Traditional advertising is still the gasoline of the American economic engine - and the dependency is not going to end any time soon. But new technology and the need for economic alternatives have combined to create a powerful new marketing hybrid. We call it e-PR. That's short for search engine optimized public relations. And it is where the majority of Delia Associates branding dollars are going on behalf of our clients in 2006.
The driving engine here is the fact that virtually every press release sent via a wire service ends up on the Internet. So if you optimize your releases for searchability, everyone from your B2B prospects to the general public will find your stories when they plug in the magic words that relate to your business. Yes, the most convincing news about your products and services will be instantly accessible via every major Internet news portal, including Google, MSN and Yahoo.
MarketingSherpa states:
"As marketers and PR pros skilled in SEO have discovered in the past year, although releases may not be response devices for reporters, they make great response devices for the search-using public. For example, marketers for Southwest Airlines used four press releases deliberately written with search engine optimization and consumer response in mind, to sell $1.5 million in tickets in 90 days. Every ticket sale was directly traceable to links in the releases."
The first step: Generate customer-relevant content.
Write stories about everything that’s going on at your company. Stories can include new product development, new hires, recent projects, customer testimonials…whatever puts you in a positive light within your industry. The more online news you can generate, the more likely you will get "picked up" by online outlets, get noticed by your buyers and influence your search engine rankings.
Step two: Get it out there.
Make sure every single release finds its way onto your site and out to the Internet. Check out www.prweb.com a service that offers broad web distribution for a nominal contribution. Other paid services include PR Wire, Business Wire and Bacons. Today, the primary benefit of using any major press release wire service is to get your release on the Internet. In doing so, the release gets posted to major Internet news portals and search engines and, depending on which wire service you use, it may land on an RSS feed (RSS stands for Rich Site Summary, or Really Simple Syndication) and result in thousands of other distribution outlets including niche web sites, eNewsletters, blogs, news aggregators, etc. The end result is the release gets in front of many of your prospects.
Step three: Keep it coming.
If you are not sending at least two marketing releases per month in this fashion, you are missing a major lead-generation opportunity. Remember, these marketing-driven press releases are different than traditional press releases. Marketing releases are SEO optimized with imbedded hyperlinks, key search terms, and shorter headlines. And, they are written for your buyers, not for reporters. So focus out what your prospects are looking for and write to attract them to your content. As increasing numbers of consumers and B2B buyers use the Internet to "shop", this strategy becomes more effective in terms of producing results.
It all comes down to quality content and your company’s ability to keep churning it out. If you need some help in this area, give us a call. Ask about our Constant Connect e-PR package. You may find that it’s the most productive means of generating leads you have ever initiated. And it may be just the boost your brand needs in ’06.
For more information on Delia Associates, please visit: www.delianet.com
Press Contact: Trish Hamer; Tel: 908-534-9044; thamer@delianet.com
Introducing E-PR - The New Marketing Hybrid - To learn more about this author, visit Ed Delia's Website.
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