There is one commonality in business, regardless of your industry or market.
Strip away labels like business-to-consumer, business-to-business, government, nonprofit, etc., and you’ll find the same thing on the other side of the content you create and conversations you have: Communities.
The communities that make up your brand’s audience are built around personal and professional networks, mutual interests, even devotion to individual influencers. And to connect with these communities, you need trust.
Without trust, your content won’t be noticed.
Without trust, your sales funnel won’t fill with new leads.
Without trust, your top and bottom lines won’t be met.
You can’t force trust, though. You must earn it.
It’s not surprising, then, that a new white paper from Outsell, Inc., shows the marketing methods rated most effective by B2B and B2C senior marketers are “pull” methods – methods that empower users to opt into their interactions with brands.
The findings from Outsell, a research and advisory firm focused on media, information, technology and the business of data, reveal a fundamental shift away from intrusive tactics, such as telemarketing, autoplay video and TV/radio ads, towards user-initiated behavior.
“In the research we conducted with Outsell, 81% of senior marketers said that earned media was more effective than paid media,” says PR Newswire’s Senior Vice President of Marketing Ken Wincko (@KenWincko).
“Because of this, today’s CMOs and their teams must go from a push to a pull strategy – leveraging earned media through advocacy, third party experts, press releases and other tactics that build communities.”
While these earned media tactics may be more labor intensive than paid media, many brands are waking up to the reasons they’re a must.
Audiences crave authenticity.
In narrowing down which company they’re going to hand their money to, customers research who you are, what you do, the opinions others share about you and how it all compares to your competition.
Anything they find that can be construed as fake or deceptive puts the trust your audience places in you at risk.
Audiences view natural and organic earned media as the most authentic form of marketing because it’s coming from someone else. A verified source who lends credibility and authority to your message.
Paid media isn’t what it used to be.
We’re entering an age where audiences are not just ignoring, but actively blocking advertisements. According to research released by eMarketer last week, 69.8 million Americans are predicted to use an ad blocker this year. And in 2017, that figure will grow 24.0% to 86.6 million people.
Earned media, on the other hand, resonates with customers because it’s grounded in quality content and meaningful relationships.
As one CMO shared when surveyed by Outsell, “We are shifting from paid to earned. We’re starting to see the needle move with more sharable content, more invitations to speak at conferences vs. paying to speak, more press coverage vs. paid advertorials.”
Earned media delivers leads.
Earned media isn’t just helpful for building brand awareness. In the Outsell report, B2B and B2C marketers rated public relations more effective for lead generation than push tactics such as print, mobile and native advertising.
“In earned media, influencers self-select and have a multiplier effect influencing many others to convert at higher rates than paid media. This makes earned media especially effective in increasing prequalification of prospects and increasing engagement with the right prospects,” writes Outsell Affiliate Analyst Chuck Richard.
To gauge earned media’s lead gen impact, Ken recommends moving beyond traditional metrics. “Shares, likes, followers, earned media coverage are important, but contribution to pipeline and revenue will better demonstrate marketing impact,” he says.
Of course, marketers can’t rely solely on earned media. Instead, it should be used – in combination with paid and owned methods – to amplify your overall growth strategy.
“It’s time for marketers to rebalance their spending and deploy more resources toward earned media and advocacy, placing them at the center of a multichannel marketing experience,” says Ken. “For instance, when PR Newswire employed an integrated mix across paid, owned and earned channels, we saw dramatic results. Content downloads increased by 5X and our conversion rate increased by over 40%.”
“When we added PR to the mix, we increased downloads by two and a half times.”
Learn more about earned media’s expanding role in the marketing mix by downloading The Earned Media Opportunity. This free white paper prepared by Outsell for PR Newswire offers new data and earned media tactics that will help you fuel customer trust, awareness and lead generation for your brand.
Author Amanda Hicken is PR Newswire’s senior manager of strategic content and managing editor of Beyond PR. Follow her on Twitter @ADHicken for tweets about marketing, the media, Cleveland and comic books.
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