News wire services are arguably one of the oldest marketing technology services in the industry. Beginning in the 1950s and 60s, companies like PR Newswire and Business Wire started developing improved ways to distribute press releases to news media and other outlets.
Today, the wire service sector increasingly overlaps with other Press Release Service solutions, including media contact databases, alert software, campaign analytics and content publishing services. Compared with other areas of marketing technology, which have thrived in the digital revolution, news wire services have seen both boom and bust, as their business has been interrupted by dramatic shifts in media organization, editorial trends and the function of press releases in business.
As any earned media professional would tell you, the value of press release distribution is no sure thing. Why should any company pay $150/release to have the content distributed to networks that will never care to read it? Depending on your business, the release topic, and your PR goals, distribution services may or may not be an effective use of your marketing budget.
Current State of PR Wire Platforms
As you consider the options, we want to make sure you understand the field as it currently stands. While there have been some excellent analyses of PR distribution platforms in the past, in the last couple of years, news wire services and other PR-focused SaaS companies have seen a great deal of consolidation and reorganizing. In 2014, we saw the biggest consolidation yet when Cision and Vocus—two of the giants in PR software—merged, rebranded as Cision, then proceeded to buy up Visible Technologies and Viralheat, two social media platforms, and Gorkana, a PR analytics company. Cision later divested its UK-based functions to address anti-competition concerns. Today, Cision manages its own news wire, social and analytics platforms alongside standalone solutions: PRWeb, Gorkana, Help a Reporter Out (HARO) and, most recently, Bulletin Intelligence.
So, in the midst of all the shakeup, how should companies evaluating PR software solutions review the current array of distribution platforms? In the rest of this article, we'll review the latest literature on customer satisfaction and proven value of PR distribution services, and provide our recommendation on the top four PR platforms customers should consider.
Which Platforms Are At the Top?
According to G2Crowd, there are eight current PR distribution service platforms that form the upper echelon of the category:- Cision
- PR Newswire (a Cision company)
- Business Wire
- Newswire
- Marketwired
- PRgloo
- PR Underground
- PRWeb
Notice that PRWeb is included as a different platform from Cision, even though the former is wholly owned by the latter.
This group represents platforms with a diverse array of origins. Unlike the marketing automation sector, which involves companies that mostly started around the same time, these news wire services represent both the old and new.
It's important to note that this group doesn't include platforms like Trend Kite, which generally focuses only on monitoring and analyzing the success of your Online Free Press Release not distribution. Also left out of the field is software like Pitch Engine, which mostly hosts news content, rather than distributing releases to publishing outlets.
Ranking the Best PR News Wires
To rank these distribution services, let's first turn to the data recently published by G2Crowd. According to the G2 Grid analysis, four of the platforms could be considered "leaders" in the field, Newswire, Business Wire, Marketwired and Cision; three others are "high performers"—PR Underground, PRgloo, and Newswire—while PRWeb is considered "niche."
Most other Press Release Power professionals would likely agree that given Marketwired and Business Wire's longtime leadership in distribution service, Newswires emphasis on customer service, and Cision's integrated solution, these four platforms are best in class. Here's our review of these top four.
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