Try my PR story pitch probability calculator (or how to use maths to show why "less is more" in media relations).

According to Cision’s 2019 Global State of the Media Report, most journalists (75pc) say that fewer than a quarter of the pitches they receive are relevant or useful.

In other words, less than 1 in 4 PR pitches have a possibility of even being considered as the basis for a story.

So let’s consider this as a probability problem.

Being charitable, if you have a 1 in 4 chance of creating a relevant or useful story pitch, how does that probability vary given the number of journalists you pitch to and the number of successful pitches you are seeking?

Let’s assume you only pitch to one journalist.

By definition, you have a 1 in 4 or 25pc probability that the journalist will find your story pitch useful or relevant (and that doesn’t mean they will run a story. But it is a necessary condition for getting a story published).

But what if you pitch the story to 2 journalists? What are the odds that both will find it relevant.

The answer is 1 in 16 or a measly 6.25pc.  

What about if I pitch my story to 10 journalists? What are the chances that one of them will find it interesting? Now my odds go up to just over 1 in 5 or around 19pc.

In fact, my chances of getting two of those 10 journalists to find it interesting goes up 28pc.

Or just over 1 in 3.

Which raises an interesting question. Is there an optimal number of journalists you should pitch to in order to try and generate a given number of story pitches that would be deemed relevant or useful?

If anyone with superior mathematical capabilities is out there, please let me know in the comments. In the meantime, I’ve created a Google Sheet that allows you to play around with the numbers yourself.

The spreadsheet makes use of the binomial distribution function and is very simple to set up (you can do this in Excel too).

The function comprises four elements. The number of successful “trials” (in this case, success is a story pitch deemed useful by a journalist). The total number of “trials” (the number of journalists pitched to). The likelihood of success (the probability that a journalist will find the story useful). And finally, whether you want the cumulative probability ie the chances that the result will be up to and including the number of successful trials. In this case, I’ve set this to false, so we are only looking at the specific success amount).

So back to the original question. Is there an optimal number of journalists you should pitch to in order to generate X amount of relevant story pitches?

Let’s imagine I’d like to get 5 journalists to find my story pitch relevant or interesting.

Looking at the spreadsheet, we can see that if I pitch to 19 or 20 journalists, then I have a roughly 20pc chance of achieving that. If I pitch 30 or more journalists the probabilities tail off. Even pitching just 18 journalists won't have the same likelihood of getting my desired result of 5 interested journalists.

For example, the chances of getting 5 journalists interested out of 100 pitches is around 1 in 10 million. My odds of winning the lottery are about 1 in 14 million. But the pay off if I win there is many millions of pounds. And my stake is only ￡2. The odds that I’d get that level of payback from my 5 journalists finding my story interesting is far more remote. And my "stake" for my story pitch is far more likely in the region of 00s or 000s of ￡￡￡s.

Which brings us to another consideration. How much resource am I investing in my story pitch and what is the return/reward I will get if it is successful? Conversely, what is my risk exposure if I don’t get the result I want?

Clearly any story pitch will require some level of investment in terms of time and money. Let’s say we’ve spent ￡1000 to develop the story idea. Pitching 100 journalists is going to add more to the investment made than by just pitching say 20 journalists.

So if I can see that I have more chance of generating a successful outcome by pitching far fewer journalists and using less investment resource, then surely that is worth doing?

Equally, I have a sense of what I stand to lose if I’m not successful. There is an 80pc chance I won’t get 5 journalists out of the 20 pitched to find my story interesting (if I'm targeting 100 journalists I would be better off spending my ￡1000 on lottery tickets - my odds would be reduced to 1 in 28000).

In other words, I have an 80pc chance that I will lose my ￡1000. If I’m betting ￡1000 pounds at odds of 5 to 1, I’d want to know that I’m going to get ￡5000 or more as the reward for my risk.

Before anyone starts poking huge holes in any of the above, I am well aware that this post needs to come with a string of caveats. The idea that any story pitch has an equal 1 in 4 chance of being deemed relevant is clearly open to question. Many would say that an obviously irrelevant pitch has 0pc chance of being looked at. 

And the 1 in 4 success rate only applies to a story pitch being considered. The number of pitches that actually translate into a piece of coverage will be even smaller (having said that, the binomial distribution can be amended accordingly with the correct probability, say, to 1 in 100 or 0.01pc).

In spite of all this, I think there is something we can draw from the PR Pitch Probability calculator. Many PRs have long argued that it makes sense to invest more effort in developing a properly differentiated story pitch and then taking the time to pitch it to a smaller target group of journalists rather than simply blasting it out to as many titles as possible.

Perhaps thinking in terms of probabilities and bets may be helpful to PR professionals in improving their ability to allocate resources efficiently as well demonstrate the worth and value of their work.

Let me know what you think in the comments!