There was a time not too long ago that the sole purpose for writing a press release was to get press.  Which, if you think about it, makes sense, right?

However, I’m finding more and more that writing a press release is one of the single greatest ways to attract qualified sales leads imaginable.  And yet, so few companies actually do it.

The goal of a press release has changed because the target audience is not necessarily a reporter, or editor… It’s your target customer.

Not a single press release I’ve written for my business has gotten picked up by main stream news, yet all of them have produced sales leads.

For instance, in a webinar that we gave last year, our press release (from PRWeb.com) attracted 90 visitors to a landing page on a website that was less than 30 days old.  Because of some SEO techniques that were uses, I suspect that most of the Google traffic to the landing page is due to the press release as well.

And another 58 or so went directly to our blog

What is the true potential of the press release?

Over 1,400 people read the press release over the course of one month.  1,400 people knew that I was going to have a webinar.  That says two things:

1.  Press releases are a great way to get a lot of people to your site; and

2. I probably left some opportunities out there.  But it was one of my first releases, and I was learning.

30 Minutes to a Good, Solid Press Release

What should you write your press release about?

Your company might not be Apple launching the newest version of the iPhone, but that doesn’t mean that there something to write about.

1. A new product or service:  If you are launching a new product, or service, or product feature; then write a press release.  It’s most definitely news worthy!
2. New Website:  If you have a new website  that will better serve your customers, that’s news worthy.
3. Webinar/white paper:  This is my personal favorite.  If you have written a new white paper/ebook or are going to have a webinar, then this is a great way to get people to sign up.
4. Tie in to current events:  A few weeks ago, the Northeast was hit by Hurricane Irene.  If you have a testimonial from a customer showing how your product or service helped them during this time of crisis, write a press release about it!

Keyword Research

One of the best parts about writing a Press Release is that they are the gift that keeps on giving.  If you do proper keyword research, you can get onto the front page of Google tomorrow!

Here’s a press release that we just experimented with.  We wanted to rank for the words “Increase online sales leads”.  The title was “How Mid-Sized B2B Companies can Incease Online Sales Leads in 30 Days”.

 The day after we released it, it was ranked second on Google.  Admittedly, this ranking will decrease over time, but if you write press releases frequently, you’ll consistently be at the top of search engines.

Write a Compelling Headline

An experienced copywriter will tell you that the difference between something getting read and something getting ignored is the headline.

Here’s a simple headline formula that almost always gets read:

“How to [insert the problem your product/service/white paper is going to solve]”

For instance a marketing firm might say “How to get more Facebook Fans”.

An Audio Visual company might say “How to decrease the cost of your next system”.

Can you do better than a simple “How to” headline?  Of course!  However, if you use this simple formula, your headline is going to be better than 99% of all headlines produced.

Tone of the press release

Before we get started with the opening paragraph of the press release, let me just talk for a second about the tone.  Always write the release in the 3^rd person, so never use words like “you”, “your”, “our”, “us”, etc.  And always avoid unsubstantiated hype.  Unless you can get credible third party validation, you can’t say it.

Many companies make the mistake of saying that they are “the world’s largest provider” or “the industry leader” or something like that.  Unless your industry magazine states that you are those things, then it’s best to leave them out of the press release.

Opening Paragraph

The simplest way to begin is to be direct.  Tell people straight way what it is that you are doing.

For instance, if it was a press release that I was writing for Cloud Marketing Labs, I would write something like:

“Cloud Marketing Labs, a B2B marketing firm, is hosting a free webinar that shows how businesses can increase Facebook fans.”

This opening line accomplishes a few things:

1. It tells readers who we are, and why we are (relatively) important.
2. It tells them why they should care. (More Facebook fans).
3. It tells them how they are going to receive the information (via a webinar).

My very next line of the opening paragraph would be:

“The webinar is going to be held on….”

Get a quote from the CEO – or better yet, a customer

Always insert a quote into your press release.  It helps the readers be reminded that an actual human being is behind your company.  Get a quote from a customer talking about how the success of their recent Facebook page explosion has dramatically altered the course of their company.

Or get a quote from your CEO that tells readers why increasing Facebook fans is important for their business.

