The Press Release as an Effective Marketing Tool

Articles
» Marketing

Published: Oct 14, 2005

No business can survive in a vacuum. The life-sustaining air for businesses comes from publicity. Ads are the first and foremost publicity, the best way of getting air to your business, but they can sometimes fail to clarify your unique selling point. Added to this is the cost - most traditional ads cost a fair amount. For specifically web-based services and products it is also true that the well-trodden methods of advertising might not produce the best results.

Given this, a useful way to inform people about your business on the Internet is through sending a press release. These press releases are not pieces of advertising but rather are informative documents which tell the media the news in your particular sector of business. Whilst this simple device a brief page of news can be very powerful but it needs to be used properly. It has the capacity to target many thousands of possible clients.

Press releases are not advertising and need to provide the facts about your company without being brash or overselling your services or product. You need to make your press release interesting to engage the media and so that they will give it space and readers will see it. Therefore it is a good idea to put in information that could be salient to potential readers.

With the press release, timing is everything. For an event like a product launch the best time for the news briefing is a couple of days before. This brings in the publicity exactly when you want it. The contents of your news release need to catch the eye, show creativity and grab the reader. Your copy needs to be able to get your ideas across, and clarify that unique selling point, and still catch the nose of the news hounds. Your release needs to show clearly what makes your product, service or company different.

Always remember your aim is to generate more visitors to your website or business. You need to create enough interest in you or your business to enthuse people sufficiently to make them want to know more about you.

You can be sure that any editor will pay little attention to overblown marketing speak that claims a product is the best in the world or absolutely unique. They will be unimpressed with cheap stunts as well. There is a style for press releases accepted throughout the industry, and your copy must live up to this standard. A news-editor will likely have your piece fact checked before running it, so if you have stretched or distorted the facts you may be exposed as a fraud. Not all publicity is good publicity and you could probably do without this kind of exposure.

Thinking out an angle is the key to a quality press briefing. Do like the professionals do and conceive a headline that grabs the reader straight away. Reporters are pretty busy people so the catchy headline will be the hook that gets your release considered. When it comes to choosing a tone for the writing you should aim to sound level-headed and objective.

Delivering the briefing to the right folk is key if you want the story to run. Take the time to comb the news-sites or newspapers you are targeting to find the person with responsibility for covering the area that relates to your press release.

Press releases can be an effective tool for marketing your products and services. You can also hire professionals and online press release service providers to create and distribute valuable press releases for your company. The contact databases for some of the reputed press releases distribution firms are detailed and extensive. They have dedicated staff that cater to customized needs of each client and avoid the pitfalls and cliches when it comes to marketing the right press release at the right time.

Up to date technology is often used by some of these services so that your website receives continuous interest and is crawled by the principle search engines regularly. In some cases these services will give you added extras like syndicated network news feeds and blogs.

There are now various online press release distribution services that can help you create and distribute your press release to the targeted channel(s) of your choice, including top daily and national newspapers, top industry and segment publications, TV, Radio, and top online news sources. Most of these services such as PRWeb.com, MarketWire.com, pressbox.co.uk, eReleases, Eworldwire, Send2Press are designed to save you money and time while delivering your press release to your most targeted prospects.

Author Information

Mark Vandorone is the founder and proprietor of Five Marketing, a quality provider of highly targeted traffic for your online advertising campaigns. Stop putting up with junk clicks and poorly converting traffic from PPC search engines! go to http://www.fivemarketing.com

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