In the ever-evolving world of digital marketing, every brand strives to make a lasting impression. But how can you achieve that without breaking the bank or creating content yourself? The answer lies in the power of earned media, a game-changer for businesses seeking to build trust, credibility, and a strong online presence. Are you ready to unlock the potential of “earned media” and dominate your niche? Let’s dive in!

Short Summary

  • Earned media is a powerful tool to help businesses build trust and recognition.
  • Maximize earned media value by reusing content, encouraging word-of-mouth recommendations, and measuring performance.
  • Leverage the power of influencer marketing, viral social campaigns & creative PR initiatives for successful earned media campaigns!

Understanding Earned Media

 

Unlike owned media, earned media is a type of publicity gained organically through promotional efforts without any cost or effort on your part. It’s like a stamp of approval from your target audience, journalists, or influencers, which can significantly boost your brand awareness, credibility, and trust.

The beauty of earned media is that it’s not influenced or controlled by brands, giving customers a more genuine and reliable experience. By learning the distinctions between paid media, owned media, and earned media, you can maximize your promotional efforts and make the most out of your marketing budget.

The Power of Earned Media

Earned media is a powerful asset for any business, with the potential to establish trust and recognition through referrals from loved ones, online reviews, and social media influencers. Some exciting examples of earned media include original social media posts referencing your product, captivating articles in trade publications, and impressive social media shoutouts.

To make the most of earned media, you can run social media contests, participate in product roundups, conduct surveys and research studies, and engage in social customer care. The key is to offer an attractive prize that resonates with your target audience, broadcast the contest across your social media platforms, and collaborate with influencers to amplify your message.

By doing so, you can effectively reach your target audience and dominate search engine results pages, ultimately growing your business and boosting sales.

Types of Earned Media

Earned media can take various forms, each with its unique benefits. Press releases, articles, blog posts, and social media interactions all fall under the earned media umbrella, providing your brand with public recognition and visibility that can be leveraged to further your brand’s growth.

Online customer reviews are an essential type of earned media, as the average consumer reads 10 reviews before they feel confident in trusting a business. By focusing on delivering exceptional service to every single customer and not just the influencers, you can create an impressive reputation that will spread through word of mouth.

Additionally, utilizing tools like NewswireJet can help you maximize your earned media efforts and distribute news, announcements, and events to a wide range of sources.

Developing an Effective Earned Media Strategy

 

An effective earned media strategy is essential for maximizing the benefits of this powerful marketing tool. By identifying brand ambassadors, building relationships with journalists and influencers, and participating in industry events, you can create a comprehensive strategy that propels your brand to new heights.

Identifying Brand Ambassadors

Brand ambassadors are enthusiastic fans who passionately love your brand and actively share their admiration online. To cultivate brand ambassadors on social media, stay engaged with them, express your gratitude for their support, and show your appreciation for them, for instance, by sending them a coupon or sharing one of their posts on your brand’s social media platform.

By nurturing these relationships, you can generate powerful earned media that boosts your brand’s reputation and reach.

Building Relationships with Journalists and Influencers

Building relationships with journalists and influencers is crucial for securing earned media coverage. Influencer marketing is a powerful type of earned media that requires strategic efforts and cultivating mutually beneficial relationships with influencers. To maximize your existing influencer relationships, actively engage with their content and strategically share it with your audience.

When reaching out to an influencer, it’s essential to do your research beforehand. Find out what kind of content they produce, what their followers enjoy, and what topics they care about. Make sure your pitch reflects that knowledge and familiarity for the best results.

In addition, tools like HARO (Help a Reporter) can help you connect with journalists who need your expertise, making it easier to share your story and gain earned media coverage.

Participating in Industry Events

Participating in industry events is hugely important, as it provides a great opportunity to network with other professionals, stay up-to-date with industry trends and advancements, and gain invaluable knowledge that can be applied to your business.

Using a trade publication can also help you to boost your brand presence in front of those that matter within your industry. You can take it a step further by taking the pain to provide insights and expert advice on such publication as well.

Moreover, getting involved in conferences and industry trade shows can be an excellent way to gain earned media by showcasing your brand to a wide audience and making connections with influential figures in your industry.

To make the most of industry events, prepare thoroughly and present your brand in the best possible light. This includes having a well-designed booth, offering engaging presentations or demos, and networking with key industry players.

