We're finally putting together press releases for the general press and more specialised (health/complementary therapies) publications. We're going to offer a free product to each publication so they can run a competition. Does anyone have any advice or tips? Is there anything vitally important that usually gets overlooked? Thanks in advance :001_smile:
Moved to the Marketing/PR forum Yes, the main point often overlooked by peoole submitting press releases to publications is that they don't write a news story or story of interest to readers - they write a release that is all about their business - advertorial rather than editorial - thus they usually get binned. A giveaway for a (related to the story) competition may work for some, but not for others. Advertorials, where the business is heavily promoted wihtin the release, is usually a chargeable service such as in a newspaper or magazine. Editorial is a news story or something of interest which links to your business, but the storyline should be the primary angle, not your business. Ther is a sticky in the marketing forum for Press Releases.
I used to work in advertising and would agree with the comments made by indizine - make sure the PR release is written as an article that is interesting to the reader. One way to do this is to write it as an article (with pressures on costs / time journalists love cut and paste articles). You should have different PR releases for different types of title - e.g. national newspapers, consumer mags, specialist trade titles I think you will do well to get a competition for free in any major publication but you may have some luck with more specialist titles. Publishers will want to charge you for the space (as if it were an advert). I have done reader offers in the past but these can be expensive in a different way - but will get you loads of exposure. You'll need to give away your product to every reader. The publishers wave the fee for the space if they belief they'll benefit from an uplift in circulation. Postage costs can be the killer here unless you can give them a voucher to pick up a product from a retailer or somewhere else.
Also once you have written your piece don't be afraid to give some journalists a call they really are quite inviting and I have found a phone approach works a lot better than just sending the article. I hope this helps Dave
On one of the threads I read this morning on the marketing forum talked about piggy-backing your story onto a bigger one. Our press release happens to be about our release of a meditation application and last week The Times among others ran a story about the Mental Health Foundation saying the NHS should fund Meditation for depression - perfect timing! Thanks for all your help
The following page is designed to help you write your press release, plus give you tips and story ideas to capture the attention of local journalists and make your story stand out from the rest! While no one can guarantee your press release will be published or used for an article, there are things you can do to improve your chances. The biggest obstacle to most press releases is the release itself. Capitalize the first letter of all words in the headline (with the exception of: "a", "an", "the", or prepositions such as: "of", "to", or "from"). The combination of upper and lower case makes it easier to read.