For digital era small and medium-sized enterprises, investing in online visibility can get pretty expensive. Between running paid media campaigns and allocating a budget for your SEO work to drive organic traffic, it’s common for SMEs to start considering what other cost-effective strategies they can implement to really maximise their digital marketing efforts. This is where earned media strategies can come into play.
What is earned media exactly? And how can SMEs sustainably utilise this often overlooked branch of digital marketing? We’ll be answering these questions today by sharing some of the most cost-effective earned media strategies that are accessible to SMEs.
You Can Also Read: Building a Better Social Media Presence: A Complete Guide
What is earned media?
Earned media refers to any branded publicity that a business or organisation can receive without any paid advertising. This makes earned media a vital asset to your brand building, as these organic brand mentions can provide your business with additional credibility, helping you strengthen your brand image and establish brand visibility in local (and potentially even international) spheres.
Top cost-effective earned media strategies for SMEs
Whilst earned media can come in many different forms, high-profile earned media can be difficult to come by. These can include earned media placements like television features or magazine interviews.
Here are some of the more accessible and sustainable earned media opportunities that you SME can integrate into its digital marketing strategies.
Create shareable and downloadable resources
Most SMEs get their start with earned media strategising by simply developing shareable resources (like downloadable PDF resources) that are more likely to be promoted in forums, blogs, and community groups. PDF creation is generally very accessible to all business owners by using PDF tools like Adobe Acrobat. You can also use Adobe Acrobat to combine PDF files for free, so different team members can work on different sections of your PDF resource before you end up collating the completed resource into one unified, downloadable file.
Getting different experts on your team to contribute to these downloadable resources is also advantageous, because you want these resources to present your enterprise as an authority in your market. The more specialised and informative your resource, the more engagement it’s likely to receive.
On that note, it’s also very simple to track the engagement of these earned media resources, because all you have to do is record the page visits for that URL plus monitor any earned backlinks that the page generates. More page visits and referring links to that page means the resource is highly shareable and is contributing to earned media (in this case, earned backlinks) for your domain and business.
These PDF resources can also be anything from downloadable checklists (i.e. a moving house checklist, tax time checklist, etc.), to industry vocabulary guides, money management resources, step-by-step how-to guides, or anything else that would be beneficial for your target audience to download and keep on-hand, or even share within their circles.
Partner with influencers for synergetic strategies
Another very accessible method for earned media is heading to social media. Being open platforms by nature, social media provides a level playing field when it comes to driving user engagement. If you promote the right messaging to the right audience using the right media formatting on the right platform – you can go viral.
This is why TikTok has taken off as a cost-effective way to promote your business online. TikTok’s algorithm is geared towards prioritising short form video content, which essentially supports a positive ripple effect by allowing for rapid-fire audience engagement.
That being said, investing in social media strategising can still be cost-intensive for SMEs. Even if you’re not spending on production value for your social media posts, filming and posting TikToks plus managing company socials will still require man hours, or even the establishment of a dedicated social media role in your enterprise.
If this isn’t accessible for your SME, you can always look for synergetic (or mutually beneficial) social opportunities by partnering with local or relevant social media influencers in your industry. With these influencer partnerships, you can enjoy all the benefits of social media mentions and your influencer can keep their accounts active with content, enjoy boosted legitimacy through their brand affiliation with you, and perhaps even maintain other perks from being associated with your brand (i.e. free products, event invitations, etc.).
Incorporate user-generated content (UGC) campaigns
Whilst synergetic influencer marketing can help drive engagement and expand your brand’s own digital audience, it may not be sustainable to maintain influencer marketing campaigns without at least some form of remuneration for your influencer partners over the long term. If you’re looking to avoid entering into contractor agreements with these third parties, then you could swap out your influencer marketing for user-generated content (or UGC) campaigns.
The concept of these is actually quite simple: you want to drive audience engagement, so you create a fun prompt on socials for your audience to engage with that encourages them to produce their own content. For TikTok and Instagram marketing, UGC can take the form of stitched videos that link back to your brand’s social media profiles. In this way, UGC campaigns can play a major role in organic brand promotion.
User-generated content campaigns that go off with a bang naturally also help to create rich communities surrounding your brand online. Social media users who’ve participated in your UGC campaigns are likely to engage with content made by other participants. All those likes, shares, and comments can culminate in your target audience not only starting conversations with your brand, but also starting conversations with each other. This dynamic relationship building is what elevates brands from faceless entities to beloved institutions.
Look for news and local media feature opportunities
As we mentioned earlier, one of the most highly sought after earned media opportunities is media features, like TV or magazine interviews. For these earned media strategies, it’s essential for your SME to be newsworthy – ideally for the right reasons!
There are many ways that SMEs can feature in local and community news media. For instance, you could be involved in a local community event like a fair, or provide services to your community which prompt local publications to promote your value-driven story as a local feel-good piece of news.
Another great way for SMEs to get earned media placements is to present themselves as experts and weigh in on industry-related stories. For instance, if you’re an accounting firm and your local newspaper is running a piece on tax preparation, you can weigh in as an authoritative source.
Finding these media opportunities can also be as easy as cultivating relationships with local journalists, culture writers, or even industry publications. With these media contacts, you can ensure your SME is well-represented in these public-facing channels.
Reach new digital heights for your SME with these earned media strategies
In an age where so much digital content is sponsored, earned media provides a refreshing return to brand engagement. At its core, earned media strategising really is all about providing your target audience with high-quality, engaging, and high-authority content. In doing so, you can not only establish your brand as a trusted voice in its industry, but also improve the likelihood of your getting genuine unpaid media mentions, boosting social media engagement, and even accruing more legitimate and unincentivised word of mouth referrals.
With the right earned media assets for your SME, your business can generate its own loyal customer base, a cult following, and who knows – perhaps even some Reddit mentions!