paying a premium to keep them on your payroll. But a clear sign it’s time to hire is if you can’t keep up with the current workload and employees report signs of burnout. The best way to track this is to watch your utilization rate.

Beyond knowing the right time to hire, your current employees are a valuable resource. Turnover is expensive, particularly in a competitive job market. So how do you retain your current talent? First: build an attractive work culture. Find out what’s most important to your employees, do they want flexible hours or remote work? Another key indicator to help you keep employees happy is to prevent burnout by maintaining a balanced workload. And lastly, increase employee satisfaction by helping your current employees to upskill. Both junior and more experienced talent will find greater job satisfaction if you support their ability to learn and grow and align further training with their overall career goals.

Integrate Management of Your People and Projects

That wraps up our Agency Resource Management Essentials series! Stay tuned; we’ll share a link to our new resource management guide soon. In the meantime, if your agency wants to streamline processes and improve your operations, our agency industry experts would happily walk you through the Deltek WorkBook total agency management system. Click the link to learn how Deltek WorkBook can help you manage your people, projects, and finances to grow your agency.

You Might Also Like:

Top Add-Ons for Your Agency Management System

Even if you’ve found an agency management system to help you manage your agency’s people, projects, and finances, chances are there’s still a handful of processes you’re looking to incorporate for easier collaboration. We take a look below at two common add-ons to agency management software to help streamline additional tasks and processes for your agency.

Connecting to Online Proofing Software

One major headache for digital and creative agencies of all sizes is churning through multiple rounds of creative review and approval with clients. At the top of most teams’ wish lists is to find a way to speed up the creative review process. Beyond improving client communication, a surefire way to reduce confusion and improve turnaround times is to leverage an online proofing solution. Many of these tools offer a free trial, and even feature connections to popular project management software like Jira or Deltek WorkBook. Here are top features to look for in an online proofing solution:

  • Upload multiple file types – flexibility is key, and your agency is likely to utilize the tool more if you can upload videos in addition to images and other types of content.
  • Easy collaboration with reviewers – any review and approval tool will only work if it’s easy for the reviewers to use in addition to your agency’s creative team. 
  • Tracking changes – it should be clear to both the creative team and reviewers which version to look at, and changes can be made even more quickly if teams are able to prioritize requests.

Integrating With a Media Buying Platform

Media planning and buying is a complex process, and even more so for agency finance leaders. It’s so important to get a clear view of media spend in order to better understand overall profitability and cash flow. By integrating your media buying platform with your overall agency management system, you will be able to manage billing and financials for all of your marketing campaigns in one central location. Reconciliations don’t have to be a painful process if your media spend invoices are automatically added to your financial management system, and eliminates errors that can come with manual file transfers. Improved real-time visibility will also make it easier to manage media buys and avoid potential overruns.

Handle the Rest With An Agency Management System

If your agency isn’t already leveraging a management system to gain greater visibility into resource management and cash flow, that might be the best place to start. Deltek WorkBook is a leading software solution purpose-built for agencies to better manage everything from utilization to profitability. Beyond streamlining your processes and projects from end to end, Deltek WorkBook also offers integrations with leading tools like Deltek ConceptShare for easy online proofing and FreeWheel’s Strata for managing media planning and buying. PCI’s agency experts would be happy to walk you through all the perks offered by Deltek WorkBook, and how it can improve your agency’s operations. We even offer implementation plans tailored for smaller boutique agencies. Contact us for a free WorkBook demo today!

You Might Also Like:

Agency Resource Management Essentials: Reporting and Forecasting

In Part 1 of our Agency Resource Management Essentials series, we covered the importance of resourcing your current projects. Once you’ve got the resources for all current work pinned down, it’s time to start looking at the data to check on overall productivity while forecasting to plan ahead for upcoming work. In Part 2 of our series, we will dig deeper into how to use reports and forecasts to bring further efficiency and profitability to your agency.

How to Track and Improve Resource Utilization

The key KPIs you’ll want to start with when reviewing your resources both center on utilization. Start with your actual utilization by calculating the number of hours on billable projects as a percentage of available hours per person. Then you’ll want to crunch the numbers on your planned utilization – a weekly view of your future workload. This number can be either total hours booked or upcoming estimated utilization. Beyond providing you with useful productivity metrics, having a strong grasp of your agency’s utilization will also help you to balance workloads, reducing burnout, as well as avoiding over-servicing your clients.

Potential problem #1: what if you can’t get accurate utilization numbers because your team drags their feet filling out timesheets? Timesheets must become a daily task. Before you drown under a rising tide of groans, keep in mind that daily timesheets are likely to be far more accurate than weekly ones. And if your team resists a daily mandate, it might be time to invest in software to make timesheet compliance easy and convenient – a tool that can even integrate directly with task management, calendars, and email.

Potential problem #2: what should you do if your agency’s utilization numbers are not where you’d like them to be? Don’t panic! Start with a resource overview: what is everyone working on, are their most valuable skills being leveraged, shuffle resources to different projects if that makes more sense. Next is to take a look at who is currently underutilized – what projects could use more support, or what skills do they have that line up well with current or future work. And last, check in with your project managers weekly to make sure that employees with available hours have billable work lined up.

Forecasting Future Capacity with Monthly Reports

Once you’re confident in your utilization, you’re on the right track to maximizing your agency’s profitability. But another key component to improving efficiency is resource planning, or forecasting your future capacity. This is most useful as a monthly process, checking in on the pipeline to plan for upcoming work. Don’t forget to loop in your Project Managers as well, to help you review workloads and planned utilization.

