Press Release Tips and KPI Strategies: Six Best Practices

Press releases are an integral part of any company’s outreach and financial reporting strategy. Many company decision-makers, however, are unsure what needs to go into a press release and how to evaluate its success after distribution.

It’s crucial to designate benchmarks that best align with the strategic direction of the business and measure each release’s effectiveness. The metrics that define success for a business, ranging from impressions to clicks, are called key performance indicators (KPIs). For a business that wants to grow, metrics like unique users might provide an understanding of how the release is reaching a new audience of potential investors. At the same time, metrics like click-through rates, page views and time spent on page are relevant to companies of any size.

While press release distribution services often come with built-in analytics to evaluate performance metrics, there are steps you can take on your own.

Here are six easy-to-implement press release tips to improve on the most important metrics:
 

1. Set SMART Goals: When you set goals for your press release, make sure they are “SMART” goals — objectives that are specific, measurable, attainable, relevant and time-based. With a specific, measurable goal, your team knows specifically what to attribute success to. If the goal isn’t realistic or relevant to your business or executable over a specific timeframe, then you’re setting your releases up for failure.
2. Know Your Audience: Analyze who is picking up your company’s releases, and nail down what releases are generating the most engagement. This way, you know what you’re doing right.

While press release services sometimes come with built-in analytics to provide a big-picture understanding of metrics like clicks and pickups, Google Analytics is the perfect tool for gleaning more advanced real-time behavior metrics.
 

3. E.A.T.: Google’s search algorithm rewards press releases that have expertise, authoritativeness and trustworthiness (E.A.T.) by ranking them higher on its search engine results page (SERP).

The experts at Moz suggest a few simple ways to reach each of these standards. First, an easy way to establish expertise is by selecting relevant keywords that align with what people search for when researching your business. Second, the more your releases are picked up by news and financial media, the more authoritative your releases are. Finally, make each one of your releases trustworthy by including contact information, including a strong boilerplate describing your company, and making sure each release’s webpage is secure.

One more note: Google’s ranking system also prefers video content over text-only releases, so including short videos that complement your message can help the release appear in more searches.
 

4. Use Specialized Targeting: While companies distributing press releases want to achieve the most reach possible, many don’t take the extra step of clearly defining a target audience when considering distribution options. Specialized targeting allows you to reach the audience (bloggers, trade publications or financial media) most closely aligned with your industry segment.
5. Monitor Sentiment: Monitoring positive and negative sentiment surrounding each release you distribute is simple using a media monitoring tool like Google Trends. Just insert your company name or a relevant keyword that you want to track, and you can receive daily email updates with relevant news coverage about that company or keyword.
6. Establish an Evaluation Plan: Evaluation is the final and most important stage of any PR effort, and this is not any different for your company’s press releases. Set up a plan to continually evaluate and improve specific KPIs. Be sure to make it clear enough for any team member to understand. Remember, there is always room to grow and improve.

Like any other part of your company’s business plan, it’s crucial to make sure there is a process in place to continually improve communications efforts. KPIs are the perfect way to ensure your press releases are targeting the right audience, generating maximum engagement and achieving the most reach possible.