Tag Archives: press release

How publicity could hurt or increase future sales

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It isn’t until after a press release, or an article is published, you then see the results of your pr marketing strategies take place. Well, have you thought about all the publicity in the news these past few months? Such as the financial markets, the autopublicity is everywhere industry and retailers?

Publicity is everywhere! That’s what I have professed for over a decade. As we all read about how bad something is, we tend to shy away from them. So let’s talk about the auto industry. The big three–GM, Chrysler and Ford. The negative pr these companies have had is going to hurt FUTURE sales. Yeah, they are having great deals on cars, trucks and SUV’s. But now people hear about them going broke, or having serious financial trouble. Would you consider buying from any of them? I don’t think so. Why? Because if you need a part in four years, or have trouble with the vehicle, you begin to ask…will they be there to help? Will the dealership I bought from be around anymore? A recent article in Media Post gets deeper into this topic discussing a survey to illustrate this point. Service is a major concern with any product. That too is what causes the slowdown on many retailers. Why buy from them, if they are closing?

What all this negative publicity does is help the competition. Again, look at the auto industry. Sales are going to increase for all the imports. Not just because they build better vehicles, or are price competitive. It’s because there hasn’t been negative publicity about any of the better known imports having financial problems. At least we do not hear about them like we do with the domestic auto companies.

This also applies to the banking industry, and retailers. If your company is in a good position, financially, then consider creating a “positive publicity campaign”. This is when branding should be a major part of your pr marketing strategy. This window of opportunity is now open, take the leap. Just make sure you work with a professional publicity company to help guide you through this timely event.

How To Write A Press Release For Your Audience

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Writing a press release is much different than writing an article, or a script, or copy for an ad or brochure. A press release should be written to a specific audience, or market. If you are a PR Client, then make sure that your in-house pr department or your publicity agency understands the importance of targeting a specific audience for each press release.

PR Clients need to understand that publicity is an art. It doesn’t just happen in the media. To get a press release published,How to write a press release you need to follow a few points. Besides writing it in the correct format, which you can check out this site to help you understand how to write a press release. What you need to also do, make the press release fit your specific audience. Don’t try to be general and reach the entire market. No matter how generic your product or service might appear to be, you can target specific markets and revise the release to target other markets.

One way to get your press release published is to see what you are saying. If you are opening a new office, or moved to a new location, then the release should be targeted to local media. It is also good to mention how this move, or new office will impact the area. For example, will you be hiring new people, how will your company affect the new area? Think in this manner and you have a good chance of getting published.

If you are a medical company, then ask how it will affect that industry. Does your release explain how your company (or what the release is about) changes anything in the industry? Of course, this release should target medical publications, and local newspapers that have a Health section. A short article on “Reaching the Right Audience” explains more ways of identifying how to understand your market so that your press release targets the right audience in order to get published.

Follow these simple steps and you will have a better chance of the media running your next release. If you need professional pr help, give George Carson a call at 949-477-9400.

The words you choose can help or hurt your press release

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How important is PR in your company?

To create a press release, an article or even a web site, requires writing. This in turn means knowing the right words to use.

If a company is concerned about getting favorable publicity, then you better make sure the words you have your pr agency, or in-house pr staff write, are carefully selected. Why? Because it is the words, the phrases and the order these are placed that can make a big difference in getting noticed and published.

Public Relations companies tend to be wordsmith’s. But they too can fall into the "template" of writing and not choose the words that are best suited for each company. If an in-house staff is doing a public relations service for your company, they can also get caught in choosing words that fill space and not benefit the company.  Sometimes you need to look outside of your industry to get a clearer picture so that your approach is different.

But just being different isn’t the solution. It is again, the choice of words you use. Words must be relevant, just as they should when building your web site and optimizing it. The structure is also important.

This is even true with articles and your web site. Your web site becomes the salesperson and only those words are what potential customers will read. These words will describe to them who you are.

Now you can better understand that words placed correctly, and key phrases used properly can increase your chances in getting publicity. Remember to look at your web site to make sure it has the words you need.