By doing so, you can create lasting impressions and generate valuable earned media that can boost your brand’s reputation and reach.

Maximizing Earned Media Value

 

To maximize the value of earned media, it’s essential to reuse and repurpose earned media in owned media channels, encourage word-of-mouth recommendations, and monitor and measure earned media performance. By doing so, you can make the most of your earned media efforts and amplify the impact it has on your brand’s reputation and growth.

Repurposing and Sharing Earned Media Content

 

Repurposing and sharing earned media content can be incredibly advantageous, as it can boost brand awareness and credibility, broaden the reach of original content, provide additional value to the audience, and help a brand achieve multiple goals. Plus, it can save time and resources for content creation and help the brand stay consistent across social media.

To effectively repurpose and share earned media content, consider creating a blog post roundup or including fan testimonials in webinars. Additionally, enthusiastically retweet fans’ comments and share them across other networks, and leverage user-generated content as part of your content marketing strategy.

By doing so, you can extend the lifespan of your earned media content and maximize its value to your brand.

Encouraging Word-of-Mouth Recommendations

 

Word-of-mouth recommendations can be incredibly beneficial for companies as they can reach new audiences, establish a positive brand reputation, and gain trust and credibility with potential customers. What’s more, word-of-mouth marketing is even more effective than traditional advertising, leading to more sales.

To motivate customers to share their experiences and promote word-of-mouth recommendations, offer incentives such as discounts or free products. You can also craft high-quality content that offers tremendous value, making it more likely that your audience will share it with their networks – for free!

Monitoring and Measuring Earned Media Performance

 

Monitoring and measuring earned media performance is essential to evaluate the return on investment of PR and marketing initiatives, compare the influence of individual posts, influencers, products, and campaigns, and recognize the effect of earned media on a brand’s reputation. It allows us to recognize areas for improvement and refine strategy.

We can measure our success with month-over-month traffic goals, the share of voice (SOV), backlinks, domain score, click-through rates, impressions, and engagement rates. By understanding the running ad cost and impression CPM (cost per thousand impressions) and taking into account previous campaign metrics, we can make a comprehensive assessment of the value of earned media.

Earned Media and Digital Marketing

 

Earned media is an integral part of digital marketing, with SEO and earned media being connected, social media and earned media being intertwined, and influencer marketing and earned media being mutually beneficial. By understanding the relationship between these elements, you can create a comprehensive digital marketing strategy that leverages the power of earned media to boost your brand’s online presence.

This strategy should include tactics such as optimizing content for search engines, leveraging social media platforms to reach a wider audience, and partnering with influencers to increase brand awareness. With the right approach, earned media can be a powerful tool for driving traffic, increasing conversions, and building a brand.

SEO and Earned Media

 

SEO and earned media can both be powerful tools for businesses, helping to build trust, credibility, and a strong online presence. It can help boost social media channels and SEO by creating content that is shared and liked by users, thus increasing the visibility of the brand. Additionally, earned media can help to improve SEO by creating backlinks to the website, which can help to elevate the website’s ranking in search engine results.

SEO can be used to create a strong digital reputation management defense system by optimizing content for search engine results. This can help to ensure that the most positive content about the brand is more visible in search engine results, while pushing any negative content further down the list. By doing so, you can effectively protect your brand’s reputation and maintain a positive online image.

Social Media and Earned Media

 

Social media and earned media are both invaluable tools for businesses to boost brand awareness, credibility, and customer engagement. Social media enables direct communication with customers, while earned media provides valuable third-party validation and strengthens trust in the brand.

Leveraging social media and earned media effectively involves understanding the unique benefits of each platform and crafting a cohesive strategy that incorporates both elements. By doing so, you can create a powerful online presence that drives engagement, builds trust, and ultimately, boosts your brand’s bottom line.

Influencer Marketing and Earned Media

Influencer marketing and earned media can be incredibly powerful tools for increasing brand awareness and credibility. Influencer marketing can spark third-party promotion and credibility, while earned media brings invaluable exposure to your brand and products. By leveraging both influencer marketing and earned media, you can effectively reach your business objectives, such as increasing brand visibility, reaching new audiences, and driving conversions.

