Did you know that using online press releases is one of most powerful ways for almost instantly driving hundreds or even thousands of potential targeted customers to your new product, web site or newsletter?

Within hours of having your press release distributed over Internet your press release could be picked up by some of major online news networks like Google News and Yahoo News.

And then within days or just a few weeks they will begin to show up in natural search engine results of major search engines.

Nowhere can you achieve so much publicity for so little effort. But let me explain what I mean by 'so little effort'.

Even though press releases are a powerful marketing tool that everyone should be using as one of their marketing methods you need to do a little research before just whipping one up.

As someone who uses press releases quite often in marketing of new products and web sites I have seen and learned how to avoid some common errors in writing my press releases.

Avoiding these errors can mean difference in driving a few hundred visitors to your new web site or product to receiving thousands of targeted hits for same amount of effort.

So what are these mistakes? And how do you avoid them?

Mistake #1- Not focusing on a main theme.

You need to determine what key purpose of your press release will be about. You don't want to target multiple items in same release.

If you just released 10 new software products this week you don't want to talk write about all of them at one time, pick one and focus on it and get your audience excited about it.

Once their curiousity is peaked they will click on your link to get additional information and that is what you want.. You can always do multiple releases for each product.

Mistake #2- Not researching keywords you want to target before hand.

You want to do a little keyword research based on concept of your press release. Why would you want to do keyword research for a press release? Because you need to optimize your press release so that it will rank high in natural search engine results once it gets picked up by Google, MSN or Yahoo.

I normally target a keyword that has a decent amount of monthly searches but has little to moderate competition from highly optimized web sites.

As most people know, freebies carry a lot of weight. One of most powerful words in marketing, especially Internet marketing, is word "free".

This little word is so powerful that even its mere presence in an email subject line sets off all kinds of alarms.

This is because, by now, most people have been "freed" to death (thanks to accursed spam), so in certain contexts they get pretty suspicious of freebies, as they should.

But way before anybody ever thought about possibility of computers, or an Internet, there was a saying -- "Nothing in life is free."

And when it comes to advertising we all know, deep down, that there is usually going to be something attached when that little word is thrown around.

As long as a customer perceives that there is indeed some genuine value for him or her in what is being given away they'll still grab it, however.

Giving away something for free as a part of your offer has long been considered one of cardinal principles for selling on Web. No matter what it is you're trying to market, you're practically considered to be nuts if you don't use freebies.

Take ezines, for example. The vast majority of ezines cost nothing. They're free. Yet many people who publish free ezines, myself included, use or have used freebies to entice people to subscribe to our ezines. It's so difficult to establish value on Web that we actually have to give something away in order to give something away!

There's a right way and a wrong way to utilize this powerful little word "free". There is also a basic principle concerning use of freebies in Web marketing which holds true for ANY information product, not just ezines.

In few paragraphs that follow, I'd like to pass on a couple of simple little techniques for effective use of freebies which will quickly result in increased sales for you and also help you to develop a new perspective and attitude about establishing value when doing business on Web.

USE BONUSES WISELY

In order to increase your sales by using freebies you need to make sure that you use your bonuses wisely. This way you'll qualify your prospects and get people who'll want to buy. The result will be a marked increase in percentage of prospects who convert to buyers.

Unfortunately, Web is full of examples of how not to use bonuses. For example, how many times have you seen an ad headline that read something like this?:

Subscribe now for FREE to Joe's Ezine and get your BONUS special report!

Now there's nothing wrong with giving away a bonus report to new subscribers. But, it shouldn't be your up-front selling point. Your up-front selling point should be benefits which your product offers your customer.

Ask yourself first, "What can my product do for my prospect?" Begin your pitch with benefits they will receive. Some great sales letters just jump right in with a bullet list of benefits.