Brand Blog

Many business-to-business trade magazines are melting away in this environment. Yet two client experiences we’ve had here at the agency led us to wonder, “Maybe it’s more important to be ‘published’ on Google than in a magazine anyway.” Here’s what happened: we placed an article for a client in its industry’s leading trade journal, only to have the sales rep call to say the article won’t run unless the client buys an ad. “Sorry, but we’re in survival mode here, and now you have to pay to play.” That’s not a good sign for the long-term prospects of that magazine. The next day, we heard from another client that the turnout for their recent webcast far exceeded anything they’d done before, and they traced it back to a simple news release we distributed on the wire (with key phrases optimized for search engines, of course). While they usually have 200-400 attending a webcast, depending on the topic, this one drew 1200 registrants. Anyone doing a routine Google search for the topic, they discovered, ran across the webcast release, and many registered. So, the event was successful, even though the release didn’t run in any of the industry’s print publications. We’re seeing that more often, the moment a release hits the wire, people discover it and it receives vast, immediate exposure, particularly when the release uses the wire services’ optimization tools.