Top Tips for Powerful Article Marketing

Distributing your articles (and press releases) in the right way is vital. These media releases are only half the process of getting publicity in media publications. Just like a website getting more sales from targeted visitors, you'll receive more benefit from readers of your media releases who are targeted and more inclined to buy from you.

To find the best way of distributing your articles, you first have to work out which method of distribution will result in the most publicity from your target market and this obviously requires you to work out just who they are. Research your past clients, carry out some questionnaires and use some good old common sense to answer the one simple question: "Who will buy what I have to offer?"

Our marketing assessments for example are reports which give tailored instructions and advice on how to implement and perfect a powerful marketing campaign. We are able to work out that the people most likely to buy our assessments are:

- Start-up business owners who need guidance on getting their marketing going.

- Business owners who have a new product/service they wish to launch a campaign for.

- Business owners who want a low-cost solution to improving and optimizing their current marketing.

All of these target markets are generally the same (business owners) but they each have a specific niche and can be marketed to in different ways for the most effective results.

As well as distributing articles, this concept should be applied to ALL of your marketing efforts.

Once you know who your ideal audience is you must then research the types of media publications they read. Again do some research and use some common sense to create a list of websites, newsletters, blogs, newspapers and magazines which your target markets are most likely to read.

If we take our marketing assessment market. Start-up business owners would be most likely to read entrepreneur magazines and newspapers, be part of start-up communities and generally participate in many entrepreneur/business forums and blogs. We can then further research specific publications which fit under these criteria.

Now we have exactly where we want our articles and press releases to appear.

The next stage is getting them there and this involves contacting suitable journalists with our releases. Check the websites and credit sections of your chosen media publications and contact them directly to find specific contact details of journalists which deal in your target market area.

For example in our chosen publications we would search for the business editor, a business journalist or nearest equivalent.

Once you have assembled your list of journo's and their contact details, it's time to get busy. Either phone up or drop them an E-mail, introduce yourself, explain a little bit about your story/article and ask if you can send them the article through E-mail. After this you can of course wait for a response or result. If you wait a few days to a week and see no result, just give them a call or drop an E-mail and ask how things are going.

Getting your article or press release out there as wide as possible always gives it the best chance of reaching media exposure. As well as personally targeting your selected media publications, you should also submit your article to distribution websites such as http://www.articlemarketer.com/. Many Journalists use such websites as a source of releases and yours may get picked up for additional coverage. Search on Google for similar websites to submit your articles to.

Scott Chapman is MD of SCD Marketing, a UK marketing agency specialising in consultancy, project management and marketing assessments which are tailored reports providing instructions and advice on how to optimize your marketing and boost sales.

For more information visit http://www.scdmarketing.co.uk/