What is Earned Media? Your Top Questions Answered

In the world of marketing and public relations, you‘ll often hear about three types of media: paid, owned, and earned. While paid media refers to advertising and owned media includes a brand‘s own channels like its website and social profiles, earned media is in a category of its own. Let‘s dive into your most frequently asked questions about earned media and how to make it work for your brand.

What is the Definition of Earned Media?

Earned media refers to any publicity or mentions that a brand receives organically from third-party sources. Unlike paid advertising, earned media coverage is not sponsored or paid for by the brand. And unlike owned media that the brand creates itself, earned media is generated by external outlets like news publications, blogs, social media users, and customers.

Some key characteristics of earned media:

• It is not controlled by the brand (for better or worse)
• It is viewed as more credible and trustworthy by consumers since it comes from an independent source
• It can have a significant impact on brand awareness, reputation, and even sales
• It requires a compelling story or campaign to catch the attention of media outlets and influencers

What are Some Examples of Earned Media?

Earned media can take many forms, both online and offline. Here are some of the most common examples:

• Media coverage and publicity: News articles, TV segments, radio interviews, etc. that feature your brand
• Reviews and roundups: Third-party reviews of your products/services or "best of" lists that include your offerings
• Organic search results: High rankings and featured snippets for your brand in Google search results
• Social media mentions: Organic posts, comments, shares about your brand on social networks
• Word-of-mouth referrals: People recommending your brand to friends and family
• Influencer endorsements: Influential figures in your industry posting favorably about your brand
• Awards and recognitions: Receiving an award or being named to a prestigious industry list

As you can see, earned media spans a wide range of channels and can be generated by customers, journalists, bloggers, social media users, industry analysts, and more. The key is that the brand itself is not behind the content.

How Has Earned Media Evolved in the Digital Age?

With the rise of the Internet and social media, earned media has expanded far beyond traditional press mentions. Social networks have given everyday customers a powerful platform to voice their opinions about brands to a wide audience. Online reviews on sites like Google, Yelp, and Amazon have become a go-to source for consumers researching purchases. Influencer recommendations shared on blogs and social media carry serious weight.

At the same time, the digital transformation of the media industry has led to an explosion of online publications and voices covering every niche and angle. Earning press from these new media outlets requires different strategies than pitching traditional print publications and TV stations.

Digital platforms have made earned media more measurable and traceable than ever before. With tools like social listening, web analytics, and attribution software, brands can now track the reach and impact of earned media mentions much more precisely.

However, the rise of digital has also made earned media more challenging in some ways. The Internet is a crowded and noisy space, making it harder than ever to stand out and gain organic traction. With so much content being published every day, even significant earned media hits can have a short shelf life. Brands need to work harder and smarter to earn meaningful media coverage in the digital age.

What are the Benefits of Earned Media for Brands?

Despite the challenges, earned media remains an incredibly valuable tool in the marketing mix. Here are some of the key benefits for brands:

• Boosts credibility and trust: Since earned media comes from third-party sources, it tends to be viewed as more objective and credible than a brand‘s own advertising or content. Positive earned media coverage acts as a strong third-party endorsement.

• Increases brand awareness: Earned media helps expose your brand to new audiences who might not be familiar with it. A single high-profile media mention or social post can put you on the map overnight.

• Improves search rankings: Earned media often includes valuable links back to your website, which can give an SEO boost and drive referral traffic. Online press mentions and reviews also tend to rank well in search results for your brand name.

• Generates leads and sales: Positive earned media can directly impact your bottom line by sending qualified visitors to your website or store to learn more or make a purchase. Many consumers seek out third-party reviews and recommendations before deciding to buy.

• Provides lasting value: While paid ads stop generating results the minute you stop funding them, earned media can live on indefinitely online and continue to surface in search results. A positive earned media hit is the gift that keeps on giving.

• Supports other marketing channels: Earned media rarely exists in a vacuum. Positive press mentions and influencer endorsements can be repurposed in your owned content and paid ads to boost their credibility and reach.

What are the Challenges of Earned Media?

Of course, earned media is not without its drawbacks and difficulties. Some of the key challenges include:

• Lack of control: Since you don‘t own or pay for earned media, you can‘t control the message or timing of the coverage. Not all earned media will be positive, and negative coverage can harm your reputation.

• Requires a compelling hook: To earn significant media coverage, you need a newsworthy story, an innovative product, a viral campaign, or an influential fan base. It‘s not enough to just pitch your brand.

