What Is Earned Media? Definition, Attribution, Best Practices with Examples

What Is Earned Media? Definition, Attribution, Best Practices with Examples

Last Updated: August 27, 2020

Earned media is defined as the unpaid coverage/mention of you or your brand or organization by third-party entities such as media publications, customers, or influencers.

Marketers use owned, paid, and earned media to connect with users and customers, and spread brand awareness. In this article, we will look at what earned media is, its types, examples, best practices, and attribution. We’ll conclude by looking at the advantages and disadvantages of earned media.

Table of Contents

What Is Earned Media?
Types of Earned Media
The Value of Earned Media
Earned Media Best Practices
Advantages and Disadvantages of Earned Media

What Is Earned Media?

Earned media is marketing by third-party entities that isn’t paid for. It is an outcome of a brand’s public relations and branding, and customer experience efforts.

You must have heard phrases such as, “The brand sold exclusively through word of mouth” or “The brand’s latest campaign went viral.” So, what do word of mouth (WoM) and going viral mean in this context?

These terms imply how the product or campaign became a hit without the brand’s active participation. This is the gist of earned media, or as Forrester puts it, “When customers become the channel.”

Often described using terms such as WoM, buzz, viral, or publicity, earned media is achieved exclusively through organic activities.

Earned media can appear across both – traditional and modern channels such as print, radio, television, social media, webzines, blogs, email, etc.

Paid media could be heading toward saturation as customers grow weary of ads and ad fatigue sets in. Earned media, on the other hand, continues to grow in prominence as users actively participate in engaging with the brand. According to research by Outsell, audiences view earned media as the most authentic form of marketing.

Learn More: What Is Paid Media? Definition, Types, Process with ExamplesOpens a new window

Types of Earned Media

Representation of the Types of Earned Media

Types of Earned Media

Earned media is the result of the brand doing something noteworthy from the PR perspective or making its customers go wow! Let’s look at some of the examples of earned media.

1. News Coverage/Press Mentions

In this type of media, a journalist may mention your brand in a story or write a full-blown article about the brand. News coverages or press mentions appear in newspapers, magazines, TV/radio news segments, or their online contemporaries.

2. Interviews

A newspaper, news channel, trade publication, blog, podcast, or similar high-impact media may interview internal stakeholders within a company to share more information about the product or any latest development with their audience.

Since interviews are conducted by a neutral party, they tend to be non-promotional, hence viewed as a reliable source as information.

3. Product Reviews

The internet has provided everyone a space to voice their opinions, and a product review is one such example. A journalist, blogger, or customer can talk about their experience of using your products/services.

For instance, a blogger may write a blog or record a video about your product, whereas a customer may write a product review on your website (testimonial for B2B organizations) or directories such as Yelp, TripAdvisor, and so on.

4. Influencer Shoutouts

This is not the typical influencer marketing, where the influencer is compensated to talk about your product. Here, an influencer or an industry expert gives your brand a shoutout without any affiliation.

The effectiveness of this depends on the effect the influencer has on their community.

5. Organic and Direct Traffic

Although your website is a type of owned media, you need to “earn” organic traffic. When you create content that people find valuable, your site ranking improves on search engines, which acts as a vote of trust.

Direct traffic is an outcome of how well someone knows your brand. When people know what they want and come to your website, it represents the perfect combination of trust and brand recall.

6. Brand Synonymity

Brand synonymity is the pinnacle of earned media. This happens when consumers use your brand name to refer to a similar white-label product. For instance, people say Xerox to refer to photocopying or Google it to look something up on the internet.

Brand synonymity is achieved by innovators due to the nascent phase of the industry. As the industry matures, it is impossible for newer players to achieve brand synonymity.

The Value of Earned Media

In an age where the market is saturated with plenty of product alternatives, it becomes a challenge to choose the best product. A simple search yields millions of results along with banner ads wherever you look. As it is becoming progressively difficult to isolate the signal from the noise, buyers are relying more on their peers and experts than the brand.

