Why traditional earned media still matter

With the explosion of social media and digital platforms, many marketers are focusing their earned and paid media efforts on these newer channels. But if you’re only following this strategy, you’re missing out on a significant valuable audience that’s cost-effective to reach.

Fake News vs Trusted Media

Traditional media outlets are actually more important than ever right now. That’s because with fake news and social media feeds providing a slanted view on news and information, traditional respected media outlets play an even more important and trusted role in consumers’ lives and media consumption. Readers’ appetites for news sources they can count on is only growing.

And we should know. Fifth Story’s News Canada earned media services have been providing trusted content to media outlets for over 35 years. Our most recent stats on our earned services show traditional media are still going strong. In 2017 alone, 2,675 media outlets used our services — that’s 67 dailies, 505 community newspapers, 995 websites, 129 magazines, 577 blogs and 365 radio stations.

Earned Media Still Delivers

Although there has been incredible disruption and changes in the media landscape, Fifth Story’s earned content delivers strong results. In 2017, the average results for our national bilingual radio service were 52 airings and 1.8 million impressions; our online videos averaged 25 clips and 11 million impressions; our article service generated on average 68 clips and 4.6 million impressions. Our media relations team works hard to consistently find new media opportunities for coverage, with 504 new media outlets starting to use our content in 2017.

Our earned services are successful and popular with clients because we offer the ability to reach local communities across the country, enhancing brand visibility and elevating awareness. This highly effective coverage heightens brand credibility by having your story spoken about in respected media outlets based on the merits of your content.

Fifth Story also understands what editors want. When we write the articles (vs. editing client/agency submissions), the campaigns achieve much stronger results! The average results for our article service when the content is written by our  journalists is 115 Clips and 6.4 million impressions — that’s 70% more clips and 1.8 million additional impressions.

Far from being dead, traditional media are experiencing a renaissance, allowing marketers to reach a wide, captive audience with custom messages that are trusted. To learn more about how we can help you leverage this great resource for content marketing, connect with us today.