Arran Events, Advertising and Marketing

Internet news releases are the key to getting a quick flow of traffic to your web site.

Whilst Internet news releases can drive traffic, very few web sites use them as part of their Internet marketing strategy, as they think they’re too expensive and just for larger companies.

Internet news releases are for ALL companies, large or small, and they are surprisingly cost effective. They are similar to the press releases sent to newspapers and magazines – only we’re using the more cost effective version – web, or Internet news releases.

Press Releases – Why they don’t Work

A press release is of very little value to you – a web address in the newspaper or on the radio, requires the potential site visitor to write the information down and visit later, when they’re at their computer. It simply doesn’t work like that

If they’re not already at their computer, looking for what you have to offer, and able to get it by simply clicking a link, then they’re not interested!

What they do

A web news release can be similar to an article, but it’s put together differently, as it’s targeted at the journalists that provide content for Google News, Yahoo News, MSN News, etc.

Nothing released onto the Internet ever goes away, so you may get traffic over a long time span, but we are aiming for a lot of traffic over a short time span – we expect most of the traffic will arrive within 3 to 7 days of submission to the various news release web sites.

Like keyword articles, a news release is re-distributed via .XML feeds, so they will also appear in blogs, and in the news section of a wide variety of web sites.

Get a Traffic Surge

The web, or Internet news release has a shorter life span than an article, but the traffic can come in a large surge, whereas an article will bring in a steady stream of visitors over a long time span.

A good news release, which catches the imagination of news websites, can see traffic of tens or even hundreds of thousands.

How to Write a Good News Release

Of course, your news release needs to be of interest to viewers to get visits to your website, so what makes a good one?

Tags: internet marketing, online marketing, site promotion, web marketing, web site traffic, web site visitors

In order to get consumers (whether they are retail or service customers or business-
to-business audiences) to notice an advertising message, many companies resort to
loudness and one-upmanship. Neither of these tactics works in the long run.

If your competition is talking loudly and you decide to yell louder, what do you think
they will do? Yep. They’ll start to scream. Nobody wins a shouting match when it
comes to advertising. And usually you’ll find you even lose a few customers in the
process because they can’t stand the noise.

It’s the same with one-upmanship. If you have to compete on more and better
coupons or more and better discounts, giveaways or incentives unrelated to your
core product, your revenue per sale decreases as well as your number of sales.

Customers see these types of games as gimmicky, fake and disingenuous; and they
leave. The ones who do stay now view you and your competitors as commodities
with no difference except your price. That is a dangerous place for a company to
find itself.

The answer to clutter is not more clutter; it’s finding who wants to hear you and
speaking to them. So how do you compete if you can’t out shout or out discount
your competition? You get rebellious and radical with your advertising.

Do those words scare you? That’s okay. Remember, you’re being courageous now.
You can handle it. Besides, rebellious and radical aren’t dirty words. They will help
you draw attention away from your competition without resorting to screaming and
insulting your customers.

It’s not about being outrageous just to get attention; it’s about being remarkable.
An advertising campaign with a strong rebellious strategy is, by its very nature,
different from anything your audience will find from your competitors’ marketing
efforts. It’s unexpected. It’s surprising. It’s effective.

There are two keys to creating a successfully rebellious advertising campaign. The
first is the big idea. This idea comes from a strategy that is derived directly from
your customers and their relationship with your brand. You arrive at this idea
through a discipline called account planning. We’ll get into the details of both the
big idea and account planning in later articles.

The second key to a successfully rebellious advertising campaign is attention. You
can’t gain attention if you don’t learn to identify and then steer clear of the norm. It
doesn’t matter how great your product or service is or how large your potential
market, if your target audience doesn’t pay attention to your message, your ad
budget has been wasted.

Think about these two keys while you flip through the newspaper or a magazine.
Ponder them while you watch TV. You should notice something almost immediately.
Most ads today don’t seem to be based on any big idea. Many are so boring that you
flip right past them without noticing them. Others get your attention but the ads
don’t have much to do with the product so you quickly forget the brand the ad was
supposed to sell you. What an opportunity for your brand!

Now, there is a caveat to being rebellious. Your ads should never be different just
for difference sake. The difference should be derived from your brand’s
uniqueness.

This article introduced the second of twelve steps. Challenge yourself, your staff and
your ad agency to revolutionize your advertising program. If you missed the first
step, contact the author for a complimentary copy. And, remember, every revolution
begins with just one step.

Jeff Berney is a freelance idealist, brand evangelist and writer. He can be reached at
jeff@jberney.com.

© 2006

After more than a decade in the business, Jeff Berney offers more than a passion for
prose. Above all, he is a strategic thinker, an idealist, a brand evangelist. The articles
posted here are from his collection entitled, “Twelve Steps to Creating Breakthrough
Advertising Campaigns: A creative philosophy to help companies recover from years of
playing it safe.” You can view his work or read his blog at http://www.jberney.com

Tags: advertising, advertising campaign, branding, copywriting, Marketing

Some self-proclaimed marketing gurus say that each person in the United States of America is exposed to over 3,000 varying and different messages every day. And if you are driving around the city each sign is competing for your eye-ball.

While you read the newspaper each add also competes for your brains visual imagery capacity. Indeed these stats seem appropriate and realistic, yet your mind often does not allow even a slice of its attention to what you consider junk.

So, when marketing folks talk about over kill in the information age your mind is not necessarily even looking, in fact you would be surprised how much your mind blocks out and it does not matter if it is in a phone book, radio, billboard, side of a bus, newspaper or brochure on a counter top.

When you study how the brain works and why it works the way it does you will begin to understand that it is not just the headlines, which sell or help you achieve a favorable impression. Much has to do with how that headline is placed, colors used, etc. and then and only then does what the headline says even matter.

Some marketing gurus, marketing book writers and self-proclaimed marketing specialists want you to believe you either need to learn how to write better copy or hire them as consultants. The truth is most of these folks are old school straddlers of the fence in a changing paradigm of the new click happy, fast paced world, where human block out junk and their eye-ball and brains move fast.

It might be better to study the aspects of the human mind and visualization of the brain. And thus perhaps we need a few less know-it-all marketing specialists and you need to read a few more MRI white papers from the top Universities on what the brain is scanning for and why. Consider all this in 2006.

Lance Winslow

Tags: Adverting Impressions, Critique, on the Human Mind