Googlize Your Press Releases with "NewsAds"
Many pundits have weighed in on the pros and cons of PR firms dabbling in Search Engine Optimization techniques. Most of the Big Guys are buying-up SEO experts, to serve as a resource to their other marcomm shops. Certainly, if nothing else, PR agencies need to be cognizant of SEO principles when writing content for news releases, et al.
But there’s another mechanism for applying SEO techniques to the PR realm, courtesy of my favorite innovator, Shannon Whitley.
Shannon has integrated his PRXBuilder service with the Google AdWords API, so that his PRX customers can optimize every news release for the Google Ad Network. Creating a “NewsAd” is a simple part of creating a release at the PRXBuilder site.
The result is deceptively effective. This is another tool in PR’s new-media arsenal.
Example: Widgets Corp. announces a new product, the BigWidget. Their Social Media News Release can now not only include T’rati tags but can also use “NewsAds,” using keywords to optimize their release for organic SEO as well as for the Google Ad Network. If the prospect sees a NewsAd during their Google search for “widgets,” their subsequent click will take them right to the Widgets Corp. news release for the BigWidget.
Shannon recently ran his own experiment, using the launch of our Newshound Facebook app as a test case. He found that:
“(The) NewsAd-assisted release was almost 7 times more likely to be viewed when compared to (a typical) release. Additionally, the Google ad itself has been displayed over 430,000 times across the internet. Although the 430,000 viewers didn’t see the full release, they’ve at least seen the (Newshound) name and a little blurb about it.”
Those are some heady statistics for a first-run with the NewsAd service.
Creating a contextual ADVERTISEMENT for NEWS RELEASES is a cool and powerful concept. Hard to see a downside. Color me intrigued.
Related links from Tom Foremski (who takes an interesting POV) and Shannon himself.
P.S. – Yes, of course you can create your own “NewsAds” without using PRXBuilder. But it’s great that PRXBuilder has automated the process. (Have you ever created an AdWords campaign on your own? It’s not rocket science, but it’s also not a lickety-split project.)
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Comments
I have been sitting on this topic for too long. I'm glad you wrote about it. I think this is a very powerful opportunity for online PR as it will have a big impact with customers directly, giving companies a heightened presence among the people they want to reach.
Posted by: Brian Solis | August 7, 2007 01:19 PM
Wow. I just went through the standard template. This is really cool! Yeah, you could probably do this by hand, but it would take so much longer. I like that it also offers multiple ways to format your release (traditional, multimedia, etc.) But will this be available for purchase or licensing so that one can store it on their own server? Or can you do that already and I missed it?
I also hope that it will be available for other CMS platforms. I use MT.
Posted by: Sandra | August 7, 2007 01:36 PM
Interesting...you're always thinking. I'm wondering though, you said the Google ad was displayed over 430,000 times across the internet. Does that represent the # of clicks ? If so, what was the cost? What is your input on how a "typical" release/wire service can incorporate this?
Posted by: Melanie Stachowiak | August 7, 2007 01:56 PM
Todd,
Thanks for your review of NewsAds. With my latest tests complete, I've opened them up on PRX Builder to anyone who wants to give them a try. The minimum cost is $20/day for a 5-day run.
Hi Sandra,
Thanks for trying PRX Builder. This is a free service and you can store your release on your own server. Be sure to check out our partnership with PR Newswire for easy wire distribution.
PRX Builder supports MoveableType and you can post a release directly to your blog. Navigate to 'Finish', 'Distribute', 'Your Blog or Email'.
Posted by: Shannon Whitley | August 7, 2007 02:59 PM
Hi Melanie -
No, that 430,000 figure represented how many times the ad was DISPLAYED, not clicked. It's a subtler, less impt metric - more a nice-to-know.
I think the wire service could easily handle similar functionality. Get on it, will ya? ;)
Posted by: Todd Defren | August 7, 2007 04:00 PM
I can see how the PRX and AdWords integration would make it easier to setup PPC campaigns in support of news announcements.
Of course, using PPC platforms like AdWords, Panama and adCenter for online PR purposes is nothing new.
The "pull" effect from optimizing content - making it easier to find used in combination with "push" wire distribution, pitching and PPC works quite nicely.
Posted by: Lee Odden | August 7, 2007 04:23 PM
As we keep moving towards uber-integrated communications, this is one of the important next steps in comprehensive online strategy. Pointing NewsAds towards a press release, client News Rooms towards the same release, subsequent and related releases towards the same release, etc., SEV and meaningful metrics will increase as well.
In our test runs, we've seen as little as $500 garner nearly 2 million impressions. Agencies scrambling to regain those VNR numbers have finally found one solution.
Posted by: David Weiner, PR Newswire | August 9, 2007 05:07 PM
So no one answered the question...is anyone clicking the ads? Impressions are great, but that's not much of a performance metric, and it seem like most marketers are being held to performance metrics for their budgets.
Posted by: Jacquie Myers | August 10, 2007 12:26 PM