Composing a Press Release
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With any retail business its all about the numbers. The more visitors you can attract to your high street shop or Web shop the more likely you are to gain sales and increase revenue.
This is especially true of a brand new Web shop. You could have the finest looking Web shop but if no one knows it exists, orders will be hard to come by.
Press Release
One way to announce the arrival of your business to a potentially wide audience is through issuing a press release to news and information outlets, both printed press and online news and information portals.
A press release is an excellent vehicle to set out what your Web shop sells and what unique selling points you offer that your competitors do not.
With online services such as Sourcewire, you can have your press release presented to as many as 5000 news and information outlets, and the more compelling and relevant your press release, the greater the distribution will be.
Composing Your Press Release
But what should you put in your press release? How can you make it compelling enough to gain maximum coverage and distribution?
A press release is a form of advertising and therefore follows the advertising principal of AIDA:
A Attention
I Interest
D Desire
A Action
A good press release will open with an attention-grabbing statement which answers the Who? What? and Why? questions about the subject of the press release.
Who is the press release about? What do they do? Why is this information important?
In the opening paragraph or two, an effective way to make your statement relative to current news is to quote from recent surveys and build on related features of popular news.
With online retail, quoting facts and figures about the growth of the online retail market, the number of people selling online and related issues such as fraud prevention and cost savings can help give your press release relevance to today's hot topics and increase your statements appeal to the news outlets.
The desire part of your statement is where you set out your businesses unique selling points. What makes this statement important is what your business offers that is both in demand and in someway different to your competitors.
As with all forms of advertising, the final paragraph of two of your press release should deal with the Action - if someone is interested in your services or products after reading your press release, what do they need to do to buy from you, or benefit from your service?
With a Web shop, the action paragraph should include your web address, perhaps a discount code to give an incentive for readers to visit your shop and make a purchase.
With Internet Retailer's easy to use Web shops you can have your own Web shop up and running within 7 working days. As part of our inclusive service, we are happy to help you compose your own press release as well as discuss other forms of marketing including those outlined in our search engine marketing article.
Whatever your online ambitions, with Internet Retailer's inclusive help and advice on all aspects of marketing your business, you have a better chance of success with Internet Retailer!