TL;DR: Earned media is unpaid exposure—like press coverage, reviews, shares, and mentions—that builds trust, drives leads, and supports every stage of the marketing funnel when paired with strong content and smart amplification.
Introduction
You may have heard that marketing success lies in finding the perfect balance of paid, owned and earned media. No doubt you’ve mastered the paid and owned parts; you’ve got a website brimming with useful content and you’re smart and strategic about your advertising dollars.
If you’re a little hazy on what earned media actually is, though – much less whether it’s right for you and your business – you’re not alone. We’ll tackle that last part in a minute. But first let’s step back and take a look at …
Three Types of Media
1. Paid media
This is what most of us consider traditional media: typically TV and radio, print ads, direct mail, and trade shows. The digital era brought a brave new world of options and ways to spend: search engine marketing, pay-per-click, native ads, and even new ad types on social channels such as Facebook.
2. Owned media
This is the content that’s all yours – your website, blog posts, whitepapers, eBooks, e-newsletters, videos, podcasts, and all the content on your social media channels. And because there’s a lot of competing content out there, it’s more important than ever to make sure your content is effective: useful, informative, inspiring, entertaining, and targeted specifically to your audiences.
3. Earned media
Whether you call it PR, word-of-mouth marketing, social sharing, or advocacy, this is the stuff that every marketer has craved since the dawn of time: fans of our brand or business singing our praises – whether in the form of positive press, product raves and reviews, or kudos about our thought leadership – to legions of potential customers via mentions, comments and links on Facebook, blogs, forums, and review sites.
Getting this type of engagement used to be strictly the job of PR pros. Today, with better tools and more channels to play in, small-business marketers are reaching their audiences where they’re active, engaging them with content they care about, and finding ways to amplify the conversations that result.
Getting earned media isn’t easy – it takes time and planning. But using it along with paid and owned media – by creating great content and helping it along with some paid promotion – can help you create a cohesive, connected marketing strategy based on providing real value to your customers before, during, and after the sale.
Why is Earned Media Effective?
- It’s based on trust. As consumers increasingly ignore traditional advertising and spend more time researching purchases online, earned media is the most trusted and credible form of content for a brand.
- It generates leads. Anyone who retweets, embeds, reviews, shares, comments, likes, and curates your paid and owned media elements generates earned media. Inventor and entrepreneur Christina Daves says that if we build campaigns and processes to turn these amplifiers into subscribers, attendees, participants and, finally, customers, we can create the ultimate lead generation machine.
- It’s enduring. Product reviews, advice and thought leadership pieces, and guest blog posts are eternal, forever showing up in search results. Especially if you’ve researched and included the keywords that make it easy for your audience to find.
- It works at all stages of the sales funnel. Earned media is good for awareness, for validating a decision, and for rallying advocacy and encouraging post-sales customer growth.
- It’s measurable. Although lots of companies consider earned media purely a branding activity that drives awareness, it is possible to measure its effects and even calculate its ROI. How you measure it depends on your goals, whether you’re seeking to drive traffic to your blogs and website, increase your search engine rankings, or generate leads.
- It’s contagious. Moods can spread virally through social media sites like Facebook, and that positive vibes spread faster than negative ones.
How to Get Earned mMedia
You’ve got two essential ways to get earned media:
1. Tap into traditional media
Figure out what your story is, then reach out to the press and pitch it. Look for a tight fit in terms of topics for that particular publication or audience.
B2C companies, you could reach out to the local newspaper’s features editor (for a human interest story) or if you’re doing something highly visual and immediate, TV might be a good bet.
B2B, you could pitch to the business editor of the local paper (a story might be good for recruiting), but trade media’s more narrow focus can make those vehicles more effective by letting you zero in on your target audience. For example, if you’re launching a new food product that restaurants might buy, you could pitch the trade magazine “Restaurant Start Up and Growth.”
Be aware that the press is not interested in pitching your product. (That’s what paid media is for.) Their goal is to grow their audience (and the corresponding value of their advertising), so they’re looking for stories their audiences (and new readers/viewers) will want to read or watch or share. Remember too that they will produce those stories how they choose to; you can’t control how they will shape the story. There’s always a risk that you won’t like what you read.
By the way, if you’re going for more PR and want to measure the value of this type of earned media coverage, Contently offers a helpful PR scorecard.
2. Tap into digital media
The key to digital earned media is getting your truly effective and engaging content in front of your fans and potential customers so they can easily find it – and share it. But how?
- Share on social media. You’re probably already doing this on your LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook channels. And ideally, you’re always looking for ways to improve and refine your messaging. If your content is visual, make sure you’re taking advantage of this powerful asset on channels like Instagram and Tumblr.
- Get bloggers to feature you. The best way to get a blogger’s attention is to offer them something of value. Help them by providing information to them, and include them (a quote, a link) in your owned content.
- Reach the masses. Consider using one of the many social news aggregators like Reddit and BizSugar to help get your content in front of new audiences and more prospects. Remember that what you should be offering with your content is solid, quality information that’s useful to your audience, and go easy on the marketing.
- Use tools to extend your reach. There’s a host of content management, syndication and promotion tools that can also help marketers share their content with new audiences. These range in cost from free to several thousand dollars per month, and include publishing and content distribution platforms that could make your life easier in various ways, depending on your needs.
- Using paid media to amplify your content. Once you’ve measured your social media results and learned which messages are resonating with your audience, it may be time to put some dollars behind them so you can reach more people. Do your research and spend wisely, though, and aim for maximizing ROI.
Summary
Earned media is the most trusted form of marketing because it comes from third parties—customers, influencers, journalists, and communities—rather than brands themselves. By creating valuable content, engaging audiences where they’re active, and amplifying what resonates through social and digital channels, marketers can turn mentions, shares, and reviews into long-lasting visibility and measurable business impact. When used alongside paid and owned media, earned media helps create a cohesive, credibility-driven marketing strategy.