Podcast pitching plays by a different set of rules, and traditional media strategies don’t always translate. In this blog, PodPitch co-founder Parker Olson shares insights from over 800,000 pitches to help PR pros avoid common pitfalls and improve their hit rate.
Even the most senior media pros stumble when they move from traditional outlets to podcasts.
From analyzing over 800,000+ pitches go out through PodPitch, we see the same blind spots surface again and again. Here’s a 2 min list of data-proven tips to keep your next pitch from getting ghosted:
1. Leading with the guest’s résumé instead of the audience’s takeaway
The #1 thing a smart Podcaster cares about isn’t a LinkedIn profile, it’s stories that serve their listeners. The fastest way to lose them is a bio-heavy opener that never answers, “What’s in it for my audience?”
Flip the script: open with a concrete listener benefit (“Your SaaS-founder audience will learn how to cut churn 30% in 90 days—no extra head-count”)
2. Forgetting the second sale: episode promotion
Hosts hustle for every download. If you show up without a way to hep the show grow, your pitch will likely get passed over for someone else who will. Spell out the assets you’ll share (newsletter blurb to 50k subscribers, LinkedIn carousel, TikTok clip, etc.).
Cross-promotion can be the tie-breaker between two equally good experts.
3. Treating podcasts like a press-release blast
Copy-pasted form letters scream “spray & pray.” Great pitches reference the host’s recent episodes, listener demographics, and content gaps. In our dataset, hyper-personalized pitches deliver 4.3× the booking rate of generic ones.
PodPitch’s relevance engine mines 50+ show signals to auto-recommend podcasts AND auto-draft personalized intros at scale.
A PR Net member said this verbatim when seeing the platform for the first time:
“This makes me so mad I’m paying for other platforms—I wish they had this feature, and I’m paying them way more than what you’re charging”
PodPitch reverse-engineers what makes hosts say “yes” by analyzing more than 800,000 real pitches across industries. The result: automatic, data-driven outreach that nails audience value, promotion commitments, and hyper-personalization (no spreadsheets or annual research necessary)
When you’re ready to scale your podcast pitching effectiveness, check out a demo of PodPitch
