Will Press ReleasesWork for Small Business Web Marketing?

As a small business owner, you don’t know online marketing. So you hire somebody who does. That person knows online marketing, but they don’t know your business. More importantly, they don’t know your audience. There is a chance that you could be investing in a service that will not produce results.

As an internet marketer, you are obligated to provide results. For that reason, you should question the relevance before providing any client with a service… regardless of how effective that strategy has been for other clients.

Some of the most effective online marketing strategies are useless for local business. Almost.

Press release writing and distribution is a very powerful online marketing campaign used for clients that need to reach the attention of a national audience. (Or, a global audience.) It’s so effective that most internet marketers will provide press release writing & distribution as part of a package.

That’s where the client (who probably doesn’t know any better) needs to pay attention to the services that you’re paying for. Or if you offer press releases as part of a web marketing service, take note: Pay attention to the unique needs of each client because online press release distribution is (almost) useless for a local business.

Some of the simplest online marketing strategies are most effective for a local business.

When a small business needs to build an online presence, they have a huge benefit over the big brand competitors. While national chains, franchises, and corporations have a bigger advertising budget, you can’t pay for a listing in organic search results.

What you can do is optimize the website for a local audience, claim local directory listings, and take advantage of the local search filter in place. (The location of a search engine user is factored into the algorithm that brings up the most relevant—read, local—results.)

In short, small businesses have a huge benefit when it comes to online marketing. Use it to your advantage!

How to use online press releases effectively for a small business.

• Targeted brand exposure.
• Authority link building.
• Increased traffic

Those are the top three benefits with online press releases. Exposure, authority, and traffic are still some of the biggest goals you want to go for with any client… but the problem with internet marketing packages is that there is truly no cookie cutter approach that will work for everybody.

Nevermind the obvious fact that a national (or international) publication would not even want to run a news article about “Betty’s Bakery in San Antonio”. You might be thinking “there’s still Yahoo! News!” and that’s true. Any publication with a localized news section would be more likely to run that story because it is relevant and useful to their audience.

A press release (should) add value and bring traffic to the publication as well. Focusing on relevance will increase the value of a news article simply by increasing the chances of acceptance but the most important benefit is the relevance itself. This shows in exposure to a targeted audience, higher authority as a local business, and more qualified traffic.

Sure, you can still go for the local news sections on big sites but the best way to handle press release writing and distribution for a small business is to go directly to the leading news sources for that demographic region. If a press release is printed in the local newspaper, with a link to the website, it will still attract traffic and build brand awareness.