The Best Time To Pitch Your Product Or ServiceThe Best Time To Pitch Your Product Or Service

One of the most popular questions I am asked is when is the best time and/or day to pitch a tech product or service to bloggers and reporters. There are absolutely better times than others and I'd like to share my thoughts and ideas as you move closer to launch. In future columns, we will explore the right content to include in a pitch.This week is CES and Macworld and is a perfect example of a week where you wouldn't want to pitch your product or service. A large number of reporters are in Las Vegas and your e-mails will go unnoticed and probably unanswered. Same thing goes for any week that a major conference is going on around the world. Some other conferences to consider scheduling around include: SXSW, DEMO, ad:tech, Web 2.0 Expo, etc. Naturally, you will want to look for conferences that match the technology demographic that you are pitching to and avoid those times.

Once you get past removing the days in the month that conferences are in session, the next thing to decide on is which specific days and times are best to send out your pitch. I receive between 20 to 30 pitches a day on average over at CenterNetworks. My personal preference is not to wake up and have pitches in my mailbox. I like product or service pitches to come in during the day and the weekend is actually a great time to send in a product pitch. I know the weekend sounds odd but it's one of the few times in a week when there's usually less news and other e-mails hitting my mailbox and I can actually spend more time reviewing the pitch and/or checking out the product or service. My guess is that most reporters actually would prefer not to get pitches over the weekend.

In terms of days of the week, I would suggest staying away from Monday or Friday because many reporters return to the office on Monday, and are hit with many news releases and other e-mails. Friday also is typically a no-no as many reporters are winding down for the week. What you don't want is for your e-mail to sit in a reporter's mailbox all weekend and get pushed down in the new items list to the point where they don't see it on first glance at their new items.

My suggestion is to make a list of the blogs and news outlets you want to cover your product or service. Figure out what time zone they are located in. Take a look at when the reporter or blogger posts during the day. Once you get that matrix completed, you now are armed with the information needed as to when to pitch. Gone are the days of sending out 100 pitches one after another. Take the few extra minutes and pitch at the right time based on your newly created matrix.

Figuring out the best time to pitch a product or service reminds me of the days of faxing a resume to a company. It was a game to decide what was the best time to fax to make sure your resume would appear on the top of the pile. But spending the time to do a little research could easily mean the difference between getting reviewed on the sites you are targeting versus not getting covered at all.