I don't believe in the Print Yellow Pages anymore but YP is an amazing company. Listings are critical to a hotel marketing effort and we have a powerful proprietary system to manage this very inexpensively. So look at YP's overall system. If this is not a good fit for you let me know. We can provide you a free report for how you are doing now and what you can do to improve.

Compatibility with your vision? Does 1+ 1= 3 or even 5? Personality mix? If you are going to stay with the acquired entity. These might be more important than any of the numbers.

I disagree with most of the previous answers. We use a proprietary PR system along with the Vocus/Cision Dashboard for distributing our news.We have been doing it effectively since 2005. In a recent "Newsblast" for a company with No brand recognition we achieved the following results in the first ten days:
-182,000 views of the release
-4500 full page reads
-1257 web visits (to a site that never existed prior to release
-200 RSS media Links
-2 Organic Media Stories (1 Broadcast)
-and 40% funding
We eventually did a follow-up release and our total Impressions for the campaign were over 250,000.
PR is treated by my firm as an excellent way to get some momentum built without a huge expense...quickly! PPC was used effectively alongside of the PR but performed with less efficiency. Also, I would much rather have a click referral from a newsblast (release) because the individual clicking has so much more info than you can get in a 3 line PPC ad? Lastly we build all of our PR Programs in 3 Segments.
-News Distribution
-Social Media Augmentation
-Separate Organic Pitches to targeted Media
In this particular example we raised 100% of our crowdfunding goal in 6 weeks with 92 Donors but we only had about 3 Organic Media Stories. You can see and read more about our Quick2Brand "Newsblast at: http://consultaro.com/quick2brand/ or see Michael Walsh's article "Is the Press Release Dead? No it is your amplification engine" https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/press-release-dead-nope-its-michael?trk=object-title
We are frankly tired of those that dismiss the distribution of PR out of hand without the knowledge or the experience of our system. (We partner frequently with consultants and agencies that do not have this expertise and they love us)

I own a PR company so of course I am biased. Unless you have a monster network of your own, you have to find people that are interested. If you have a great social media network, or know how to find this target market via your own tools that's great. If not, consider hiring a firm that does.

We are currently working with a crowdsourcing campaign, and we kicked it off with one of our proprietary news blasts a week ago. This not just a press release but an entire campaign. Even with all of the power of these tools, massive social media engagement and a very smart client we are at 39% of our "raise" with 46 days left. We have over 150,000 views of this announcement and we have driven over a thousand sessions to our landing page since January 22 2015. We have not even begun our organic media efforts. If you can generate this kind of response with your own team...do it. If not, find someone to help.

Look for people within (or understand) your industry no matter where they. One of our clients is flying to meet potential investors (no matter the distance) if they have expressed fundamental interest and have a good track record.

Unless you have an amazing network, an extraordinary topic, or an existing super brand, it is tough t get butts in seats even for a webinar. Frank Kern (known for his web launches and many successes) recently conducted a webinar with nearly 1000 people but his initial webinar was free with some very useful content (even in the free program). He uses a multi-touch system, lead pages, email, text and phone callls to make sure you attend. He then pitches the paid content while you are there. Kern has done this effectively for years.

Do you offer CEUs or credits for the attendees? My clients have no where near the brand that Kern has and we use the same tools as Kern, but we add pay per click, Social Media, and PR to drive our audience. I hope this helps?