To create trust in your consumers’ minds, you need someone reliable to vouch for you. And that’s what earned media does.

Chris Lynch (CMO of KUIU and ex-CMO of Cision) sums it up by saying:

Consumers foundationally trust earned media more than other mediums. Despite years of consumer attention turning to new media outlets and user-generated content, the last presidential election triggered a pendulum swing for consumers back to the traditional news. According to research from Ogilvy, traditional media is the most trusted news source of consumers (52%). So as people learn more about products, brands, and topics, they are more likely to trust reporting from professional journalists or individual people.

Earned Media Best Practices

Since you can’t control how a journalist will pick up your story or a blogger will review your product, it’s difficult to create an earned media strategy that will ensure news coverage across all media outlets and make your brand the talk of the town. However, you can increase the chances of such instances occurring by following specific steps.

In this section, we will look at five earned media best practices for your brand.

1. Create Valuable and Shareworthy Content

Eventually, everything boils down to the content you produce. If you’d like your prospects, customers, and influencers to talk about your brand, provide valuable content that they would be tempted to share within their networks. You can provide value by creating content that aims to inspire, inform, engage, or entertain your target audience.

Don’t restrict your content creation activities to text content. You can substantially increase the sharability of your content by experimenting with videos, podcasts, infographics, quizzes, and other interactive content.

For example, HubSpot’s marketing blog can give you an overview of the types of content they create:

Example of HubSpot?s content types on the marketing blog

HubSpot’s content types on the marketing blog

What Is Earned Media? Definition, Attribution, Best Practices with Examples

2. Connect With Journalists and Influencers

Building long-term relationships is the secret behind a successful earned media strategy. Journalists and influencers get plenty of press releases, requests for mentions, or interviews every day, and you don’t want to send one more request.

The wise thing to do is to dig your well before you’re thirsty, i.e., focus on building a rapport initially. There are a few ways you can do this. Know the topics they cover and for whom they write. For instance, two tech bloggers can have two different sets of audiences. Being aware of the stories they’re working on and their lead times will allow you to pitch them at the right time.

3. Deliver Amazing Customer Experiences

Delivering memorable customer experiences (CX) will ensure consumers talk about and promote your brand. Providing exemplary customer service from their initial interaction, to proactively resolving complaints and creating memorable experiences throughout their buyer’s journey can ensure they are delighted with your CX. They’ll happily sing your praises online, provide product feedback, and become brand advocates.

For example, underground or independent bands and music artists have street teams – a group of enthusiastic fans who voluntarily do the promotional work such as putting up posters, calling radio stations to play their songs, etc. The band’s music has turned these fans into advocates.

4. Build Communities

One of the best ways to turn customers into brand advocates is to build communities. Online communities bring customers and brands closer. You can initiate conversations on social media to generate engagement or contribute to an existing one.

You can also use social media to acquaint strangers with your brand. Using brand, product, or industry-related searches, you can identify the right queries to respond to, which can drive them to your website. This method of proactive communication shows customers that you care.

5. Develop Thought Leadership

Becoming a thought leader means people see you as an authority in your niche. This directly impacts how people perceive your brand. Apart from creating content for owned media, you can amplify your efforts through guest blogging. Once you become a successful guest blogger, you can pitch your ideas to premium publications and become a columnist.

If you are unsure about whether this strategy will work, you should know, Leo Widrich, co-founder of Buffer, acquired 100,000 users for Buffer within nine months by writing around 150 guests posts.

Earned Media Attribution

Now, let’s talk about earned media attribution, that is, measuring the success of your earned media efforts.

It’s relatively simple to report the results of owned and paid media, but it’s complicated to know how well your PR efforts have fared. Imagine this: your brand was just featured in a premium magazine. People then searched for it on search engines or social media (organic or paid) and landed on your website. Now, if they become your customers, the conversion will be attributed to the medium that drove them to your website, not the PR mention.

