A Definitive Guide to Media Placement for Brands | Digitimatic Blog

Introduction

Media placement has long been one of the essential means for raising brand awareness.

Although it can be difficult to predict if advertising on a particular television show or social network will have optimum results, businesses need to figure out how.

A media placement is a form of advertising that can help you promote your brand. It is a powerful tool to get your brand and product on the consumer’s radar.

The art of media placement is complex and requires a deep understanding of the ins and outs of the industry. Countless moving parts go into creating a successful media placement.

However, this comprehensive guide breaks down the specifics and provides some valuable tips to help you get started along the way.

1.0 Media Placement Strategy

At its simplest, media placement strategy includes creating and implementing ways to get your media in front of your target customers.

But it’s more than that.

A genuinely effective media placement strategy will earn your company accolades, improve customer loyalty and awareness, create a competitive advantage for your product or service and help offset marketing costs.

Media placement has become more strategically critical than ever in the last decade.

The rapid growth of digital media, coupled with a decline in traditional advertising, forces brands to rethink their marketing strategies.

As we move through the 21st century toward new modes of communication, social networks, and technological advances, our marketing methods also evolve.

1.1 Setting advertising goals

The goals of advertising can be either qualitative or quantitative. Qualitative plans include building your brand image, increasing brand awareness, and changing how people feel about your product. Quantitative goals include increasing sales, growing market share, and increasing the number of customers. 

1. Qualitative Goals

Qualitative goals represent the image, personality, or other intangibles you want your target audience to associate with your brand. For example, if you’re going to convey a sense of luxury, you would place ads in high-end publications. If you want to be perceived as environmentally responsible, you might place ads in publications that promote green living or donate a portion of your profits to environmental causes. 

2. Quantitative Goals

The quantitative goals can be counted, such as sales numbers and customer acquisition rates. You will also include metrics for tracking ad performance, such as identifying target audiences based on demographics or areas of interest and measuring how often each ad was viewed and clicked on.

1.2 Types of advertising media

One of the most crucial online marketing decisions you have to make as a business owner is what media formats to advertise your products.

There are many different online advertising formats that you can use, and each comes with its advantages and disadvantages.

1. Print Media: Newspapers and magazines are examples of print media. Many marketers like to advertise in newspapers to reach consumers at the beginning of their buying cycle.
2. Broadcast Media: Television is a form of broadcast media that uses audio and visual channels, reaching a broad audience. It is considered the most effective and persuasive form of advertising.
3. Outdoor Media: Billboards and outdoor signage using this advertising medium. It is a highly targeted option that allows you to reach your ideal target market at the right time – when they are on the road!
4. Internet media: Online media includes various digital marketing tools such as email, social media, video, and search engine optimization (SEO).

1.3 Challenges of modern media planning strategies

There are a lot of factors that go into successful media planning, so knowing all of them is vital to creating a process that is effective for your brand. 

Media planning is one of the most significant investments in advertising, but you can encounter some problems. In today’s world, media planners face many challenges in delivering the right message to the right target audience at the right time.

1. Timeliness

Communication problems during the COVID-19 pandemic have been immense, with brands facing many challenges.

The ability to react quickly in a crisis has been shown to have a measurable impact on brand perception.

One of the challenges was the speed at which events unfolded; the need for brands to react quickly and effectively has caused some confusion in the traditional media planning process and has led to a large degree of uncertainty regarding their messaging strategies throughout the crisis.

Additionally, timing is everything during a wide-scale disaster. If a brand fails to pivot and adapt to changing market conditions, it could be left behind if they don’t evolve quickly enough.

2. Multichannel Ad Campaign Management

There are many options for media placements, and most modern advertisers spread their campaign strategy across multiple channels.

As a result, media planners face the challenge of integrating all this data. These challenges may manifest in terms of data quality and data management on a campaign level.

Integrating different channels may also present challenges in marketing automation execution and reporting.

Failure to integrate this data can also lead to cross-channel blind spots or a lack of insight into campaign performance.

3. Information Complexity

In today’s increasingly complex media environment, media planners are required to make many judgments that they can only make based on information that is not always readily available.

