Using Mass Press Release Distribution Services

Should You Use a Mass Press Release Distribution Service?

What’s Your Goal–Quantity, Quality or Both?

 “Get your message to thousands of media.”  Sounds  seductive doesn’t it?  A number of online media distribution services promise to deliver your P.R. release to thousands of outlets across the internet.  So what should you do?

What we do

At Kundell Communications we have found that building and curating our own media list for each client yields the best results.  We have 200 – 300 carefully vetted journalists, print, online and broadcast.  And, we’re constantly updating and editing our lists.  However, for certain types of press releases  where we want to increase the client’s SEO, and reach a broader range of media, we enhance our press release distribution with a supplemental distribution service.   When used selectively, these services can help provide a broader range of outlets for our clients.

A Closer Look

We recently did our own informal research with a service, and analyzed some statistics.  One press release had 12,000 impressions the day it went out.  That means it popped up 12,000 times on the internet.   But, there’s no quality control for the websites on which it appears. Of those 12,000, there were 300 full page views, meaning that one out of 40 – or 2.5% –actually viewed the contents.

We compared the same press releases sent to our own proprietary, individually researched and targeted press list.  The readership for our targeted list ranged from 16% to 20%, nearly 10 times higher than the mass distribution services.

What to Consider

Before you spend hundreds, or several thousand dollars, on these services, consider the following:

  • Because many of these services use an electronic feed, the journalists you want to reach may never look at these feeds.
  • Your release may end up buried on the publication’s web site, not on the editorial pages.  These pages may also be hard or next to impossible to find through the site’s home page.
  • The press releases often go to a central repository at a publication, and never reach your targeted editor.
  • The services can be costly, ranging from $100 – $700 per release.

Why the Difference?

  • If you want to impress your company with the number of internet impressions, these services will get your message out to many internet sites, some legitimate, some not.
  • These services can help raise your SEO visibility.
  • You may gain placements in smaller publications, which sometimes use these services as a news source.
  • These services save you the time of building your own lists.
  • Frequently the mass distribution lists use a shotgun approach rather than being well targeted.
  • However, if you want your message to be read by a higher percent of top quality media, there is no substitute for building a customized, well-researched and targeted media list.