Maximizing Your Earned Media for Sales and Lead Generation
Maximizing Your Earned Media for Sales and Lead Generation:
from Duct Tape Marketing This guest post is brought to you by Outbrain – Enjoy!
If leveraged correctly, earned media can be an effective source of qualified leads and other benefits, rather than vanishing into the ether or otherwise going to waste on the wrong audience.
Here are a few tips to making the most of your earned media to benefit sales and lead generation:
1. Keep Track of It
You may find a number earned media placements are not the result of your direct PR efforts, in which case are you certain you’re aware each time your brand is mentioned in the press? Set up a mechanism for routinely gathering this information (daily, if possible). Google Alerts is a simple solution.
2. Amplify It
Think of content marketing like oral storytelling; once the story’s been told, it can be passed on to other audiences in ways organic and paid. Let your goals dictate which channels you pursue for each piece of earned media. If your goal is to drive conversions, that means attracting the most qualified audience and you can use traffic acquisition platforms like Outbrain to get your earned media in front of that qualified audience. The more people engage with it, the longer the shelf-life for your content and your long-term potential to bring in leads
3. Repurpose It
One of the undervalued aspects of earned media is that the parties producing it have different ideas than you do — not just about the nature of your brand or product but the landscape of the market, who your competitors are, etc.
Earned media can be a springboard for owned media. If a piece of earned media highlights a problem, misconception, or even a positive asset related to your business that you had never considered before, use it as an opportunity to generate your own content addressing those issues or demonstrating those assets.
4. Arm Your Team with It
Prospects love to hear about other customers who have faced similar challenges and used your company to solve them. For this reason, case studies, testimonials and positive earned media are all great tools for your team when making their case. Look at how a local restaurant keeps their restaurant review in the window or a clothing boutique showcases their fashion magazine editorial coverage on their shelves. When you have great earned media, think about how your business can use it to generate leads or help drive new prospects over the sales line.
Brandon Carter is a Marketing Manager at Outbrain. Outbrain helps people discover the most interesting, relevant and trusted content wherever they are. Outbrain provides personalized recommendations across a network of premium publishers, including CNN, Fox News, Hearst, Rolling Stone, US Weekly and Fast Company. Through Outbrain’s all-in-one content discovery solution, publishers, brands and marketers are able to amplify their audience engagement by driving traffic to their content – on their site and around the web.Maximizing Your Earned Media for Sales and Lead Generation is a post from: Small Business Marketing Blog from Duct Tape Marketing
No comments:
Post a Comment