A well-written press release can dramatically increase your sales, expose your company to the masses, and greatly enhance the image of your business or products.

Press releases are short documents used to call the media’s attention to an event or newsworthy happening at your company and are an extremely effective tool for marketing your business both online and offline.

It has been proven to be more effective than advertising, and very inexpensive - if you know how to write a release in a format that will be read by journalists, the publicity your business can receive could be priceless!

Press releases are used effectively all the time from world leaders to diplomats to movie stars to artists to the guy who owns Joe’s Corner Market who happened to sell a winning lottery ticket.

Where do you think most of the articles you read in your newspaper come from? Articles from locations all around the country, all around the world for that matter? They come from press releases. The press wire.

Ever hear a reporter remark “it’s coming across the press wire now”, or something to that effect, on a television program? That’s a press release.

That’s how effective press releases are and have been for ions. They work.

If you want your business, service or products to get attention fast, there is no quicker way than by issueing a press release.

Your primary goal is to generate awareness in your target market.

Here are some questions to ask yourself when preparing to write a release:

What results are you looking to achieve with your media release?
Are you looking at this from a journalist’s perspective?
In today’s world, everyone is inundated with e-mails, faxes, texting, paging, and phone calls on a daily basis. Journalists receive literally hundreds of press releases each day by people who want to have news written about their products or services. The business person usually has their company at the front of their mind when considering a news release. On the other hand, journalists will have the interests of their audience at the top of their considerations. If you want to grab the attention of the journalists and get your press release noticed, ask yourself these questions from a journalist’s perspective:
1) Is the release newsworthy to the public?
2) If you were the journalist, would you see a value to your readers?
3) Will the readers be interested in this topic, your product or service?
4) In a stack of press releases, is there something in your release that will catch the attention of the journalist?

Is your release a “sales pitch” or does it have “news value”?
An experienced journalist can easily identify if your release is intended to sell the reader. While the end result may be to increase product awareness and sell your product or service, your release cannot sound like a television or radio commercial.

It’s about credibility
Credibility will gain the customers confidence and can very easily convince them to purchase your product and/or service at the same time. A properly formatted release that is picked up by the media will build credibility for your business that you couldn’t imagine.

You need to think about press releases as a stream of water over the landscape. In the short term, the water doesn’t do much. In the long term, it can carve a gorgeous canyon. That’s because it takes time for the media to recognize your releases, and more time for the public to catch on.

So, are press releases really that effective? It’s a no-brainer if you want exposure or publicity for your company or business that could lead to more revenue in a shorter period of time than you ever thought possible.

You can find information all over the web on the proper way to format a press release just by Googling
“press releases.”

Effectively written press releases can be money in the bank and definately well worth your effort to use as a marketing tool for your company or business.