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Marketing Tips August 2008
How a Press Release Can Transform Your Business from Advertiser to Positive News MakerYou know the scene. Your company has just released a new product, or maybe an employee has been promoted…or maybe your firm plans new construction in a development. So you write up a quick press release, email it to the local papers, and wait….. From personal experience, I can tell you what often happens next. A copy editor plucks your press release from a towering stack, reads it in three seconds (at most), and – if you’re lucky – reduces it to a few sentences buried as filler on page E-24. Why? Newspapers are desperately hungry for good content…and they’re besieged by bare-skeletal press releases on every imaginable topic. How to tell what’s worthwhile and what isn’t? So a press release needs to pass three crucial tests before it has any chance of getting published: Just so you know – any news that’s happening in your company CAN pass at least two of those tests. How? Try seeing your release with an editor’s eyes. There are two keys to the success of a press release – the headline, and the body. If the headline grabs you, and the body holds you, you’ve got a winner. But to apply this test successfully, you need to step outside of your own fascination for everything that happens in your company. So instead of saying, for example, ABC Paperclips Releases New Product, try New Paperclip Breaks Record for Most Pages Clasped (only if it’s true, of course ). A light, entertaining story, quietly promoting a key benefit of your product, is likelier to get past the deadly “filler” pile than a bald announcement. Or let’s say your mail-room clerk has just graduated from night school and been promoted. Instead of John Smith Named Lead Sales Rep, try Four Years of Night School Launches John Smith from Mailroom to Lead Sales Post. Rather than giving a capsule of John’s resume, tell his classic American success story (with his permission, of course). Or perhaps your long-planned housing development is going to feature LEED-certified green homes. How much better response will you receive if you reveal that Projected Homes Will Use Less Energy, Preserve Green Space…rather than announcing New Homes Planned for Oak Lane? With creative, truthful and ethical press releases, you can feed your newspaper’s hunger for rich news content…and earn free, positive publicity for your company into the bargain. Phila Hoopes
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