Should PRs be doing more to promote the benefits of earned media?

Time to read: 3 minutes

Tech PR lead Debbie Smith looks to balance the more subtle benefits of earned media against the instant gratification of the click through…

So you’ve just achieved two great pieces of coverage for your client. You send them the links and pat yourself on the back. Then you get a reply from their SEO expert: “But one piece doesn’t link to the website at all, and the other only has a link at the bottom.”

They go on to explain that for SEO purposes, it’s good to get links. But ideally these links would be towards the top of articles to increase click-throughs.

Resisting the temptation to throw your coffee at your screen in exasperation, you take a deep breath and explain PR 101: the difference between earned, owned and paid media.

This is not the only time I’ve had to explain earned media in recent weeks. So, I’ve been thinking about why the question is being asked. Although it may seem glaringly obvious to those of us who’ve spent our careers in B2B PR, perhaps the convergence of different channels has muddied the waters for some marketeers?

It’s not that PRs don’t understand the value of SEO and obtaining links back to the client’s site. It’s simply that earned media is, first and foremost, the tool to build credibility, increase brand trust and manage reputation.

First, let’s clarify what we’re talking about.

• Paid media: you pay for visibility or reach through advertising, advertorial, PPC or affiliate marketing. You have complete control, but it’s the least credible. Ultimately, you are paying to get your audience’s attention.
• Owned media: includes your website, your blogs, your newsletters and your social media channels, where you control both channel and content. This is ideal for education and demonstrating thought leadership. No money is changing hands, but it’s still you explaining to the world why you are so great.
• Earned media: third-party objective endorsement, i.e. someone else is talking about you as an expert, and no money has changed hands. This includes media coverage obtained through PR, where a journalist has covered the story because it’s newsworthy, not because you’ve paid for the coverage. To get this, you need strong content. Whether it’s a genuinely innovative product, an opinion which provides new and informed views, or a piece of thought leadership.

The great benefit of earned media is the credibility it brings which the other two routes can’t provide.

However, the downside is that you don’t get to dictate to the journalists where to put a link back to your client’s site. Or indeed if one is there at all, depending on their editorial policy. You certainly don’t go back to a publication and ask for a link to be added. You’ll be promptly referred – with a few choice words – to their advertising department, and they’ll unlikely feel inclined to write about your clients again.

It gets blurry when earned media becomes ‘online word of mouth’, including shares and reposts, content picked up by third-party sites, and media developed through partners and influencers.

Say you post about your new blog (owned) or the latest press coverage (earned) on your company’s LinkedIn page. When these are shared, they are both ‘online conversations’, even though the content has originated in different ways. Are posts from partners truly earned or based on a mutually beneficial relationship, i.e. owned? And while tech and fintech analysts (i.e. influencers) review products and provide editorial independence, the ASA has taken many so-called consumer influencers to task for not making clear when content has been paid for.

There’s a tendency to class all click-throughs as equal. Perhaps that’s true for buying trainers. It also makes reporting more straightforward! However, in B2B, the clicks driven by third-party objective endorsements are the most likely to generate genuine interest and preference.

The journalists we work with pride themselves on their editorial integrity. This week, a discussion on a journalist and PR social media group made that abundantly clear. So they’ll only cover material that, in their view, has earned its place on their websites.

We’ll continue to focus on obtaining that earned media and other third-party objective endorsement, as well as on generating the strong owned content that drives it. We’ll celebrate when journalists write about our clients because we know there is more to building credibility, increasing brand trust and managing reputation than including a backlink.

Where we sit in the digital marketing mix

Writing the American Marketing and PR Playbook: Part II

Time to read: 3 minutes

Jo Detavernier, vice president  of Swyft, our US partner and the founding firm of our global network, First PR Alliance,  provides this two part guide. It’s for UK tech companies on how not to get lost in translation when venturing across the pond:

Part Two: UK marketing to US: getting it right

Any modern marketing and PR campaign must be integrated. Integration implies that you will try to have the following channels working together to reinforce one another:

• Your ‘owned’ (your website, blog, etc.) channels
• Your earned (media coverage) channels
• Your paid (advertising) channels

In many cases, ‘shared’ (online shares) is added to the mix, equating to PESO (paid, earned, shared & owned). We stick to the first three tracks and count shared with earned.

Here is a list of tools available for a marketing and PR campaign in the US. For each campaign, you will make a unique selection of building blocks. As you’ve been fairly warned about selecting the right market segment, speaking the right language, funding your effort sufficiently, and employing the right channels, your marketing activities can yield the highest possible return.

Owned media

• Website content tuned to an American audience (either a U.S. site or American pages on your global site) and plenty of call-to-actions help conversions through the sales funnel.
• Blog with articles that are relevant to American buyer personas.
• Send newsletters that are geared towards different buyer personas.
• Tailor video content to provide valuable information to prospective buyers.

Earned media

• When warranted, distribute press releases to American news outlets that serve your target audience and wire services (e.g., Business Wire).
• Offer interviews to journalists who attend a trade show at which you have a booth.
• Pitch exclusive stories to journalists when practical.
• Do a press tour and visit journalists’ offices for one-on-one talks. This assumes you are a sizable player in your respective industry or are first-to-market with disruptive technology.
• Contribute articles to trade magazines.

Paid media

• Advertise in print or online media.
• Promote content and/or ads on social media.
• SEA on Google and/or Bing.
• Sponsor posts (native advertising) / advertorials in print or online media.
• Sponsor podcasts.

Integrating owned, earned and paid

Marketing and PR campaigns that yield the best results are fully integrated. Pitching interviews on a story in October, promoting posts on Facebook in January and paying for a sponsored article in March can and will have some impact. However, they are not nearly as powerful as a fully integrated campaign, where you bring everything together in mutually reinforcing ways.

Let’s illustrate this with an example. Say you have just surveyed a hot issue in your industry. How can you maximize the impact of that survey to increase brand awareness and stimulate lead generation?

• Owned: Make the survey report available on your site for people who leave their email addresses. Make sure you respect American CAN-SPAM regulations while you are at it). If possible, write a series of blog posts on the results, illustrated by an infographic. Dedicate a status update to the survey on your Facebook page, and publish a slide deck on your SlideShare account.
• Earned: Send a release about the survey to a major tech news outlet or a trade publication if it has enough news value. Pitch interviews with your CEO about the results and use the survey to feed your proof points for a contributed article in a key trade magazine.
• Paid: Companies will typically not pay to promote a survey. However, the buzz created by the survey will allow your now ‘primed’ audiences to be extra receptive to any advertising campaign you run in the months following the campaign.

The US and UK markets are different

In these two blogs, we have discussed some common mistakes that European companies will typically make when looking to expand in the US. And what advice these companies should heed if they want to succeed across the pond.

The American market is, in many regards, very different from the UK. Those entrepreneurs and marketing managers who stick to their UK playbook when arriving in the US will do themselves a huge disservice.

This white paper is based on the Swyft whitepaper: How Should European Companies Write Their American Marketing and PR Playbook? Swyft is the founding member and organizer of First PR Alliance. For more information on Swyft, visit growswyft.com

First PR Alliance is a network of independent PR and marketing agencies that offers highly coordinated support spanning borders, time zones, languages and cultures. For more information, visit firstpralliance.com.