What Is Earned Media? Definition, Benefits & Examples

And If you’re interested in learning digital marketing techniques and various strategies to gain free promotion for your brand, consider registering for our digital marketing course. It includes mentions, shares, and recommendations from happy customers, influencers, and news outlets. Earned media is a strong way to build trust in your brand and reach more people without paying for ads. As you start receiving entries from the audience, you can repost and promote the contest across your social media channels. For example, you can start a contest on your page encouraging your audience who want to attend your next marketing conference to share a earned media definition video explaining why they want to attend. So when customers feel valued and connected to your brand, they’re more likely to spread the word, leading to organic mentions and increased visibility.

However, getting earned media requires a strategic approach and real engagement with your audience. Ideally, leveraging paid or owned media results in earned media. Sometimes, putting in the extra effort to get people on your team is well worth it.

A piece of JavaScript that populates Google Analytics with detailed traffic data from a website. Historically this would occur via email, but it now happens in various forms across the Internet. A collection of websites that allow users to interact with one another by signing up and submitting personal information. Semantic search is the process search engines use to understand the intent and contextual meaning of a search query.

Increases Brand Awareness

A positive review stays online, a news article remains in search results, and social shares live on timelines. Unlike paid ads that disappear when you stop paying, earned media can have lasting effects. When a customer reviews your product or a journalist covers your story, audiences trust it more than your own marketing messages. Securing quality placements is also a hurdle, as journalists receive a constant influx of pitches and prioritize stories based on their own news judgment.

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Consistently deliver engaging content to the right audience, be patient and you’ll start seeing positive results. One of the most common questions marketers ask is, “How long does it take to see results from earned media efforts? Once you’ve defined your goals, you can define who you need to reach in order to make those goals happen. Any time someone organically mentions your brand on social media, that counts as earned media. They increasingly care about sustainability and ethical practices, and they’re looking for a reason to buy from your brand. They happen naturally when your content is genuinely useful, original, or data-rich.

Earned media vs paid media vs owned media

Examples include mentions in traditional media, guest appearances on television shows, or an opinion piece in a periodical. Earned media is what happens when a person or organization is spoken of by a third party, with no payment changing hands. For example, paying a social media influencer to promote a product or event is both "social" and "paid" media. Earned media excludes advertising (paid media) and company branding (owned media). The phrase "earned media" serves as a contrast to the concept of "paid media". It includes articles by media outlets, interviews with the person or representatives of the organization, or bylined editorials in trade press and other publications.

Unique conversions can be set up and tracked in Google Analytics for a website so one can see how many times these actions have been taken. A form of advertising in which relevant ads are served based on the content they accompany. Content marketing is a specific practice that is considered part of inbound marketing. A content management system, or CMS, is any “back end” website software used to control the text, graphics, and/or code that appears on a website. Conceptual searching results in more relevant search results.

A page of results after searching for something in a search engine. Stored data of a user’s past queries, often used for advertisement targeting purposes. A technique in which software extracts data from an online source. A file in the root directory of a website that controls what search engines should and should not crawl. A marketing strategy that involves serving ads for previously viewed websites or products to a user. There are also gray/black-hat reciprocal link exchange strategies that can result in penalties.

Whether you’re pitching a story angle, an expert quote, or a roundup inclusion, the value to their readers has to come first. Obviously, not every brand can do something like this, but as you can see from the results above, people appreciate outside of the box thinking and execution. The reviews that you see above created a compounding effect that led many users to download and start using the desktop app after the launch.

Social media followers share an influencer or brand’s post.

A mention in a reputable publication or a viral social post can expose the brand to new and highly engaged audiences. This third-party endorsement increases consumer trust, as audiences are more inclined to believe sources that are not financially invested in the promotion. When an independent journalist, industry analyst, or satisfied customer endorses a product or service, it acts as an unbiased seal of approval.

To show you what this looks like in practice, here are some common examples of earned media today. You may have heard of earned media as compared with paid media and owned media. And a lot of those people listen and use those stories to make buying decisions. And, it's that technology blogger's "Top 10 Apps of The Year" article that was viewed and shared by thousands of people after you launched your new mobile app.

• Today, earned media also feeds AI search engines and recommendation systems that define brand visibility.
• Yes, startups and small brands can earn media effectively.In fact, journalists and audiences often look for new, innovative stories.Startups earn media by focusing on unique value, strong storytelling, data, thought leadership, customer advocacy, and targeted PR rather than promotional messaging.
• Or we secure an exclusive for a company’s announcement, and the story gets picked up by other publications.
• If a search query matches the content, the specific content comes up in the search results.

Now, most influencer marketing will count as paid media – because you're probably paying them for their partnership, or sending them free products. While paid media requires budget allocation for placement and promotion, earned media results from organic amplification and word-of-mouth, often at no direct cost to the brand. Of course, the lines between earned and paid media can blur at times. And the happier your customers, the more positive earned media you'll get the next time they're chatting with someone who's looking to buy a product like yours. When a company pays a publication to write a glowing article about them, for example, that's not an example of paying for earned media — that's just paid media.