Earned media is quickly becoming the target of every advertising and marketing department in the marketplace. Across brands and industrial sectors, everyone wants to get their hands on the lucrative and powerful commodity of this kind of media, yet many people are still in the dark about what this is and how it can help their brand continue to grow toward new and exciting opportunities.
In this guide, you’ll learn about what earned media is so that you can begin to utilize it in your own branding and business decisions, as well as how to find examples that will give you a great foundation for the future. Read on to discover how earned sources of additional media can transform your business and sales productivity for the better.
Earned media is viral media.
The first lesson of any new approach to leveraging this opportunity is the understanding that virality is a key feature in the earned content spectrum. This is a challenge that brands must overcome though. Virality isn’t something that can be manufactured yet. It’s hard to put a finger on what makes a piece of video or text content viral, but what can be said is that brands of all types work overtime to imitate other viral content, often to no avail.
Instead of focusing on achieving a viral video that can be repurposed for earned media influence, the most comprehensive earned media examples instead promote strategic marketing as a key pillar in the quest for engaging this type of media. The best way to chase after this type of media is to continuously update your understanding of the market itself. SEO practices, influence, and social media all converge in an inclusive and ever-changing media environment that can be hard to harness for even the most experienced executives in the media production space. Media coverage begins a cycle for your business and an understanding of the foundations that will provide you with the best potential for creating conversions.
This type of media requires a strategy and an eye on the long game.
In the age of enhanced social media presence, influencer marketing and SEO that incorporates product reviews, word of mouth marketing, and other elements of influence are a mainstay. Yet these can be costly, and the allure of alternative sources of media coverage is enticing. This is where earned media shines. Essentially, this is any free coverage that you receive from influencers who have chosen to conduct a product review, leave a Yelp review, or publish a blog post about your product or service without you having to pay them for it. Free media is fantastic, but it’s hard to come by and can be unpredictable.
Because of this, building a strategy that maximizes your exposure and the ability for others to take snippets of your press releases, blog posts, and social media content without much difficulty is crucial in promoting this kind of exposure throughout the brand. Relying on earned sources of media is a mistake, but with a great strategy, you can reproduce a trickle of additional, free coverage at all times that can increase to a roar with a piece of content that really hits well. On occasion, you’ll see virtually no additional content being published on your behalf, but with patience and an eye for the long game, you will see waves of additional coverage that can drive profits to new heights.
Capitalizing on the additional weight of earned media is something that brands have been doing for many years. Yet in the current market, a push for new and exciting ways to incorporate this publicity into marketing strategies is making for a vibrant and interesting new marketing landscape.