The fundamental challenge of media planning is to find the right combination of channels, genres, and time slots to reach the target audience.

Modern media planning strategies have become increasingly complex.

Planners must create more intelligent media plans based on more accurate market and media information to meet these challenges.

4. Rapidly Changing Media Landscape

The seemingly infinite possibilities can seem paralyzing and contradict one another.

Over the past decade, digital and social channels have become more critical than broadcast and print.

More so, consumers are demanding more from their media consumption experience.

As a business owner or manager, you need to get out there and make sure you stay in the game.

With the speed at which digital technology evolves, your team must keep up with shifts in best practices and emerging technologies.

1.4 The media planning process

Media planning is a crucial step in planning a communications campaign.

Media planning is how marketers decide the best media to reach, convert and retain their prospects and customers.

It can significantly impact the success of a published communications campaign via the selection of media vehicles, outlets, and the amount of space purchased.

We can break down the media plan into four stages. They are:

Step 1: Setting goals; define what is to be achieved through a media plan.

Define what is to be achieved through a media plan.

The overall goal of a media plan is often to deliver a message to an audience. However, in some cases (particularly with advertising), one might design the media plan to change brand attitudes or elicit an action from the customer.

But, firstly, a market analysis is done to understand the factors influencing consumer behavior and market trends.

Then advertising expectations are set according to the company’s marketing objectives, whether to build awareness about the product, increase sales of a product or improve its image.

When setting goals, be specific. How much sales increase are you expecting? Set yourself realistic goals and make sure to communicate them to your team.

A common goal of a media plan is to deliver a message that leads consumers to take action; for example, by purchasing something from your company or giving you their contact information so you can follow up with them later.

Step 2: Gathering information about your audience

Once the goals are determined, the media planner needs to understand what kinds of resources they have at their disposal.

In other words, what information will help them create the most effective advertising strategy possible? Do they have internal data on past consumer activities? Is there external data available on these audiences, such as demographics or opinions? Who else will access this information, and how will it be used?

Once you answer these questions, you can begin gathering the relevant research on target audiences and strategies; you will ultimately use this information to achieve the advertising objectives.

It is also the stage where you gather information regarding your target audience.

Who needs to know about your product/service? Define this group as precisely as possible. 

• What are their interests?
• Where do they live? 
• What are their income levels? 
• Are there specific age groups upon which you want to focus? 
• What is their job title? 
• What magazines do they read? 

And so on.

Step 3: Formulation of media strategy

Formulating the media strategy consisting of the message content, the budget, and the scheduling is one part of the media planning process.

It is defined as identifying, prioritizing, and selecting media channels to achieve objectives.

In addition, you need to get your message straight before you even start planning your media buy.

Make sure that your message is also consistent with your brand positioning. It will help you avoid confusing potential customers with mixed messages.

Therefore, the media strategy formulation consists of the message content, the media channel, and the timing and placement of the message. These elements are combined to achieve communication objectives.

The message content is then broken down into a series of statements combined to develop a single positioning statement for the product.

This positioning statement should be detailed, unambiguous, concise, memorable, and credible.

It should reflect an essential benefit that sets the product apart from its competitors. Message content must also be focused on the target audience and their needs to increase effectiveness.

Once the message content is developed, it is time to determine which communication channels will spread this message, leading us to the next step.

Step 4: Executing the strategy through the selected media vehicles

Often, when people talk about choosing the “right” media type, they’re talking about choosing between online ads and television spots or radio commercials — but there are many other types of media to consider.

And because each type has unique advantages, you shouldn’t choose between them until you’ve done a little exploration and research.

• Create an advertising schedule and map out each placement in detail.
• Develop an operational plan for each placement.
• Monitor and evaluate the performance of the media placements.

One of the significant differences in media planning today versus a few decades ago is the shift away from traditional mass media such as newspapers and magazines to digital media like e-newsletters, blogs, and social networking sites.

A good media mix will allow you to deliver your message to a broader demographic and make an enormous impact on the consumer.

In all, once all these steps have been taken, a good media placement strategy should achieve these objectives:

• Reach your target audience by selecting the proper media devices or a mix of media devices.
• Achieve a high frequency of exposure for the target audience.
• Convey the message with impact and clarity.
• Obtain the maximum value for marketing dollars spent.

