How to write a product press release

Press releases have been around a long time. They have been traditionally focused on the offline world, mainly for print. The internet and the print industry are very different marketing mediums. If you are writing a web product release, it should be constructed specifically for an internet audience in mind. Most importantly web product releases must be constructed to be ‘search engine friendly’.

Your web product release will have its own web page within a website. You want to optimise your product release so it will achieve maximum exposure through the search engines. Product releases frequently show up in search engine result pages. The process of optimising your release for search engines is known as ‘search engine optimisiation’.

How people source, find and read a web product release is completely different to a print release. Web product releases must be constructed with “keywords” in mind. Keywords are the words you type into the search field of a search engine. Before you begin to write your product release you must pick the keywords you wish to target and plan to use them through your product release to maximise its potential for lead generation and internet exposure.

Press release Format

Headline

The headline is the most important aspect of your web product release. It will attract the reader, and it will drive traffic to your article if it is constructed with your targeted keywords.
The headline is the most important aspect for search engine optimisation.
•    Include your brand name, product name and application/benefit in your headline
•    Your targeted keywords must be in your headline
•    Capitalise important words
•    Always mention brand names
•    Place most important keywords first

Examples
“Industrial Fibre Optic Modem ABC MR-22 from ACME”
What the product is, its function, brand, part number and distributor have all been mentioned. Targeted keywords may be “industrial fibre optic modem”, “MR-22” “ABC” and “ACME”. By including your company name and brand you are selling you are also increasing brand recognition.

“ABC MR-22 Industrial Fibre Optic Modem for Telemetry from ACME”.
Here we have put the brand name first and part number second. For competitive markets with a number of distributors this is a better structure. We have also included the keyword “telemetry” which is an application.

Lead Sentence/Product Introduction

The product introduction contains the most important information in 25 words or less. Grab the  attention of your reader. Include your targeted keywords from your headline. Include your company name, product name, part number and function, application or benefit of the product. This will help your article to perform in the search engines and quickly describe the main messaging of your release.

Body/Product description

Keep sentences and paragraphs short. This fits in the style of writing content for the web, which is short, concise and keyword targeted. Readers will be able to quickly scan your article to find ‘keywords’ they are looking for. This is also beneficial for your search engine optimisation. Be sure to mention your targeted keywords at least twice in your body. Your first few paragraphs should answer the who, what, when, where and how questions. When describing your product remember feature, function and benefit.

Final Paragraph

Restate and summarize the key points of your product release. Include your targeted keywords with a link to your website. Link to your home page or the related product page. The amount of links pointing to your website is extremely important for search engine optimisation. The more links you have the more important your website is to a search engine.  Increasing the number of links will improve your ranking in search engine result pages.
Include a call to action at the end of your release such as “for more information visit our site, or call us…”
Provide sales staff names if necessary.

Ways to link to your website

A simple link would be to place a link to your home page as www.utopianwebstraegy.com.au
A better way to link to your website is to link to your home page or product page with your targeted keywords from your product release. e.g  How to write a product press release
This is much more effective for your search engine optimisation as your keywords are included in your link.
Always remember when writing a web product release that it needs to be constructed for search engines with keywords in mind. Manipulate your headings, content and links for your targeted keywords. Provide the reader with a clear and concise summary of what they are looking for. If you follow these guidelines you should see a significant improvement in your web marketing initiatives.

For more information on Industrial Marketing and product press releases contact Utopian Web Strategy