For decades, my career has flowed from daily journalism to marketing to PR back to marketing. Along the way, I’ve seen poor habits when the three crafts intersect. These patterns are propagated by executives, marketing teams, and PR professionals at companies of all sizes. The most egregious is press release misuse, which stems from competing forces driving PR, Marketing, and the media.
Press releases are used liberally by companies, in many cases too liberally. In this post we set the record straight on how misusing press releases results in poor PR performance, cost inefficiency, or worse, reputational black-balling by the media. Then we spotlight the immense benefits of using press releases as part of a broader “media-savvy PR” approach for companies to influence their press corps. The difference between both approaches is startling.
Let’s begin with press release misuse and common cases to avoid. Although there are many examples, we’ll focus on three. Below is the first, with posts to follow on the other two as well as a capstone ending on how to ensure media-savvy PR.
PR Mistake No.1: Press Releases Should Not Be Sources of Marketing Messaging
Too many times Marketing asks PR to write a release so they can use it as the messaging source for launches, campaigns, and assorted marketing deliverables. Candidly, some marketing teams lack message development and writing skills. They lean on PR for help.
One demand generation manager once asked my PR manager to help her write tweets and emails for her campaigns. When asked why, she replied, “I don’t know what to write. I don’t like writing.”
The PR manager complained to me why a marketing manager could not write 140 characters.
It was a soapbox moment: A marketer who can’t write or develop messaging is like an engineer who can’t code. Writing and messaging are fundamental to any social science, including marketing.
Honestly, I couldn’t agree more. Especially when press releases are used as crutches for poor marketing.
Press releases should not be the source of marketing messaging. There are many reasons, with the most sensible being the release’s target audience. Press releases are for the press. Literally. They are legal documents with considerably less public latitude than typical marketing materials. They also contain basic, distilled messaging for brevity’s sake. Every day members of the media receive hundreds of emails, texts, and tweets. They do not have time to read press releases overstocked with jargon, marketing bias, and technical data.
Press releases should be used as teasers. They do not need to provide all available information – just enough to entice the media to take briefings where full details can be provided thoughtfully by trained spokespeople.
Adjacent to press releases is content marketing, which fuels demand generation campaigns and aims messaging at prospects, customers, and partners. Content manifests throughout the marketing mix. Events, speakerships, webinars, digital marketing, content syndication, direct mail, email, websites, blogs, social media, and ABM assets are all used as a coordinated array of messaging vehicles aimed at customers and prospects. When juxtaposed against press releases and their intent with media, you see clearly how there are different strokes for different folks.
When developing messaging for marketing and PR, take the proper approach. Create a messaging document that feeds all deliverables, including press releases. A standard messaging document includes:
- Three to five key messages representing a topic, with each one a sentence or less. Be ruthless. Distill to a few short messages that carry the most critical points.
- Supplemental messages that reinforce the key messages. Include blurbs (e.g. 25-, 50-, 100-worders).
- Communications guidance, such as tone of voice, word choice emphasis, and messaging rationale.
- FAQ housing all conceivable questions, both easy and difficult. This stimulates alignment, ensuring “one voice” across your company. The FAQ is the pure starting point for messaging development but sits at the end of the document because of its length and detail.
Once complete, use this resource to localize messaging for all content deliverables, including press releases. Share it with exec and GTM teams, stressing internal use only. After all the hard work, the last outcome you want is competitors using it in their own marketing and sales.
Always remember the pragmatism of messaging. Different messages resonate with different audiences. Avoid one message for all audiences. It’s why you don’t pitch a reporter with a first-call deck or brief a prospect with a press release. Customizing messaging can be a competitive advantage against rivals who mayonnaise one message across many audiences.
PR Mistake No.2: Press Releases Are Not Lead Generation Tools
Let’s shift from press releases serving as the source of marketing messaging to the mistake of using them for lead generation.
At a public company, an executive was eager to drive sales. He asked me to issue a press release to drive lead generation and encourage prospective customers in our pipeline to buy our company’s product.
“Can’t you write a press release promoting our product so we’ll get leads?” he asked.
He was a GM of a business unit. He didn’t know what he didn’t know. So we talked it through. Press releases are designed for the press. Their messaging is tailored for objective media. In addition, press releases are a key part of PR’s awareness-building, not lead generation. Their form factor limits calls to action. Press releases are unidirectional mass communications vehicles that are not interactive. Why not cut to the chase with digital marketing channels and content marketing?
The discussion was peaceful and professional. It was a coaching moment for PR to an executive, and he was appreciative of the discussion. For me, I learned how much of a consultative partner PR must be. If I had been an order taker or a yes man, we would have failed to drive leads, confused key media, and jeopardized our relationships. No one would win. Media. Him. Me.
Instead of sidetracking to PR to generate leads, use the messaging doc described above to customize communications to all audiences – from media, analysts, and investors to prospects, customers, and partners. Then use appropriate content marketing vehicles for lead generation and influencing existing customers to buy more.