Call to Action:  The Money Step

Most press releases just end.  They talk about the webinar, or the free trial, and that’s the end of it.  I think that this is a HUGE mistake.  Remember the statistic above:  Over 1,400 people read that one press release.  I had to send them somewhere – if not, I’d lose all of the interested readers.

There are almost an infinite amount of calls to actions, but here are three examples that work extremely well:

1. Click here to sign up for our webinar:  [insert link]
2. Visit our Facebook page and “like” us to download our ebook:  [insert link]
3. Sign up for our newsletter to receive more useful tips: [insert link]

This takes some experimenting and some practice, but even if you get 90 people to your webinar, or Facebook page, or whatever… then it is time well spent.

One more thing

The more Press Releases you write, the more success you will have.   There is a cumulative effect that goes on.  The number of readers increases, the amount of traffic increases, the amount of subscriptions increase, and so on…

You’re done your release, now what?

Now you distribute your release.  I recommend one of two services:

PRWeb and PRLog.org

PRWeb is a paid service that works great for SEO.  It also allows you to incorporate videos, pictures of your product, and anchor link your text.

PRLog.org is a free service.  While the SEO isn’t bad, you can’t anchor link text.  You also can’t incorporate videos or pictures.

Of the two, PRWeb will give you a much broader reach than PRLog.

Yup.  From the makers of revolutionary services like Page Rank, Gmail, and Maps, comes “Better Ads in Gmail”.

Instead of creating your website around your products, create a site around the people who buy your products.  Chances are, your products and solutions fill a need, solve a problem, and are used in a variety of applications by a wide range of people.  Make sure that when a visitor comes to your website, they can discover exactly which solution will help them, how it will help them, and give case studies and examples that they can relate to.

Segregate your email marketing lists

When you are creating your email marketing lists, know that not all members of your list are created equal.  Like the visitors to your website, the members of your list are going to be made up of a wide variety of industries.  Some of the ways to build your email lists are:

• To separate the members by industry type.
• To separate the members by size of the company.
• To separate the list by geographic region
• To separate the list by ranking your most ideal prospects to those who you know are not going to make a purchase from you.

Multiple Media Outlets.

There are multiple ways that visitors choose to consume content.  Some visitors will like to read text, others would like to watch videos, and still others would like to download a podcast and listen to their iPod while driving to work in the morning.  By giving your visitors options for which to consume the content on the site, you be able to better to engage them.

Here is an example of some of the ways to use multiple media:

• Have a blog that gives readers valuable information on how to solve specific problems.
• Create videos of actual customers using your products
• Have a weekly podcast and interview customers about how they are using your products and services.

Integrate With a CRM

A website integrated with a CRM is a powerful tool.  With a CRM, you will better understand exactly what your ideal prospects and customers are browsing for and downloading on your website, so that the marketing department can create more of that information.  You will know exactly what type of offers to make to get them to buy products and what types of blog posts to create that will keep them engaged to your site and coming back for more.

Type of Content

If the content on your website is geared toward Chief Information Officers, written with language and jargon that they speak with on a daily basis, then CIO’s are going to gravitate to your website.  If you’re website is written in legalese and helps law firms solve business problems, then your website will attract lawyers.

The way in which you write content, and the type of content that you write is the single best way to personalize your website.

I set up ads in Linkedin and spent about $25 bucks and I generated absolutely no leads.  People visited the page, but no one signed up for the offer.

There could be a number of reasons for this:

1.       The copywriting wasn’t good.  Perhaps I need a stronger headline.

2.       The form that I was asking people to fill out was too long.

3.       Too small of a sample size.

4.       For this type of offer to work most effectively, I’d need to build a relationship with the person who lands on the page first.

5.       It’s just a bad idea.

I’ll probably spend a few more bucks experimenting with this offer mostly because I really dislike writing proposals and I think it would add much more value.

Back to the Point

In the old days, circa 1998, in order to test an idea like this you needed to take out an ad in a publication, or send out a bunch of direct mail letters and post cards.  This would cost a few hundred bucks and a couple of weeks to test.

Now you can know of how an idea is going to turn out in a weekend with less than $100 and some knowledge in a popular advertising platform such as Linkedin.

