How to Write an Earnings Press Release: 5 Tips to Consider
A press release is a necessary marketing vehicle public companies can use to share their quarterly earnings confidently.
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.
In this blog post, we share five tips to consider
and a free quarterly earnings press release template you can download and use today!
5 Earnings Press Release Writing Tips
Create a press release template. Creating a consistent template keeps your details organized and helps audiences track and easily compare your progress every quarter.
Take a look at these two Issuer Direct earnings press releases, for example.
You can see the layout for both the
first-quarter and
second-quarter press releases are the same.
Each press release follows the same flow:
- Short introduction
- Quotes from the CEO
- Quarter highlights
- Year-to-Date highlights
- Key performance indicators
- Non-GAAP information
- Financial tables
Creating and following a template ensures your business consistently covers the most important details when sharing quarterly earnings.
Tell a story. Data fuels your company’s ability to control the narrative. Work with your C-suite executives to 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.
Include financial tables. Most journalists in the financial media and 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, share your information concisely. 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 track results and performance in Google Analytics effectively.
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.
Download your FREE Press Release Template
A successful campaign starts with a proper press release format.
Download our quarterly earnings press release template so you include all the necessary information in your campaign.
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