2.0 Media Placement Analysis

Media placement analysis usually involves putting together a plan that will consider all the different ways relevant people could see an ad or receive information about a product or service from your company.

Media placement analysis helps marketers and advertisers understand the impact of where an ad is placed.

Advertisers should consider the media’s context, prominence, and audience engagement to get the maximum value from their ad placement.

It is vital to track the performance of each placement after it has been implemented. See some tips below:

• Monitor each placement against set benchmarks, such as reaching a specific number of people at a given frequency.
• Evaluate each placement’s performance by comparing them against each other and identifying the most efficient vehicles.
• Analyze whether the overall media plan meets reach, frequency, and efficiency expectations.

2.1 How to measure media placement performance

Media placement analysis is an essential step in the media planning process.

After you’ve identified your target audience, determined the best media for reaching them, and planned a campaign that gets the audience at the right time with the right message, you need to figure out how well you did.

One of the biggest challenges for digital media planners is knowing what to measure and how to measure it to understand if the media mix is performing.

Comparing actual media placement performance against your goals will tell you whether to continue what you’re doing, change course, or re-evaluate your original plan.

Three key factors can describe your media placement performance:

• Impressions: How many times a user was delivered your ad
• Interactions: How many times a user clicked on or otherwise engaged with your ad
• Conversions: How many users took an action that converted them into paying customers

2.2 Success Metrics

Every media plan has an objective. The objective might be to improve brand awareness or increase sales.

Whatever the objective is, it’s important to use measurement tools to evaluate the performance of a media plan.

1. Exposure (Reach + Impression)

Did people see your advertisement? It is usually measured as reach or impressions.

Reach is the number of people who see your ad at least once; impressions are all the times your ad was seen across all viewers.

Reach and impressions aren’t perfect measures; however, they don’t tell you whether someone paid attention to your ad and took action.

Hence, while it is helpful to calculate the reach and impressions, you need other metrics to gain the complete picture of your ad performance.

2. Ad Engagement

How deeply engaged are people with your ad? You can also measure ad engagement directly via clicks, but it can also be inferred from dwell time, scrolling behavior, etc.

Engagements are vital because they provide us with a better understanding of how much people interact with content instead of how many times they see it.

We can then determine what content best elicits interactions with this information.

3. Brand lift

Does your campaign change brand perceptions?

The problem with traditional metrics like click-through rates and impressions is that they fail to measure how effectively an ad influences consumer behavior.

Brand Lift is a way to determine if advertising changes how people feel about a specific topic or brand.

Are your audience members more likely to remember or recognize your company after seeing an ad? Do they associate positive feelings with your brand after seeing an ad?

You must seek to answer these questions by sending out surveys.

4. Cost per click (CPC)

Cost per click is the price of acquiring a single customer via paid search advertising.

CPC can have a significant impact on the success of your campaigns, so it’s essential to monitor and optimize this metric as often as possible.

The average CPC varies greatly depending on industry and competition, so you’ll need to determine what works best for you by testing different ad copy, ad landing pages, and keywords over time.

5. Clickthrough Rate

Click-through rate is one of the most critical success metrics for campaigns with a direct response objective like driving traffic to a website or conversions on a page.

This metric measures the percentage of users who click on an ad compared to the number of impressions it receives.

A high CTR indicates that users respond to your messaging and take action.

6. Return on Advertising Spend (ROAS)

This metric shows how much money a company makes for every dollar spent on advertising. It’s used to measure the efficiency of your marketing spend and the profitability of each campaign. It can be measured as follows:

ROAS = (Revenue Generated/Ad Spend) x 100%

While it’s easy to calculate, ROAS is more than just a number. It can help marketers better understand their audiences, craft more effective campaigns, and create more realistic budgets.

ROAS can also help you identify underperforming channels and ad sets to optimize them.

7. Effective Frequency

Effective frequency refers to the number of times an advertisement must be experienced by its target audience before it achieves its intended objective.

It shows how often people need to see an ad to buy a product or contact the company.

