What is Earned Media?

We've all heard the adage, "There's no such thing as bad publicity." Now, while this isn't exactly correct (unless you're Donald Trump, in which case it might win you an election), there is something to be said about the power of having your brand endorsed or shared in some way, shape or form by an external source. In marketing, we call this earned media.

And it's got the power to do some big things for your bottom-line.

Earned Media: Here's What It Is (and Isn't)

For understanding earned media it's important to learn what it isn't, as well as what it is, by understanding the media types that run alongside it. Let's take a quick look at the three media types:

• Owned Media. This is the media your company creates for Inbound Marketing purposes, the meat and potatoes of your marketing strategy. It's your eBooks, video content, podcasts, slideshares, newsletters and the like. It also extends to your social media accounts, where you distribute all the great stuff you're creating. Essentially, it's everything you publish and put out into the world yourself.

• Paid Media. Here's where you show us the money by purchasing access to social ads, Google Adwords and various PPC (pay-per-click) options that do their job to promote your owned media and business to the max. Maybe you've got a new ebook, a solution or a great offer running – this is the media that ensures your audience knows about it and draws visitors to your website through paid means.

• Earned Media. Unlike the former and latter, earned media relies on your ability to attract the interest of external influencers among your audience or media outlets that are so tickled by your offer/service/owned media that they're willing to create and distribute messaging that promotes your business – for free! This can also mean media you created that is published or picked up by someone else on your behalf, either because you have convinced them to do so or because they have reached out to you and asked to re-publish it.

Perhaps you're thinking, "As if anything is ever TRULY free!" Well, earned media is, and it's important that you pay attention towards it. After all, it doesn't cost you anything, and mainly depends on you succeeding in your owned media, along with building stable relationships with influencers in your target audience's sector.

So how does earned media affect your bottom-line?

The Power of Earned Media for Your Business

Earned media isn’t the easiest media to secure. It’s dependent on the willingness of your customers, fans and followers to promote your brand and business as brand advocates. Since you don’t pay them to do so, their only motivation to act as an endorser of your business is the quality of the offerings and services you provide, along with your unique content and culture. Which is why it’s so important to produce excellent content, offering sterling services and focus on continually improving the experience your audience and customers get when interacting with your brand.

If you do, you increase your chances of securing channels of earned media. This has the potential to impact your business’s revenue in the following six ways.

1. It Helps You Establish a Solid Reputation

Naturally, having others endorse your company and brand helps it build a positive reputation. They do this through positive comments and endorsements through social media, mentions in blog posts or articles or by sharing your content with others. A strong reputation makes it more likely for others to reach out to your business instead of your competitors when they have a need you can address through your products, services and solutions.

2. It Builds Trustworthiness

Not unlike the above point, earned media helps your brand and business establish trust through the equivalent of “digital word-of-mouth”. Your fans or influencers endorse your business, and the more weight they carry with the third parties to whom they are endorsing your company, the greater level of trust that is conveyed to your brand.

3. It Increases Your Exposure

When others recommend your brand or business online, whether it’s via a social share or a mention in a blog, your brand gets an exposure boost. Every positive mention adds weight to your credibility and standing. It also means your message is often placed in new or different media environments, reaching individuals you might have missed in your owned media placements and targeting.

By leveraging earned media, you have an opportunity to amplify your owned and paid media efforts for greater reach and effect.

4. It Lifts Your Levels of Customer Communication

It’s no secret that customer communication needs to be on point for a business to be successful. Earned media often helps companies elevate their customer care and communication.

The unpredictable nature of earned media means that negative publicity has the same reach as positive publicity, and businesses need to maintain strong channels of customer communication to mitigate any potential issues before the possibility of negative comment in a public forum arises.

We’ve all experienced how quickly a complaint on the Facebook page can go viral, and some of the most successful businesses have learned how to turn these events into opportunities to showcase themselves positively in their responses. And it all starts with proper customer communication.

5. It Builds Support for Your Business

Your earned media sources (also known as your fans) can be a rallying support in the event of a harsh knock to your company’s reputation. Naturally, this is event-specific, but it can be invaluable in the event of an adverse situation to have loyal supporters willing to stand beside your brand in a difficult time.

6. It Boosts Your SEO Rankings

SEO (search engine optimisation) is a crucial element in a marketing strategy. A part of any successful SEO strategy is the nurturing of links from other websites to your site or content. When these links are natural mentions from reputable external sources, like your followers or fans, or industry influencers, they carry enormous weight with Google. The subsequent result is that your search engine rankings improve, which is tremendously valuable for your business.

A Final Note: Building Your Earned Media

Earned media is an essential part of a good marketing strategy. Although it may seem difficult to pin down at first, with perseverance it is possible to reap the rewards. To get started, it's important to be prepared to allocate time and budget to the development of earned media channels. Even though earned media is free, it does take time and effort to achieve good standing in this regard.

You should also be prepared to:

• Work on creating 10x better content. The quality of your owned media is essential when trying to secure the endorsement of earned media sources. Make sure you are focusing on your buyer personas and creating top-quality content that stays true to your audience pain points.

• Research influencers in your industry. Earned media can help your brand image tremendously, but it's important to secure endorsement from the right people to build trust and brand image with your audience.

• Build relationships with your influencers. Reach out to the influencers you would like to try secure endorsements through. Perhaps ask if they would be willing to republish one of your content pieces, or suggest a guest blogging opportunity.

• Keep up your audience engagement. This means creating and building relationships with your audience that will help transition them into fans willing to share your content and messaging. Make the most of your social media channels here, using them to your best advantage to boost engagement with your audience members.

Working on the above will set you in good stead to gaining the benefits of earned media.