But tools such as Onclusive’s PR Attribution, AirPR, or Cision Impact are trying to solve this issue by linking PR content and conversions despite the absence of a direct link. These tools are capable of reporting social media reach, website traffic, leads, and revenue generated through earned media.

Advantages and Disadvantages of Earned Media

advantages of earned media

Advantages of Earned Media

Earned media tilts towards building relationships and trust in the minds of your customers. Let’s begin with the three main advantages of using earned media:

1. Drives Awareness

Early-stage businesses have a tough time breaking through the clutter to get their message across. Earned media offers them avenues that can expand their audience base.

Brands can drive awareness through guest blogging, social listening (and responding!), interviews, and press coverage. One activity can create a ripple effect that amplifies your reach.

For example, a startup founder getting interviewed by a reputed magazine will not only boost their reach but also help them bring more customers and get noticed.

2. Builds Credibility

Credibility is a perception, and it becomes stronger when people start talking about your brand. It could be about your product/service or the CX. Earned media partially relies on WoM to spread awareness. The more positive sentiments surround your brand, the more credible it becomes.

Thought leadership activities such as interviews, guest posts, or columns convey your expertise and strengthen your reliability.

3. Improves ROI

Paid media is the function of the money you’re willing to invest, whereas earned media is the function of the relationships you cultivate.

When you take the effort to build a rapport with journalists, influencers, and customers, they wouldn’t mind talking about your product. Also, earned media proves to be sustainable as once you develop these relationships, your communities will help you promote the brand continually.

Moving on to the disadvantages – While there are certain shortcomings of earned media, none of these should deter you from experimenting with earned media before you reach a conclusion.

Disadvantages of Earned Media

Disadvantages of Earned Media

1. Less Control Over the Messaging

A grumpy customer might write a scathing review about a bad experience with your brand, or a journalist could bring your brand under scrutiny for your latest campaign.

You can’t control the narrative that goes out from third-party entities. It could be both – positive and negative. A PR disaster can tarnish the brand image in a matter of seconds. Therefore, you need to be extra careful with how you portray yourself through owned and paid media.

2. Nothing Guarantees Success

Despite the amount of time you spend to build relationships with journalists or PR people, there’s no assurance whether your content will get featured in their publication. Eventually, it comes down to the quality and value your brand brings.

3. Requires a Lot of Time to See Results

Earned media doesn’t show results overnight, and it involves you to put in a lot of effort. There is no fixed timeline or way to plan this. You must give it time and nurture these relationships for as long as it takes.

First, you need to create content on owned properties and social media that can be amplified. Second, building long-term relationships takes time. Therefore, although earned media is seen as a lucrative media to generate influence, brands need to be prepared to put in the work and remain patient until they start seeing the results.

The Bottom LineLike every marketing activity, great content is the cornerstone of the success of earned media. Activities such as developing PR relationships or user-generated content build on top off the content you create.

So, how can you make your brand authoritative and trustworthy? If you are looking for a silver bullet answer on how to initiate your earned media efforts, it is this: build authentic content that helps your audience, provide exceptional customer experiences, and build your networks.

What’s your earned media strategy? Share it with us on LinkedInOpens a new window , FacebookOpens a new window , or TwitterOpens a new window .

Indrajeet Deshpande
Indrajeet is a Marketing professional with 6+ years of experience in managing different facets of Digital Marketing. After working with SpiderG - a Pune based SaaS startup, he is now ready to work as a freelance marketer with different SaaS startups helping them with marketing strategy, plan and execution. His love for old-school hard rock and metal music culminated in taking up guitar and starting www.guitargabble.com. He is studying Stoic philosophy, experimenting with productive habits and documenting the progress. Get in touch if you are keen to know how you can implement pro-wrestling tactics in your marketing, community building and storytelling
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