At a time when content is everything, press releases can serve as the perfect marketing tool. You must be wondering how something as orthodox and straightforward as a press release can give your marketing strategy the required boost. But believe it or not, press releases play a vital role in spreading the right words about your business to an audience that everyone loves, i.e., journalists.
Many marketing experts give counter-arguments that nobody (even most journalists) reads newspapers anymore. Therefore, our press releases are useless when it comes to telling our stories. But here’s where they are wrong! Press releases with important news can be published and distributed anywhere! You can always email the press release content to different journalists or get it posted on various news forums. Some organizations even share snippets of their press releases such as the lede as social statuses on other platforms.
The matter of fact is that it does not matter whether your organization is big or small. Publishing a press release in any and every scenario will always serve you well. But writing a good press release is not the only thing that will win you the ticket to a good marketing strategy. Through a solid plan for distributing your press release, you can amplify the impact of your news as well as its reach.
Control Your Story
Once upon a time, in 1906, there was an accident on the railroads of Pennsylvania that resulted in the death of 50 people. Now the department of Railroad Pennsylvania panicked and did not know how to handle the situation at hand. At such a time, Ivy Lee published an announcement for the public, which eventually became so popular that even the New York Times published it. This content was a first of its kind. Despite discussing the lives lost and the damage caused, the press release was able to minimize the news’s negative impact on the audiences.
Using press releases as a source of direction for the audience is still widely practiced today. By writing a press release, you deliver honest news about your organization worldwide precisely the words you want. It gives you the ultimate control over the story, and your organization can thrive with the information. Sure, competitors can highlight your weaknesses and problems, but news published and distributed through a personal perspective can do wonders in terms of reach and impact.
Using press release distribution as a marketing tool, you can tell a story about your organization that you want the audiences to hear, see, and understand.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
You will hear the word search engine optimization in everything these days. There is a lot of hype around it, and well, why shouldn’t there be? It plays a vital role in your website ranking and bringing traffic to your website. And not just some random clicks and views from irrelevant audiences; instead, you can get the relevant and genuine audience to your webpages through proper optimization techniques.
Most experts staunchly believe that press releases do not improve the SEO of a website. It does play a role in improving your position in search engine result pages (SERP). Here is how that can happen.
- Write a press release that is sprinkled with relevant solid keywords with perfect spacing.
- Employ good strategies for press release distribution. Publish it on the right platforms and at the right time.
- Get a good number of impressions, views, and clicks on your press releases.
Whenever a person searches something on Google with the right keywords, the chances are that your press release will pop up in the results. Once someone reaches your press release and follows through with its call to action, your webpage will open up. In this long and elaborate way, your traffic will eventually start to increase. Always remember, search engine optimization is not an over the night changing sort of concept. When press releases are written with SEO intent, organizations must remain patient for a while before they get their desired results.
By writing a search engine optimized press release, organizations maximize the chances of improving their website’s SERPs ranking and eventually reaching the top of Google News.
Extensive Performance Reporting
The modern means of marketing are exciting. Why? Well, because they are easily measurable. When it comes to press release distribution as a marketing tool, things are no different. Today, a marketing manager can see and exactly know the profile of every visitor that interacts with their press release? Is that not a dream come true?
Your organization always has full knowledge of how well or poorly your press release has performed through different tools. You can learn all about the number of clicks, views, and impressions as well. To take things on another level, your highlighted keywords are also identified, and their performance is measured as well. This means that in your performance report, you will be able to see the keywords that triggered your press release and led potential customers/audience to your press release. Social media metrics can help in understanding the audiences and different regions from where they were triggered.
All this information is a part of your press release performance report. This extensive and detailed data can help you make better decisions in the future. Moreover, you can understand and observe your audience’s behavior and how they interacted with your press release. You can further base your marketing strategy on this information. This is a fail-proof method, guaranteeing organizations a solid return on their investments.
With press release distribution, organizations receive extensive reports, which are helpful when it comes to identifying and targeting the desired audiences.
Boost Your Social Media
Through a strong press release distribution strategy, you can give a boost to your social media. Every distribution strategy incorporates some interaction with social media. Surprising, right? In some strategies, press releases are eventually published and distributed on social platforms to spread the news.
At the same time, you can help your social media team with press releases as well. Surprising, right? But ask content creators in your team about how difficult it is to come up with unique yet exciting content for your organization’s multiple social platforms on a regular basis. They can use snippets and essential portions of press releases as their social posts. Moreover, they can run campaigns before and after a press release is published on different platforms. Your social media content and engagement are bound to increase with multiple tweets and status updates.
Social media presence serves as a focal point for organizations. By incorporating press release distribution in the marketing strategy, social media marketing directly boosts and reaps many benefits from the press releases.
Permanent Online Presence
Press releases can serve as proof of an event happening in your organization. This may sound ridiculous and irrelevant to most marketing managers. But organizations that expand and grow over time can utilize and reap many benefits from this marketing strategy.
For example, suppose your organization ran a campaign for charity organizations by having its press release posted. In that case, you can let the world know even after long periods that the event genuinely happened and that your organization did participate in the said task. Now whenever a person searches information about your organization on Google, it shows every relevant result, and possibly your press release about the event may also pop up. This can create a positive impression on the person, and their conversion into becoming your customer becomes more accessible.
Moreover, by having multiple press releases, you can increase your presence on Google search result pages. And everybody knows that a robust online fact of an organization only proves its authenticity and rapidly increases audiences’ trust.
Press Releases are posted permanently on most platforms that increase your content on the world wide web and help build the trust of your audience in your work.
Final Words
Yes, the concept of press releases is more than a hundred years old. But no, they are not obsolete. The famous proverb, old is gold, fits quite well in the case of press release distribution. The beauty of press releases is that they can be molded in hundreds of different ways and still stay relevant and original to their initial concept. Incorporating a good press release distribution plan as a marketing tool is the one thing that can set you apart and miles ahead of your competitors. If you do not have press releases sorted out, it is time to consider the matter seriously. This little tool can go a long way and reap your benefits for long periods.
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