How do you get press coverage?
To get press coverage, find a story that a specific publication’s readers will care about, pitch it personally to the journalist who covers that subject at the right point in their planning, and give them the facts, people and photographs they need to publish it. Most businesses fall at the first step: they send announcements rather than stories.
This guide explains how to get press coverage, and media coverage more broadly, including radio and online, for a premium or Cotswold business. It is written for owners and marketing leads doing it themselves, and it is honest about what to expect.
Step 1: find your stories
A story is something new, surprising, useful or moving to people who have never heard of you. An announcement is something that matters to you. Journalists only run the first kind.
Most good businesses have more stories than they realise. They are usually hidden in the detail of how you work.
| What you have | The story in it | Who might run it |
|---|---|---|
| A new opening, menu, range or room | A launch with a date and a hook | Local news, food, travel and property desks |
| A founder with an unusual path or strong views | A profile or opinion piece | Business pages, trade titles, podcasts |
| Data you already collect (bookings, sales, enquiries) | A trend nobody else can see | National consumer and news desks |
| A restoration, heritage building or garden | A before-and-after feature | Country, interiors and regional glossy titles |
| A seasonal moment (lambing, harvest, game, Christmas) | A timely feature or picture story | Weekend supplements, glossies, gift guides |
| Expertise in your team (sommelier, head gardener, estate manager) | Expert comment and how-to features | Consumer and specialist titles, radio |
Test every idea with one question: why would this title’s readers care, and why now? If you cannot answer in a sentence, keep digging.
Step 2: choose the right titles and journalists
Coverage is only valuable if the right people see it. Start from your customers, not from the most famous titles. For a country-house hotel near Burford, the targets might be The Times travel pages, Condé Nast Traveller and Country Life. For a Cheltenham wealth manager, the FT weekend pages and a handful of trade titles. For a farm shop outside Stroud, it is as likely to be Cotswold Life, BBC Radio Gloucestershire and a well-read local newsletter.
Then build a list of 20 to 30 named journalists, not publications:
- Read the last few months of each title and note who writes about your subject.
- Note the sections and regular slots, such as the weekend round-up, the “where to eat now” column or the property pages.
- Include freelancers. A good deal of travel, food and interiors writing is commissioned from freelance writers who pitch ideas to editors themselves.
- Write one line on why your story suits each person. If you cannot write that line, take them off the list.
Media databases such as Roxhill, Muck Rack and Cision speed this up, but they still need the reading. The effort pays: Muck Rack found that 88% of journalists immediately discard pitches that miss their beat. Twenty journalists who fit beat five hundred who might.
Step 3: local first, or national?
For most Cotswold businesses the answer is both, in that order. Local and regional coverage is easier to win, reaches people who can actually visit, and shows national journalists that a story has legs.
Local media still has real reach. Ofcom found that 93% of people aged 16 and over use at least one form of local news. Journalists think locally too: in the same Muck Rack survey, 78% said a pitch is relevant when it directly affects their audience’s community.
The titles worth knowing include Cotswold Life, the Cotswold Journal, the Wilts and Gloucestershire Standard, Gloucestershire Live, the Oxford Mail, SoGlos and BBC Radio Gloucestershire. The local press also watches the nationals. The Cotswold Journal reported Condé Nast Traveller’s 2026 list of the best hotels in the Cotswolds, so a single national mention can become several local ones.
National coverage needs a bigger angle: a trend, a number, a first, or something that says how people live now. “Farm shop opens cookery school” is a local story. “Farm shop gives a quarter of its cookery places to state-school students” starts to look like a national one, especially with evidence about young people and cooking skills to back it up.
Step 4: work to the right lead times
Different media plan on very different timescales, and missing the window is one of the most common reasons a good story goes nowhere.
| Type of media | How far ahead they work | What it means for you |
|---|---|---|
| Online news and daily papers | Hours to days | Pitch as the news happens, or shortly before under embargo |
| Weekly local papers | Days | Know their deadline and send well before it |
| Weekend supplements | Weeks | Pitch features and seasonal ideas early |
| Monthly glossy magazines | Months | Pitch seasonal stories long before the season |
| Broadcast | Hours for news, far longer for features | Have a spokesperson ready at short notice |
Monthly magazines catch most people out. A spring garden opening is a winter pitch, and a festive menu is a summer one. For Christmas gift guides, the media database Roxhill notes that glossy magazines typically work to a three to four-month lead, and luxury periodicals six or eight months, while some newspapers work right up to the wire. Check each title’s timing rather than assuming.
The Cotswold calendar helps. The Cheltenham Festival in March, Badminton in May, the wedding season, harvest and Christmas all attract predictable coverage, so you can plan stories around them months in advance.
