Earned media is a cornerstone of communication, marketing, and both traditional and digital public relations strategies. As such, it is a vital part of a media strategy that can help your business achieve its brand, financial, public relations, and digital marketing goals. Before diving into how earned media can benefit your business, let’s make sure we are on the same page about this concept.
What is Earned Media?
To understand the role of earned media in your strategy, you must first know it is part of the Combined Media Model:
- Owned media: Channels you control, such as your website, blog, and social media accounts.
- Paid media: Social ads, pay-per-click programs, and more.
- Shared media: Content designed specifically for circulation on social platforms and user-generated content.
- Earned media: Promotion of your brand by third parties outside your owned channels, based on the relevance and value of your content.
When used consistently in your PR and digital marketing plans, earned media helps accelerate your brand positioning and connects you with various generations of your target audience.
Earned media generates brand awareness and visibility through eWOM (electronic word of mouth). This includes customer comments, news coverage in traditional and digital media, opinions, multimedia content, influencer and journalist referrals, and the coveted recommendations from prosumers and natural brand ambassadors.
While earned media offers less control (as what is shared depends on third parties), it is a goldmine for branding, providing an invaluable vote of credibility.
Want to know how earned media can positively impact your PR strategy? Here are the 5 reasons we love earned media:
1. It bypasses filters to reach your target audience
Amid political debates, entertaining memes, and personal updates, your customers are overwhelmed by the distractions on social media.
Because you are not the one sharing a glowing review of your brand, earned media cuts through these filters and delivers the message to potential customers. The result? Your audience trusts this content more than usual.
2. It reaches a broader audience
Whether through a blog post or TV news feature, earned media allows you to connect with more customers.
It acts as a trusted endorsement of your product or service. As more customers rely on online reviews, these become a significant factor in decision-making.
Building your own community takes time and resources but complementing it with a robust earned media strategy—both traditional and digital—results in greater brand awareness and a noticeable increase in potential customers.
3. It boosts credibility
Here’s the truth: Customers are most influenced by family, friends, and educational content.
Did you know?
- 66% of people trust third-party articles, posts, and online reviews. (Nielsen)
- 83% trust recommendations from people they know. (Nielsen)
Leveraging earned media means tapping into the credibility provided by third-party endorsements. As a result, current and potential customers trust you more, fostering greater engagement.
4. It delivers evergreen and discoverable content
Online communication channels are increasingly important as starting points in the buying journey for various generations of current and potential customers.
Did you know?
87% of Mexicans surveyed use digital media as their primary news source. (Digital News Report)
Earned media featuring useful and authoritative content must be evergreen and easily discoverable to maximize business opportunities and ROI.
Did you know?
- 87% of Mexicans surveyed use digital media as their primary news source. (Digital News Report)
The longevity of content depends on its relevance, value, and optimization (data, SEO, etc.). This content stands out amidst the overwhelming flow of online material, ensuring brand visibility and increasing the likelihood of discovery by potential customers.
Earned media often creates evergreen content that remains accessible online, driving brand awareness, attracting potential customers (inbound marketing), increasing loyalty among existing ones, and amplifying your key messages.
5. It maximizes your marketing resources
Earned media helps introduce new marketing concepts to your organization and enhances your media strategy with tactics such as:
- Collaborating with influencers and prosumers to tell stories that resonate with your audience’s daily lives and real needs.
- Driving organic traffic to your website and online content through the digital media channels your audience respects and consults.
- Engaging with relevant media outlets to elevate your brand’s thought leadership.
- Supporting content creators with user-generated content.
- Repurposing on-demand content like podcasts and internet interviews to extend and enhance your brand’s visibility.
Adding an earned media strategy to your marketing and PR activities helps you reach potential customers, maintain loyalty among current ones, and increase sales.
As the renowned online marketing strategist David Meerman Scott once said:
“Instead of interruption-based, one-to-many marketing, digital marketing enables us to provide useful content precisely when people need it.”
Strengthen your smart marketing strategies with the benefits offered by earned media.