When Should You Pay for Press Releases? | Ep. 30

Ty Smith0:04

Welcome to another episode of the Crypto Marketing Show. My name is Ty Daniel Smith, with me is Kylie. And today we are discussing when you should pay for a press release. So when it comes to getting started with marketing, a lot of people kind of default to issuing a press release because it's just kind of a something everyone knows about, it's a simple way of getting information distributed, but it's not necessarily the best option for all companies all of the time. So we're going to talk about what types of companies should be paying for press releases, questions to ask before you pay to publish, and who it makes sense for.

Ty Smith0:23

So let's first start with what a press release is. So a press release is just a short news story, article-type story, written by a member of a company's marketing team. It highlights the key updates or announcements, just whatever a company is trying to get attention to. And it's typically written in a very kind of direct, no-fluff type way, intended more for other reporters to write about, not necessarily the end consumer. Usually they're published on like a PR Newswire type site that aggregates a bunch of press releases, or it could be issued on a just published on like a an industry-specific niche kind of website, or included in a in a press kit that gets sent usually by email to a bunch of different publishers hoping they'll they'll write about it organically.

Ty Smith1:17

So we're going to focus on paid press releases for this episode. So that's when a company actually pays a news site to publish the press release. So this is prevalent in every industry, whether you're in crypto, whether you're in cannabis, whether you're in sports equipment, it doesn't matter, software. It's the same thing.

Kylie1:28

Yeah, everyone does press releases.

Ty Smith1:30

Everyone does press releases, everyone pays for them, sometimes, and we'll we'll discuss.

Ty Smith1:33

So let's talk about the benefits of paying for a press release. So it gets your information published very quickly to places that people might actually see it. So you can if you have a press release, a lot of people will just kind of publish it to their own blog if they have one, but unless you have a lot of traffic on your site, people aren't going to see that unless they're like directly looking for it. So publishing it on a reputable news site means more people can find it organically. It also allows you or your team to actually write the story, so you can control the messaging and communicate it exactly how you would in your brand's voice.

Kylie2:21

Yeah, because especially if you're paying for a press release, a lot of times you can write it yourself, or just give give the writer of the source all the information that you want and they'll write it and send it to you and you can edit it how you want. So you totally get to control the message.

Ty Smith2:33

Yeah, and it's very time-effective. The only time cost really is actually writing the press release, if you're the one writing it, and choosing where to publish it. And then there's a money cost, but that is usually not so significant. So what types of companies should should pay for press releases? So a paid PR is typically more of like a vanity strategy. It makes you look a little more credible. You can say, 'I was featured in XYZ magazine.'

Kylie3:09

They're very traditional, press releases. And so if it's more of a traditional play, when you're doing the investor route or whatever, you're having someone who is a little bit more of the traditional business side, they're going to want to see the reputable news source publishing information about you because it makes you look more legitimate.

Ty Smith3:30

Yeah, exactly. It's a credibility play. It lets you it lets you say, 'I've been featured in certain places.' But if you're if you're a company and you're relying on a paid press release as a good source of just traffic by itself, unless the place you're publishing it is Google indexed and the article is keyword optimized and the website is a high authority, it's probably not going to drive a significant amount of traffic, in my experience.

Ty Smith4:13

So before you pay to publish a press release somewhere, there's a couple questions that I think everyone should ask, and that's as follows. So the first question you have to ask is what the site's distribution is. So how many monthly readers does the site have, assuming this is a website, not a magazine? Will it be shared on social media? If so, how many followers, which channels? Is the article going to be shared in the publication's email newsletter? That's a pretty common thing and nice added value. And if so, how many people does it actually get delivered to? What is the open rate? What is the click-through rate? Those are all things you should make sure you have in front of you before you decide if you're going to go through with paying a place to publish your PR.

Ty Smith5:05

Also ask if the PR is going to be indexed by Google. So by default, most websites will, all their content is going to be indexed by Google at some point. Google does it by default and just follows the links to the sites. Some sites go as far as no-indexing certain categories of posts, and sometimes that's PRs. So if that's the case, the article is not going to come up on Google search, which could be a problem if you're trying to get organic traffic there.

