How a Press Release Can Drum Up Sales and Free Publicity !

Let's start with, What Is A Press Release?

A Press Release is a vital tool for announcing your business, or a new service within your business, to the media. The media consists of editors and journalist for newspapers, magazines, newsletters, and trade publication, as well as television and radio stations. This type of marketing informs journalist, editors and producers that you and your service are available to be interviewed for their publication. When you are featured in an article you gain credibility with your buying audience. It says that you are a leader in your field and newsworthy. While an ad is a very acceptable form of marketing a product or service, an article can not be purchased. An ad says, "I'm paying for you to see this and buy from me", while getting featured in a publication announces you and your product or service as newsworthy. It creates a bigger impact much faster than a paid ad can create.

How do you get the press to sit up and take notice of you instead of your competitors?

While some people use gimmicks such as brightly colored paper in an attempt to make their releases get noticed by busy reporters, the real "trick" to getting media attention is to pique the editor's interest in your MESSAGE. In other words, make the person who receives your release think "Here is something that will INTEREST my READERS."

What interests editors and their readers? Your release should contain actual "news" about yourself, your products or services, your company, or personnel in your company. Information that qualifies as news (depending on the media to which you are submitting your release) include, but are not limited to announcements about:

The release of a new product
Launch of a new service
Opening of a new store
Awards you or your company have won
"Firsts" (e.g., first to offer a particular service or product in your area,
first product to solve a common, but previously unsolvable problem)
Contests your company is sponsoring
Winners in of a contest you've sponsored
Free seminars you are offering
Free booklets you are offering
Results or a survey your company has conducted
How you or your company helped solve a community problem
Opening of a new business
New, unusual uses of an old product
Donations you've made to a nonprofit group
Writing the release

Just announcing your news isn't enough, however. The launch of your new service may be news to you, but to a reporter or editor, who has to read hundreds of releases about new products and services, it's not likely to be interesting news. Therefore, it may find it's way quickly to the trash bin.

Before you start writing the release, choose the angle (what's interesting about your news) to use , if you will be sending your release to various media (local newspapers, large metro newspaper, TV stations, trade magazines, etc.) you may have to use different angles for the different media. For instance if you have just published a new book on how to get your family to share the housework, you'd get the attention of local newspaper editors with a news angle (local author makes good). But if you were sending a release about the same book to editors of national publications, you would stress the solution your book provides to a common problem: how working mothers can keep the house clean and neat without hiring a cleaning person. Gather all the facts and figures you will need to complete the release. Like any news story, the release should include the basic information about, who, what, where, when, why and how. In addition , your release should contain a release date (notice of when the information may be published); and details of who to contact for more information.

Keep in mind that editors, journalist and producers do not like releases simply sent to them, professional services have their own opt-in list of those who want them to send them releases.

What to do after you have completed creating a press release?

Once you have written your press release or hired a professional service to do so, you must now SEND IT OUT, and to the right people.

Advertising costs continue to rise as competitors try to climb on top of each other by paying the higher prices, certainly ads can help however if you're not looking to spend thousands and still want to reach thousands than a press release campaign is the way to go.

You could try to do it yourself and send them all out, which would be very time consuming and costly if you're looking to cover all states, or you can hire a company that handles press release submissions as well as have their own list of contacts to send them to, and you're in luck, I am listing at the end of this article some resources I've used personally and have had great results with, most are free and some cost less than the price of an ad to use their services.

Now that you know what is a Press Release and why its vital to your business' success, you must now decide....

Do you keep crossing your fingers hoping enough traffic comes your way or its picked up by the media, OR, you take action to increase your visibility?

Here are some places I highly reccomend for those on a budget!

1888PressRelease.com - Free distribution, paid services gives you better placement and permanent archiving.

Express-Press-Release.com - Free distribution company with offices in 12 states.

Pr Depot- Press Release Services - For the amount of sends-outs/coverage they are still the most reasonable out here as far as prices are concerned and do a pretty good job writing a release too. (They DO submit to editors, journalists, freelance writers, magazines, tv/radio producers not just post your release online)- http://pressreleasedepot.weebly.com

24-7PressRelease.com - Free release distribution with ad-support, I've used them personally.

Free-Press-Release.com - Easy press release distribution for free, more features for paid accounts.

Free-Press-Release-Center.info - Distributes your release, offers a web page with one keyword link to your site. Pro upgrade will give you three links, permanent archiving and more.

I-Newswire.com - Allows for free distribution to sites and search engines, premium membership differs only slightly in adding in graphics.

PR-Inside.com - European-based free press release distribution site.

PRBuzz.com - Completely free distribution to search engines, news sites, and blogs.

PRCompass.com - Distribute your press release with a free or paid version, others can vote it up ala Digg style. (They do NOT submit to editors, journalists, freelance writers, magazines, tv/radio producers)

Press-Base.com - Submit your release for free and get on their front page and the category of your choice.

PressAbout.com - A free press release service formatted as a blog.

PressMethod.com - Free press release distribution no matter what, but extra services based on the size of your contribution.

PRLeap.com - Free distribution to search engines, newswires, and RSS feeds. Fee based bumps get you better placement.

PRLog.org - Free distribution to Google News and other other search engines.

TheOpenPress.com - Gives free distribution for plain formatted releases, fees for HTML-coded releases.

If you have read this far you now see how a press release can truly help increase your search rankings, visibility and bottom line. I hope this article was of help to you.

Thank you

Steven Weez
Freelance Writer