News-peg your health products press release

Want to get your press releases picked up by the newspapers? That’s not easy when you’re plugging a product. Newspapers don’t want to be seen as flacks for advertisers. They’re looking to churn out hard news and fluff features, not product reviews. But here’s a tip: look where they’re looking, and insert yourself or your product as a possible solution.

Let’s say you sell a natural herbal product that helps lower cholesterol. You can send out a million releases pushing the product on the press. Or you can look for the inevitable day when new research suggests a top-selling pharma product isn’t as hot as we were led to believe. That’s when you swoop in, explain the pharma fiasco in simple terms, and suggest alternatives. Namely, dietary improvements, daily exercise and, why not, a certain herbal product.

My first success with this technique occurred years ago when Vioxx, the cox-2 inhibitor arthritis medication made the hall of shame headlines. My client at the time sold a proteolytic enzyme product for joint health. We quickly spun off a series of press releases that got widely picked up. We went against conventional wisdom and didn’t even mention the client’s product until the third paragraph. My client enjoyed their best ever spike in sales which continued for quite a while since millions of people were madly searching for an alternative to their arthritis meds.

Why not try news-pegging your own releases. Break out of the typical “all about us” format, shine some light on a “news” story, and then offer an alternative solution.

Happy Health Writing,

Kathy Summers