Guest Post: PR's Love Affair With The Press Release (And How To End It)
By Tom Foremski - August 12, 2009
[Here is an excellent article by Andrew Fowler, from Newsvetter, a Portland based PR consultancy. If you'd like to publish a guest post on SVW please contact me tom at foremski.com]
By Andrew Fowler
If there's anybody who has developed a successful model for charging for news content, it's the PR industry.
In 2007, press releases represented a $2.2 billion market, according to Fortune. This figure only covers distribution through companies such as PR Newswire and PR Web. It does not include the cost to write and pitch them to the media which, in my experience, almost always exceeds the cost of distribution.
Most companies have accepted press releases (or social media releases) as the main engine powering their news programs. PR agencies love them because it's the easiest way to generate revenue and there's little resistance on the client side.
But how many of these press releases are actually worth the time and money? Not many.
Go to any corporate site and you would be hard pressed to find a handful of press releases (or social media news releases) that had enough news value to warrant their distribution. For example, recently, I was asked to weigh in on whether a company should write a press release about the launch of their corporate blog.
Press releases would be a lot less attractive if it weren't for search engine optimization which allows PR folk to tout search rank and traffic numbers. In the old days, nothing spelled F-A-I-L like a press release that didn't generate one piece of coverage. But these days, you get to say things like: "This press release generated 20K hits."
Of course, these numbers are meaningless unless you can track a particular hit to something tangible, like a sale, a business lead or even a piece of coverage. One of my cartoons generated over 30K hits, but other than boosting my ego, it did little to move the bar for my business.
The point is this: Don't let traffic numbers and search results give you a false sense of security about the success of your PR program. If you can't tie it to a specific business result, you're just wasting your precious PR dollars.
Now is a good time as any for companies to take a serious look at what they're spending on press release development and distribution. Here are a few things you should do first:
- Go through your press release archive and count how many press releases reported major pieces of company news (e.g., new product launches, major corporate developments or achievements). As a point of reference, most companies don't generate more than 5 major announcements (unless of course you're a large company like Microsoft).
- Ask your PR department or agency to give you a total cost for each press release (including time drafting, newswire distribution, and media outreach).
- Ask your PR department or agency to tie each press release to a specific business objective (not just traffic hits or search results). Consider using press releases for only your most earth shattering news. For everything else just post a simple note on your corporate website or blog.
We think after going through this exercise, most of you will want to end your love affair with the press release. It's probably better to be "just friends" anyway.
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August 12, 2009 | Permalink | Comment | Subscribe to SVW
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Comments (4)
For the most part, Andrew, I agree with you; especially in the world of B2C PR.
At the moment, however, I work for a software company that specializes in serving a relatively small, tight-knit industry in a B2B capacity -- i.e. we provide advertising software to businesses who target the consumers. And out of everything we do, we have found that press releases are really great at generating sales leads for us and helping our clients secure publishers for their ads.
Of course, in a specialized industry, there is less info overload, and building relationships with industry publications is much easier. But I still can't help but to wonder whether press releases are still relevant to a B2B context.
That said, in a B2C context, I would probably advise a client to focus less on press releases and more on building actual relationships with relevant journalists and other influencers. So that when they had something that was actually newsworthy, it would come down to one-on-one pitches rather than the spray-and-pray press release approach.
Posted: August 13, 2009 10:26 AM
There's nothing in this piece that I disagree with or that hasn't been said a thousand times. But the advent of social media + Google means that execs (particularly at smaller B2B companies) view press releases as a major sales tool, which potential customers will find in their online research or salespeople can use to show evidence of qualifications & momentum. Value to actual press is increasingly considered incidental. Execs even seem to prefer releases over well-placed articles in vertical publications (despite the fact that the same messages in a company-issued press release don't carry the level of credibility they would when written up by a third party). This is due to the perceived "reach" of press releases. Frustrating? Certainly. But even by using the ROI tools suggested, I wish people luck in weaning small-company execs from their press release addiction.
Posted: August 13, 2009 10:54 AM
According to the New Rules of PR and Marketing (David Meerman Scott) most companies aren't sending enough press releases. I can't disagree more but his book sells well on Amazon so I wonder if anyone agrees with him.
Posted: August 13, 2009 1:57 PM
Just to clarify, my post was not meant as an attack on the press release. Rather, an attack on the lack of thought and rigor that goes into writing them.
Remember what the NRA likes to say: Guns don't kill people, people kill people. Well in similar fashion: Press release don't kill people, people kill press releases.
Posted: August 13, 2009 2:25 PM