The idea behind effective frequency is simple: you’re likely to get more responses from people who have seen your ad multiple times.

After all, they’ve had more chances to develop an interest in your product or service.

3.0 Media Buying/Paid Media Placement

Paid media is one of the most powerful ways to promote a brand, product, or service. So how does a marketer find and evaluate all the channels available? What factors should you consider? How can you effectively measure performance? And what tools are available to supercharge your paid media efforts?

3.1 Advertising options for various channels

No matter what is your campaign objective: to drive traffic, make people click on you, build awareness around your brand, and so on – getting the desired results for your business is your main concern; that’s why it is imperative to find what advertising option will work best for you.

Media planners consider several factors when choosing which media outlets to buy, including:

1. Audience Size/Reach

(How many people might see the ad?)

The more people who will see the ad, the more likely it that some will be interested in the product or service.

You want to reach the largest audience possible, but you also have to know your advertising budget.

Hence, the advertisement’s reach can also be significant — sometimes, a smaller group of people can be worth reaching if they’re precious customers.

2. Demographics

(Who are those people? Are they your target audience?)

Demographics are crucial.

The audience size of the outlet, while important, doesn’t matter as much if it doesn’t include the target market for the advertiser’s product or service.

If you know your target audience well, you can use this data to decide whether a particular medium will reach that group.

Understanding your audience’s age, gender, occupation, income level, and other characteristics will help you determine if members of your target audience use the media outlet you are considering or if there is a better option available.

Even if you have a broad-based product offering, it’s often helpful to segment your audience by demographic factors.

3. Placement value

(Is the outlet effective at reaching its audience?)

Different media outlets offer a variety of options for placement value.

These include commercials on television, print ads in newspapers or magazines, display advertisements on websites and social media sites, or outdoor advertising such as billboards.

Each has benefits and limitations depending on the advertised product or service and the target market reached with that message.

4. Frequency

(How often does an ad need to be seen for maximum impact?)

Sometimes, an advertisement is most effective when it’s seen repeatedly. It is often the case with TV and radio advertisements.

You want people to see your ad multiple times so they’ll remember it and think about it when they’re ready to buy.

However, too many impressions can get annoying, and you don’t want the ad to wear out its welcome or dilute its effect on viewers.

There’s no perfect formula for determining frequency — too much depends on your particular audience and method of communication.

3.2 Brand Advertising vs. Performance Advertising

Brand advertising is about increasing awareness for your brand. It usually focuses on building an image and reputation for the company.

On the other hand, performance advertising has a more specific goal — it targets customers who are already interested in the product or service you offer. It aims to bring traffic to your website and increase conversions. 

1. Brand advertising

Brands use this type of advertising to create brand awareness and recognition. For example, imagine you see a Coca-Cola commercial while watching your favorite TV show.

Even if you don’t drink Coke or are not in a market to buy soda, you will remember seeing that advertisement the next time you are at the grocery store and in front of the soda aisle.

Brand advertising aims to connect your brand with the right audience using emotional storytelling that builds long-term trust, credibility, and engagement around your business.

The goal is to generate interest and create a positive impression in the minds of your target audience. 

2. Performance advertising

This type of advertising focuses on driving conversions rather than building brand awareness as brand advertising does.

For example, let’s say you search for the “best place to go on vacation” on Google. While scrolling through the search results page, you see ads from various travel agencies.

Those ads are positioned not simply to garner awareness but for you to take action by contacting the travel agency and making a booking.

The main objective of performance advertising is to achieve short-term goals like lead generation, conversions, and sales.

If you ever confuse them, always remember that brand advertising aims to create a desire while performance advertising aims to drive action.

3.3 Tools to Supercharge Paid Media Placement

We’ve gone over the basics of how paid media works, but what about tools that can make your work easier or more efficient?

With the proper paid media advertising and marketing tools, you can significantly increase the results of your campaigns.

There are hundreds of great options for online paid media advertising. But here are a few top online tools for everything from reporting to testing to managing audiences:

1. Google Adwords Keyword Planner

Source: Google Ads

Here is an obvious one. This tool is vital for any PPC campaign as it helps you identify keyword opportunities, volume, and competition, in addition to helping you build a better understanding of how competitive a particular keyword might be. It can also help you discover new keywords and groups of keywords. 