Automate Reporting and Increase Visibility with Agency Management Software

The most effective way to improve efficiency and increase visibility is to super-charge your reporting with a streamlined tool. The right agency management software can help you automate reporting and make it easier to understand productivity and utilization. Deltek WorkBook is a total agency management system that will give you end-to-end visibility into your business, and help you to better manage your projects, people, and finances. For smaller boutique agencies, check out our special MAC Attack quick-start package geared to help your small business with a customized implementation guided by our agency industry experts. Sign up for a demo of Deltek WorkBook today, and stay tuned for the next blog in our Resource Management Essentials Series: Rightsizing and Hiring.

You Might Also Like:

Top Tips to Improve Revenue Forecasting Accuracy for Your Agency

So what exactly is revenue forecasting? If you’ve heard the term but are not entirely sure, we’ll break it down for you: a revenue forecast is simply an estimate of your revenues over a set period of time, usually monthly or quarterly. It’s a powerful tool to help you plan ahead for resource management and build project estimates. Your agency’s revenue forecast should take into account past financial performance as well as your upcoming sales pipeline.

While it may be difficult to gaze into your crystal ball and predict the future, sitting down to build a revenue forecast is an important exercise. A properly utilized revenue forecast will help agency leaders make better decisions on everything from hiring to resource allocation to budgeting and results in stronger agency finances.

How to Improve the Accuracy of Your Revenue Forecasting

When you place a bet, you want as much accurate data as possible in order to make the right prediction. The same goes for revenue forecasting – your plan will only be as good as its inputs. Here are some tips to improve the accuracy of your revenue forecasts:

  1. Pinpoint capacity – knowing your actual utilization rate will help tremendously here. Evaluate current and estimated workloads to better understand how much work you’ll be able to commit to.
  2. Calculate expenses – a clear picture of current costs is a crucial element of a revenue forecast. Include everything: rent, payroll, software licenses, etc.
  3. Past project revenue – it’s easier to predict the future when you have a reliable picture of the past. Focus on the average revenue per project, so you aren’t deceived by outliers of projects that were extremely profitable or lost revenue.
  4. Involve the right people – this is where you lean on your resource managers and financial leaders. They should be able to quickly give you data on the current state of things, but don’t involve too many people or the process can get bogged down.
  5. Focus on the right level of detail – if compiling monthly forecasts is slowing you down, switch to a quarterly forecast instead. The most important factor here is that you review your forecast on a regular cadence, updating it often for better accuracy.

Put Revenue Forecasting Best Practices to Work

Deltek WorkBook’s total agency management system makes it easy to combine both your resource management and project estimates so you can quickly build accurate revenue forecasts. Sign up for our webinar and learn how WorkBook uses real-time data to create revenue forecasts and best practices for reviewing and producing the forecast. You’ll also get a step-by-step guide to the best configuration for your agency. Click here to sign up for the webinar.

You Might Also Like:

5 Reasons Deltek ProjectCon Is A Must Attend Event

Deltek ProjectCon 2023 will be taking place from October 16th – 18th at the Gaylord Palms Resort & Convention Center in Orlando, FL. As a Platinum Sponsor of this event, PCI is excited to be a part of this incredible event!

Deltek ProjectCon is the ultimate event for project-based business professionals looking for inspiration, education and collaboration. This unique three-day conference is filled with learning and networking opportunities that you do not want to miss! Here are the top 5 reasons why you absolutely can’t miss out on this amazing event. Trust us, it’s going to be epic!

  • Expand your Knowledge and Skills

The conference is designed to provide attendees with the latest insights and best practices in all areas. With over 300 sessions, you’ll uncover valuable tips and tricks, gain insider insights into upcoming product developments and witness inspiring success stories from organizations like yours.  

Make sure you attend three must-see sessions hosted by PCI!

CPSPON-10 – Elevate Your Subcontractor Game: Mastering the Art of Subcontractor Management

CPSPON-11 – Mastering the Indirect Rate Reconciliation Process

CPSPON-12 – Simplify Your Expense Management and Maximize Efficiency

DAS-03 – Achieving Scheduling Zen – How to Unleash the Power of WorkBook Resourcing Planning

  • Network with Like-Minded Professionals

Deltek ProjectCon brings together thousands of like-minded professionals. This provides an excellent opportunity to network with colleagues and make new connections! The conference offers numerous networking events as well as an expo hall where attendees can meet with leading vendors and service providers. Come meet PCI in the expo hall at booth 3!

  • Stay up-to-date on Industry Trends

Deltek’s offerings continues to grow and evolve, especially with the recent release of Costpoint 8.2. It is important for professionals to stay up-to-date on the newest features and enhancements to gain valuable insights from product experts. Hear tips and tricks from other users on how to get the most out of your Deltek experience.

  • Learn Directly from Deltek Experts

Deltek is filled with experts who are uniquely positioned to provide insights and guidance on how to get the most from their products. At Deltek ProjectCon, attendees can learn directly from these experts via in-depth training sessions. This provides unparalleled access to the people who know the products best and can help attendees optimize their use of Deltek software.

  • Have Fun While you Learn

While Deltek ProjectCon is a serious business event, it’s also designed to be fun and engaging. From social events like happy hours and networking receptions to interactive exhibits and live demonstrations, there’s plenty to see and do throughout the conference. This creates a dynamic and lively atmosphere that makes learning and networking more enjoyable and memorable.

We hope to see you there! Register now to attend!