Turning Earned Media into Your Sharpest Sales Tool
So, you got a front page mention of your grand opening. That op-ed from your CEO looked great on the industry’s leading website. And now your product design director is being quoted in the very publications that all your clients read. Your earned media push has paid off, congratulations!
Now what?
Instead of resting on your laurels, this is the time to leverage all that “free” visibility to actually drive sales. Your PR efforts are not a “one and done” thing. Think of them as a continuum that builds sales momentum across the classic sales funnel.
At Paquin PR, our approach is a full-court press that perpetuates the PR/sales cycle. Let’s take a closer look at why earned media is so important as a sales accelerant and how to harness it for even more mentions.
Trust as a Launch Pad
Above all else, earned media builds trust with your brand’s audience. Hearing someone else praise your product or service is light-years more beneficial than blowing your own horn. Don’t get us wrong, paid advertising and media mentions are great for awareness, but when you want your audience to start considering their purchase, they have to trust what you’re selling. Earned media checks that box and lays the foundation for your sales efforts.
Amplify Paid Media
Consumers understand very well how advertising works. They absorb paid media all day, every day. According to National Institutes of Health, we are exposed to 4,000-10,000 paid messages per day (!), yet we only register and process between 100 and 600 of those. How to break through the clutter? Earned media does the trick because it is presented by platforms and people that consumers choose for their information. When we connect the dots between earned and paid, we’ve not only jumped the line into the consumer’s preference zone, but we’ve validated the money spent on paid media. Teamwork for the win!
Own It
Most companies and brands have their own communication channels: customer newsletters, corporate websites, social media, employee emails, IRL interactions. Using these owned channels is an easy and very effective way to evangelize your mentions, solidifying relationships and boosting your credibility among your established customers. Tell them about the thought-leader piece and the op-ed! Encourage them to tell their individual networks. Word of mouth and personal recommendation are two of the most effective sales tools in existence.
Get Ready for More
A classic mistake businesses make is not having their house in order when the earned media efforts begin to convert to sales. A bad customer experience, faulty product or missed service delivery deadline can be the end of what was to be a beautiful customer relationship. Make sure that your operational and customer service sides of the house are in order. When they are, you’ll have happy consumers who become mini brand ambassadors as well as repeat customers.
Don’t Stop
So, your earned media is boosting your paid media, your audience loves your services and your employees are singing praises on every street corner. Time to ease-up, right? Not so fast. An ongoing PR strategy builds brand equity and gives you room to operate with some discretion. Earned media opens the door to more mentions. It builds a relationship with your customers so that one day (we hope not soon), you have the grace with which to repair the relationship should things go South (think data breaches, customer service snafus, network outages, a bad review, product failures, etc.). The trust and credibility established by earned media many times is the balm that heals the wounds of a bad rap. Keep at it; brand equity is a good thing.
We love earned media, obviously, and we want you to love it too! Let’s start a conversation on how a robust earned strategy can be one of the sharpest tools in your toolkit. Hit us up!
