Your paid media has little impact on your audience. Why? They’re either ignoring or blocking your ads every time they see them. In fact, 88 percent of consumers state that ads have little to no influence on their purchase decisions.
To break down your audience’s resistance, you need to earn back their trust by returning to a traditional approach. Enter (or rather, re-enter) earned media.
Last week, Cision’s Senior Vice President of Marketing Ken Wincko and Sodexo’s Vice President of Public Relations Steve Cox explained how to utilize earned media to enhance your marketing and communications strategies. During their webinar, The New Kid on the Block is Back: Why Earned Media is Back in the Driver’s Seat, they discussed why earned media has taken over the communications wheel, what needs to be done to continue on the right path and how to prove each campaign was a successful journey towards earned media.
Wondering how to get started? Keep reading to find out how Sodexo and Cision delivered true business ROI by focusing on earned media first.
1. Earned Media Sparks Positive Sentiment
Two of Sodexo’s goals, client retention and sales/new business development, rely heavily on how others view their brand. In a world where 78 percent of people trust friends and family the most, brand sentiment is key to ensuring those recommendations are positive ones.
One way to provide value to your target audience is through thought leadership and compelling content.
“At Cision, we customize content based on who you are by looking at your role, organization, what stage of the life cycle you are in and more,” says Wincko.
By distributing this hyper-targeted content using a holistic multichannel approach, customers are more likely to pay attention to your brand. And if they like what they consume, they’ll be more likely to share their positive experience and recommend your brand.
In Sodexo’s case, by sending 200 targeted press releases over the course of a year, the food services and facilities management company significantly shifted its sentiment. Over 180 days, Sodexo’s positive sentiment quadrupled, from 21 percent to 79 percent.
2. Earned Media Increases Share of Voice
Another attainable outcome that brands can realize through a multichannel strategy is an increased share of voice. One way to outshine competitors is to highlight expert insights or analysis on trending topics that affect your customers and industry.
In only 90 days, Sodexo increased their share of voice from 27 percent to 46 percent. Now, the company leads its biggest competitor by 10 percentage points. Of the mentions Sodexo earned, 58% came from third-party news sites that picked up their releases.
“Curated content on those third-party sites is the hook that drives traffic back to us,” says Cox.
When third-party sites expose your brand to a wider audience, they’ll drive more traffic back to your sites. And the more people these sites direct back to your brand, the more of an impact they have on your brand reputation and place in the industry.
3. Earned Media Drives Traffic to Your Business
Last, but not least, is the way a multichannel strategy drives traffic and ultimately increases leads.
“With this strategy, our content became aggregated. It now lives in a digital ecosystem and serves as a traffic convertor,” says Cox.
After implementing the new strategy, Sodexo saw a 14% increase in traffic levels.
But traffic to your brand is only the beginning. With a multichannel strategy, you’ll streamline customers’ journeys by providing a clear path down the funnel.
As you take note of business impact metrics such as contribution to the pipeline, revenue and retention, you get a better sense of your success, making it easier to ask for an increase in investment.
To hear more about why earned media’s seat at the marketing table is so valuable, join Cision and CommPRO for our next live-stream, Revolution or Evolution? A Deep Dive into the Future of the Communications Industry.
On Tuesday, Nov. 29, at 3 p.m. ET, Ken Wincko will be joined by Ketchum President Barri Rafferty for a conversation about:
- The case for integrating communications across functions and teams
- What today’s insights might tell us about Buyer 3.0 and beyond
- How to use augmented reality and other emerging technologies to engage buyers
- How to utilize advanced program analytics and KPIs to propel organizational growth
Register here, then tune in on Nov. 29 at 3 p.m. ET to discover why marketers, communicators and agencies must come together to transform their 2017 marketing strategy.
Author Katie Gaab is a content marketing specialist for Cision. Previously the senior editor for Help A Reporter Out (HARO), she enjoys connecting audiences to exciting, new content. She’s a dancer, avid concert-goer, foreign language nerd and book worm. Find her on Twitter @kathryngaab.
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