Looking for PR advice

[altyfc]

Hi Brian/everyone...

Sorry, been a long time since I last posted here.

Looking for some PR advice. We have a new feature on a group of sites which we run which we're rather excited about. In short, you can pull up a Google map of a particular hotel in the UK, or a shop or tourist attraction or whatever, and see what other points of interest are nearby. This is combining data from the various sites we run under the UKseries.com umbrella that we have collated over many years (UKhotel.com, UKattraction.com, UKstation.com, etc.).

So, for example, I can pull up a map of the Ritz Hotel in Mayfair and immediately get a visual that shows me that it's near Green Park Underground, there's a Planet Hollywood a few hundred metres down the road, and it's close to The Guards Museum on the edge of St. James Park. Each of these points of interest are clickable, with pages of further information. And across the UK, I would estimate that we probably have over 15,000 points of interest, each with their own clickable page (with description, picture, etc.)

I'm very pleased with the result and I think it's genuinely very useful to surfers. For instance, if you were travelling to Edinburgh on business late at night and wanted a hotel that's close to the station, you'd be able to find one relatively easily through the aid of these maps. I would therefore like to get the word out more and wondered whether a press release might be a good way to do this.

My questions are:

1) do you think a press release would be an effective way of raising awareness of what we've done?

2) if we did do a press release on this, what's the best approach to take? Something that doesn't scream 'advertisement'...? I don't have much experience of doing press releases so is it best to hire someone who has? Advice much appreciated...

3) how else would you suggest that I might raise awareness?

Thanks

Aaron

[A.N.Onym]

Press release, targeted the UK, is a good idea.

In the press release, you'll need to talk how your customers can benefit from what you have done. List three the most important benefits along with the ways on how your potential customers can do what you offer right from the press release (>$80 press releases at PRWeb can have links in the body of the text).

The more clearly you describe what and how much value you provide to your customers via the press release, the better you'll be off.

Generally, press releases are thought of as something that journalists will write something about. That's why you may add some journalistic point of view on your matter. Of course, the main point of the press release is to provide something newsworthy and useful, though.

You can write the PR yourself if you are good at it or get a PR agency do that (might cost about 50-100 pounds?). Then, you'll need to schedule your press release to the UK and send the PR personally to the major local newspapers the day or two before the PR will be distributed. This way you'll build personal relationships with the editors and the PRs will be more likely to be picked up or featured.

Of course, the matter of someone making a story about you is what you need the PR for. You can find a local journalist and talk about your solution profusely. If you only talk to one journalist from the major newspaper and let him know this is exclusive material (way sooner than you release the PR), you may get the real good coverage. Maybe, if you are featured in the major newspaper, you won't need a PR at all.

But of course, all the above is simply musings until done with clear heart and mind

Good luck.

[Brian Turner]

Nice to see you around, Altyfc - looks like quite a lot of work has gone into it.

As for Press Releases - to be honest, my main point of contact on that is for SEO purposes, but the impression is this is somewhat devalued.

I'd certainly echo the sentiments about promoting benefits first - you may also be able to promote it on the idea of uniqueness.

However, I'm about to issue a press release next week for a niche project I'm working on, but rather than simply send it out and leave it, I plan to also approach niche publications in the area and see if they would like to mention - or ask any questions about - the news I'm announcing.

This may be something you can work with yourself - track down various magazines, especially small publications and a few of the bigger fliers, and see if they think it's worth a paragraph or few for offline/online publication.

Anyway, hope that helps, and best of luck with it.

[Media Jems]

hi there

I agree with all of the above - you will have to be very careful with how you approach this story - as it has to focus on the benefits to consumers, businesses etc etc - this certainly has an interesting element to it and I am also thinking that you should be targeting holiday makers, business travellers etc - so looking for opps to link with online bookings for airlines, hotels, in flight publications, trains, buses, travel guides etc - i think the possibilites are great!

I notice this was posted a month or so ago but if you need any help writing the release and developing a marketing strategy I would be more than happy to do this for you.

Best wishes
Jenna

[hunch]

Hi,

How's your marketing going so far?

Perhaps, you could put a free to use internet kiosk in the most popular airports/trainstations/hotels that are searched for, for people to use to find the hotel/taxi they want.

OR

Send leaflets to most popular places asking them to be displayed and available, customised to the area, with a great deal of subconcious marketing in it.

Jayme.