The Press Release: The Champagne of Beers

By Chelsea Irwin

The press release has evolved into more than just a vehicle to deliver news these days - it’s a very expensive vehicle to deliver news. The truth is, a shorter press release with multimedia features is less expensive and more media friendly. 

For example, we recently worked with a new client on a press release announcing the launch of the company, its flagship product and first customer win. All bundled into a single press release, these elements resulted in a document that was nearly 1,000 words long. The projected price to distribute this news globally exceeded $10,000. (Yes, that’s a 5 digit number.) EPR worked with the company to bring the price to less than $4,000 – while still maintaining global reach and adding enhanced features to generate higher quality coverage, and without sacrificing important content..

Included below are some of the tactics Engage PR recommends to clients looking to maximize value and minimize cost of press releases:

1. The shorter, the better. Most major wire services charge per word after the first 400 words to distribute a news release. Simple solution: Cut the release to 600 words and created a landing page for the full-length press release. Not only does this method force longwinded writers to focus on the core news facts, but it brings traffic to your company’s web site.

2. SEO enhance your release. Many companies are constantly issuing press releases (regardless of the news value). This routine can get expensive fast. The simple solution is to maximize the search life of your quality press releases with the “search engine optimization” (SEO) tool offered by most wire services. It’s about $200 to SEO enhance a news release (give or take a few dollars) but it extends the life of your release. The average shelf life of a press release in search engines is 28 days; after that time it is pushed to the end of the search results ending up on something like page 16 - at which point companies get the “issue–another-press-release itch” and start fabricating product upgrades. With SEO, the release is frequently refreshed and will continue to appear on page one in search engines much longer (in most cases for up to three months).

3. Key words are key. Many wire services offer an optimization tool that determines what keywords people search most frequently – for example, optimizing a recent release showed that the term “products with role-based access control” is searched much more than the term “role-based access control” alone. It’s fair to say that the ultimate goal of a press release is to generate sales leads, and by including the right key words, you increase the chance that a potential customer will end up on your site rather than your competitors.

4. Everyone needs a visual! Most wire services charge around $400 for the first graphic that accompanies a press release and $200 for each additional graphic. Experience has taught us that reporters are more likely to cover your news if a graphic is available. Granted, the graphic should be compelling and relevant. Including the right graphic will not only increase your chances to receive news coverage, but readers are more likely to read an article with visual stimulation.

(I know, my headline doesn’t really make sense. Deal with it.)