In sports, India won the Cricket world championships.  The NCAA tournament captured the attention of almost every male American past the age of 12; and a large majority of the ladies as well.  Baseball season started, and the NBA and NHL are winding down.

In world news, there is a tragedy in Japan, civil unrest in the Middle East, and demonstrators marching on the capital building in Madison.

A little bit closer to home, there is text messaging, Facebook, and this cute Youtube video of twin boys having an engaging conversation in “baby talk”.

Whether you are creating content to sell more CMS software, more analytics software, or if you are launching a new app, you have to realize that you are competing for the time and attention of your audience.  Both of which are fleeting resources.

What’s the Answer

People do actually love to consume content.  And people want to hear what you have to say.  As long as its interesting.

Here are a X ways to ensure that your content is interesting:

1.  Being educational is no longer enough.  In my field there, there are no more ways to tell people that Facebook for business is valuable.  It’s been covered.  However, I can put a spin on the topic by adding my own story, by telling you where I failed, and where I succeeded.

2.  Go against the grain.  When every one zigs, you zag.

3.  Talk about your buyers problems.  My buyers have a huge issue regarding time.  While I haven’t spoken about it, I can easily see a time management post the not too distant future.  Your content doesn’t always have to relate your products or services.

1.  Lack of Consistency

The first one is a lack of consistency.  I think that when we write, we are producing valuable content.  However, we don’t do it consistently.  We tend to take several weeks off, for a variety of reasons; such as changing direction, getting our house in order, etc.  None of these are great excuses.

When I look at blogs that are the same age or younger than the CML blog, I noticed that the most successful blogs are the most consistent.

On “The Rise to the Top” David posts every day.  Whether it be a compelling interview with successful entrepreneurs or text with his own thoughts.

Tristan, on the other hand, posts twice a week.  (It used to be 3 times a week).  And his uber successful blog about blogging is growing rapidly.

2.  Lack of Promotion

We haven’t done a very good job promoting our content.  As a small company, word of mouth is able to sustain our business growth.  I wonder though how much further we would be if we promote our content more.

Again, going back to the two blogs above, David is everywhere.  He updates his Facebook page every day; ditto Twitter.  He is constantly growing his community.  I watch his interviews every day, but I don’t subscribe to his RSS.  He promotes shamelessly – and I mean that in a good way.  (He also gives a ton of value along side of his promotion.)

Tristan has been known to comment on 100 blogs in a day as well as guest post on other blogs at least twice a week.  He creates conversations on other web properties and then brings that conversation into his own house.

3.  Failure to Make Up Our Minds

One of the things that we have done as a startup is constantly pivot.  this isn’t necessarily a bad thing in startup-land, however it doesn’t give content a chance to gain momentum.  We now know where we want to go-what offers we want to test.  Hopefully we can spend a lot of time building momentum the remainder of this year-Growing our customer base and our online community.

We help B2B companies generate sales leads in 30 days.  We spent a lot of time perfecting the process, developing the offers, and articulating the service.  Now it’s time to get busy!

Click the image to watch the webinar.

I’m sure Kelly here is a lovely individual.  But why do I care about her picks?  Why doesn’t Borders send me an email that closely relates to the last five purchases that I made?  They know what I like, and what I buy.

What do you think?

Click the image to watch the webinar.

I started out this year setting a goal for myself that I wanted to blog four days a week, and I wanted to comment on 10 blogs a day, and tweet more often, yadda, yadda, yadda.   As a person who is adamant about setting quality goals, I realize how poor my original goals are.

Content marketing simply takes too much time and energy just for the sake of doing it.

Here are five take aways from the book that we will implement in our content marketing strategy.

1.  Having a publishing schedule makes it easier for you and your team to consistently produce quality content.

Something simple such as saying:

• Daily – our team is going to tweet, update facebook, and comment on 5-10 blogs.
• Weekly – Our team is going to blog 3-4 times per week; write 1 guest post
• Monthly – Our team is going to produce a lengthy blog that requires research, and may be able to be repurposed as a white paper.
• Quarterly – We are going to produce a white paper and host a webinar.

The amount of content adds up quick, which is why take away #2 is so important.