Step 5: write a pitch email that gets read
The pitch is a short personal email, and it matters more than the press release. Muck Rack’s 2026 findings, as reported by The PR Net, are that journalists prefer one-to-one email pitches under 200 words, sent before noon, with one timely follow-up.
A good pitch has five parts:
- A subject line that is the story, not “Press release” or “Exciting news”.
- The story in one sentence, in the first line.
- Why it suits this journalist, referring honestly to what they cover.
- What you can offer: images, interviews, a visit, data.
- Your name and mobile number.
Here is an example. It is fictional and uses the same invented farm shop as our guide on how to write a press release.
Subject: Cotswold farm shop’s new cookery school gives a quarter of places to state-school students
Hi Sarah,
A farm shop near Stow-on-the-Wold is opening a cookery school on 17 October where every class starts in the field, and one in four places goes free to sixth-formers from local state schools.
I thought it might suit your weekend food pages, given your recent piece on young people and cooking. The owners, Harriet and Sam Cole, started the free places after noticing how few of their younger customers cook from scratch.
Harriet and head tutor Tom Aske are happy to talk, we have high-resolution images of the barn and a class in progress, and you would be very welcome to join a session.
The release is below. Do let me know if you need anything else.
Best wishes, [Name] [Mobile]
It is under 150 words, it is about the reader rather than the business, and it gives the journalist everything needed to say yes.
Step 6: offer reactive comment
Not all coverage starts with your own news. Every day journalists write stories that need an expert voice, often within hours: a wine merchant on English sparkling wine, an estate agent on prime property prices, a hotelier on staffing, a garden designer on a hosepipe ban.
To win these opportunities:
- Choose three to five subjects you can speak about with real authority, and stick to them.
- Watch the news each morning, and the journalist request services, such as #journorequest on X, ResponseSource and Qwoted.
- Reply fast with a ready-to-use quote of two or three sentences: a clear view and a fact, with your name, title and business.
- Keep a good headshot ready to send.
Reactive comment is one of the most reliable ways to build a profile, especially for founders. It is the core of our founder and thought leadership PR.
Step 7: invest in photography
Muck Rack’s survey found high-resolution images among the things journalists value most in a pitch. For lifestyle titles, a strong photograph can be the difference between a paragraph and a page.
Commission a professional photographer and build a library you can send on request:
- people at work, not posed rows of staff
- the place in each season, including the Cotswolds out of summer
- close-up detail of products, food, materials and craft
- landscape and portrait versions, with space around the subject for a headline
- captions and a photographer credit for every image, shared by link
Step 8: build relationships, not a mailing list
Journalists remember who made their job easier. Reply quickly, answer the phone, get facts right and never mislead. Say so when a story is not right for them, and point them to someone better placed if you can. Do not ask to approve their copy, and do not chase for changes after publication unless there is a genuine factual error.
If you host a journalist for a stay or a meal, make it clear there are no strings attached. Some titles pay their own way and others accept hosted visits and say so. Either way, the decision to write is theirs.
Can you get free press coverage?
Yes. Earned coverage is free in the sense that you never pay a publication for it. It costs time, good photography and sometimes hospitality. If a publication asks for money to feature you, that is advertising or an advertorial. It may have a place in your marketing, but it is not press coverage, and paid links in it should be marked as sponsored under Google’s spam policies.
What to expect, and how to measure it
Be realistic. Most pitches receive no reply. In Cision’s 2026 survey, 72% of journalists said fewer than a quarter of the pitches they receive are relevant. The bar is high, but a well-targeted pitch stands out precisely because so few are.
- Timing varies. A local story can run within days. National features often take months of planning and relationship building.
- Nothing is guaranteed. Journalists decide what runs, what it says and whether it links to you.
- Consistency counts. One article rarely changes a business. A steady run of coverage in the right titles over a year builds a reputation.
Measure what matters to the business:
- coverage in the titles on your list, judged by audience fit rather than count
- whether your name, place and key message appeared accurately
- links earned, and referral traffic from them
- searches for your brand name, and rankings for the searches that bring customers
- enquiries and bookings, by asking every new customer how they heard of you
- what AI assistants such as ChatGPT and Gemini say when asked about your area and sector
Ignore advertising value equivalents, which put a notional price on coverage. The industry’s own measurement framework, AMEC’s Barcelona Principles, says invalid measures such as AVEs should not be used.
When to get help
Everything in this guide can be done in-house with time and persistence. If you would rather have senior people find the stories and handle the pitching, our PR and press office service does exactly that, and our digital PR service adds the links and search visibility. When you are ready, get in touch and we will tell you honestly where we think your stories could land.