Press Placements: What They Are, How to Earn Them, and What to Do With One

A press placement is any appearance of your company in a publication: a feature, a mention in someone else's article, a quote in a news story, a contributed piece, or a spot in a "best of" roundup. You get one of two ways. You pay for it, through a placement vendor or the outlet's sponsored content desk, or you earn it, by giving an editor a reason to include you. This page covers the kinds of placement, where earned placements actually land, how to get them, and what to do with one once it is live.

Six kinds of press placement

"Press placement" gets used for everything from a front-page story to a line in a newsletter. They are not worth the same, and they are not won the same way:

Features are what most people picture, and they are the hardest to get: a journalist needs news, and most companies have news a few times a year at most. Quotes are the fastest route into large outlets. Roundups and contextual mentions are the quiet majority, and as the data below shows, they are where most earned placements come from.

Paid or earned

Any of the six can be bought somewhere. Placement vendors sell features and contributed articles on news sites, and many blogs will add a product to a roundup for a fee. What changes is who decided. An editor who chose to include you is vouching for you; a sponsored slot is an advertisement, and outlets that label it honestly will say so on the page.

We compared what the paid route costs, vendor by vendor, in our guide to media placement agencies. The short version: prices run from $49 for one article to $5,000 and more for a national outlet, and the guarantee covers publication, not readers. The rest of this page is about the earned route.

How to get press placements without paying

The method differs by kind of placement, but the order of work is the same:

1. Pick the articles, not the outlets. Search for the roundups, alternatives posts and guides your buyers read: "best [category] tools", "[competitor] alternatives", "how to [job your product does]". Each result is a specific page with a specific writer.
2. Check fit before anything else. Would a reader of that article be better served if you were in it? If you have to stretch, skip it.
3. Find the person who wrote it. The byline, the author page, or the site's editor. A generic contact form rarely reaches them.
4. Pitch that article. Say which piece, where you fit, and why a reader would care. Our listicle outreach guide covers roundups specifically; getting listed in SaaS roundups covers software.
5. Follow up once or twice. Writers are busy, and a short reminder after a few days is normal. Our follow-up templates keep it short.
6. Say no to the price. Some writers will quote a fee instead. On the media placement page we counted how often that happens: a third of the publishers who answered MentionAgent pitches asked for money. Decline politely and move on.

For expert quotes, the route is different: answer journalist requests quickly and specifically. Our HARO pitch templates and Qwoted alternatives cover the platforms. For features, you need news and a list of the right journalists; see how to pitch to media and building a media list.

What the pitch needs

A placement pitch that works is short and about the reader, not about you. It names the article, it says where you fit (the section, the gap, the reader question you answer), and it gives the writer everything needed to add you in one pass: one sentence on what you do, who it is for, and a link. It does not ask for a link or a "backlink" in the first message, and it does not pretend to be a fan of a site the sender has never read.

Offering something in return helps with independent sites. A mention on your own blog, a share to your audience, or a mention in one of your own roundups gives a small publisher a reason to say yes that is not money. That exchange is how MentionAgent structures its deals.

Where earned press placements actually land

MentionAgent pitches site owners and editors for editorial mentions on behalf of its users, and records which conversations end with a live mention. Between 7 March and 24 September 2026, 107 publisher sites placed a mention without a fee. We sorted the 93 target articles whose title we had by what kind of page they were:

Roundups dominate for a practical reason: a roundup already exists to name products, so adding one more costs the writer a paragraph, and a writer who keeps a list current has a standing reason to hear about new options. A how-to guide needs a natural spot for your product; a personal essay rarely has one. About half of the "other" placements came from niche sites where the product fitted the writer's own subject, such as sober travel blogs for a sobriety app.

The titles also show how much these writers care about freshness. 44 of the 93 named the current year, and several named the previous one. A roundup titled for this year gets updated, which is exactly the moment a writer is open to adding something.

How big the sites are

82 of the 107 sites had an Ahrefs Domain Rating on record when they were found. The spread:

The median was 31.5: mostly small and mid-sized independent publications, with a real minority of large ones. A quarter sat at DR 60 or above, the range placement vendors sell as premium, among them several SaaS company blogs and marketing publications. Size is not the point, though. A mention on a DR 25 blog that your buyers actually read, in an article that ranks for the query they search, does more than a sponsored page on a large site nobody visits.

What to do with a press placement

A placement nobody sees after publication is half wasted. Once it is live:

• Put it where buyers look. An "as seen in" or "featured in" row on your homepage and pricing page, with the outlet's name, not a vague badge.
• Use it in sales. A link to a respected roundup that names you answers "who else uses this?" better than your own claims.
• Share it and thank the writer. Sharing the article sends the writer readers, which makes you the kind of company they add again at the next update.
• Link to it. Linking from your site to an article that mentions you helps readers find it, and helps that page stay visible.
• Ask for a link if there is none. If the mention is unlinked, a polite note usually fixes it; see unlinked brand mentions.
• Check it later. Roundups get rewritten. A mention can drop out of an update, and the sooner you notice, the easier it is to get back in.

Measuring press placements

Count placements you would be glad to show a buyer, not placements in total. Useful signals, roughly in order of how much they mean: referral visits and signups from the article, whether the article ranks for the query it targets, whether AI assistants name you when asked the question the article answers, and whether the placement carries a followed link. A roundup that ranks on page one for "best [your category]" and names you is worth more than ten articles nobody finds. Our digital PR examples show what strong placements look like in practice.

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