How to Choose the Best Press Release Distribution in 5 Steps
Choosing the best press release distribution can be tricky. With stiff competition in the industry, it can be challenging to pick the right platform.
That’s right, there are a lot of options in the market today. The competition is urging these platforms to offer the best services.
One platform provides several services. There are those that offer a number of marketing solutions under their hood. But how are you going to make the right decision?
In this post, we’ll go through some points that can help you decide. Although deciding for your marketing campaigns can be daunting sometimes, it can be made simple.
Decide the end result of your campaign.
What do you want to achieve at the end of your campaign? Do you have a specific goal or several goals in mind?
When picking a press release service, you need to keep your goals in mind. Of course, you need to go with the one that can help achieve these goals. It’s a waste of time and money to choose a platform that isn’t capable of helping your brand.
If you’re not yet certain of what you really want to achieve, meet with your team first. Brainstorm on the goal that you want to attain. That’s the only time you can seek a platform that will distribute your release.
Do you want to earn media coverage, boosts your online visibility, improve your brand engagement, increase your conversion rates, or establish your brand as an expert? If your goal is one of these, work on your goals by picking the right press distribution service.
Build brand engagement
How does the press release distribution service help your brand build brand engagement? Do they support social sharing button in each page that hosts your content? Is it easy for the audience to like, share, or comment on your content?
Do they include multimedia like images and videos in the plan they offer? Studies support that the more multimedia content has, the more engaging it can be.
Increase conversion rates
It’s not enough that you have different social media channels to share your content. A reliable and effective press release distribution provider knows that you need to distribute your content across various channels. Pick a provider that has a huge network to syndicate your content. It must also ensure that it is placing your story in front of your target audience.
To improve your visibility.
If your goal is to improve your online visibility, you need to choose a service that has high authority in the search engines. This way, you can reach your audience organically.
To establish your brand as an expert.
If you want to be known in your field as an expert, you need to pick a provider that knows what type of content can establish you as an expert. They advise you on the right message and what content appeals to the audience.
Pick the most important features that matter to your goal.
After you have decided your goal, determine what features of a press release service matters to you. Different platforms provide different features. You need to choose a service that offers features that are important for the success of your campaign.
For instance, Newswire offers features such as connections with major media outlets, local and regional, state, national, and international press release distribution. It is rated as “best in value” by clients, embedded media, top in customer support, fast editorial processing, Powerful partnership connections, and their expertise in marketing campaigns.
Does your campaign prioritize multimedia? Choose a platform that allows you to embed images or videos. Do you need additional service? Pick a provider that offers editorial assistance and writing services.
Decide who you want to reach.
Decide your target media and audience. If you don’t know the buying behavior, interests, and needs of your audience, how can you write an effective and newsworthy press release in the first place?
It is also impossible to distribute it if you don’t know your audience. How can you choose a service that will place your story in front of them?
You need to reach the audience by demographics. Determine what age, lifestyle, gender, religion, or ethnicity your audience belongs.
That is the only time if you can decide if you need to reach out to sports, technology, or fashion journalists. If you know the right media, you can surely place your story in the right audience. You must know the reporters whom they follow.
Do you want to reach the local, state, regional, national, or international market? You must go with a provider that offers this feature. It’s also important that you know the journalists that cover your industry. Whatever industry you’re in, you need to choose the service that offers industry-specific targeting.
What if the multicultural market matters to you? You need to pick a service that offers the ability to reach the Hispanic, North American Chinese, African American, and Native American audience.
Determine how a distribution platform measures the success of your campaign.
It’s important that you can measure or determine the outcome of your marketing campaign. You need to know how it went, or how it’s going to change or improve your business.
You must know the metrics that can measure its success. For this, a press release distribution site must offer an analytics report at the end of your campaign. The report contains metrics that matter to your business like conversion and engagement rates, where your story is published, social media engagement rates, and so on.
If you have chosen a distribution platform, determine the best plan that provides reporting. Not all plans offer it. You don’t want to commit mistakes and later learn that they can give you a monitoring report.
Reports give you insight into how well your campaign has performed. It provides you an idea if it succeeded or not. The outcome can give you insights on what areas to improve, change, or delete.
If you don’t have any idea how it performs, it is a waste of investment. There’s no sense in investing in campaigns that you don’t know if you reached your goal or not.
Discuss this thing before getting any platform. Ask them to show you a sample monitoring or tracking report. Ask when they give it to you.
The reports can be used as a basis for the next PR campaigns. You can adjust and work better if you know the strengths and weaknesses if the previous one.
Know your level of expectations.
Not only that you know a platform can help you achieve your goals. You need to work with a service that exceeds or meet your expectation.
For instance, you want to look for a distribution provider that offers professional editorial assistance. It is common for these platforms to provide this service. How are you going to determine if it is the right one?
The platform must have an editorial team that gives their tips and advice on writing press releases. Do they offer to proofread as part of the package? Do they advise you on search engine optimization (SEO)?
How about improved user experience? Does the site offer easy and fast press release submission?
Do they have customer support? How do they prefer to be contacted? It is easy for you to reach them if you have questions?
Determine the expectations that you want from them. Carefully check it if they can provide it. If not, just move on to the next option.
It’s important that they can fulfill your expectations. Besides, you will be working with them in the long run. It may not only be for this campaign but in the future.
Consider these 5 steps when deciding the right press release distribution provider. It is not easy to just pick a provider and regret that you must have chosen the other.
Getting a paid distribution service isn’t easy. You invest a big part of your money and expect a good return-on-investment (ROI).
You invest in these campaigns to reach your goals. If you didn’t reach your goal, try to analyze what went wrong. The tracking report can provide answers.
If you think that a distribution service isn’t a good fit for your brand, don’t think twice. There are a lot of reputable and effective options in the market. You can get a platform that can provide you expectations and help reach your goals at the same time.
If you are in a tight budget, you can choose a platform that offers cost-effective distribution plans. You don’t have to break your own bank in launching PR campaigns.
Determine how you want to launch PR campaigns. Do you want to issue a release for one-time, monthly, or annually?
Check your goals. For instance, if you want to establish your brand as a thought leader in your industry, you need to launch campaigns on a regular basis and not just one time. These considerations can help you in deciding the right platform.