How to Write a Press Release For Your Business

How to write a press release

Writing an effective press release for a new product can be tricky if you unsure of what you’re doing, but there are clear steps you can take to ensure that your press release is the best that it can possibly be.

Firstly, before you even start, remember that what you’re creating is a press release and not a standard blog post or article.

The tone should reflect the fact that its key purpose is to offer information and is not to entertain or persuade. You can nudge a press release to incorporate persuasion into its purpose, but this should not be the primary reason for a press release.

The body of your press release is quite simple, just go back to the big question words: who, what, when, where, why and how. Answer these questions and you have yourself a press release.

Start with the who, what and why. Every good press release regarding a new product should start with the name and sector of the company and then go on to announce the name, function, features and benefits of the product.

The company, product name and function should be done in no more than a couple of sentences. Get right to the point.

A foolproof formula for the beginning of your press release is “x company, a prominent z company since y, is proud to announce the release of brand new product for specific target market (if applicable) on 23rd November 2014″

Now you need to think about the features of your product, what can it do? If it’s an upgrade of a previous model, compare the two and highlight the improved features of your new model. For example, if your product release is a laptop, you would talk about the memory, screen resolution, processor, dimensions, battery life and any inbuilt software.

After you have your features, you should start to think about how these features translate into benefits for your customers. For example, if the computer you’re selling has a battery life of eight hours, you can claim that it’s great for business people on-the-go, who may use their laptops more when they’re mobile. It’s best not to do this for every feature you list, as you don’t want your press release to be too crammed, so perhaps pick the top three benefits your product offers and mention them in tandem with the feature they link to.

For example: “The new y model features eight hours of battery life, xG of memory and a quad core processor; making it perfect for busy professionals who need their device to run smoothly and hold high volumes of documents and other files.”

After you’ve done this you’re almost done, but there are still two more questions to think about; when and how.

The question of when can pertain to when the product is being released (which should really be mentioned at the beginning and then again at the end of your press release), but you may also want to think about when the press release should go live. The best time is before your product is released but after it has a solid release date.

All that’s left is the how; how did this product come about? Was it customer feedback, market research, or did your company just see the opportunity for improvement and grab it for the sake of its customers?

End your press release with a couple of sentences about your company and a URL to your company website.