2.  Have a clear goal for each piece of content that you publish. Here are a few questions to ask yourself:  When you are writing a blog post, what’s the purpose?  Is it simply to engage the community (which isn’t a bad goal).  Is it to move your audience into your buying process?  Or is it meant as “link bait” in order to introduce your blog to a new audience?

3.  Make it clear what you want your audience to do. If you want them to sign up for your newsletter, you might want to investigate a non-intrusive pop-up.  If you want them to download your ebook, make sure you embed it on your blog’s side bar.  If you want your audience to call you, make sure that you give them a reason, and paste your phone number big and bold in the blog’s banner.

Never assume that you know what you want your audience to do.  Spell it out!

4.  Create new content and don’t simply echo what others say.  Here are a few ways to do that:

• Take a current industry trend and insert an experience that you have had.
• Tell the story of your company.  People love to hear and read stories.
• Disagree when everyone else agrees.  The guys over at Social Media Explorer just asked if Facebook for Business is Overrated.  That’s pretty much considered heresy for a social media blog.

5.  Have a grand vision of what your blog and content marketing strategy is, and how it differs from everyone else in your industry. For us, even though we are considered “Social Media Marketers” we speak a lot more about stories and messaging than we do about the nitty gritty of Facebook and Twitter.  (I’ll let you know if that’s a good idea or not shortly.)

In conclusion:  This book is a great read.  Some of the stuff in it is obvious.  However, for a person like me, some times it takes a book and a few steps back to recognize the obvious.

Click the image to watch the webinar.

Have Something Valuable to Say

Believe it or not, this is probably the hardest part of the marketing plan.  The reason this is so difficult is that we as marketers have to understand that our prospects don’t care about our companies.  They don’t care about our products and services.  They only care about themselves.

The great news is that the second you understand this, you will be 10 times further in your marketing efforts than your competitors.  The first step is to have something valuable to say – emphasis on the word valuable.  This can come in the form of a white paper, ebook, webinar or podcast.

Build a Landing Page

Now that you have your value, you have to sell it.  Just because you are giving it away for free, doesn’t mean that the world is going to jump all over it.  You need an effective landing page.  To be effective, your landing page must have:

• An effective hook for a headline.  “How to Create a Damn Good Marketing Plan” might be effective.
• A singular and clear call to action.  Their should only be one thing for your visitor to do on your landing page
• No clutter

In many industries, even the best landing pages, giving away free and valuable advice, only have a 15-20% conversion ratio.

Keep Talking To Them

Once your customers have signed up for your list, you need to keep talking to them.  Not in a salesy kind of way though.

Create an industry news letter that supplements the white paper that they signed up for.  Keep it simple, keep it useful, keep it entertaining.

Develop Intimacy

After you have been talking to your audience for a while, it’s time to get intimate.  You can do this in a few ways.

You can:

• Offer a free consultation
• Host a webinar
• Host a live event
• Video conferencing

Anything that you can do to get your audience to know you more – and you can learn more about your audience will help strengthen that bond.

Make Your Pitch

Finally, you have to make your pitch.  All of this work means nothing if it doesn’t help you generate revenue.  Yes, it’s good to be helpful.  Yes, it’s good to make friends.  But you still have to make your numbers, pay your employees, and do all that great stuff that makes your business successful.

One of our customers, Future Free Energy, has not only given us the opportunity to implement these ideas and create a product and story from scratch, but also given us permission to blog about the process.

Future Free Energy designs and installs solar panel systems on residential and commercial buildings.  They have given us the task to build a remote monitoring and maintenance system that will improve their customer service.  This isn’t necessarily a new concept in the industry, and one of our challenges is going to be to create differentiation.

Once a week, we will be blogging about the progress of Future Free Energy.  We won’t be getting into the specifics of the product (you’ll be able to find that on their website, eventually), but we will be digging deep into the processes that we will use to create the story, combine the technology involved with that story, and bring it to market.

The first step of this process is the customer discovery phase.  During this phase, we will find out what the current need for the product is, what customers are currently doing to monitor their solar output, and some other stuff.  (This is vague, because quite frankly I’m not sure what we are going to find out.)

Next week, I’ll tell you exactly what we are doing to uncover the story of the service and tell you what our next steps are.

We hope that you enjoy following along as much as we are going to enjoy doing this!