Use organic or unpaid coverage or promotion of your business in other media outlets to drive growth outside of your own channels
Leverage the power of trusted media to reach prospects that might not otherwise interact with you
Word-of-mouth marketing can generate earned media that can be a tremendous growth marketing driver
Owned media comprises digital marketing channels that a company exercises complete control over, such as its branded website, blogs, and organic social media channels. Improving upon and leveraging owned media efforts often increases the effectiveness of paid media, and for those that truly know how to leverage effective PR through a variety of tactics, earned media.
Owned media in fact does lead to earned media
While owned media has its effects on consumers' purchasing behaviors - 78 percent of people said companies' posts on social media impacted their buying, according to Invesp - businesses can also increase their lead and conversion rates by investing in paid and earned media.
Earned media, in particular, has been found to be 88 percent more trustworthy to customers than owned media alone
While certainly owned media sets the foundation for establishing a baseline level of familiarity, trust, and certainly an awareness of a business, how does one go about taking the steps to generate earned media that allows certain companies to set themselves even further apart?
Earned Media As Part of an Extremely Hyper-Growth Marketing Centric Strategy
Earned Media can be a hyper-efficient growth marketing tactic
Earned media has 2 inherent advantages that make it so coveted
Earned media is cheaper in the long run
Earned media, especially when it is achieved consistently over time, is an especially powerful strategic tool to generate brand awareness and recall
Examples of earned media that growth marketing-centric firms can use.
TV segment
Newspaper/magazine feature
Niche/trade publications
Twitter mentions
Influencers
Search engines
These are just some examples of earned media, which can, if the right publications, channels, and methods are leveraged, cascade very quickly and keep a business and its brand in the public eye for an extended period of time, and can trigger massive potential growth.
So how do we go about getting the earned media as part of an efficient growth-marketing strategy?
It really depends on the nature of your business, the strengths of your own channels as well as understanding the inherent history and competitive advantage of your business. But some ways we feel can be effective as far as generating PR/earned media include
Pitching podcasts
Doing something newsworthy
Attending the right trade shows
Product reviews
And these are just a few. Of course, we wouldn’t want to limit ourselves, and more importantly, limit your business and its ability to capitalize by even trying to generate a comprehensive but inherently restricted list.