Ty Smith5:22

And also ask if the PR is going to be published on Google News. Google News is a really convenient way that a lot of people use to get all their news in one place, and it pulls from certain sites. And depending on what sites you're regularly on, it'll serve you content from there. So if it's going to be published on Google News, that's definitely more valuable because that's more organic traffic to those content.

Ty Smith5:36

Also ask where on the website the PR is going to be visible. So it's common for people to put it in maybe the sidebar of a website, sponsored posts, sponsored PR, everyone kind of calls it something different. If it's on the homepage of a site that gets a lot of traffic, then there's a good chance that people will actually see it and click on it.

Kylie6:13

Sometimes you can never find it.

Ty Smith6:14

Yeah, I mean, it ruins the point of it a lot of the time.

Kylie6:18

Right.

Ty Smith6:18

But at the end of the day, though, too, people know it's a press release. People know what press releases are, like they serve a purpose, but it's not necessarily for everyone at the right time.

Kylie6:25

Yeah, and that's why some sites don't put it on their homepage or make it super visible because it's not always meant for it's not meant for their everyday reader.

Ty Smith6:35

Yeah, they want to get paid, they want to pay their bills, but they don't want their readers to be bogged down with sponsored content.

Kylie6:35

Exactly. Right.

Ty Smith6:36

So another question to ask is when the article does get published, is it going to include a do-follow link or backlink? So backlinks obviously help with SEO and building your site as a more reputable site, so Google will serve it more frequently. So built into that, you should find out what the domain rank is of the website. So it's 0 to 100, the higher it is, the more authority the site has, the more likely it is to be served organically on Google. So you can use a site called moz.com, M-O-Z dot com. They have a free tool to see the domain ranking of a, they might call it domain authority, but it's the same thing, of a website. So that's a helpful metric to know.

Ty Smith7:25

Along that line, though, technically, according to Google's recent SEO guidelines that they issued, publishers aren't supposed to be paid to link to a site. It kind of defeats the purpose of why Google uses that as a metric to serve content. But it's kind of a gray area in the SEO world. But still, it could help. It's just kind of your marketing strategy, how white-hat you want to go. And just keep in mind that the risk is kind of on you and the publisher, which is why sometimes they have been marking up the prices as Google issued that announcement.

Kylie8:11

Yeah, I mean, part of that is like if I'm paying for a press release, I would assume that you would backlink to me anyways because I'm paying. But on the other hand, like if you're not supposed to do that, like it is a gray area, so interesting. I had no idea that that was technically not allowed.

Ty Smith8:20

Yeah, it's always been kind of assumed that Google doesn't want you to do that. Google wants the best results to be served all the time, not necessarily the best marketing team to be served all the time. So it makes sense, and no one's really surprised by it, but they actually formally announced it, which is kind of surprising because Google almost never formally announces what they're going to be looking for because then everyone just builds a business around it. And they talk about it on podcasts like this.

Kylie8:40

Yeah, there you go.

Ty Smith8:41

So just to wrap this up, just to recap everything, if you're going to pay for a press release in hopes of it driving a ton of traffic to your site, you're going to be disappointed. If you're using a press release to distribute information or announcements and make it publicly available on a website that people actually could find and you could share on social media in a time-effective kind of way, then yeah, it probably makes sense, and it definitely helps build some brand credibility.

Ty Smith9:22

If you're going to, if you're considering issuing a paid press release or have any other kind of marketing questions, definitely reach out to us. We're happy to help and provide our input. We have a new phone number set up now that you can actually text. So the number is 949-229-5650. We'll put that in the description. You can text us whenever you want, ask us your questions, and we're happy to chat. And if you found this episode or this podcast valuable, just remember to leave us a positive rating, review us on Apple Podcasts. It goes a very long way in terms of helping us grow and get more people on. So that will be it for today, guys. Thank you for joining us, and we will catch you next time.

Kylie10:10

Bye.