What Is Earned Media? A Comprehensive Guide

Earned media can help your business build brand credibility and gain the trust of prospects.

Content marketing can be overwhelming for most small-and-midsize-business owners (SMBs). Marketing-related terms, including paid, owned, shared, and earned media, can make you feel lost. Understanding the role of each is imperative to your business’s ongoing success.

While many people rely on earned media for their marketing needs, pairing this promotional marketing tactic with other forms of advertising, including paid and owned media, can yield an excellent opportunity to boost your return on investment.

Earning media attention can be tricky for most SMBs because large corporations and companies often dominate major media outlets. By understanding what is earned media and how it can fit into your marketing plan, you can enhance the credibility of your business.

What is earned media, and why is it important?

Earned media is any form of media that you did not pay for or create yourself. This includes social shares, reviews, and press releases This organic and highly effective form of promotional content marketing is also one of the most challenging media types to secure.

Earned media is one of three media types in the digital marketing mix. The other two include

• Owned media, which includes the marketing content that you create and distribute, including your blog, emails, and social content.

• Paid media, which includes paid promotions via various channels, including social media ads—display ads, pay-per-click, and paid social. 

Due to its organic nature, you cannot control earned media. For example, a follower may drop an Instagram mention after visiting your store, or an existing customer may write an unsolicited review. As the process is not paid and based on authentic reviews, it helps gain the trust of your prospects and customers, enhancing your overall brand credibility and helping you drive organic conversions.

What are the benefits of earned media?

Before your SMB invests in an earned media strategy, it is important to consider its advantages.

Builds credibility and trust 

Capturing attention and gaining trust in a saturated market is often challenging but crucial for the growth of a business. With earned media, it's essentially a "word-of-mouth” approach. Mentions from influencers and mainstream media outlets can help you build credibility and gain the trust of your prospects. 

Cost effectively expands your reach 

When consumers are happy with your product or service and share their experience online or in person with their friends and family, they’ll share information about your brand that doesn't require any financial investment from you. This allows you to reach a wider audience without bearing any expenses. If required, you can invest in a comprehensive PR and pitching strategy to get recognized by top-tier publications.

Yields valuable feedback via reviews

According to Gartner Digital Markets’ 2023 SMB Software Buying Trends, 86% of businesses find verified reviews crucial for purchase decisions, showcasing the power of social proof in driving sales and trust.^[1] Considering that 49% of customers say they reference reviews and user ratings when evaluating what to buy, continue to invest in this type of media coverage.^[2]

Different types of earned media 

All earned media is virtually free for you to obtain. While you may need to invest in a public relations firm to pitch your brand, expertise, or products, the media you earn is free because you're not directly paying for an ad or placement in an article. 

But what does this look like in practice? Here are more specific earned media examples:

• Media coverage: A major publication writes about your business, highlighting what makes your brand unique. For example, your mission or an upcoming event. 

• Social mentions: A customer has a great experience with your company and posts about it on social media.

• Social shares: You publish a viral-worthy video that generates content shares, mentions, and interactions on social media. 

• Free influencers: You are interviewed for an influencer’s video or podcast because of your brand's approach, mission, policies, etc. 

• Reviews: Your product or service is reviewed and published in an industry-specific publication.

How to generate earned media for your brand

While earned media has multiple benefits, getting mentions in high-authority sites and publications can be tough, especially if you're still building your brand’s online presence. 

Here's how to give your SMB the best chance of getting earned media:

• Invest in quality content and a well-designed website. Curating easily understandable, enjoyable, and attractive content can boost the user experience, increasing the chances of getting unpaid promotions. 

• Build your SEO ranking to become more visible in search engines. You can adopt various content marketing strategies, including search engine optimization (SEO), to enhance your brand's outreach. Enhancing your website’s keyword optimization, sharing regular updates to remain relevant, investing in optimal link building, and well-written content can increase your online visibility. 

• Focus on your mailing list and curate unique content. Cultivate relationships with your readers and personalize your email content to meet their expectations and experiences. If you nail your email marketing strategy, your content can be repurposed and shared, driving your total ROI.

• Participate in industry-specific trade shows. While participating in trade shows may not directly help you drive online growth, happy customers tend to share their positive experiences via their social media channels. Meeting prospects at your industry-specific trade shows can help acquire new customers and brand ambassadors.

How to measure the impact of earned media

Many SMBs do not maximize the potential of earned media because they think measuring its ROI is complicated. With the right tools, you can track your website referrals and media mentions, making it easy to measure the success of your earned media. 

Web analytics tools like Google Analytics can help you gain free access to insights related to your referrals. You can also use Google Alerts to check whenever your company is mentioned online. Access to this information can help you target ongoing opportunities to strengthen customer relationships, grow your audience, and launch a lead generation strategy.

To measure your share of voice (SOV), you can compare your level of brand awareness against your competitors and automate this process by investing in brand management and social analytics tools.

Follow these best practices for earned media marketing

Remember the following when aiming to strengthen your approach to earned media as part of your online marketing strategy.

• Start with a solid earned media strategy. This step will ensure your efforts are efficient and measurable. Focus on defining your goals, pinpointing your audience, researching well-performing content, looking into influencers you can connect with, and building a strategy to share your earned media. 

• Don't forget paid media coverage. Paid media techniques, including influencer marketing, can help you gain traction to get earned media. This channel can help inspire credibility and third-party promotion. Dig deep into an influencer that could develop a mutually beneficial relationship with your brand. Look into the content they produce, what their audience loves, and the topics that are important to them, and send a pitch accordingly. Repeat this process to build relationships with journalists. 

• Use the right tools and digital resources to drive your goals. Plenty of public relations software options exist, helping you better connect with journalists, measure the impact of your earned media, understand your earned media values, create customized reports, etc. It is particularly important to lean on software for marketing analytics to identify patterns.

Seek help with your earned media strategy

Earned media results from a well-executed public relations program. This is an ongoing process that focuses on the building and managing of relationships. Get this strategy right, and you'll benefit from long-lasting results. Unlike paid media, earned media doesn't require ongoing investment to drive awareness and conversions. Instead, focus on generating quality content and a community of meaningful relationships.