Sure, digital press releases tell the world about your organization’s great achievements. And your SEO master waxes enthusiastic about their benefits to your web marketing plan.
But for smaller companies who don’t have a full digital public relations program and whose business future doesn’t depend on successful SEO, there are other palpable benefits for creating and issuing optimized press releases that announce new customers or clients.
How do press releases help?
First of all, it’s always good to push out new content, especially online. Your press releases should have at least one link back to your website, or a particular page on your website. This not only provides an incoming link from a reputable site (the press release website), but Google often picks up these 3rd party stories and ranks your website higher as a result.
As we see from our press releases, people who read the article are likely to click on the link that goes to the website, thus driving referral traffic.
Tip: putting your company name in the title of the press release gives it an excellent chance of coming up on the first page of a Google search for your company name. Also, that press release may push negative search results onto another page. (Not that you would have any…)
And here’s a secret benefit not many people know about: there are thousands of Twitter accounts that will auto-post articles with certain keywords. If a press release’s title has the same keyword(s) that these Twitter accounts are looking for, then it’s possible to get hundreds (or more) tweets, without doing anything extra!
5 reasons to announce new clients with a digital press releases
- Demonstrate your successes to new prospects – people feel comfortable joining when others are doing the same. Over time an ongoing track record of new customers builds trust and confidence.
- Reassure recent new customers that they made a good choice – see #1 above.
- Issuing press releases gives you another reason to broadcast to the world that you are ‘in the game’ and to stress your strong points. This opens opportunities with writers and other people researching the market, including prospects.
- Your social media programs will benefit from well-executed digital press releases in several ways:
- The press releases offer new, fresh content for your community.
- The new content also helps with Search Engine Optimization (SEO) for your website by providing more incoming links and being found for a search on your comapny’s name.
- Interestingly, issuing a press release is a ‘bonding experience’ with your new customer.
- The act of assembling the release and getting customer testimonials helps them think through their buying decision and makes them feel part your team.
- Once the release is issued, the customer has a vested interest in validating their good decision to go with your organization.
- Often the customer organization re-publishes that release through their internal channels which gives you added positive publicity.
Of course announcing new customers lets your competition see what you are up to and gives them insight into your client list. This is a concern to some companies – but let’s think about this for a moment. You have to assess the likelihood of one of your happy customers jumping ship to a competitor. If that’s really a concern, you have bigger issues to address!
