Do Your Homework Before You Send Out A Press Release

Two rules to getting your press releases read.

(Shel Horowitz's Frugal Marketing Tip, March, 2000)

I'm going to make an example of someone, but it's not unique to this outfit. I get a dozen or so press releases a week, because I edit three online publications. For every 20 I get, one might survive the delete button in the first 10 seconds.

Don't end up in the recycle bin—remember two vital rules:
1) Send to the right people: editors in your niche, covering your geographic area
2) Provide meaningful, relevant, newsworthy content, written in simple, clear language

Here's one that failed utterly—the names have been erased to protect the guilty:

Global TRAVEL Review — Shel Horowitz, Editor

Contact: ***************
Firm Name Division Name Group
212-***-****
***-@divisionname.com

New York February 24, 2000—Firm Name, Inc. announced that its start-up practice, Division Name, has topped $5 million in annualized revenues in less than one year.

The Division Name group, started last March, integrates a set of services to clients that are seeking to manage their brand and reputation strategically in the new digital economy. Division Name works with Firm Name's other practices to add the dimension of Digital Brand Management to clients' communications initiatives.

And on and on it goes—276 words in the main text.

Now, first of all, they sent it to me at Global Travel Review. If they'd sent it my business 'zine, Down to Business, I could at least give them credit for trying. But why on earth would this interest a travel editor?

Second, it's almost indecipherable. I write marketing communications for a living and I only have the vaguest idea of what they're talking about. What is a dimension of digital brand management and why would anyone need to add it? (The parts I snipped out are even worse).

Third, there's no news in it, outside the narrow niche of PR specialty publications. Why would the average reader of a general interest publication care one whit about their billing level?

And fourth—though I cleaned it up for your benefit—they forgot to turn off special characters, so that when they sent it by e-mail, their long dashes turned into tildes, their apostrophes morphed into an accented i—making it pretty hard to read.

Thank you reading this back issue of Shel Horowitz's Monthly Frugal Marketing Tips, published every month since May, 1997; please click here to view the complete archives, grouped by subject. Shel is an internationally known copywriter and marketing consultant, author of Grassroots Marketing Getting Noticed in a Noisy World, Principled Profit: Marketing That Puts People First and several other books, and creator of the Frugal Marketing web site. Please click here to contact Shel.


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