Press or news releases about industrial products have been and still are very popular. They work because the content is mainly about features that help engineers specify these industrial products.
In the past, manufacturers used them primarily in traditional print media like an industry-specific tabloid. People sent back a completed reader service or bingo card and leads were generated that way. Of course, those days are long gone. Today, you are more likely to see a URL like http://ogpe.hotims.com or http://powereng.hotims.com printed at the end of the news release.
Since industrial companies struggle with content, I think one way to overcome the problem is to take a traditional marketing tactic like a news release and turn it into a blog post for use in digital marketing.
What I’m suggesting here is not to copy word-for-word from your old product releases but to expand on them and create new blog posts. Instead of listing product features and specifications, your blog posts can add a lot more information, which will be more educational rather than a blatant sales pitch.
How do you expand news releases into blog posts?
Here are some thoughts:
How do you generate leads from blog posts?
Use your blog posts to generate leads by adding links back to specific product pages. These pages on your main site should include one or more of the following content:
You can gate (put behind a registration form) some of the content that I have listed above and the rest should be set free (no registration required). The rule of thumb that I use is to gate content that moves the reader closer to the “buy” or “specify” decision and set the rest free.
The next time you are stuck writing a blog post, look at your existing news releases. See if you can update or if necessary rewrite some of them as new blog posts. What I have outlined here is a good way for industrial companies to turn their news releases into direct digital marketing (DDM) content that will generate qualified leads that turn into sales.
Let me hear your thoughts about using news releases in today’s industrial marketing.
Let’s chat to determine if this will be a good fit for both of us. It will be a friendly conversation to get to know each other better, not a high-pressure sales pitch.