Just who is viewing your press release – do they matter?

Paid media Geographic and Demographic targeting delivers numbers traditional press release distribution can only dream about – it is about ten to hundreds of thousands of views and tens to hundreds of engagements clicks for even a small company press release costing only a couple of hundred dollars. But it is much more than that, traditional press release distribution using web site postings, news agencies, RSS feeds and other legacy technologies cannot even accurately track views or engagement and even if with sophisticated monitoring tools distribution services do provide figures the question is: who are these audiences viewing a release or even engaging and clicking through to a landing page?

You would think this would have been the question all along for decades, not only make sure a service delivers a worthwhile number of viewers and engagement click through but that that the audience, the viewers and those clicking through to my landing page, web site or release are the targeted audience that provides ROI for my investment.

The solution has been available to the industry for decades and some thought and innovation is all that has been needed to take the $750 million dollar a year press release distribution industry into the year 2020. Paid media targeting, Geographic and Demographic targeting achieved using paid media or in simpler terms, targeted advertising. Its so simple it makes you wonder why in 2019 the only press release distribution service with a full suite of paid media targeting options is a small startup – iCrowdNewswire.

Full disclosure, I am the CEO of iCrowdNewswire so if this article seems biased it is because it is. Biased as it may be, I am sharing a trade “secret” and doing so because the sooner the industry wakes up the better off we will all be including iCrowdNewswire.

When we distribute a press release and run paid media targeting campaigns, also known as social media ads, our Geographic targeting targets a country, state, city, zip or postal code worldwide. Our Demographic targeting targets audiences by age, industry and interests. The users chooses, with three clicks, who he wants driven to his or her release – its not a shot gun blast or as some would say, put a bag on the street, set it on fire, run and hope someone comes out and puts out the fire before it burns out on its own.

Using paid media we deliver the number of viewers and engagement click throughs press release services only dream about but more than that, since we ran the paid media campaigns specifically targeting Geographic and Demographic audiences chosen by the issuer, we deliver viewers that are exactly the audience a press release issuer wants to read their release. In other words, it’s the difference between an undefined random audience and a surgically targeted audience – and add to that numbers that traditional distribution cannot come close to.

Sound smart? It is. And no, it was not my concept but rather that of a Google Vice President I met almost two years ago – he told me that we were in the dark ages regarding technology, that we were not only not a technology company but a no-technology industry. He was right, decades come, and decades go, and the entire industry is still telling press release issuers that their release had a potential of 100 million viewers because its posted on Yahoo Finance! the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times!

Some of you from New York my recall a street game of the 80’s or 90’s called “three card monty”, the industry technology today by enlarge reminds me of three card monty, put up your $20 and tell me under which card the bean is? In this case it is more like pay me $1,500 and pray some random individuals run across your release even if they never heard of your company, product or service and have no hope or prayer of either investing in your business, buying your product or ever coming across another piece of news from you.

And for those of you enjoying this piece over the weekend let me share some more joy – Google Search 2.0 is around the corner, what will you do when your traditional blue links to releases don’t appear anymore? Or when 50% of 5.6 billion daily searches done on Google are voice driven which eMarketer predicts will happen in 2020, and your releases are not “voice search” ready? And when with AI and NLG technologies grow and the technology distance between the have and have not in the industry grows even larger?

Oh well, there is always the option to grab a box, three playing cards and try three card monty on 5th Avenue, maybe near Trump Tower as it gets a fair amount of traffic these days.

If I got your attention and your interested to know more, even see more, go to www.icrowdnewswire and at the bottom of the page we have a link to sample reports – actual client reports (also try getting a real actual report from anyone else – good luck) and better yet, register. We don’t require a contract or a credit card, a few simple fields, email verification and you are done.

Then choose a product, we have 5 product categories and 3 -4 prices per product, our pricing is based on audience targets of 15k, 30k and 45k and start at $250 all inclusive – no overage fees, no cost for images, links or anything else – if you choose our $250 product you will pay $250 in our PayPal checkout at the end. But you don’t have to send a release to see the system and better understand how paid media works.

Once you have chosen a product sign in and you will see our user interface, scroll down to the paid media section and viola – this is where the magic happens. Imagine yourself issuing Microsoft’s earnings release. You first choose New York City (to make sure you get wall street) and then pick the 25 – 65 age group of individuals in banking, finance with an interest in technology.

Then for another $150 dollars you add an additional paid media campaign, this time you change the title of the campaign and maybe you focus on the fact that cloud services was responsible for a large part of your revenue growth – you target this campaign to California to make sure you get Silicon Valley and the tech industry.

And then for another $150 dollars you add one more paid media campaign, this time in Japanese (all our releases are translated and posted in English and 8 other languages – really, we publish 9 versions of every release and we don’t charge extra for translations) and you target Tokyo, Japan because you happen to be growing at a fast rate in Japan.

The end result is you started with a $250 release with one paid media campaign, added two other campaigns at $150 each or $300 – so for $550 dollars you ran unlimited words with three advertising campaigns targeting three different audiences driving targeted traffic to your release. Oh, and after you review your release and push publish (give 30 minutes to an hour) ask Alexa: “Alexa open Corporate Newswire” and then search for your release – Alexa does not do Japanese yet, but the English version will be there and you can even ask Alexa to email the release to any of you contacts. It is free as well. And yes, if you did nothing extra and only ran one campaign it would have cost you $250 flat fee, no overage, no contract and absolutely no extra charges. And for reading this to this point (keep this a secret) use the support button and ask for a 100% free coupon and do the whole thing absolutely free.

And if you only go through the process to see what I am talking about I promise, we will not leak your name, our teams are based in Asia and neither them nor I know the Inspector General. And I promise to keep your email off our marketing lists – we have enough email gathering methods working right now. Then write me and do me a favor just like the Google VP that told me our industry was doomed and we were all headed to become Starbucks’s baristas (I love the baristas at Starbucks) my email is hbotero@icrowdnewswire.com. The Google VP is from Atlanta and I guess three card monty is a New York thing. And really, you may by now have figured out I do well with criticism and my Asia team – they love anything that can make us better.

Contact:

Hector Botero
hbotero@icrowdnewswire.com