Creating Earned Media for the Digital Marketing Strategy

A good friend of mine is a journalist. I asked her what she though was the next frontier in her industry. She started talking about a local company she knew called 72 Point, “they do sponsored surveys. Mostly things like, ‘how many slices of pizza do people eat in their lifetime’.” 

A far cry from hard hitting news, but then she got into it. First of all, companies like 72 Point employ the same kind of people who would work in a news room. Journalists, photographers, graphic designers… They work together with their clients (like H&R Block and Groupon) to “create and distribute newsworthy content and generate media exposure.”

How could lifetime pizza consumption be considered newsworthy? Topics like these have something 72 Point refers to as “talk value”: subjects that are likely to strike a chord with publishers and their audience. Subject that publishers want to write about and that readers want to share: earned media. 

To illustrate how this works, take 72 Point’s campaign for Garnier. They conducted a survey profiling women’s busy schedules. The tie-in to hair care is the implication that because mornings are the busiest part of the day for many women, Garnier’s Flatiron Express product (which is formulated to reduce styling time) frees up time in the morning and gives you time for everything else you need to do. They go on to create very cute infographics, complete with hashtags. It’s all designed to be sharable material. 

Infographics and news releases are then sent out to 72 Point’s network. Since a lot of media outlets have scaled back their teams, they are very reliant on outside sources for research and are especially interested in news (releases) that writes itself. In fact, you’ve likely read content like this before without realizing it. For example, let’s say ABC is running a story on working moms’ stress. Well, the story might have something like this: “according to a survey done by Garnier, women need an extra 82 minutes per day to accomplish everything on their to-do lists.” 

The story links back to the site, which drives traffic. Of course, the clout of the backlinker’s site helps to increase the search ranking of the destination site. And these backlinkers include some very prominent sites. It’s all part of the broader digital marketing strategy. The content produced is incredibly consumable and sharable. It comes complete with hashtags and cute infographics and, similar to listicles, creates and easy reading experience.