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Using Public Relations to Increase Sales

Five Ways Press Releases Can Increase Your Sales

1. Use Press Releases to Sell Product Direct - Some products can be sold directly from links contained in press releases. This is especially true now that the Internet has made it possible to buy products on line with a credit card. Selling direct works best for products that have clearly defined benefits and are not available through retail outlets. They should have some degree of inherent excitement and be priced under $1,000. It also works well for supplies and other commodity items that can be grouped together by category and offered in a catalog format. There are literally millions of websites using this approach.

2. Use Press Releases to Generate Sales Leads - For smaller firms with limited budgets the best use of public relations is to generate immediate business leads that can be converted to sales. This type of release encourages a reader to respond to some type of free offer - usually a free white paper, a free initial consultation, a free estimate, a free evaluation of a problem, or some other type free information.

Readers are willing to trade their contact information in order to get the free offer. The business leads generated through this process can add tens of thousands, even hundreds of thousands of dollars to gross sales every year.

3. Use Press Releases to Educate Future Customers - Press releases are a great way to educate customers about your products/services, your business philosophy and why potential customers should do business with your company.

For example, one our clients wrote a series of press releases that showed how wireless technology could provide broadband Internet services to areas that didn't have DSL or cable modem broadband services.

Their press releases demonstrated the key differences between wired and wireless technology, explained why wireless was more cost effective and stressed be ease of use benefits that wired broadband couldn't deliver. In 2001, no one had ever heard of a Wi-Fi Hotspot or a Wireless ISP. Today wireless technology is making the headlines everywhere. The Broadband Wireless Exchange (BWE) Magazine was and still is the world's best source for broadband wireless news and "how-to" information. Their success started with a single press release that introduced wireless technology and explained its benefits.

4. Use Press Releases to Create Mind Share Awareness - There are many products, services and ideas on the market today. A big part of a public relation executive's job is to simply make sure people and reporters are aware that your company offers a product or service that could potentially solve their business problems.

The BWE example mentioned above is the perfect example. BWE did not need to convince prospects that their site was better than the competition, because when they started, they had no direct competitors. BWE's only challenge was to make potential customers aware (a) that building broadband wireless networks was more cost effective than building wired networks, and (b) that BWE was a recognized authority and expert on how to build these types of networks.

After releasing a series of press releases on the benefits of wireless networking and providing links back to the company's website on "How to Build Wireless Networks," their web traffic rose from less than 10,000 hits per month to more than 6 million per month. The site is now the largest website of its kind in the world.

5. Use Press Releases for Cost Effective Marketing - Unlike advertising, public relations is the most cost effective way to market your products and services. Placing an ad in a typical trade publication costs around $10,000 for a page 4-color bleed. This advertisement will only be read for one cycle of the publication's print run. And, the advertisement is never seen online, so the maximum exposure you'll get is 50,000 - 100,000 readers.

The cost to write and issue an 800-word press release, plus national newswire distribution can be as low as $2,000 (shorter releases cost much less). But unlike advertising, press releases show up everywhere, and if they actually lead to stories in news print and websites, their value increases dramatically. They literally have the potential to generate stories in hundreds of thousands of newspapers, trade publications, Blogs and news portals worldwide. One place our releases show up frequently is Forbes.com. They receive around 100 million page views per day. It is hard to beat that kind of exposure for $2,000.