How to Write an Earnings Press Release: 5 Tips to Consider
January 19, 2023
Published by Maria Marchewka
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Earnings season is quickly approaching, and with that comes an opportunity for public companies to share their quarterly earnings with confidence.
A press release is an excellent and necessary marketing vehicle to share these updates.
At ACCESSWIRE, we’ve built press release distribution services that offer predictable pricing (flat fees) and wide distribution to help you get the coverage you need to reach your investors and shareholders.
Here are five tips to consider if you plan to share your quarterly earnings with a press release.
5 Earnings Press Release Writing Tips
Create a template. Creating a consistent template keeps your details organized and helps audiences keep track of and easily compare your progress on a quarterly basis.
Take a look at these two Issuer Direct earnings press releases, for example.
Creating and following a template ensures your business will consistently cover the most important details when sharing its quarterly earnings.
Tell a story. Data fuels your company’s ability to control the narrative. Work with your c-suite executives to effectively dissect and interpret the data to create a compelling story. The story can then be used to promote your quarterly earnings in email campaigns, social media posts, etc.
Always include financial tables. Most journalists in financial media as well as traders are only concerned with the data in a company’s financial tables. Meet these groups where they are with the information they’re looking for by including financial tables in your earnings press release.
Note: We do not charge extra fees per financial table in a press release.
Stay on topic. This press release should focus only on your quarterly earnings. Going off-topic can create confusion. To that point, be sure to share your information in a concise and organized manner. By sticking to the basics, you can improve the readability and keep the focus on the information people came for in the first place -- your quarterly earnings.
Include links. Just as you would with a general press release, earnings press releases should include links when applicable. These links can send readers to investor relations or product pages on your website.
TIP: Always add UTM parameters to your links to keep track of the website traffic generated from the press release. Unique UTM parameters are tags you can add to a website URL to effectively track results and performance in Google Analytics. These tags include:
Source - This is used to identify what source the traffic is coming from. (Examples: the name of the social media network, newsletter, etc.)
Medium - This defines the advertising or marketing medium. (Examples: organic social, paid social, email, PPC, etc.
Campaign - Helps identify which campaign the promotion is connected to.
Term - Manually identify keywords a company's targeting in the specific campaign.
Content - Identifies the specific piece of content that was clicked to drive the website traffic.
You don’t have to use all five UTM parameters when building a link. However, according to Google, source, medium, and campaign are required.
Creating an Earnings Press Release: 6 Essential Components
With these tips in mind, you'll want to make sure your earnings press release includes six essential components. These elements are like pieces of a puzzle. Each section brings its own individual value and together creates the big picture.
Every press release, no matter the topic, should include a:
Headline
Summary
Date and location
Body
Boilerplate
Closing
Headline
Your headline is the hook that reels your audience in. It should be straightforward and engaging and tease the main message of the press release. If your headlines are falling flat, check out our Press Release Headline Tips blog for helpful tips and advice.
Summary
Think of your press release summary as the overview of your content. This portion of your press release is meant to give readers additional details that support the headline, pique their interest even more, and/or confirm the topic of the press release. You don't want to give it all away in the summary, but you do want to give them enough that it reels them in even more to read the press release in its entirety.
Date and Location
This portion of a press release creates a level of immediacy. This information is placed at the beginning of the press release right before the first line of body text. It's typically separated by an em dash with spaces.
When writing your dateline, always capitalize the city's name, abbreviate the state, and provide the date in its entirety.
Here's an example:
RALEIGH, N.C., January 11, 2023 — First line of body text.
Body
This is the main event of your press release. It's where you deliver on the promise you made in the headline and expand on the information you shared in the summary.
Paragraph 1: This is where you put the inverted pyramid to work to highlight the most important information -- who, what, when, where, why, and how. Addressing each of these prompts is a tried and true way to make sure you've included the facts journalists need to know.
Paragraph 2: Include supporting information to give readers context and understand why this press release is important. This paragraph can include facts, figures, and statistics, for example. This is also an excellent place to include your multimedia. Not only is adding high-quality visuals and graphics a way to increase engagement, but the multimedia you can include can also bring your story to life. For earnings press releases, in particular, financial videos are a way for companies to emphasize growth, revenue, and more. An added benefit of distributing your earnings press release with ACCESSWIRE is we don't tack on additional fees for any graphics or multi-media.
Paragraph 3: Include at least one quote from either a c-suite executive or a subject matter expert in your company. Quotes are an extra chance for you to build your story. Not to mention, quotes are typically the most common piece of a press release that's shared with the public. Make sure you put time and attention into creating quotes that are shareable and valuable.
TIP: The ideal length of a press release is between 300 and 400 words. You can learn more, here.
Boilerplate
The boilerplate is a condensed "About Us" section at the end of the press release. This is where you can share an overview of your company, what you have to offer, your mission, any awards/accolades you've recently received, and your company's objectives and operations.
Boilerplates start with About (insert company name).
Closing
This isn't necessarily a section, but it's a must when tying up the loose ends of your press release. The closing of your press release is marked by the use of three, pound symbols.
These symbols include em dashes on either side.
Example: — ### —
These symbols prevent additional information from being published as part of the press release.
Connect with your Audience
As one of the top newswires in the industry, we offer global distribution, predictable flat-fee pricing, and top-tier customer service that's been recognized by numerous G2 badges including, "Easiest To Do Business With," "Best Relationship," "Most Implementable" and more. Combining our innovative technology platform and network of journalists and media outlets gives our customers peace of mind and confidence knowing their stories will reach their target audiences.
When distributing a press release with us, you'll never have to sacrifice text, images, or media in your story.
There are NO…
Word counts or coverage fees. Multimedia fees (Embed YouTube videos for free!).
You CAN…
Include all social media links without worrying about extra wordsUse logos in the contact information to promote branding.
