10 Benefits of Press Releases for Your Business

Press releases have been around for a long time and many companies have used them as part of a successful content marketing plan. They are a great way to let the press and the public know about new product launches and other company news and to get your company and brand into the media.

Here are 10 benefits of issuing press releases.

1. Become an industry thought leader

Press releases shouldn’t just be self-promotional or they won’t be very interesting to your customers and the media outlets that you send them to. Therefore, you should send out press releases that help to educate and share information specific to your industry, and that offer unique insights that only you can provide. 

This will help to establish yourself as a thought leader within your industry and will lead to an increase in the trustworthiness of your brand which in turn will lead to an increase in sales in the long run.

2. Free advertising

Getting your press release picked up by journalists who then write about your company helps to spread the visibility of your brand and is essentially a form of advertising. The best part of this approach to spreading the word about your company is that it will cost you essentially nothing. 

For example, let’s say a local newspaper covers your company by doing a profile of it and then publishes that profile to tens of thousands of readers, this will result in thousands of dollars of free publicity through what is known as ‘earned media’.

3. SEO

A huge benefit of issuing press releases that not a lot of companies know about is that each time you issue a press release through a press release platform and/or by posting it to your blog it will be indexed by Google and other search engines. 

This gives your website valuable backlinks and helps you to rank higher for keywords. This means that even if your press release isn’t picked up by the media there are still great SEO benefits that you should take into consideration.

4. Manage your reputation

Getting bad reviews posted online about your company is inevitable, it’s how you deal with them that’s important. The first thing you can do is reply to them on the platform they are listed or in the comments section if it is a blog post. 

But you can also issue press releases through distribution platforms such as PRNewsWire.com that address negative reviews or just offer positive news about your company. This helps to push these reviews lower down the rankings on search engine results pages (SERP’s) and can help to boost your reputation.

5. Build relationships with media

Press releases help you to build long-term mutually beneficial relationships with industry publications. As mentioned above these publications have a huge reach in terms of the number of your prospective customers that read their content, so it is worthwhile to build a relationship with them. 

For example, when a journalist from a media outlet needs a quote about an industry event or trend they are more likely to contact you if you have a relationship with them – this will also help solidify yourself as an industry thought leader.

6. Reach a larger audience

Hundreds of millions of people read news online and millions of those people might be in your target market. This means that if you can get your story and message in front of these customers by way of news articles and press releases you will be able to reach a large audience of highly engaged customers. 

However, it should be noted that if you don’t have a great inhouse writer then you should consider hiring a freelance writer to write your press releases, or they might not get the results that you are after and end up costing you time and money that you don’t see a return on.

7. Cost-effective

High-quality press releases can be a very cost-effective marketing tool to include in your content marketing plan. Apart from paying for your press releases to be written by a professional content writer (if you don’t write them yourself), your only other cost is to pay for a press release platform to distribute your press release. 

If your press releases get picked up by journalists who then mention your company in news articles, or they rank high in search results then you will get a lot of value for money out of it considering the increase in website traffic and brand exposure.

8. Go viral 

Professionally written press releases that share unique and interesting news can quickly spread around the internet. For example, some companies have found great success with sharing polls and surveys about industry topics that are then picked up by the media who publish articles about them. 

Those articles and then shared by consumers on social media platforms which further boosts the spread of your news. This can create lots of new traffic to your website and interest in your products and services all from sharing a simple press release.

9. Build your brand

When you issue press releases that highlight all your company’s achievements and successes then this helps to position your brand as a market leader. This not only reaches customers but also investors and other industry stakeholders who will start to pay more attention to your company.

10. Highly targetted

Using tools such as PRWeb you can send your press release to a highly targeted group of journalists and bloggers who cover your industry. 

Unlike the old days when you had to go out and build relationships with individual journalists, you can now use online services to make contact with the journalists for you.

The best part is it doesn’t have to cost you much money to do and you’ll see much better results than a mass mail out of your press release.

The bottom line

Press releases are a great way to boost your brand awareness and increase website traffic which will ultimately lead to higher sales. 

They are also a great way to become a thought leader within your industry and to grow your brand across multiple channels. 

Perhaps the biggest benefit of press releases is they are an incredibly cost-effective marketing tool to include in your content marketing plan.