Press Release Tips for Small Business Marketers
As a small business owner trying to market your product or service, it’s important to stay focused on smart marketing basics, including using public relations, specifically press releases, to promote your company and your offerings. One of our goals here at SMBmarketer.com is to feature advice articles and snippets to help guide you through this process.
I highly recommend this article, “The Do’s and Don’ts of Pitching Your Small Business to a Reporter”, by Joe Pompeo, recently featured on OPEN Forum. The author provides some succinct advice to small business owners to avoid common mistakes when approaching editors.
Be sure to also check out my feature article,”Using Press Releases to Market Your Small Business.” Issuing press releases on a regular basis keeps your company top of mind with prospects and customers, and builds awareness for what you do, and the value you provide.
Smart Marketing Starts with a Solid Message
I am inspired by a recent blog article from Marketing Sherpa, Writing Better Releases and Copy, http://bit.ly/bMUC4H, written by reporter Adam T. Sutton. He talks about how often he comes across press releases that don’t really say anything, but feature “gobbleygook”. Or described another way, superlatives and hype. The blog article goes on to cite some resources devoted to this topic, and also calls out the most commonly used “gobbleygook” phrases. Check it out to see if you have been an offender.
This topic hits near and dear to me, as creating good marketing, specifically press releases, starts with building a solid and clear message. Developing and issuing press releases is a key promotional activity that can drive marketing leads and growth for your business. However, most small and even medium- sized businesses struggle with crafting a short, succint, meaningful story before embarking on drafting news announcements.
At a minimum, organizations should develop a company boilerplate description that is used consistently across all marketing communications. This is the foundation upon which the marketing templates available from SMBmarketer.com, were built upon. See our featured article, “Using Press Releases to Market Your Business“, available for free download at http://www.smbmarketer.com/featured-articles/
Smart Marketing Basics 