How to Use News Releases as a Marketing Tool

HONG KONG – Surprisingly, 20% of NovationWire’s respondents advised they do not even use a press release as a part of their marketing strategy. As we have mentioned in the past, sending out a press release when Users have newsworthy information to share makes sense. The key word here is “newsworthy.” The information should be newsworthy and useful to journalists or customers’ general audience. It is important to note that when Users send out insignificant news on a regular basis, it will only alienate yourself and company from journalists. And just like the “boy who cried wolf,” people will not pay attention when they find that customers’ news is usually trivial, exaggerated or misleading–Users must be credible.

What is customers’ typical preferred reach? In the pre-Internet world, unless Users were a big national company, the news Users wanted to announce would more than likely have been either local or hyperlocal news. Times have changed, and the Internet has opened opportunities for businesses to have customers reaching them from around the globe. In NovationWire’s survey, the majority of businesses distributing a news release on a newswire service selected ‘national’ as their choice of reach. The next most popular distribution choices were ‘multiple cities,’ ‘state wide’ and ‘mainly an online audience.’

The main goal for distributing a press release was to garner the attention of journalists who would write a story covering the news. About 20% of businesses stated that their goal in distributing a press release was to ‘increase their search engine rankings.’

Recently, one of NovationWire’s reps was asked by a client if they could add ‘back links’ and if those back links were ‘do follow.’ We advised the client that the reason for submitting a press release should be to garner the interest of a journalist and not to increase search engine rankings.

An excellent question that many would like the answer to is ‘What is the most popular day to send out a press release?’ NovationWire’s winner, by a landslide is Tuesday! Yes – the reason for Tuesday is this: On Fridays, many people check out early-mentally and physically. Do Users want a great start to the weekend? Start it early! The weekends are just naturally not a business news type of time. By the time Monday rolls around, many people are cleaning up from Friday and preparing for the week ahead, which leaves Tuesday as the best option for having customers’ news released. That being said, a good percentage of customers still believe in Monday and kicking of the week with a press release.

The actual time of day when the press release is distributed does not seem as important to press release distributors as it once did. Until not too long ago, many people would love to have their press release scheduled for a ‘set time’ early in the morning. Interestingly, a majority of respondents advised that a particular set time is no longer a big deal to them, as long as it is early in the morning of the day of their release. For smaller companies, we typically don’t recommend 9 a.m. Eastern time, as this can conflict with a lot of ‘big company’ publicly traded company news. A significant number of NovationWire’s customers tend to prefer 7-8 a.m. Eastern as their premium distribution time.

Do Users have customers’ own personal media lists? If Users do, then Users are with the majority of PR professionals who send their News Releases through a press distribution service and also use their own lists to target journalists they know, according to a majority of NovationWire’s respondents.

Newsrooms are a technology on the marketing horizon. Why? Because done properly, they can be an excellent research resource for journalists to access everything from high resolution images, media contact information and more. Online newsrooms are an important emerging technology, so it was not surprising to learn that the large majority of respondents still do not have a public facing newsroom. We expect that will change in the near future.

By applying a few points we have mentioned, we hope that this will increase the success of customers’ next press release.

About NovationWire

NovationWire is a marketing firm that offers customized online press release distribution solutions. These online PR distribution solutions are for PR firms, agencies, organizations & Corporates. It includes e-mail delivery directly to Editors who are targeted to media editors at newspapers, magazines, and broadcast outlets like TV and news/talk radio stations. They also cooperate with significant wire services like ACN Newswire, JCN Newswire, Dow Jones Factiva, Reuters Eikon, Bloomberg Terminal, Yahoo news etc. NovationWire also provides a package to target different regions of the world and too different languages. These regions include Japan, South Korea, Vietnam, Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, China (Hong Kong, Taiwan), Russia, the United States, EU, UK, CA, AU, DE & many other countries. The Press releases could also be translated to English, Korean, Japanese, Chinese, Vietnamese, Thai, Malay, Indonesian, French, Portuguese & Spanish.

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