SEO How to use Press Releases to benefit Direct Mailing?

[Kris K]

A client of mine is looking to increase its Direct Mailing over the next few months. We are scheduled to do a lot of press releases over that time to. Any ideas on how we could take advantage of the press releases to increase direct mailing effectiveness and/or mailing list?

All thoughts appreciated!

[Jake]

It does sound like somewhat of an unrelated channel, like doing a TV brand awareness blitz before sending out mailings. One hope would be to have the word trickle down to your prospects (the general public?) using one of the premier press release distribution services is more likely to make it reach the press or important sites like Google news, prWeb.com who's services start at $89 per release is the best known.

[Aaron]

This is a great question, a favorite topic of mine trying to get traditional and online advertising to work together.

I am not sure if you can directly link the press releases (typically a shotgun style release) to the DM campaign. If however, you could identify some relevant keywords that people who received the mailing would be likely to type in, I would definitely include those in the PR text, as well as link back to the site/landing page.

Something else to consider would be Google Adwords- there are advanced options to target ads right down to the zip code level and even time. For example you could schedule Adwords campaigns to start at 5PM for keywords related to the business name in cities you mailed to. Also, you could use retargeting- placing cookies on your website so that visitors who receive the mailings can be targeted with banner ads. There are some other things you could do with PURLS, in mailing QR codes Etc.