So the last couple of articles you’ve heard me gripe about how you should send more letters.  Yip yip yip yip yip.  Send more letters, send more letters.  I sound like your mother when she told you not to get that tattoo, don’t I?  And you’re still sorry you got it, aren’t you?

     Well, here’s the reason: letters are great marketing tools.  You can reach anyone with a letter - the president of a bank or of an airline, a top executive of almost any corporation, or the purchasing agent who buys your goods or services.  While prospecting for new business, I’ll admit that giving customers a new car carries considerably more weight, but in most cases a simple letter works just fine for making the phone ring.

     I consistently and respectfully remind my own clients of the value of the printed word when sent - one page at a time - to a specific prospect or customer. But do they listen?  If a tree falls in the forest does anyone care?

     A letter is the most effective single sheet of paper in direct marketing, but it is not the most effective single sheet of paper in all of marketing.  That, my friend, would be a hundred dollar bill.  Ooops, excuse me, that’s the most important single sheet of paper when you get pulled over by a cop for speeding.

     In marketing, the most important single page you can create is... is... I’m building suspense... is... a press release.  If you knew that, kindly raise your right hand.  Hey, you in the back - raise your other right hand.  Now, if you send a press release out every two months, raise your left hand.  Have both of your hands raised high in the air?  OK, now gimme all your money, this is a stick-up.

     If you don’t have both your hands raised, take note: you’re making a big mistake, unless of course you don’t want any more money.  So, you’re maxed out - running your business three or four shifts a day?  I know the feeling - it’s rough, isn’t it - trying to spend all that extra money to avoid all those additional taxes.  If this is the case, you shouldn’t be sending out press releases every couple of months, you should be sending some of that additional money to me.

     As a marketing guy, I feel everyone can use more business - at least that’s why people call me. And when they do I tell them they need to send out more letters... and more press releases.  There - I saved you a ton of money.  Just send me $500 and I’ll wave the rest of my invoice for now.  Press releases and letter campaigns are two of the lowest cost ways to promote any business.

     For the price of a couple of sheets of paper - a press release and a cover letter - you can generate a story about your firm that will be published in newspapers and magazines.  It’s easy, at least in theory.

     For the price of a couple of beers - your wife and a good, ahem, woman friend, you can generate a story about you that will be published in newspapers and magazines, too.  It would be in a different section.  But, we’ll save that for another article.

     A press release is a one-page, double spaced document about you, your firm, its products or services, with a compelling headline and a story written in a brief, pyramid-style (the important stuff at the top) news format.

     When writing a press release, start with the MOST important element as the headline. Here’s where I differ from most PR agencies: strangely enough I recommend that in the first two lines of your body copy you weave in one or two of the biggest benefits of your products, or of doing business with your firm.  People buy from the benefits, so it’s important to show readers what your’s are.  Stating your benefits this early in the release ensures they won’t get edited out: editors traditionally cut from the bottom of the release.  Immediately after the benefits, present the rest of the facts in their descending order of relevance.  I call this the “benefits-first” press release.

     Compare your press release (also called a news release) to a newspaper story which features the most important event in the headline: for example, “Fire Kills 3!”  The story unfolds with facts in a descending order of importance, “At 123 Maple Ave… a six alarm fire… blah, blah, blah… 30 firemen where called… blah, blah, blah… neighbors watched…” spiraling down to the trailing end of the story, “368 donuts were eaten by the police and firemen…”

     When your press release is written in a tight, crisp news-style format: who, what, where, when, how, without filler or fluff - the chance of it being published in a newspaper or magazine are much greater. 20% in small papers and trade magazines, 5% in larger papers, less than 1% in the larger consumer magazines.

     If you call the editor it can double the chances your story will run. If the editor is cranky when you speak with him or her, be brief, and tell them it was nice speaking to them even though it wasn’t.  If they’re on-deadline and don’t answer their phone, leave a competitor’s name on their voice mail, tell them it was urgent, leave a 6 digit phone number while crinkling a Tastykake Creamies wrapper in the mouthpiece of the phone to sound like static.  Hey, remember when you got 2 Creamies in a package - now they just give you one big one shaped like two stuck together and hope you don’t notice.  So, you’re that old, too?

     If published, your story appears as editorial, alongside the rest of the manufactured news and other generated-news pieces.  Over 50% of the stories in a newspaper, outside of the first few pages which are considered “hard news” are generated by press releases.

     There are lots of ways to spin a business story, and lots of ways to get media attention and ink, but I always create newspaper pitches with a human interest story line and a very strong headline.  Press releases for magazine or for the business section of papers can be more product or company oriented. If the headline doesn’t make potential customers read the story, why bother?  If you have a piece about your firm printed in The Wall Street Journal but no one calls, what good did it do you?

     A good way to come up with a strong headline is the Jeff Dobkin 100 to 1 Rule: Write 100 headlines, then go back and pick our your best one.  I didn’t say you’d like it, I just said it was a good way.  You can find the full article titled “The 100 to 1 Rule” in my book, Uncommon Marketing Techniques.  You’ve just read the short version.

     Here are two main headline formula I use quite a bit:  One headline is for product marketing: “New Product Offers Benefit,” (example: “New Lawnmower is Easier to Push”).  The other headline formula is for getting quality leads by offering a FREE booklet.  Use a title that drives only real customers to call, to save you time and stop wasting your expensive literature.  Example: “Free booklet: How To get this Benefit” (“Free Booklet: How to Stop Leaks in Older Roofs”).  If you were a roofer, this would be the perfect press release headline - editors love to have free things sent to their readers so there’s a good chance your release would be published, and guess who would call you?  I would.  You’d owe me the other $500 for this lesson.

Next month: How to stop leaks in older roofers, and increasing your chances of having your press release published.