Press releases are a big tool utilized by marketing organizations to distribute their news throughout the industry. With digital marketing taking over the business world like wildfire, the relevancy of press releases in the new marketing jungle is always questioned. But believe it or not, even with many other options available, press releases hold their value today, tomorrow, and most likely forever. Yes, best press release distribution method has evolved but the crux of the press release remains the same i.e. the structure, the content, and its purpose. This article targets all the confused marketing managers and public relations executives who do not know whether spending on a press release is worthy or not.

Exploring the Purpose of Press Release

To understand the worth of a press release and deciding to spend money on them, it is better to understand why a press release is written and what purpose it holds.

Distribute News

This is the most basic purpose of a press release. Any news related to a launch, changes made, or any other company related announcements are distributed through press releases. Organizations use them as a tool to target the relevant audience and get their attention. It is one of the oldest and most effective ways of generating publicity for an organization.

Increase Customers

This is an indirect purpose of writing and distributing a press release. Even though press releases are not sent to the clients directly, they are sent to journalists in the hopes that they will further share the news of the press releases on multiple platforms which will attract the right customers to the product or services. Through this way, the number of customers may increase.

Press releases do not improve the SEO of an organization. This is one of the most important things to remember when utilizing press releases as a tool for marketing. There are no follow links with press releases these days which means that there is no chance for SEO of a website to improve. Sure, through the usage of LSI and proper keywords, SEO may improve but publishing and distributing press releases just for the purpose of boosting the SEO of a website, is just incorrect. Therefore, when writing a press do not even consider the option of improving your SEO through this process.

Organization Size

The size of an organization plays a vital role in the world of press releases. An organization which is big has news throughout the year which is why they need to distribute more press releases. These kinds of press releases contain news that genuinely interest’s investors and other stakeholders. Publishing such press releases is always a good idea and spending on them proves more beneficial.

But on the other hand, startups or smaller organizations do not have news that regularly interests different stakeholders. Most people do not care if there is a change in the hierarchy of a startup. Instead they want to know about their annual finances, profits, or loss. Publishing detailed information about a company’s finance on a monthly basis is not such a good idea, sharing that information annually or biannually is more than enough. Apart from that, there are only a few topics of news which may interest the stakeholders.    

These factors must be kept in mind when deciding on distributing a press release or not as they play a vital role in identifying the worth of a press release. For small organizations and startups, it is advised to target the local industry. When distributing press releases, small organizations need to target the local journalists, newsrooms, and other people from the local vicinity. This increases their chance of getting their story picked up and attracting the right clients.

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When small organizations try to target the international media sources and big journalism organizations, there is a 99% chance that they will not get the attention needed because there are hundreds or thousands of more important stories out there. By understanding this factor, no matter how painful it may sound, startups and even small organizations can reach the more accurate audience and easily get the attention that they require.

Final Verdict

Now for the final answer that everyone is waiting to know, press releases are worth the spend. But do not forget their basic purpose i.e. distributing news and announcing new products. Other than that, there are a few factors which need to be kept in mind. Identify whether your organization is big or small. Comprehend whether the news that you are about to distribute is genuinely important or not. Then make the decision of publishing a press release. Over usage of press releases can only lead to issues such as loss of press release importance. This means that when you publish press releases on a daily basis, no one will be interested in reading them and when you finally announce something very important, no one will bother reading it. Moderate number of press releases should be shared to ensure reader retention.