Why or why not to publish press releases?
Every story has at least two sides. So does the press release story. But this story is even more complex and it has more sides, as it involves more participants.
The first side of the press release story is the one of the public relation agency, who’s employees get paid to write and distribute press releases to various media outlets. The second side of the press release story is the one of the clients, who need publicity to attract more customers and increase revenues, as fast as possible in most of the cases. The third participant in the press release story is the publisher, who is responsible for distribution of the promotional materials. At last comes the recipient – the consumer at whom the press releases are targeted.
Lets have a look who gets what slice of the cake in the press release story.
Public Relation Companies
Some public relation companies in Dubai charge their clients between AED 6,000 to AED 40,000 a month. In exchange for this payments, copywriters prepare advertorials of between 800 and 1,500 words, with the purpose to inform about an event or promote a new product. Then they distribute the advertorial press releases across their networks. Most PR professionals have mailing lists and shoot press releases to a large number of various publishers few times a day. This is the same as spamming, as they do not have agreements with this publishers and do not pay for their services.
In the United Kingdom and the US, for example, public relation professionals operate differently. They approach publishers with inquiries for the cost of the their services and sign agreements that clearly outline terms and conditions of services and payments.
However, in the Middle East and more particularly in Dubai, PR professionals take publishers for granted and do not pay for their services, with two or three exceptions among local publications. Some public relation professionals even turn verbally abusive when we refuse to publish their advertorials. Others simply pretend that they did not receive the emails in which we ask to be removed from their mailing lists and keep spamming us for ages.
In general, public relation companies try to take advantage on publishers for as long as they can. They charge their clients serious amounts, but expect to receive services from media outlets for free.
The recipients of the advertorials – the general consumer – often is not taken into consideration, as he is expected to pay for, but not to question about the quality or reliability of the advertised products, let alone the ethics of the information providers.
Clients for PR Services
They need publicity. Usually, the clients of public relation companies are large corporations, holdings or publicly listed and private companies from different fields of the industry. Small and medium-size businesses are also using the services of paid promoters, but they have more limited budgets and therefore seldom take the spotlight.
The clients for public relation services need to reach a large number of consumers in a short time, because they want to sell something – a service or a product. This could be real estate, electronics, educational or financial services, or any other type of consumer oriented product. This product campaigns usually target a particular short period of time, such as a season or occasion. Therefore, for such clients, the services of the PR companies are very valuable as they drive revenues to their bank accounts quickly. Therefore, they spend without hesitations in most of the cases.
Publishers
Why publishers should publish press releases? Or not….
Publishers in general depend on sales of their products such as paid subscriptions to their newsletters and advertising revenues, or in most of the cases both.
Paid subscriptions are largely unpopular nowadays, as more an more people have access to Internet, where they can find large amounts of information absolutely free of charge. Although, few Western well-established publishers are experimenting with paid subscriptions online, in the Middle East consumers are far from responsive. There is a handful of publications based in Dubai, such as MEED for example, that charge readers for consuming companies’ press releases, but it is very doubtful if they generate substantial revenues from that business activity in particular. Why would one pay to read a company’s press release that promotes a product or service, if the information is available at another at least ten websites absolutely free of charge? So, publishing press releases in order to generate revenues from subscriptions is not a very profitable business model for publishers.
There is a large number of publisher regionally, that run publishing business activities primarily with the aim to generate revenues from advertisement. They are the ones who desperately need press releases. For them, press releases are free of charge content, along which they can display advertisement. They do not have to pay writers, correspondents or reporters for crafting unique and engaging articles.
How interesting and useful are these press releases to the readers/consumers is another question. According to the search engines, duplicate content as many times republished press release, is not valuable and it doesn’t attract huge amount of traffic to a website. But this traffic is needed for the successful sales of advertisement. The press releases publishers can’t make ends meet only by selling advertisement displayed along the free of charge content. This is why many of them never grow into a bigger and significant websites, neither generate substantial revenues. Few buy traffic and impressions in order to attract more and better paying advertisers, but this works for a short period of time, because the advertisers do not get quality return of investment. In simple words: if a computer flips a web page 10,000 times a day, it doesn’t mean that 10,000 readers saw the advertisement and some percentage of them would act. On the contrary, it mens that no one saw the advertisement and the the advertising is wasting funds. Advertisers now use statistics and quickly figure out if a publisher is overstating his readership. Or so we assume….
So, why would a publisher publish press releases if he doesn’t get paid from the public relation company on the behalf of the company or from selling advertising space?
*To be continued in part 2…
Thanks, I look forward to reading the rest of the article. I am in the US and found the ways things are done in Dubai very interesting. Thanks again, Edward Smith.
Yes, the rest of the article should come soon, perhaps as part 2. It is mostly about the consumer and what businesses want to make him do 😉 for their benefit……