How to get press coverage without followers: PR for small businesses

You do not need 10,000 followers to get into a newspaper. If you want to know how to get press coverage as a small business, it comes down to three things: a story the journalist’s readers will care about, the right journalist, and a pitch short enough to read on a phone between two deadlines.

I am not a PR specialist. I barely tried, and I still got a friend who is a personal trainer featured in the French magazine Match. What made it work, I think, is what cold emailing taught me about copywriting and targeting: write little, write to the right person, and give them a reason to answer.

“I have 10k followers on Instagram” or “this magazine published a whole article about my business”: the second sentence wins every time, with customers and, as you will see, with search engines and AI assistants too. This article is part of my guide to getting more clients, which compares the marketing channels open to a small business.

Why press coverage is worth more than followers

An article is someone else vouching for you. A journalist picked your story, checked it and put the title’s name next to yours. Anyone can buy followers; an editor’s choice to write about you is much harder to fake. That proof works in four places.

• With customers. “As featured in” on your website, in a proposal or on a sales call answers the question every new customer asks themselves: can I trust them?
• With Google. The online version of an article can link to your website, which gives you a backlink from a news site. Google says it uses links as a signal when it judges how relevant a page is.
• With AI assistants. When Ahrefs studied 75,000 brands, the factor most closely linked to visibility in Google’s AI Overviews was the number of web pages mentioning the brand, with a correlation of 0.664, ahead of links using the brand’s name (0.527) and searches for the brand (0.392), according to Ahrefs’ study. A correlation does not prove cause, but the pattern is hard to miss: what other sites say about you feeds the answers. My guides on getting recommended by ChatGPT and on generative engine optimisation cover the rest of that work.
• On social media. An article is content you can share the week it comes out and quote for years. If you are still deciding where to post it, my guide to the best social media for a small business will help.

What makes a small business worth an article

Journalists do not cover businesses; they cover stories. “We have launched a new website” is an advert. “A bakery gives every unsold loaf to three food banks, every evening” is a story. The test is simple: a reader who has never heard of you should still want to read the article.

Angles that work for small businesses:

• A first: the first business of its kind in your town, or a new way of doing things in your trade.
• A figure from your own work that says something about the area: the number of requests you had during a heatwave, or what customers ask about most this year.
• A person: a career change, an apprentice you trained, a founder who came back to their home town.
• A link to the news: a new law, a price rise, a strike, the weather. Journalists need local voices to explain national news to their readers.
• Useful advice at the right moment: what to check before winter, before a tax deadline, before the summer holidays.
• An event or a cause: a charity day, a partnership with a school, a free workshop.

Pick one angle per pitch. A pitch with five angles reads like a brochure, and the journalist will not do the sorting for you.

How to get press coverage: local first, then regional, then national

Start with your town’s paper, then the region, then the country. It is not modesty: each step makes the next one easier.

1. Local. Your local weekly paper, the local news website, your BBC local radio station or a community station. They need local stories every week, and a local business is exactly what they cover. Their website usually gives a newsdesk email or a form for sending a story.
2. Regional. With a first article to show, approach a regional daily such as the Manchester Evening News or the Yorkshire Post, or the regional news programmes of the BBC and ITV. The journalist who looks you up now finds proof instead of silence.
3. National. National titles want a wider angle: a trend your figures illustrate, advice that applies across the country, a person whose story speaks to everyone. By then you have practice, a press page and articles to point to.

Alongside that ladder, think about the trade press: the magazines your customers read for their job. For a business that sells to other businesses, an article in a title such as The Grocer or Construction News can matter more than one in a national daily, because every reader works in the trade you sell to.

How to find the right journalist

Targeting is the half of cold emailing that people skip, and the press is no different: a great story sent to the wrong person is a deleted email.

1. Read the title: go through two or three weeks of its articles, online or in print, and note who writes about subjects close to yours. The byline is your contact, not the editor.
2. Find their address. Many titles show the journalist’s email under their articles or on a contact page; otherwise, use the newsdesk address or the journalist’s professional profile on LinkedIn.
3. Note one recent article of theirs in a single line. It will become the first sentence of your pitch.
4. Keep the list short. Ten well-chosen journalists are worth more than two hundred addresses from a bought list.

For a local paper, the newsdesk address is fine: someone there passes stories to the right reporter. For trade and national titles, write to a person.

How to write a pitch a journalist can use

A pitch is a short email that offers a story to one journalist. It is not a press release, which is a formal announcement written for everyone, and it is not an advert. The rules are the ones I use for cold emails: short, plain text, one clear request.

