PR or press release marketing isn't anything new. Businesses have been using it as a marketing strategy for a long time. A few years ago I started my first e-commerce company with two friends of mine. One of my partners suggested that we do some PR marketing. Quite honestly, I had no idea what it was. (I knew what the acronym stood for but that's about it.) We spent about $6,000 on a annual license for a PR marketing software program called Vocus. (Vocus is a great PR marketing tool. Basically, its a huge database of media contacts. It allows you to create target email lists of reporters and media outlets and email your press releases.) We started using it a lot along with another web PR distribution service called PRweb with great results. However, our goal for PR marketing was quite different than the traditional objectives of PR marketing. We didn't really care about our company being mentioned in print newspaper and magazines. Although I am sure this had some value, all we were really after was high value links on newspaper websites, blogs, and other online media. In the first six months our PR marketing campaign produced a lot of links including links on USAToday.com, SFGate.com (San Francisco Chronicle), U.S. News, Detroit Free Press, Detroit News, and a lot of other popular and high traffic blogs. These kind of links are invaluable because the sites they come from usually have a high page rank and trust value and your competitors can't easily get them. We launched the website in August and obtained the #1 position in Google for our principle keyword by November. I have no doubt that this never would have happened if we had not executed such an effective PR marketing campaign.
Keys to a successful PR marketing campaign
A successful PR marketing campaign takes some careful thought and research. Anyone can send out a press release and distribute it online through PRWeb or something similar; however, it won't get much traction unless it is well-targeted and truly newsworthy. A few of our competitors started sending out press releases through PRWeb after we did it but they were never successful because they weren't newsworthy. Reporters receive hundreds, if not thousands, of press releases each day. If your press release doesn't stand out or is not truly newsworthy it will end up in the reporters' trash can along with hundreds of other crappy press releases.
So how does one create a newsworthy press release? Creating a press release that is newsworthy is difficult. I am sure that there are lots of other ways to come up with a good press release put we basically used two methods:
- We manufactured events or programs that were newsworthy.
- We scoured the internet looking for news related to our industry to find opportunities to create press releases around.
These strategies are difficult to describe in general so I will give you a few examples of how we used each strategy.
Manufacturing a newsworthy event or program
The best example of our use of this strategy was our recycling program. Our business sells LED Christmas lights. We received several phone calls from customers who were extremely environmentally conscious. They liked the idea of the energy savings that LED lights offered but didn't like the idea of throwing away their light sets that worked fine. We didn't have a good answer to this objection so we thought about it a lot. After a lot of brain storming we came up with the idea of offering a free Christmas light recycling program. We found a company that would recycle the lights for free so we launched the program and offered to recycle Christmas lights for free and give participants a coupon for 15% off our LED Christmas lights. We created a press release about the program and sent it out to thousands of holiday and environmental reporters. No one else was doing this and with "green" issues being very popular at the time, the press release got a lot of traction and yielded a lot of high quality links. This program continues to generate links to this day. Operating the program requires a lot of time and labor and we probably loose some money on it, but the value of all the links we have gained is invaluable.
I think manufacturing news worthy events or programs for the legal industry is more challenging but it can be done. Here are a few ideas to consider:
- Develop and launch a pro bono clinic for a specific legal issue relevant to your community. For example, you could offer a pro bono estate planning clinic for military personnel. Offer the clinic once a month and send out a press release about it. It will take some time but you can meet your professional obligation to provide pro bono service and probably get some great links. I would be surprised if this type of release wasn't at least picked up by your local paper.
- With the current housing market crisis you could offer a free legal clinic on mortgage foreclosure. Offer the clinic one weekend a month for a while. In order to not be overwhelmed, you can always limit the number of participants for each session.
- Offer a free legal clinic about legal issues for small business owners. Maybe also have a raffle or drawing at the clinic and set up an LLC or other business entity for the winner(s) at no charge.
Create a press around news events in your area of expertise
The example of how we utilized this strategy that comes to mind involved a news article I found about a small town that was going to have to cancel its holiday decorating program because of high energy costs. I contacted the mayor of the town and offered to donate some LED Christmas lights. I also sent out a targeted press release about the offer. This release produced a weeks worth of high quality links. I found this story by using a Google tool called Google Alerts to monitor the web for content related to my industry and keywords. Each day that there is something posted on the web that contains my specified key words Google sends me an email with a link and summary of everything new related to my key words. I read these every day and look for PR marketing opportunities. It is easy and it's free.
It is hard to give some suggestions for utilizing this technique in the legal industry but I think it can be done. For example, there was recently an article in my local paper about a German man who lost his job and was going to have to return to Germany after living in this country for more than 10 years. I already represented this man and he didn't tell me he was interviewed about his story. However, if I didn't already represent this person I would have offered to help the family pro bono and made a press release about it. There are regularly personal interest stories like this in our local paper where families are facing issues that involve the legal system. Keep a close eye on your local paper or other publications related to you field and look for these types of opportunities. Google Alerts is an easy way to do this.
How to distribute your press release
As I mentioned above, we use Vocus and PRWeb to distribute our releases but these tools are expensive and may not be necessary or economically sensible depending on the scope and nature of your practice. In the example I used about the small town that was going to cancel their holiday program, I didn't use Vocus at all. The nature of the story was of local interest only so there was no point in sending it to reporters all over the country. I simply found the websites for all the local newspapers in the area and emailed the release to the editors. This method of distribution is perfectly effective for press releases that are of local interest only. However, even for stories that were only of local interest, we usually still sent out the release through PRWeb. Releases sent out through PRWeb get picked up by Google News and other major search engines very quickly. Depending on how many releases you purchase, a PRWeb release costs about $250. It's still a bit expensive but I think its worth the fee.
I would also suggest that you post the release on your website and submit it to various social media or content aggregation sites such as Digg.com.
Conclusion
Effective PR marketing is a great SEO tool and can produce several invaluable links to your site. Pay attention to the news in your area of expertise and always think about ways to manufacture stories. Be patient and creative. Don't send out a press release just for the sake of issuing a press release. Make sure what you send out is news worthy.
