It’s my favorite time of the year! We are at the point when press release goals move swiftly from awareness to purchase or donation. It is the time when products, events, guides, and wrap-ups become lead stories.
Every year, we distribute thousands of holiday season press releases. From gift guides and product launches to events and end-of-year wrap-ups, there are many ways brands use press releases to successfully insert their company and products into the holiday news cycle. This is the perfect time to use the press release as a true revenue driver.
To build a news release that drives revenue, you need a few things:
- A relevant news release topic, product, data point, cause, or offering
- An interactive format that educates and drives action
- Wide reach via Business Wire
Finding a relevant holiday topic
A timely, well-crafted news release is one that both resonates with your target audience and surprises them. For some companies, it may be a product launch or a gift guide.
Here are a few holiday news themes we see each year:
- Small business sales
- Recipes and holiday foods
- New toys and gadgets
- Gift ideas by age and demographic
- Holiday corporate social responsibility activities
- Holiday-related products
- Product reviews
- Non-profit donation requests
- Economic/holiday tie-ins
- Customer spotlights
- End-of-year business wrap-ups
- Awards
- A new holiday twist on an old offering
- New Year, New You: Tips for a better holiday, life or year
Once you have identified your news topic, it is time to build a release that resonates with and surprises your audience.
Write a news release people will want to read
To increase resonance, you need to write a headline that will capture the interest of reporters and customers alike.
We highly recommend using Google Trends to identify the best keywords for your news release headline. You can find step-by-step instructions for this here.
Using Google Trends ensures your news is positioned to generate the maximum amount of interest and the highest visibility possible within Google search results. Google Trends identifies which words in your news release are the most commonly searched. This will increase the probability of your news release appearing in your audience’s holiday searches, putting your news in front of your audience at the time they are most likely to act.
Now that you have resonance, it is time to build surprise
To surprise your audience, we recommend adding interactivity to your news release. Why? Interactive assets are surprising, different, and create dialogue between you and your customer that you cannot achieve with a traditional news release.
Interactive news content is great for cutting through the holiday clutter to catch and keep your audience’s attention.
Adding an interactive image to your news creates an opportunity for your audience to learn through engagement, something rarely found in a traditional press release. By using animated hot spots, you attract your audience’s attention; with supporting content, you can educate readers before calling them to action in the form of a purchase, donation, or social support.
Click below to see how TravelRest used interactivity to attract, educate, and sell this travel pillow:
Click below to see how P&G piqued interest in their new Tide Eco-Box with sign-ups:
Click below to see how FedEx presented its annual report “Superior Networks Power Performance”:
Want to see more examples? Click here to see how interactive media is used to support data, partnerships, product expansions, contest results, and more.
Great content only works if people see it
Now it is time to take your great work and share it as widely as possible. In addition to sharing your news release and embeddable interactive asset to your media list and placing it on your website and social channels, you need to leverage the reach of Business Wire. Let us put your great news into news systems across the country or the world! If you build an interactive news asset, we will distribute your news release to one of our countrywide circuits at no additional charge.
The holiday season is not the time to be timid with your news. As the year closes, PR pros have a real opportunity to tie their news programming directly into their company’s business goal by turning their traditional news release into an actionable, interactive experience that’s tailored to their audience.
