Is Your Earned Media a Missed Opportunity?

We took on quite a big challenge a few months back. We decided to survey marketers to really understand their needs and preferences and to get a full picture of what content marketing looks like in 2018. This, combined with the data we see daily on our platform can really help uncover some interesting insights.

We’ll be sharing the results in the coming days, but today I wanted to call attention to an incredible missed opportunity that we uncovered during our research: Earned Media.

A Dramatic Uplift

What is Earned Media? Just what it sounds like. It’s media coverage that your brand has earned, rather than created or paid for. So if TechCrunch decides to give you a write-up just because of how awesome you are – that’s earned media.

During our research, we found that over 71% of marketers have some sort of earned media. But only 13.1% use paid channels to promote it.

At this point you may be saying to yourself: “Of course they’re not paying to promote earned media – why would you pay for a user to visit someone else’s site?”.

3.3x the conversion rate, that’s why. Our data shows that a user who interacted with a piece of earned media is more than 3 times more likely to convert compared to other users.

A user who interacted with a piece of earned media is more than 3 times more likely to convert compared to other users. Click To Tweet

Earned Media Tips and Tricks

Of course, you don’t want to fly blind when it comes to that promotion. Here are some things you may want to keep in mind:

  • Always track. Ideally, the publisher would let you put TrenDemon code in the article’s header so you can have full transparency into the user journey. But barring that – you can do a few other things instead:
    • Use a redirect linking service.
    • Use a pixel on your site in combination with your promotion channel’s analytics.
  • Consider retargeting. If your product is one that usually has a long consideration phase, you may want to consider promoting the earned media as a second touch page.
  • Make sure you’re the star. It may be tempting to promote, say, a top 10 list where you’re number 3. Don’t do it. You’ll be helping everyone else just as much as yourself.
  • Check in.Publications close. Links get outdated or go offline. Make sure to do a health check every few weeks to make sure everything is still where it should be.

When it comes to earned media, the door is wide open. All you have to do is run through it.