Digital Success and the Power of Earned Media
Did you know that 80% of prospective customers or clients prefer learning about a company from custom content?
What that means is content that describes the business and offers value, insight, and even incentives, about the brand. This custom content comes from the brand itself or from others whom they trust.
For many brands and their marketing teams, providing “custom content” means paid content marketing: Facebook, LinkedIn and pay-per-click (PPC) ads through Google and other networks.
Paid Content Delivers Value
Let’s be clear: it’s not that we don’t believe that PPC ads aren’t useful and don’t work, because we know they do. However, many brands leave content and money on the table by focusing exclusively on PPC.
The Catch
There’s just a small catch: you’re not maximizing your opportunities and the value being provided with a PPC-only strategy. Iinstead, you’re hoping to reach the largest amount of people in the shortest amount of time. If you can properly utilize authentic content through earned media, such as articles that link to you and content created by journalists, then you’re maximizing every chance of being seen and converting potential customers into loyal buyers.
The Clicks and Conversion Conundrum
A properly created PPC ad can develop thousands of impressions (the number of people who’s News Feed your post appears on), but unless your content is optimized, engaging, and built effectively, your click and conversions won’t reflect as well. But you don’t need to do it on your own. This is where earned media comes in.
What is Earned Media?
Earned media is any kind of online content that wasn’t written by you or anyone at your business. When a journalist writes about a new cafe that opened, they’re creating earned media for that cafe that will if written positively act as marketing. Earned media is powerful - more powerful arguably than any other digital marketing. It uses backlinks and SEO to link to your business and direct people to you who may not have found you otherwise.
Trusted Resources, Receptive Readers
This content is being written by trusted sources who often have a long-standing audience. If these trusted sources recommending businesses, then customers are far more likely to come to you and convert. Take, for example, using a blogger as an affiliate marketer to promote your brand when posting blog posts within the relevant industry. Those readers are going to click those links that connect to you because it’s convenient and because they trust the site.
The Always-On Brand Strategy
The best thing about earned media? It’s free and it continues to work for you even though you might not be constantly on it. Earned media is "always on" media; it does not go dark when your budget runs out as paid campaigns do. When the money runs out on PPC ads, so do your impressions and visibility online, however, with earned media, you’re constantly being seen and discovered by new customers.
Add Dimension to Your Brand
Earned media adds dimension to your brand. You can build your own trust and thought leadership via earned media as well by becoming an expert commentator on a key trend for your market community. So, by learning about earned media and using it effectively, you will grow your own business as well as your thought leadership and trust within the marketing community.
ABOUT PRA PUBLIC RELATIONS
PRA Public Relations is a nationally-recognized, award-winning agency, expert in creating custom, thought-leadership-focused earned media programs for industries’ fastest-growing brands. Learn more: www.prapublicrelations.com.
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