How to Build a Media Plan for a Product Launch Using Outset Media Index

A PR lead has six weeks before the product ships, a budget that has already been signed off, and one job: produce a media plan for product launch day that leadership will approve. That document decides where the budget goes, which outlets get pitched, and how the campaign will be judged after it lands. Plans built from instinct and last-campaign defaults look familiar but rarely survive scrutiny. Strong ones get built from structured inputs. The difference shows up in the report afterwards. This walkthrough covers how a PR lead uses Outset Media Index to build a launch plan from the ground up. The same workflow works for a FinTech startup launching a payments product, a Web3 project releasing a new protocol, or a SaaS company rolling out a major feature. What a Launch Media Plan Actually Requires A launch plan is not a list of 30 outlets ranked by traffic. It is a structured answer to four questions: What the launch is trying to achieve in business terms Which audience needs to see it for that outcome to happen Which outlets reach that audience credibly How each phase of the launch maps to a different set of outlet choices Without those four answers, what looks like a product launch PR plan is a media wish list. The job of building a media plan worth defending is to answer all four with consistent inputs across the shortlist. The Three-Phase Model A product launch PR campaign runs in three phases, each with its own goal, audience, and outlet priorities. The same launch needs different outlets at different moments. Pre-Launch Positioning (Weeks 1 to 4) The goal is credibility groundwork with outlets that shape industry conversation, not retail awareness. The audience is analysts, researchers, and sector journalists who set the framing that other outlets pick up later. OMI signals that matter most here: LLM Referral Share (%) and the overall GRP rating. Pre-launch placements need to land in outlets. AI search engines will surface when readers later search for the product or category. The LLM Referral Share figure shows how much of an outlet's traffic already arrives from AI tools like ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, and others. Launch-Window Blitz (Launch Day Plus or Minus Five Days) The goal shifts to coordinated coverage in outlets that drive immediate reach. The audience widens to target users, prospective customers, and broader sector readers. OMI signals that matter most here: Average Traffic (3M), Reprints (Min/Max), and GEO. Launch-week coverage has to travel. The Reprints range shows how many times an outlet's stories are typically republished, which signals how far a launch placement will move past the original page. Post-Launch Follow-Through (Four Weeks After Launch) The goal is sustained narrative momentum and conversion-stage visibility. The audience narrows to users in the consideration phase and AI-search users entering the category for the first time. OMI signals that matter most here: Reading Behaviour, the CRP convenience rating, and LLM Referral Share again. Reading Behaviour shows whether readers actually pause, scroll, and absorb the message instead of bouncing on arrival. How to Use OMI Filters at Each Phase The filters and scores weigh differently across the three phases. The table below maps the launch media plan to its operational priorities: Phase OMI signals to weight What changes in the filter Pre-Launch LLM Referral Share (%), GRP Filter for AI-search presence and outlets with strong overall performance Launch Window Average Traffic (3M), Reprints (Min/Max), GEO Filter for reach and content travel; weight GEO when the launch is geographically targeted Post-Launch Reading Behaviour, CRP, LLM Referral Share (%) Filter for outlets where readers actually engage and coverage is easy to follow through on The mapping is what makes a PR plan for a product launch defensible. Each outlet on the shortlist earns its place through signals tied to the phase it serves. Building the Shortlist: From 340+ Outlets to 12 The narrowing logic is where the plan gets practical. OMI's database holds more than 340 outlets covering Web3 (crypto, blockchain gaming, AI, broader tech) and adjacent verticals. The narrowing happens in four steps: Media Type and Types of Coverage. A FinTech payments launch narrows the set to financial services and FinTech outlets. A Web3 protocol launch narrows to crypto and Web3 outlets. A SaaS launch narrows to B2B tech outlets. The first cut typically removes 60% to 70% of the database. Unique Score threshold. OMI's Unique Score is a normalised 1-to-10 measure of how strong an outlet's unique readership is. Setting a working floor on the Unique Score isolates outlets with genuine audience scale. GEO. If the launch has a geographic priority, filtering by GEO and GEO Breakdown narrows the set further. OMI covers 100+ GEOs. Composite ranking by phase weight. The remaining 30 to 50 outlets get ranked by the signals tied to the phase the launch is in, producing a launch outlet shortlist of approximately 12 publications worth pitching. The 12 are the operational core of the plan: where pitches go, where coverage gets tracked, and where the report finds its evidence. How to Structure Post-Launch Reporting The plan does not end at placement. It ends when the report's leadership reads. The same outlet-level data used to build the plan structures the report on what worked. For each placement, the report shows the OMI signals the outlet held pre-launch, the coverage that was published, and the downstream signals that followed: referral traffic, branded search lift, and LLM Referral Share movement. The connection between inputs and outputs is what makes the plan defensible and the next launch faster to plan. Outset Data Pulse fits here as the market-context layer. Whether the sector was quiet or noisy during launch week affects how placement numbers should be read. Why This Workflow Beats the Default The default behaviour is to pitch the same outlets as last campaign, sort by name recognition, and hope for coverage. The structured workflow filters by signals, narrows by phase priority, and builds the plan around what drives launch outcomes. A product launch PR strategy built on signal-weighted shortlists compounds across launches. Each report becomes the baseline for the next one. FAQ What goes into a media plan for a product launch? A launch media plan answers four questions: what the launch needs to achieve, who needs to see it, which outlets reach that audience credibly, and how each phase of the launch maps to different outlet priorities. The plan organises outlet selection by pre-launch, launch window, and post-launch phases. How long should a product launch PR campaign run? A typical launch campaign runs eight to ten weeks total: four weeks of pre-launch positioning, a launch window of seven to ten days, and four weeks of post-launch follow-through. The exact length depends on category complexity and how much pre-launch credibility groundwork the product requires. Which OMI signals matter most for launch outlet selection? Different signals matter at different phases. Pre-launch weights, LLM Referral Share and the GRP rating. Launch-window weights Average Traffic, Reprints, and GEO. Post-launch weight:s Reading Behaviour, CRP, and LLM Referral Share. The shortlist reflects the phase the launch is in. How does OMI help build a launch media plan? OMI gives outlet-level data across 340+ publications. PR teams filter the database by Media Type, Unique Score, GEO, and other dimensions, then rank the remaining set by phase-specific signal weights. The output is a defensible shortlist of approximately 12 outlets to pitch. What is the difference between a launch media plan and a regular PR plan? A regular PR plan supports ongoing visibility across a category. A launch plan is event-driven, runs on a compressed timeline, and shifts outlet priorities across three phases. Launch plans need stronger phase logic and tighter shortlists because the campaign has a defined start, peak, and end. Disclaimer: This article is for informational purposes only and should not be considered legal, financial, or investment advice.