# Message Pull-Through ## Quick answer Message pull-through is how much of a brand's intended messaging, the specific points pitched to a journalist or included in a press release, actually shows up in the resulting published coverage. A brand can earn plenty of coverage with weak pull-through if the published article tells a different story than the one it originally pitched to the journalist. ## Why it matters Coverage volume alone doesn't tell a team whether the message actually landed with readers. A brand could get mentioned in ten articles and have its key point, say a specific product differentiator, appear in only one of them, which means the earned coverage isn't doing the communication job it was meant to do, even though it looks successful on a simple count of articles published across outlets. ## How to measure it Compare the specific points included in a pitch or release against what actually appears in the published coverage, article by article, rather than just counting how many articles ran at all regardless of content. A simple tally of which key messages did and didn't make it through is usually enough to see the pattern, and repeating the tally after future pitches shows whether the problem is improving. ## Example A fintech startup pitches three key points, including a notable security certification, ahead of a funding announcement it expects to generate coverage. Five articles run the story, but only one mentions the certification; the rest focus entirely on the funding number instead. Pull-through on the certification point was low even though coverage volume looked like a clear success on the surface, which is exactly the gap a simple article count would have missed. ## FAQ ### Is message pull-through the same as share of voice? No. Share of voice measures how often a brand is mentioned relative to competitors; pull-through measures whether the specific points a brand wanted communicated actually appear in the coverage it gets, regardless of how much coverage there is overall. ### Can coverage volume be high while pull-through is low? Yes, and it's a common pattern. Plenty of articles can mention a brand without repeating the specific message the brand was trying to land, especially around a loud, competing headline like a funding number that overshadows everything else pitched that week. ### Who typically tracks message pull-through? Usually a PR or communications team evaluating whether a specific campaign or announcement landed the intended message, rather than a brand-monitoring team watching general mention volume across the whole market. ### What causes low pull-through most often? Pitching too many points at once, so a journalist picks the single most newsworthy one and drops the rest, or a message that's less distinctive than the headline the story ends up centered on regardless of what was pitched, especially when the message competes with bigger news that day. ## Related terms - /glossary/press-clipping - /glossary/advertising-value-equivalency - /glossary/source-citation ## Related - Competitor monitoring use case: /use-cases/competitor-monitoring - MarketHQ pricing: /pricing