The Value of Earned Media to your Business Content Strategy

70% of consumers trust brand recommendations from friends, but only 10% trust advertising. - Forrester Research Report

Earned media - or 'Free media' - an interesting term that is now being referred to increasingly online and in the digital marketing world is essentially a form of publicity, that is free to a company or brand and is also outside of the control of the company. This is when content receives recognition, but is not bought nor owned. Examples of such media; product/service reviews, publications in traditional media outlets (newspapers, radio), traditional word-of-mouth conversations between consumers, and mentions or publications online e.g blog articles, public forums, social media platforms and online reviews.

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The Value

The value of Earned Media comes into it's own when specifically looking at influence and biased. Paid and Owned Media are entirely influenced directly by a brand or company. Earned Media is out of the direct control of a company and generally has a higher value to other consumers than the likes of other media types. As mentioned earlier, research has shown 70% of consumers trust recommendations from friends, as opposed to only 10% from traditional advertising. This is an substantial findings and certainly should not be ignored.

Other Types of Media?

There are of course other types of media also available, such as Paid and Owned media. Paid media, as suggested by it's name, is activity that is financied by a business for the gain of publicity through financial means. This could be sponsorships, display/banner advertising, search advertising and e-mail advertising. Owned media is literature that is owned within the business e.g. company press releases, product/service literature, company blogs and company websites.

Fans, Followers & Brand Ambassadors

It is often important to recognise and establish who are you key "brand ambassadors" for your business, from a consumer view. There are a number of key factors you could consider to find out if your fan or follower "hits the mark", but some key areas could be used for judgement:

• How does this person speak publicly about your brand?
• Does this person speak regularly to other users of your product or service?
• How long has this person dealt with your brand, both online and offline?

Keep these key contacts on your side, and they shall continue to promote your brand much more effectively than any message communicated by other forms of company produced media.

With the customer journey between devices, channels, and media becoming increasingly complex, and new forms of technology only making it more so, the strategy of considering paid/owned/earned makes marketers impenetrable to the disruption caused by emerging technologies.

I would love to hear others views and experiences of Paid, Owned and Earned media. How does your company incorporate Earned media into it's digital marketing mix and how does it view the importance of Earned media to the business?

How Has Digital Impacted Brands of Today?

When the word "digital" is mentioned, bounded around and waved about the place, what does the term actually mean to you? An endless stream of 1's and 0's? Green and red flashing lights? A digital clock? The Matrix? The term digital now widely encapsulates a number of areas online, including (but not limited to!) social media, data analytics, mobile browsing and mobile experience, e-mail marketing or generic online advertising, plus a wide range of other online activities.

Digital has already impacted on how businesses operate on a daily basis, particularly with the explosion of well-known social media sites that have developed over the last 10+ years. I've listed below some great examples of companies using digital methods to their advantage, marketing, serving and conversing with their customers and prospects in a very different way or to provide a level of service over and above that offered by their competitors:

First Direct - Internet Banking, a division of HSBC Bank

firstdirect.co.uk | FirstDirect on Twitter | FirstDirect on Facebook

First Direct originally joined the 'social media bandwagon' as they very quickly realised that customer recommendations provided a very powerful tool for referrals and new business for the company. First Direct has always strived to provide the best customer service possible from a bank and this has been proven by the numerous awards the company has received since opening. Some of the more recent awards the financial institution have received; "Recommended Provider - Current Account 2013" - Which Best Buy Awards, "Moneywise Customer Service Awards 2013" & "Moneyfacts Awards 2013" - something that FirstDirect are proud to mention on their ever-growing awards page.

Typical FirstDirect Digital Advert (Source)

By incorporating social media into the brand, alongside informal brand advertising, it encourages their visitors to interact with the brand itself, not just the bank itself for transactional relationships. First Direct want to be more than just a bank. They want to to be your one-stop finance solution, a company you can trust and turn to. It also provided additional routes to market the business and stay closely in touch with its customers and fan base outside of the normal methods of telephone and internet banking. 

They openly accept and seek feedback, both positive and negative via Twitter and Facebook and are very quick at replying to these comments to try and leave the customer feeling positive and satisfied. Convenience also plays a massive part - allowing customers to get in touch with them through methods more familiar and convenient to the consumer. So confident are FirstDirect at their level of service that they even offer cash sums for leaving them - something that they hope is unlikely to happen, based on communicating more effectively with their customers and responding quickly to their needs.

Wonga - Short Term Cash Loans aka "The Digital Finance Company"

wonga.co.uk | Wonga on Twitter | Wonga on Facebook

Wonga, designed to provide a short term loan of cash on a day-by-day basis have broken out of the 'loan-shark' category by becoming a household name, with the clever use of TV, web and digital advertising. A self-proclaimed "Digital Finance Company", Wonga was founded in 2006 and were amongst the first company of its type to use fully automated risk processing technology, allowing decisions to be made on new loans instantly, with customers receiving cleared funds in as little as 5 minutes. 

Backed up by strong marketing campaigns, Wonga operates entirely digitally, with the ability to provide an instant quote on the web or directly via a mobile app. Clever branding and key icons such as the three distinct elderly characters used across their marketing strategies ensure continuity whilst putting a 'smiley face' on what would otherwise be a just another money lending business. Wonga has built a very strong personal relationship with its fan base with the use of "The Wongies" - smiley-faced digitally-created personas to front the Wonga brand, pictured below.

The "Wongies" Social Club (Source)

Wonga has provided over 7,000,000 short-term loans and operates in the UK, South Africa, Canada and Poland since 2007, they were also the first business to enable quick-quotes via a mobile application. Clever use of social media has led them to create the "Social Club", a Facebook app that records how much a user visits and interacts with the brand, earning points enabling users to redeem these as rewards or money-off vouchers. By measuring tweets, shares and competition entries, Wonga has the ability to collect user information on-mass and can distribute marketing messages very quickly. Additional the "#WongaFriday" hashtag used (you guessed it - on Fridays) as a competition method, has proved popular with its audience, by encouraging their audience to share a specific post on Twitter or Facebook publicly in return for the chance to win £100 weekly, therefore increasing brand awareness and widening their potential future clientele for only a minimal outlay every week.

It is clear the digital world has had a tremendous impact on every industry, from Finance to Healthcare. The youth of today are growing up in an ever-evolving technological world and businesses need to embrace this fact as oppose to ignoring it. Digital affects everyone - prospects, existing customers and general brand-engagement. What companies do you know of, that are using digital in a particularly noteworthy  or innovative way? Post your comments below!