Ciao Bella C.
A shot in the dark.
We expected that when we tried a press release that it would be a “shot in the dark.” We purchased an “Industry Pro” release with writing support. Send2press did a great job of helping us to build upon our draft to create what we believed to be a newsworthy and compelling press release at a relevant time, but two weeks later we don’t see any evidence that it’s made a difference for our small business. Our web traffic went up substantially in the lead-up to the press release, but as of now it’s tapering off and no one has reached out. Websites who picked up the AP feed are from all over, we found about 50 of them by Google searching our headline but none were local to DC or Virginia, the area we’re trying to reach. Of note, the AP shows a large banner across the top to clarify that it’s a paid press release; perhaps paid press releases are viewed as less credible? Squarespace shows location and page visits as part of their analytics, so we were able to match several visitors to our website to places like Mississippi, Kentucky and Montana where the release was picked up. We’re unsure of the email campaign, the reporting lists hundreds of organizations in our region where it was sent but for obvious reasons we don’t get the email addresses. We sent the release to “news tips” for all the TV stations in DC and VA, it looks like one in Richmond visited our site shortly afterwards but didn’t reach out. The results we’re seeing are like the results we get when we post a TikTok video … views from all over, but no evidence of anyone following up. We don’t fault Send2press for our lack of results. We’ve used several industry specific listing sites, newspaper and radio ads and much more over the years; in the end, we find our most effective results to be from direct personal networking and our social media. We did find real value in our work with the professional writers, it’s helped us to refine our message and offered fresh wording we’re working to build into our online presence. Our quest for fame & fortune continues.
Response from SEND2PRESSFeb 6, 2024
Thank you for taking the time to leave such a thoughful and honest review. Yes, a press release is always a bit of a 'crapshoot' since basically pandering/begging for free media coverage. Some of our clients over the past 40 years have gotten coverage, many don't. Nature of the effort, and hence why PR is really only part of outreach (as you mention) with direct marketing, advertising, and so forth. With the AP, paid placement is noted as such as they want to be transparent in noting clearly that press releases are not news content they create and syndicated to traditional media for a fee. Putting the news into 3500 AP newsrooms was the real value with up to 50,000 users who work in the news field at professional level. Our service tries to combine traditional email push, AP newsrooms, syndication, social, news platforms and data systems since media don't respond to news as they did 20 years back. Send2Press is a great partner in overall marketing/PR campaigns, but certainly not the only vehicle one should use to gain success. Thank you again for the feedback! :-) -- Chris S., chief widget washer at Send2Press (a service of Neotrope; doing PR since 1983!).