Make no mistake – issuing a press announcement on a newsworthy development is encouraged. In this case, sending it to the field and customer base is a great tactic. But make sure the release truly represents an actual newsworthy event aimed at media, with other audiences as “extra credit” beneficiaries.
PR Mistake No.3: Announcements Without Strategic Media Engagement Are Wasted Efforts
Describing the third misuse example is best done through role-play. Let’s get into character.
You’re a PR manager. Your press release is finally approved and ready for wire distribution. It’s been a marathon getting to this point.
Drafting the release took a couple days, but review cycles took weeks. There were nine official rev cycles, not including several sideline sessions between various constituents during the same timeframe. Reviewers included a GM, CTO, VP of Product Management, the lead product manager, VP of Sales, CMO, VP of Marketing, two product marketers, a demand gen director, a marketing manager, PR director, two members of the PR agency, and yourself. That’s 15 people, including six executives.
That was before corporate approvals, where the General Counsel, VP of Investor Relations, and VP of Corporate Communications took their requisite three to five days to review and approve. That’s 18 people total, including nine executives, plus an added week of execution. (In smaller, private companies, substitute a CEO for the IR leader.)
That’s a lot of people. If a customer or partner were quoted, they would have included several colleagues too. All this for one press release.
At the outset, the GM and CTO spent a meeting or two with several product managers, product marketers, and PR personnel working through positioning. The CMO, VP of Marketing, and VP or Product Management all huddled with the marketing and PR team about key features and messaging. Countless emails were shared between the 15 stakeholders over several weeks. You were embroiled in most of them.
Imagine the total hours drafting emails, writing the release, and incorporating edits from the numerous rev cycles. Add in the time engaging executive admins and setting meetings. Tack on the actual meeting time. Don’t forget the wasted hours between each email volley and days between meetings before progress could lurch forward. Add in the PR agency and wire distribution costs. Producing one press announcement took 18 people over several weeks – half of a fiscal quarter.
You schedule the release to cross the wire in 24 hours and email the broader team as a courtesy FYI – all of marketing, sales leaders, Strategic Alliances, the GM and CTO, and product management. (If this is a smaller company, the CEO is CCd as well.)
The GM replies with a thank you to the team, then asks, “how much press coverage are we going to get?”
Everyone stays silent, deferring to you.
“We’re emailing the release to our media targets,” you reply.
Freeze the story. It is then that everyone learns there is no real media engagement plan. Just an “any-tier” pitch copied and pasted in emails sent to several media targets with no strategic engagement.
Too many PR teams fail to plot out a pre-game, gametime, and post-game plan with the media. Any press announcement that is truly newsworthy could have several angles to pitch media. News reporters. Long-lead feature writers. Business reporters for broader trend stories. Channel reporters. Vertical industry reporters. Journalists in different countries. It takes time to prepare a pitch grid and assorted pitches.
To go through all that effort and leave press coverage and media relationship-building opportunities on the table is cringe-worthy. It happens frequently, especially at smaller companies that lack media-savvy PR acumen or responsible PR agencies. I call them spam-a-thons – email blasts with no localization for individual reporters and editors.
5 Media-savvy Actions
Have a plan. There are countless guidance points, but for brevity’s sake, here are five fundamental actions to help maximize success with press announcements:
- Create a media list of relevant editors and reporters. Not a master list of everyone – only those who are appropriate for the topic of your announcement. This takes research, which is why you pay PR agencies and inhouse practitioners to know the press corps and their assorted beats and interests.
- Ideate pitch angles for various targets. Document them. Refine them. Stress-test them with PR to ensure they are media-savvy and not blatant marketing.
- Drive instant offense the day of the announcement by setting embargoed prebriefs with trusted media, such as trade reporters. In addition to immediate results, I’ve found that spokespeople get excited delivering prebriefings a week before an announcement, which rubs off on the troops. Morale builds, creating a crescendo of company spirit attributed to the PR team. If results play out as expected, PR and Marketing can put the cape on their backs, compliments of the executive team.
- Identify reporters who require earlier lead time. Craft pitches for long-lead and business reporters who won’t care about the announcement date as much as developing a comprehensive story that runs on their own clock. This extends coverage potential over time while creating opportunities to strengthen ties with top-tier media. Your executives love being in the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, and Forbes, right? If it’s a month or quarter after a press release crosses the wire, do you really care? There’s no shot clock on good press coverage. A win is a win.
- Avoid the one-day, one-hit wonder of a press announcement. Fuel momentum by identifying customers, partners, and secondary storylines. These new pitches maintain awareness as market traction picks up. They also counter copycat competitors who announce “me-too” offerings, allowing your company to infiltrate their coverage. These added pitches bolster long-lead and business stories outlined in the previous bullet. They can also be delivered as another press release and media engagement round.
