Have you ever tried finding a friend in a crowded area with no discernible landmarks? Looking for a familiar face among a sea of people can be as difficult as ensuring your brand’s message is seen—and remembered—by your target audience. The amount of content we’re each exposed to all day long makes it challenging to retain all the information we take in. So, how can PR, comms and marketing professionals break through the noise?
The Rule of Seven posits that customers need to see a message at least seven times before they are ready to make a purchase. While this rule is typically applied solely to marketing strategy, it is also relevant for comms strategies. The best way to ensure your comms campaign is viewed and retained by your target audience is to take a page from the marketing playbook and craft an integrated omnichannel strategy.
An Integrated, Multichannel Framework to Maximize Awareness
PESO is a comms pro’s ticket to increasing visibility for their brand’s message. It integrates four different media channels— paid, earned, shared and owned—to supercharge the impact of your story. Here’s a quick walk-through of the components of PESO:
Paid media includes the traditional types of print and online advertising that you know and love, as well as paid social media advertising and sponsored content. You see examples every day as you scroll through sites like the New York Times or Wall Street Journal. Paid media usually includes a call to action that redirects the reader to a dedicated site that you control. It’s great for reaching a specific demographic drawn to a particular publication or site. Some providers of paid media even offer a guaranteed number of views for your content, so you know that you’re getting the views that you paid for.
Earned media is probably what comes to mind when you think of classic public relations. It’s when media gatekeepers such as journalists, bloggers and influencers publish content based on your news. Earned media can boost your credibility because your story is filtered through an objective third party. But how do you get your story in front of those gatekeepers? To get the traction you need for effective earned media, you need a combination of reach and precision to target your chosen audience. And that means you need to connect with the right segments at the right scale.
Shared media is the content shared through your social media handles and community sites—where others can pick it up and reshare it with their networks. Shared media is how your story can create buzz and even go viral. One of the reasons shared media is so compelling is that we tend to give more credence to content shared by someone we know and trust. And we tend to pay more attention to hot topics and trending stories. But as with earned media, you don’t fully control the content of shared media. That’s why so many PR teams are now providing pre-existing snippets or post copy that anyone—including a company’s employees—can reshare with a single click.
Owned media refers to content that lives on your organization’s website(s) or blogs. Like paid media, you control where and how it appears. It’s a go-to option because of its low cost and the high degree of control you have over your content. But it’s not without its challenges. One of the issues with owned media is that PR teams often have to wait in line behind other internal customers for their web team’s help to get content posted. Because today’s PR teams have to be agile and proactive, they’ll often use tools to self-publish time-sensitive or urgent content via a structured approach that ensures adherence to the company’s online standards and brand guidelines. That way, PR teams can publish when they need to, without adding to their web team’s workload and without compromising the company’s brand.
Why Make PESO Part of Your PR/Communications Strategy?
Incorporating PESO offers several distinct advantages over single-channel outreach strategies, helping communicators navigate a more diverse and fluid media environment to connect with the audiences they most want to reach. Those advantages include:
An Integrated Approach: PESO Model encourages an integrated approach to communications. By incorporating paid, earned, shared and owned media into their strategies, marketers and PR professionals can create cohesive campaigns that deliver consistent messaging across multiple touchpoints. As prospects move through their decision-making journey, engaging with touchpoints on multiple channels reinforces the campaign’s overall message with each engagement.
Maximized Reach and Impact: Leveraging a combination of paid, earned, shared and owned media allows brands to maximize their reach and impact. Paid media can help amplify messaging and attract attention, while earned media builds credibility and trust. Shared media enables brands to engage directly with their audience, while owned media provides a platform for ongoing communication and relationship-building.
Improved ROI: By diversifying their media mix and taking a more holistic approach to communications, marketers and PR professionals can improve their ROI. Instead of relying solely on paid advertising or traditional PR tactics, they can leverage the strengths of each media type to achieve their objectives more efficiently.
Adaptation to Changing Landscape: In today's digital age, consumer behavior is constantly evolving and new technologies are reshaping the media landscape. PESO provides a flexible framework that can adapt to these changes, allowing marketers and PR professionals to stay agile and innovative in their approach.
How PESO Drives Success
By capitalizing on PESO’s inherent reach and flexibility, communicators can make measurable progress on their most critical communications objectives, including:
Increased Visibility and Brand Awareness: By diversifying their media mix and leveraging multiple channels, brands can increase their visibility and reach a broader audience. Whether through paid advertising, earned media coverage, shared social media content or owned media channels, PESO ensures that brands are present where their target audience is, ultimately boosting brand awareness and recognition.
Enhanced Credibility and Trust: Earned media, in particular, plays a crucial role in building credibility and trust for a brand. When consumers see positive mentions, reviews, or recommendations from reputable sources, they are more likely to trust the brand and consider its products or services. By integrating earned media into their strategies, marketers and PR professionals can enhance the credibility of their messaging and establish stronger connections with their audience.
Engagement and Community Building: Shared media enables brands to engage directly with their audience, fostering conversations and building a sense of community around their brand. By actively participating in social media conversations, responding to comments and encouraging user-generated content, brands can create meaningful interactions with their audience, leading to increased loyalty and advocacy.
Thought Leadership and Authority: Owned media provides brands with a platform to showcase their expertise and establish themselves as thought leaders in their industry. By consistently producing high-quality content, sharing valuable insights and addressing relevant topics, brands can position themselves as authoritative voices within their niche, attracting attention and respect from their target audience.
Strategy Is Still in Your Hands
Remember, PESO is just one strategy—not a goal. The key is to integrate the strengths of multiple channels and coordinate each activity to achieve maximum impact towards your specific PR or marketing objective.
It might help to think of the PESO’s channels as instruments available to a musician. You’ll use more of some instruments than others and synchronize sounds to get the effect you want. The real artistry comes in the choices you make.
One of PR’s longstanding best practices is to tell your audience what you’re going to tell them, tell them and then recap what you told them. Repetition is key, and PESO amplifies this dynamic further. You don’t know when or where your target audience will tune in. Using the synchronized integrated multichannel approach of PESO allows you to grab your audience’s attention by repeating your story across the media channels with which your audience engages.
Start Putting PESO to Work with PR Newswire
You can find more insights in our PESO Playbook and learn how you can put more eyes and ears on your story. Use end-to-end solutions from PR Newswire to incorporate PESO into your comms strategy today and see how far you can amplify your next story.
About Cision News Editor
Articles written by the Cision team.