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Why Your Press Releases Are Not Getting Published

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As a PR Client you need to follow the rules

Publicity agencies and pr clients sometimes loose sight of how to write a press release for the media.

Get your pr release noticed by editorsWhen you submit a release to a publisher, editor, or a freelance writer, it is important to follow the basic rules when writing "newsworthy" releases.

All releases should follow these simple rules:
• WHO
• WHY
• WHERE
• CONTACT

Keep in mind WHO the publication’s audience is when writing. Sometimes it is necessary to modify a release if the audience varies even slightly.

Know WHY it is an important release. The product or service may be important to you, but what about the readers and your industry. Make it important to them and the editors will then not toss your release into the trash.

If the press release has a location, such as an event, seminar, or announcement of the unveiling, be sure to mention this. Otherwise, pr clients need to list the location as their main office, or headquarters. Publicity agencies need to also list the pr clients location, not theirs.

Finally, put the contact info for the pr client. The publicity agency should also include their contact info as the focal point. Be sure the person listed is available to respond in a timely manner.

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Brand Building

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How to keep your brand going strong

Auto brandingWhat makes a brand? It takes more than one sentence to answer this question. As well as it takes more than doing just one press release, or an article to create or build a brand. It takes an entire campaign that can last more than a few years to build a solid brand image.

First you need to understand what it takes to build a brand, as well as how to maintain that brands image. A good thought would be why you are buying a particular car. Why do you prefer a GM brand over an import like Toyota, Nissan, Lexus, etc, or vice versa? Ask yourself, why is a brand important?

Brands are a big part of our daily life. It is how we make decisions on our buying habits. So knowing this much, you should then realize no matter your industry, branding is critical.

Oh, you think that your company is a B2B company, and therefore you don’t sell directly to consumers. Bad thought. All people, even business people are brand conscious. They too are consumers. Take another test. Why do your business customers buy from competitors? It’s the branding. Ok, sometimes cost is a factor. But if your brand was highly respected, one that delivers excellent service with follow up, then your brand will outlast the discount companies.

If you need to read some other thoughts on building a brand, then read a column from Rhonda’s Report. She will address the 5 points that brands are based on. It is time to build your brand before your competitors knock you out of the industry.

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E-Mail Marketing for Publicity

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Using the tools can help a publicity campaign

Most public relations service companies use e-mail to disburse the press releases or to send a mass mailing announcing a newsworthy event.

As with all mass mailings, publicity can become a victim of too much mail that it gets trashed. Sending out a mass blast e-mail may not always be the best solution for a publicitye-mail marketing campaign. Sometimes it is best to target the few media reporters that best fit your press release or pitch for an article. e-Mail blast can be good for some news bulletins or to announce an event you might be holding. But I recommend that you are selective in that approach and choose the few media you really want to attend and send them a separate email with a personal invitation, not a generic one.

In our fast pace world of publicity, we need to slow down and target our audience, in this case it is the reporters or publishers. Doing this does require extra time, but it will pay off better than sending a blast and having no reporters attend.

This is true with press releases and press kits for pr clients. Not every release needs to be blasted to hundreds of media. Taking this easy approach only gets bad publicity for you and your company.
Knowing how to use e-mail marketing can be a major benefit to a company. It allows you to measure the response sooner than traditional mailings. And you have a stronger of reaching your prospect, media, than placing the release in an envelope and hope that it isn’t filtered (tossed out by the secretary) before it reaches your chosen destination.

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Targeting Your Publicity Release

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How to use the Internet wisely

Writing a press release today is not the same as it was several years ago. The Internet has changed how we treat these releases and the words we use. Public Relations firms and pr clients have been quickly learning how to make a press release meet the demand of the new technology.

Just as your web site needs to be optimized, it is just as important that each press release you distribute be optimized when submitting to the online news media. The use of keywords and how they are placed within the text body is critical. Using too many keywords, or phrases will destroy your objective.

