Before you even begin to think about pitching your projects to anyone, I would strongly advise you to answer and identify the following questions:
– What is your target market? Do you know your target market, niche audience? Who is going to buy your product, idea or service?
– What are the benefits your target market can achieve by working with you or by buying your product?
– What problems are you going to solve for your target market?
– Do you have a category under which your product/offering can be featured? How can you describe your product?
– What results your market needs & wants that you can help them achieve?
– Have you got a few (2-3) keywords describing your product or offering that can be used for your marketing & promotional purposes?
– Have you checked out your competition to see what they do to promote their work or product?
Once you can comfortably answer the above questions, you are ready to start working on structuring your pitches. Having answered the questions above will make the whole pitching process more comfortable for you.
I admit, in my line of work I have pitched ideas without really knowing who I was pitching to, as I didn’t think that identifying the audience was relevant to me. However, on other occasions, I have also pitched after I did my homework and took the time to answer the above questions. The second method gave me clarity, and I knew exactly what I was talking about and to whom I was talking. Trying to make your ideas understood is very different to just having and developing them.
The first thing to know about pitches is that different kinds should be used under different circumstances.
You are not going to use all the pitches at the same time, and most likely you will have to adjust your pitch to your listener. It’s exactly like applying for a job when, for the best effect, you would use a different CV or covering letter for various positions. So, you are going to use different wording for pitching to someone from your industry and different wording for pitching to someone who doesn’t know that much about your business.