Some noteworthy and successful influencer marketing and earned media campaigns include the Nike “Just Do It” campaign, the Red Bull Stratos jump, and the Dove “Real Beauty” campaign. These examples demonstrate the effectiveness of influencer marketing and earned media in achieving business goals and showcase the importance of partnering with influencers that share the same values and personality as the brand.

Successful Earned Media Campaigns

Analyzing case studies of successful earned media campaigns can provide valuable insights and inspiration for your own marketing efforts. By examining viral social media campaigns, influencer marketing success stories, and creative PR initiatives, you can learn from the best and apply their strategies to your own campaigns.

Viral Social Media Campaigns

A viral social media campaign is an exciting type of marketing strategy that uses social media platforms to generate buzz around a product, service, or brand. It is crafted to spread rapidly and widely through the sharing of content by users, ultimately increasing brand awareness, engagement, and website traffic.

To maximize the potential of your viral social media campaigns, focus on predicting the success of a campaign, controlling the message, and mitigating the risk of negative publicity. By doing so, you can create a successful campaign that captures the attention of your target audience and drives engagement, conversions, and ultimately, sales.

Influencer Marketing Success Stories

 

Influencer marketing success stories are a great source of motivation for brands looking to maximize their ROI. These stories showcase how successful campaigns have been run by brands leveraging influencers to promote their products or services. Real-life examples demonstrate the effectiveness of influencer marketing in achieving business goals, such as increasing brand visibility, reaching new audiences, and driving conversions.

Some of the most inspiring influencer marketing success stories include Nike leveraging influencers to showcase their new line of shoes, Apple using influencers to highlight their new iPhone, and Coca-Cola tapping influencers to promote their new beverage. These examples illustrate the power of influencer marketing in driving brand success and achieving business goals.

Creative PR Initiatives

 

Creative PR initiatives can be incredibly beneficial to a company, helping it stand out in a crowded market, express its brand values in a distinct voice, and generate positive media coverage. Moreover, creativity is essential for success in public relations, as it enables brands to engage with audiences in innovative and memorable ways.

Some of the most successful creative PR initiatives include Coca-Cola’s “Share a Coke” campaign, Dove’s “Real Beauty” campaign, and the “Like a Girl” campaign by Always. These campaigns showcase the power of creative PR in capturing the attention of audiences and generating earned media, ultimately boosting brand awareness, reputation, and customer engagement.

Summary

Earned media is a powerful marketing tool that can help your brand build trust, credibility, and a strong online presence. By understanding the different types of earned media, developing an effective earned media strategy, and leveraging the power of digital marketing, you can create a comprehensive approach that maximizes the value of your earned media efforts. Remember the inspiring examples of successful earned media campaigns, and use them as a guide to create your own viral social media campaigns, influencer marketing success stories, and creative PR initiatives.

As you embark on your earned media journey, take advantage of the valuable insights you’ve gained from this comprehensive guide. With careful planning, creativity, and a deep understanding of your target audience, you can harness the full power of earned media and propel your brand to new heights. So go forth, and let earned media be your secret weapon in achieving unparalleled success!

Frequently Asked Questions

What are examples of earned media?

This is an invaluable tool for any business looking to increase visibility and engagement. Examples of earned media include word of mouth, sharing content on social media, customer reviews, press coverage, and referral programs.

By leveraging these strategies, businesses can effectively amplify their brand’s message and reach larger audiences.

What is an example of earned digital media?

A great example of earned digital media is content marketing. Content marketing involves creating and publishing useful and relevant content, such as blog posts, videos, and infographics, to attract and retain a clearly defined audience. When this content is shared through digital channels, it can reach a broad range of potential customers, providing companies with valuable engagement opportunities and an enhanced online presence. This form of media majorly driven by owned and paid media.

What is earned media quizlet?

Earned Media Quizlet is a great way to learn and understand the power of earned media. It is a set of quizzes that teaches how to use publicity, content sharing, SEO, and other tactics to increase brand recognition, traffic, and engagement.

Learning about earned media is an important step for any business hoping to establish their online presence.

What is the meaning of earned media?

Earned media is the free media coverage that a business, product or service receives in the form of an editorial or feature article, radio segment or television feature. These mentions are organic, meaning they happen without a company paying for advertisement or promotion.

This type of PR is invaluable and can have a lasting impact on a business’s public image when propelled by digital media outlets.