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Press releases provide an effective way of announcing interesting, important and unique news about your company. However, it is essential to remember that what is important to you is not necessarily important to the world.

A well-crafted, target market oriented press release captures the attention of journalists as well as others who matter and can give your business a tremendous boost.

The following are three tactics that will guarantee your press releases' success.

1) Offer something valuable for free

The lure of the freebie is too powerful for most people to resist. Why not use this to your advantage and offer your customers something for nothing. Make sure what you are offering has some value to the customer; and if it can be downloaded, so much the better.

Check out these ideas for valuable giveaways:

- Offer your customers an electronic information product and place your advertisement somewhere on the product. Whether it is an autoresponder to a downloadable eBook or perhaps a simple report that's posted on your website, it is important that the information product should relate to your target audience.

- Offer potential customers the opportunity to ask you questions specific to your business. By dispensing with free advice you can prove your authority on the subject giving you instant credibility.

2) Be different - Avoid the hype and offer useful information

98% of all press releases are promotional hype. Offering your customers something different makes you stand out from the crowd and get noticed. Pay close attention to the content of your press release.

Keep these factors in mind when writing your press release:

- Make sure your content is newsworthy and not mere fluff. Your main purpose is to inform your customers about a new business development and not sound like an advertisement. Your press release should be about answering the why, who, when and where of your business and not a sales pitch telling customers why they should buy your product.

- You have but a few seconds to grab your customer's attention. Make it count with an attention grabbing headline and a strong first paragraph. You can provide the details in the rest of the press release. Readers will continue to the end only if they like what they see in the first paragraph.

- Use your press release to illustrate real life examples about how your company helped a customer solve a problem. Identifying the problem and illustrating why your solution is the right one speaks volumes about the value of your product.

- Write a newsworthy story that any online media would love to run in their publication.

3) Look at paid PR services for the widest distribution

Paying a PR company to handle your press releases could prove to be better than handling it yourself. PR companies are more experienced and hence more adept at handling various issues.

They understand the timing of your press release, how and where to distribute it for widest coverage and will also select the best platform for reaching your target audience.