Hi, Micah... hope you don't mind me answeing your question on a new thread in marketing. So far I have done four releases through Prweb. $80, $80, $90, $120 The $120 one I did Monday. Here are the stats they gave me on that so far: Reads 23,702 This number tells you how many times your press release was accessed from our site and other distribution points where we have the ability to measure traffic. Estimated Pickup 228 This number estimates the number of times your press release was accessed by a consumer / media person. This does not tell you how many times your story appears on other websites, blogs, or in the media. It simply attempts to estimate interest in your release. My traffic went from 40-80 a day... to 800+ yesterday... and 164 so far today. Jenn from here wrote the release... and I'm sure that contributed to its success. I've never done a free release so I can't comment on the difference in results. Maybe someone who has done both can make further comments on whether PRWeb.com are worth it?
I am curious to know, but i personally never spent a cent on marketing blogs/sites. Note, they are personal not for a business.
I have done press releases and I don't really notice much change. I have done the $80 and $120 levels. I average 1000 uniques a day and pretty much always have. It just stays that way. Micah
Ditto for me and Press Releases... I had one professionally written and submitted.... did absolutely nothing for me... just keeps my money going around in the economy. I would highly recmnd the FREE one and see if you get any results...then base your decision on that.
I have done both a free and a $40 PRWeb Press release. the Free one gained me approx 20 backlinks to my site and less than 100 site visitors. The $40 one was much, much better - I got over 300 high PR (PageRank) Backlinks and between 1000 and 1500 visitors in 3-4 days as a result of the PR. I guess it depends on a lot of factors - such as the quality of the Press Release, what your site is about, etc etc. Based on my personal experience, I will in future budget $40 for a PR for a new site where I am selling something that is new to the Market. I would even do it if I needed to get around 300+ quality backlinks to a site. The Backlinks alone were worth it in my opinion, as for me to gain 300 links by submitting to article sites it would take me a lot longer than a few hours - and a few hours of my time is worth more than the measly $40 I paid. Overall, a $40 Release is well worth the effort as long as you have something that is in fact newsworthy. In both cases, I wrote my own Press Releases and got an editorial score of 4 for them from PRWeb. If I had scored a lower number, then I would have hooked up with someone to re-write them for me.
I'm glad to hear the release helped out. If you get any particular pickups worth mentioning, be sure to let me know. When I hear about them, I like to keep them on file, to track the results of my releases if you don't mind. Jenn
RRWH, That is a lot of good info - thanks. I'm just trying to see if the extra money is worth it or not, and from what you are showing it definitely is. I just saw that PRWEB wants $80,$120 and $200+ packages. Has anyone had a better experience with these? One thing that I hate about press releases is the scam artist marketing companies that come calling. They have names similar to QVC and other TV marketing companies and promise huge returns on TV ads. Then they try to hook you to a $10-20,000 marketing blitz which can only fail. LOL. Micah
We paid 200USD and these were our results, hope this helps Statistic Count Description Reads 36,619 This number tells you how many times your press release was accessed from our site and other distribution points where we have the ability to measure traffic. This number does not include the number of journalists who have received your release through email. In addition there are online distribution points that we currently have no ability to track. This number does include RSS measurements. Estimated Pickup 1,771 This number estimates the number of times your press release was accessed by a consumer / media person. This does not tell you how many times your story appears on other websites, blogs, or in the media. It simply attempts to estimate interest in your release. Prints 30 This is the number of times that someone has printed your press release. We measure this by the number of times that the "printer friendly version" link is pressed. In reality, only a small percentage of users actually click this link before printing a release. Forwards 0 This is the number of times that someone has forwarded your press release to a third party using the link on your press release. PDF Downloads 267 The number of times your release was downloaded as a PDF document. PDF Downloads may be reflected in "Reads" and "Estimated Pickup" statistics.
A couple more bits - I had around 45,000 reads after 24 hours and around 51,000 reads after 7 days. Also, be careful about what day you plan on doing your PR! My personal research has shown me that in order to "not get lost in the noise" Don't do it on a Monday or Friday. Mine was actually done on a Thursday, but I think that Tue, Wed or Thur would work equally as well.