2. Ahrefs

Source: Ahrefs

Ahrefs offers tools such as an SEO dashboard, backlink checker, rank tracker, site explorer, content explorer, and the ability to research competitors’ sites.

The site explorer feature is beneficial for uncovering link-building opportunities and looking into competitors’ websites.

3. Buffer

Source: Buffer

Buffer lets you schedule posts to social networks and analyzes social media traffic.

It’s an excellent tool for those who want to manage various social networks from one place without having to log in to each platform individually.

4. Mention

Source: Mention

Mention is a real-time media monitoring tool that allows you to track mentions of your brand or any other brand across the web.

You can even use Mention to track competitors’ content and identify influencers in your industry.

Mention also offers sentiment analysis so you can gauge how people feel about your brand based on what they’re saying online.

5. Wordstream

Source: Wordstream

This tool uses proprietary algorithms to help marketers improve their PPC efforts on Google Ads, Bing Ads, and Facebook.

It includes keyword discovery and management tools as well as comprehensive reporting features.

6. SimilarWeb

Source: SimilarWeb

SimilarWeb provides insight into where sites get their traffic and demographic information about the visitors themselves.

If you know what sites your audience is visiting, you can reach them via advertising on those sites.

It is beneficial to target a site’s visitors based on their demographics and interests because SimilarWeb provides that level of detail.

7. Google Analytics

Source: neilpatel.com

Google Analytics is a powerful resource for tracking and analyzing website traffic.

It provides insights into where visitors are coming from, their subsequent behavior on your site, and ultimately how many people convert.

You can also integrate Google Analytics with Google AdWords to track paid search campaigns’ effectiveness further.

8. Google Trends

Source: Google Trends

This tool lets you analyze search trends over time for a word or phrase in Google’s search results.

Here you can find what people are searching for on Google.

Get ideas for new ad groups, blogs, or campaigns based on the search volume of the keywords related to your product or service.

4.0 Paid Social Media Placement

Social media has become an increasingly important part of our day-to-day lives. You can use paid social media campaigns for many objectives: to increase brand awareness, generate leads or sales, drive website traffic, or build your audience. Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, and TikTok all offer paid social advertising options that can help you achieve several different marketing objectives. The form and function of paid social ads vary from platform to platform according to the purpose you set for your campaign.

 4.1 Facebook

Pros

• Facebook has about 3 billion monthly active users; whatever demographic you want to target with ads, you’ll find them on Facebook
• Ability to target particular segments of your audience. Also, advertisers very much love the ability to target lookalike audiences (people similar to your current customer base)
• With an average $0.97 cost per click, Facebook ads are among the cheapest of all social networks
• Facebook makes it easy to test different versions of an ad and see how they perform with your target audience
• Facebook collects a lot of data about its users, and it shares that information with advertisers to help them make informed decisions

Source: MetaforBusiness

Cons

• Facebook charges a commission on product sales generated through its site
• Increased competition. Good news for consumers, but bad for advertisers.
• Facebook has had its share of scandals regarding sharing user data with third parties. More users are wary of sharing their data with Facebook for advertising targeting

4.2 Twitter

Pros

• Twitter is where broadcast and social media intersect and where content trends start.
• It has the lowest average cost per click of all social networks, at $0.38
• Twitter offers timely promotions that enable businesses to connect with customers when they’re looking for what you have to offer.
• Your promoted tweets can get more retweets and likes, earning you more followers.
• Twitter ads engagements are more authentic because, unlike platforms such as Facebook and Instagram, users don’t visit Twitter looking to shop

Source: Twitter Ads

Cons

• Twitter’s 211 monthly daily active users are among the lowest compared with other social networks.
• You cannot set up more detailed targeting for your ads based on interests or behaviors like Facebook, Instagram, and Pinterest.
• There aren’t many options for tracking conversions from your ads as there are on other platforms

4.3 Instagram

Pros

• Instagram offers advertisers a great chance to reach millennials and Gen Zs.
• The Instagram audience is highly engaging due to the primary visual format it uses
• Since Instagram is an image-focused platform, it provides a perfect channel for showing off e-commerce products in beautiful ways.
• Instagram ads are highly mobile-friendly. It’s essential because users tend to use social media more on their phones than on their computers.
• Meta allows advertisers to connect ads on Facebook and Instagram, extending the impact of your ads.