The purpose to optimizing press releases and story’s that you are pitching is to help your web site gain higher ranking and position with the search engines.  In addition to using the keywords, you need to include your company’s web address. That may seem logical, and most pr firms and clients do include that information.  Want to make your release more worthy? Then don’t only list the URL of the web site, but have a link be directed to a specific page that discusses the product or service of that press release.

This will help reporters, or other media people collect more information quickly than searching for it on your home page.

When you combine the technology of today, using search engines, and traditional writing for press releases, you can increase your company’s visibility and traffic. It is best to work with a company that knows how to optimize a press release than trying to learn by trial and error.

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Publicity Is Your Web Site

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Make Publicity Work For You

No matter how much you read about optimizing a web site, or how to design it for ease of navigation, we are always asked by clients how to improve their image via the Internet.

Web Marketing and PublicityThe best and most oblivious media is through your web site. Simple, yet companies tend to crowd everything they have about the company into hundreds of pages deep, or they make one page be a couple of thousand words long.

You can talk to a dozen different web-marketing companies, or web designers, and all they know is that small segment. Few understand the power of publicity. Those progressive web companies will work with the pr clients, or the publicity staff, or the pr firm to discuss how to incorporate their areas of expertise into making the web site proactive.

For example, each pr clients website should include a newsroom, or press section. This will have company press releases, articles, white papers, etc that can be viewed by the reporters, publishers, or any media.

Other important pages are:

  • About Us
  • Contact Us
  • Products/Services
  • Blog Site

The Press Room or Publicity section should also be in this list. The above areas are the main sections to a good web site structure. Planning these pages within these sections is also critical. Don’t go wild and have a dozen pages deeper. If you need to, break that heavy copy page into another one or two sections for visitors to view if desired.

Too much information is not as good as you may think. Instead, condense your information with solid content. Your visitors will learn more and come back often.

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How To Get free Publicity

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Ask for help

If you have a unique product or a gimmick that needs to get publicity, think about asking for help. The kind of help in this case is not asking your publicity agency, or pr staff to do a lot, just have them send a press release to post that asks for publicity ideas to market the product.

Sounds like free ideas and publicity? It is. Just look at what a couple of attorneys did to market a new watch. The short article which was on Publicity Hound’s Blog this week had a posting of a watch that has the dials divided into six-minute-increments, that is how attorney’s bill you!

The frightening thing is a lot of people posted ideas telling them it was a great way to sell these to other industries.

Granted, it doesn’t take a lot of creativity to see the potential of the market.

What was interesting to me, that people were willing to offer suggestions. Plus, these people and many others reading the blogs  were probably telling their friends about this legal type of watch. That my friends is FREE publicity.

True, this will not work for all products or in most markets. But it shows you that with a little creative thought you can get publicity for most anything, even something as NOT unique as a watch.

Think about it, when was the last time a publication ran a press release on a common item as a watch? Remember, this watch isn’t a unique design, or runs on solar, or has special rings…it’s just an ordinary watch with the dials (the face) broken into six-minute segments. Incredible, but that’s publicity.

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Are Your Photos Funny or Serious?

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Photos are important for publicity

Before you send out that press release or article to the editors or publishers of a magazine, make sure you analyze the photos. This means to make sure the photos are:

  • Not boring
  • Has a visual that is of interest
  • Captures the mood you want
  • Is creative

These are a few tips to consider when submitting photos in any publicity campaign for pr clients.

Another tip is to make sure when you include people that the photos are not showing a smiling person if the release, or article is of a serious nature. A book titled "How to use Photos and Graphics in your Publicity Campaign" sums up a lot of the mistakes publicity people make too often. Whether are in the publicity industry, working for a pr firm, or happen to be a pr client doing your own stuff, this book could help. It is not telling you things you probably don’t already know, but it will keep you in line with the things to look for when including photos with your pr campaign.

In addition, you need to consider different angles of the subject. Of course, if the release is about a product, there are only so many ways to shoot it, right? Wrong. Be creative, but not too creative. The purpose of the photos is to help visually get the message across and offers the publisher, or other media, an option to use when publishing the release or article.

Just like a good ad has more potential of being noticed and read, a well written release with good photos has a greater chance of being published.

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