If you get a so-so result can you rerelease the same press release? Rewritten a little of course to avoid duplicate penalties. Micah
Actually, if you're targeting "real media" you want to avoid Thursdays... it's often deadline-day, and all they look for then are fluff pieces if they have extra space needing to be filled quickly. Jenn
You can... but if they didn't think it was newsworthy the first time, they won't think it's newsworthy the second time. Jenn
BritishGuy... your reads are actually only about half of what I'd expect to see at that upgrade level. What day did you publish your release (day of the week)? Also, how long between the time you published it and posting your results here? Maybe it was just too quick. Also, keep in mind, it can take weeks to know how well your press release does, unless you're willing to shell out the money on a clipping service or something similar. Since that's not economical for most site owners to track all of the actual pickups (basically being sent clips and such anywhere your name appears - to oversimplify), the best bet is just doing a Google search or Google news search for your press release title (although keep in mind that any bigger publications will use their own headline and write an artice from scratch... and that's what you're really after). The problem is that while Google is free, and will find most of them for you in an online sense, it can take weeks to have all of the pickups indexed depending on the size of the sites. Jenn
So, lets see, press releases are so-so, article writing isn't very fruitful anymore, viral marketing and link exchanges are dead - anyone know what really works right now to increase targeted traffic and see real results like the big C - conversions - whether they be sales, subcribers, etc... Micah www.bestbraindrain.com
Actually, press releases are excellent... but only if you use them properly and actually have something newsworthy to say... most site owners really don't. You have to remember; just because you think it's a big deal that you're launching a new site or something, there are probably hundreds or thousands of others doing the same thing. If you can't tell people why yours is different or better, then you won't have success. Press releases, like I've said here seemingly a million times, aren't about backlinks. They're about getting the media to pick up on the news, craft their own stories or interview you, and those (if you get decent media interest) can lead to tens or hundreds of thousands of people being exposed to your site name. That's what publicity is. If you want to generate a buzz and have it convert to word of mouth marketing, you need to make yourself important enough first. PR might be free or cheap, but it takes a lot of work and time to do it right. If you just want sales, subscribers, etc. stick with advertising, direct mail, or try offering some kind of contest or incentive of value to your target market that is subject to them signing up for whatever you want them to. Jenn
Why is it that sales and conversions drop greatly right after and during a press release? Yet traffic is there? What do you think about this pr that scored a 4 on PRWEB? http://www.prweb.com/releases/2006/03/prweb365431.htm Micah www.bestbraindrain.com
Because press releases aren't about sales and conversions. They're about sharing "news" and generating a buzz. Publicity and sales have very little to do with each other on the surface. You build publicity to grow and maintain an image, to position your brand in your market's minds, and overtime, that converts to trust, and those people become or stay your customers. You're looking for "exposure" with a press release, not sales. That's what advertising is for. Unfortunately most people think marketing, public relations, publicity, promotion, and advertising are all interchangeable, and they're really quite different even though they're all in the same family. You need to understand what each is really meant to do, what the most effective tools in each are for your niche and your purpose, and then use them effectively. Your link to the release was wrong... here's the right one: http://www.prweb.com/releases/2006/03/prweb365431.htm Your title's really long and probably a bit of a turn-off to some who are used to them being short and sweet. Your first paragraph is supposed to answer who, what, when, where, and why. You give more of a sales line. I'm actually surprised this got a 4... then again PRweb isn't really known for paying attention to industry standards... they prefer their own rules. You don't even mention your news in the first paragraph, so you're certainly not going to get the best results possible. I didn't go on to read the whole thing, but just from looking, you don't even have a boilerplate in there. I really doubt you'd get great results from that release. Stick with more traditional release formats and don't take PRweb's guidelines and such as the be all and end all. If you want a free template and general tips on press release writing, visit the link in my sig, and you can feel free to PM me personally with any questions if you're stuck or need advice. I run a small PR firm, and it's the field my education and experience are based in, so I'm happy to help. Jenn