• Time and resource intensive: Earned media is highly valuable, but it doesn‘t come easy. It takes a lot of time and effort to research media targets, craft customized pitches, coordinate interviews, and nurture relationships with journalists and influencers over the long run.

• Hard to measure impact: While digital analytics have improved earned media measurement, it can still be challenging to tie earned press directly to marketing KPIs and revenue, especially for offline coverage.

• Short shelf life: In today‘s real-time news cycle, even major earned media hits can get buried quickly. Brands need to have a plan to amplify and extend the reach of earned media after the initial buzz fades.

How Can Brands Earn More Media Coverage?

Now for the million-dollar question: how do you actually generate positive earned media for your brand? Here are some proven strategies:

1. Create compelling content: Earned media is all about storytelling. To catch the attention of journalists and influencers, you need to create content that is newsworthy, timely, unique, and relevant to their audience. Proprietary data, emotional human interest stories, thought leadership, and trending topics are all good hooks.

2. Build real relationships: Earning media coverage is not a one-and-done transaction. Focus on building genuine relationships with journalists, editors, producers, bloggers, and influencers in your space. Read and share their work, comment substantively, meet up at events. When you have news to share, personalize your outreach with authentic rapport.

3. Offer real value: Make your pitch about more than just promoting your brand. How can you help this journalist or influencer inform, entertain, serve their audience? Offer an exclusive, data that hasn‘t been reported elsewhere, access to an executive, product for review, or tips and takeaways that are useful regardless of your brand.

4. Make experts available: Having a bench of experts and thought leaders available to comment on industry topics is extremely valuable for earning media opportunities. Make sure your experts are trained on working with the media and have timely, quotable insights to share. Reach out proactively when you see a relevant media request.

5. Tap into trends: Keep a pulse on what topics are trending in the news and on social media. How does your brand relate to what‘s being talked about? Find creative ways to insert your brand into trending conversations in a relevant and meaningful way. Newsjacking can help you ride a rising wave of interest.

6. Amplify earned media: The work doesn‘t stop once you‘ve landed an earned media placement. To maximize the reach and shelf life of your hard-earned media hit, promote it via your owned channels and paid ads. Share on social, include in email newsletters and blog roundups, showcase on your website‘s press page, boost high-performing earned posts.

How Do You Measure Earned Media Success?

To gauge the impact of your earned media efforts and optimize your strategy over time, it‘s important to track key metrics like:

• Media mentions: How many placements did you generate in target publications and sites? Track quantity and quality.
• Reach and impressions: How many people potentially saw your earned media coverage? Look at circulation, unique visitors, followers, shares.
• Sentiment: Is the coverage positive, negative, or neutral in tone? How is your brand portrayed?
• Message pull-through: Are your key brand messages and talking points included in the coverage?
• Engagement: How many likes, comments, shares did the media posts generate? How long did people spend with the content?
• Referral traffic: How many people came to your website from earned media placements and what did they do there?
• Conversions and revenue: Did the earned media mention drive measurable leads, sales, downloads, or other desired actions?

Use a media monitoring tool to track your earned media coverage across online and social channels. Set up Google Analytics and UTM tracking codes to measure website traffic and behavior from earned sources. Work with your sales team to gauge impact on offline purchases and pipeline.

What Does the Future Hold for Earned Media?

Earned media has evolved significantly with the digital revolution, and will undoubtedly continue to change as new technologies and platforms emerge. Some key trends to watch include:

• Increased importance of social proof: Customer reviews, social media posts, and influencer endorsements will become even more vital forms of earned media as consumers tune out brand content and traditional advertising.

• Shorter news cycles: The rapid pace of digital publishing means earned media hits may have a shorter shelf life. Brands will need to focus on generating a steady drumbeat of coverage.

• Multimedia storytelling: Earned media is expanding beyond text to visual formats like images, videos, infographics, and live streams that are highly shareable on social.

• Rise of "earned" influencers: Brands are investing in cultivating organic influencer relationships based on affinity and mutual value rather than purely transactional paid posts.

• Blurring lines between paid and earned: Native advertising, sponsored content, and affiliate marketing are further blurring the boundaries of paid and earned. But transparency and credibility are key.

• AI-powered earned media: AI tools are helping brands discover relevant media opportunities, personalize their outreach, and even draft data-driven pitch angles at scale.

One thing is certain: earned media will continue to play a vital role in the marketing mix. In an age of declining trust in institutions and advertising, credible third-party recognition is more valuable than ever. Savvy brands will invest in using compelling storytelling, genuine relationship-building, and smart amplification to earn their share of the media spotlight.