Prepare the page the journalist will check

Before you write, make sure the journalist can check you in thirty seconds. You do not need a big website: a single page that shows your work is enough, and my comparison of a landing page vs a website will help you choose. The page needs who you are in two lines, high-resolution photos of your work and of you that can be downloaded, a few key figures, any past coverage and a mobile number. A journalist will look you up before replying, and an empty profile with no website makes that check harder.

Write five lines, not five paragraphs

In cold emailing, my first email is three lines at most: who I am, and what I would like the person to do. People hate long emails from strangers they never asked for anything, and journalists are no exception. A pitch can be a little longer, but not much:

• The subject line is the story, in a few words, the way a headline would put it.
• The first sentence says why it is for them: their readers, their section, an article they wrote recently.
• The facts: what, where, when, and one figure.
• What you can offer: an interview, photos, a visit, a customer happy to talk.
• Your mobile number, with an invitation to call.

That last point comes straight from my cold email campaigns. I put the phone number in the email and invite people to call, and they do: a call is quicker than writing back, and people like talking to a real person. A journalist on deadline often feels the same.

Here is what it can look like for a bakery:

Subject: [Town] bakery gives every unsold loaf to food banks

Hello [first name],

I read your piece on food bank demand in [town] last week. Since
January, my bakery on [street] has given every unsold loaf to three
local food banks, collected each evening by their volunteers.

You are welcome to join an evening collection, and I can put you in
touch with the food banks. The quickest way is to call me on
[mobile number]. Photos are on the page below.

[Your name], [business name]
[link to the page that shows your work]

I never put links in cold emails: they go out in volume, and plain text delivers better. A pitch is different. You send a handful of personal emails from your usual address to people who need to check your work, so one link, to that page, is fine. Leave out attachments and put the photos on the page instead. For more on short emails that get answers, MLK Leadhunters has a guide on how to write a cold email that gets replies.

Follow up once, then move on

If you hear nothing after three or four working days, send one short follow-up in the same thread, ideally with something new: a photo, a date, a figure. In cold emailing I send up to three emails, because busy people often answer the third. Journalists are pitched every day, so one follow-up is the limit; after that, offer the story to another title.

Do you need Prowly or another PR tool?

Prowly is PR software: a database of journalists and media outlets, plus tools to write, send and track your pitches. It has belonged to Semrush since 2020, and Prowly’s own site now presents it as Semrush’s AI PR Toolkit. According to Semrush’s help pages, you can:

• search a database of more than 600,000 journalist profiles (some Semrush pages say over a million) and keep your contacts in lists;
• draft pitches and press releases with AI, send them from a connected Gmail or Outlook account, and track opens, clicks and replies;
• see which outlets AI assistants cite most often on a topic, and who writes for them;
• monitor mentions of your business in the news, on blogs, Reddit and YouTube, with alerts and summaries.

In my view, PR platforms like this are really valuable when you want to find journalists who could be interested in your services, your story or your products. They are priced for PR teams and agencies, though. At the time of writing (October 2026), Semrush’s pricing page lists three plans in US dollars: Base at $149 (about £112) a month, Pro at $279 (about £210) and Business at $499 (about £375), each with a seven-day free trial. Monitoring your mentions needs Pro or above, and the page may show the annual-billing price, so check the billing period before you pay.

Who it suits: a business that pitches several titles every month, goes after national or trade press beyond its own area, or launches a product with a long list of journalists to reach.

Who can wait: anyone going for a first article in the local paper. The newsdesk address is on the paper’s website, and for monitoring, a free Google Alert on your business name tells you when it appears online.

A subscription will not find your story for you, and an AI draft is only as good as the story you give it. If you are tempted to pay for a tool before your first pitch, read my piece on shiny object syndrome first.

After the article: make it work for you

• Thank the journalist in two lines, and offer to help again as a source on your subject.
• Add it to your website: a press page, or an “As featured in” line with the title’s name and a link to the article.
• Share it on your social accounts and on LinkedIn, mentioning the journalist where it feels natural.
• Reuse it in your sales material: proposals, quotes, your about page, your email signature.
• Pitch the next level, with this article as proof. Keep a simple sheet of who you pitched, when, about what, and the answer.

Your first pitch this week: a checklist

1. Write your story in one sentence that a stranger would want to read.
2. Choose one local title and go through its last two or three weeks of articles.
3. Find the journalist who covers your subject, or the newsdesk address.
4. Check that your website or press page shows your work, good photos and a mobile number.
5. Write five lines: the story as the subject line, why them, the facts, what you offer, your number.
6. Send it in plain text from your usual address, with one link and no attachments.
7. Follow up once after three or four working days, with something new.
8. When the article is out, thank the journalist, share it, add it to your site and pitch the next level.

Apart from waiting for answers, most of this takes an afternoon. Spend the longest on step 1: when the story is right, the other seven steps are routine.