Press Releases

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Press Releases

How often have you read press releases who spent most of the time pitching you on features and benefits you cared little about?
Or press releases that had no sense of the "language" of your industry-the words and phrases and acronyms that you and your colleagues use to describe your operations and business needs?
Probably too often. And that's exactly what's wrong with much of press releases today.

Too many people are wasting their press releases and their money pitching the wrong message-or using the wrong language. At least with a sales call, you're face to face with a customer or prospect. You can see if you're not connecting with them and adjust the message (if you're paying attention).
With an ad or brochure, you don't have the ability to adjust the message. You better get the message right before you place the ad or print the brochure. If not, there is no recovery. You've wasted the money (and the opportunity).

So how do you make sure you get the message right before send press releases? By identifying what really matters to your customers and prospects first. And by knowing how they talk about those critical press releases, the short hand and emotionally loaded words and phrases press releases use to describe the problems and opportunities they face.

How can you develop this type of insight? By talking to people. You can start with your top salespeople. They should have a pretty good idea of what customers and prospects want and how to talk to them. The problem will come if your salespeople deal with an intermediary (distributors or wholesalers) instead of dealing directly with end users. In that case, you will probably have to hire someone to interview those end users for you or conduct focus groups with key customer/prospect segments.

At this point you will have identified the dozen or more features and benefits sought by customers and prospects. What you probably still don't know is the hierarchy of those benefits.
In other words, which press releases benefit most customers and prospects? Which is the second most important and the third? Which press releases are only copy points, desirable but not that important in the final decision making process?

Prospective customers are not going to go through the trouble of decoding your press releases. Your press releases better come through loud and clear. Otherwise you run the very real risk of wasting a lot of money on the wrong advertising message or printing thousands of brochures that will never be opened by anyone but you.