Earned Media workloads (versus Paid or Owned Media) naturally map onto traditional Public Relations remits

More than this, Earned Media as a concept is suddenly winning a much larger share of marketing budgets again. Why? The answer, as we I’ve been discussing in my latest vodcast series in which I’ve been chatting with a range of PR and Digital Marketing agency bosses, is to do with the rise of Generative AI Search and Generative Engine Optimization (GEO).

The algorithms which drive Gen AI platforms and datasets which their LLMs are learning on, are clearly favouring what trusted third party sources are writing and saying about you, rather than providing links through to carefully crafted Owned Media content sitting on your website and social feeds (as Google would have done pre-Gen AI).

So, PR agencies’ Earned Media remits must now focus on building your authority and credibility within those valued third party media sources. The ‘bread and butter’ of good PR campaigns of old - top tier editorial media coverage linked to your news and views - is more than ever likely to surface on AI overviews, whereas a link through to your unreviewed (and possibly gated) white paper on your website, may not.

Customer Advocacy gaining value

It also means Customer Advocacy programmes, as part of Earned Media/PR campaigns, are gaining ground. I’m glad to say, some key methods of optimising the success of Customer Advocacy programmes was the core focus of my conversation with the co-founder of Round Earth Consulting, Sarah Lafferty, earlier this summer.

Getting your customers to agree to participate in the creation of a customer case study and/or video case study is clearly gaining importance in this context. From a GEO perspective, persuading that customer to advocate for the work you have done for them in wider online forums is even more important.

Advocacy value of awards

One clear route forward is to work with a customer advocate to jointly enter a valued industry award. So, here you have the potential for greater authority to be conferred on your company for your good work, not just because your customer is saying good things about you but also because a valued third party organisation (the respected judges for a top tier industry award) may endorse and promote your work.

Spreading the word from one influential third party organisation to another and targeting relatively independent and valued accolades along the way, can make Customer Advocacy programmes pay off in spades. The success that an award win can bring can also flow back to your customer creating a fantastic WIN-WIN effect.

Bulletin boards

It is also important to encourage your customer advocates to share their experiences of working with your people, at different levels of the organisation, on relevant public forums and socials. For example for developer-led software businesses, bulletin boards on Reddit, HackerNews and Stack Overflow (before its steep decline in usage since 2021, ironically due to increasing use of LLMs for developer queries when ChatGPT was actually trained on Stack Overflow’s dataset), as I discussed with Sarah in our Customer Advocacy Best Practice-focused vodcast., are all worth considering as part of Advocacy workloads.

Third Party Reviews

This works for consumer tech as much as B2B tech players. The only difference is the types of review sites which PRO’s need to focus on. So, for a restaurant or retail clothing brand happy customer reviews on say Trustpilot or Amazon marketplace work well. However, for an early stage B2B Tech firm looking for additional funding, a review and company profile on TechCrunch, Crunchbase or Beauhurst makes all the difference.

Similarly, having your channel partner news published in CRN or TechTarget’s MicroScope, and your partners promoting your offering in trade media serving specific markets, is again very helpful from a GEO perspective.

It is also important to articulate what makes you different as an organisation. You will probably still need Owned Media (blog posts, white papers, market research, case studies etc) to articulate what makes your business unique in terms of your positioning, ethos, culture, offerings, range of tech capabilities and domain expertise.

And you may still need Paid Media to boost your visibility online. However, its that Earned Media, often built on a firm foundation of Owned Media content, which is likely to win those targeted hearts as well as minds and references which feed through into the increasingly vital Gen AI overviews.

So, like the Wikipedia page of the CEO of your client some 10 years ago or more, as Steve Earl of BOLDT BPI said in our recent vodcast chat, Gen AI platforms are rapidly becoming the key trusted, central checking point to make sure that the world outside is ‘getting’ what you’re good at.

If you need to be seen as a Top 5 vendor for a specific niche, if none of those key Gen AI platforms are indicating that right now, against relevant queries, your PR team still has work to do to get your there.

Spreading the earned media net

Steve Earl of BOLDT BPI also touched on the value of looking at a wider pool of media for advocacy as part of Earned Media campaigns. Steve says in vodcast #3, increasingly it’s important to have access to martech tools which tell you where your company name is appearing, and what type of audience it is delivering – even down to which company or organisation they work for.

Create and/or join online forums

There are two clear routes to spreading the ‘earned media net’ further – create or join relevant online discussion forums. The first involves establishing your own channels and inviting potential or actual advocates to come together and discuss relevant topics, relevant to your commercial success, and which key decision-makers and influencers might tune into.

So, in the pandemic Agility PR created a lot of advocacy opportunities through monthly or quarterly webinars for clients. We defined the topic, led the client to say their piece on it upfront, and then invited guests to talk to it, and attendees to put questions to the invited panel.

This format proved to be a great way to rally advocates to your cause or way of thinking and build advocacy. Deals were done on the back of those webinars and engagement levels moved up a level across the board. From a content perspective, they also served as a springboard for swathes of owned media: articles, white papers and news stories aplenty. As COVID-19 abated, many of these forums went face to face and roundtable discussions gained a new lease of life.

It is also worth considering putting yourself up for respected podcast interview slots covering topics relevant to your company and, more importantly your customers and prospects. I was surprised how quickly I was able to secure the time of PR and Digital Marketing agency bosses to join my vodcasts. But I was able to ‘sell them’ based on clear knowledge of what they themselves were already commenting on – helping them to position themselves as thought leaders on key industry topics which are driving customers’ and prospects’ discussions right now.

Earned Media is about Earning the Right to be seen and heard in the right places

So, Earned Media work is basically the bread and butter of PR professionals, or at least it ought to be today as it was in the past. With the rise of Gen AI, PR people now need to divert more of their energies and budgets towards Earned Media building work, perhaps (if budgets remain tight) at the expense of some of the great Owned Media content creation that they’re routinely creating for companies’ websites and social channels.

Now is the time to focus again on gaining a wider array of powerful third party advocates, perhaps even extending to what we used to call government relations work. After all, earning the right and opportunity to speak to specific ministers or researchers in specific government departments linked to draft legislation which could determine the success or failure of your company, must also be considered part of PR consultants’ Earned Media remit if they have the skills and contacts to do that work.