Cons

• Like Facebook, Instagram is strict about what kinds of businesses can run ads on its platform.
• The competition on Instagram is very fierce.
• Another disadvantage is that Instagram users tend to be younger and may not have as much money to spend as an older audience.

4.4 TikTok

Pros

• TikTok was the world’s most visited site in 2021, beating Google and Facebook.
• TikTok is a visual platform with users scrolling through videos quickly on a never-ending feed. Visual content is way more engaging than text, and TikTok is banking on this hugely.
• The opportunity to engage with TikTok influencers — who have large audiences and high engagement rates — for low-cost promotions and ad campaigns
• The videos on this platform can go viral quickly and make it easy for brands to reach a broad audience within days or even hours.

Source: TikTok

Cons

• You can’t target keywords like you can on Facebook, TikTok, or LinkedIn
• If you’re looking for an ad platform with a user base that is solidly in the middle class and older demographics, this might not be the best choice for you
• Because of TikTok’s links to China, analysts express worry about its data privacy policies

4.5 LinkedIn

Pros

• LinkedIn is the leading platform to target professionals or businesses who may show interest in your products or services.
• As one of the most professional social media platforms available, advertising on LinkedIn boosts the credibility of your brand while driving traffic to your website.
• Promoted content on LinkedIn is a great way to build brand awareness, promote thought leadership, and nurture prospects with content offers.
• Due to its professional nature, LinkedIn is an excellent platform for networking and building authentic relationships with users.
• LinkedIn leads are more highly qualified than leads generated from other platforms.

Source: LinkedIn

Cons

• LinkedIn does not have any native capabilities for e-commerce businesses to drive sales.
• The cost per click for LinkedIn ads is $5.26, the highest of all social media apps.
• LinkedIn will be less valuable than other options if your business aims at consumers.
• LinkedIn offers few targeting options because it is not as broad-based as other social networks. 

5.0 Earning Media Coverage

The difference between earned media and paid media is simple – earned media is complimentary, while paid media costs money.

In the PR world, earned media means publicity you haven’t had to pay for – it’s coverage you’ve received due to your PR efforts and the relationships you have with journalists.

Earned Media is coverage of your brand gained without payment to the media outlet. It can include reviews, news stories, and mentions on social media.

Earned media is sometimes used interchangeably with “Word-of-Mouth” marketing, although earned media typically covers a much wider audience than word-of-mouth alone.

There are two main types of earned media: editorial mentions and social shares.

Editorial mentions may happen organically through outreach or as the result of gaining traction with influencers in your space by gaining features in their roundups or interviews.

5.1 Why Earned Media Placement is important

Earned media is vital because it tells people about you more credibly than ads or marketing messages.

It positions your brand as an authority by placing your message in front of audiences that trust the source. Think of it as getting a recommendation from a friend instead of an ad or radio spot directed at strangers.

Earned media is a powerful tool for your business because it leverages third-party approval to help build credibility for your brand. Often, earned media can showcase your business’s unique value in ways that you cannot show through other marketing channels.

In addition, earned media can be incredibly impactful at engaging customers and prospects by presenting information from an objective perspective.

 Why is earned media so influential? Here are three reasons:

1. It’s credible. Journalists, bloggers, and other influencers are reliable sources of information. When they talk about your company, their audience looks to them as experts who have vetted your company (and hopefully like what they see).
2. It spreads the word. People don’t just read an article one time – they share it with friends and colleagues using email, social media, and other digital channels. Earned media can spread quickly and reach thousands or even millions of people in no time at all.
3. It’s cost-effective. While you may pay for advertising in newspapers and magazines, you don’t pay for earned media coverage – it’s free.

5.2 Using earned media for brand promotion

The best part is that most earned media opportunities are relatively easy to get, even for small businesses with limited time and resources.

1. Be newsworthy

The most crucial part of getting earned media is that your business has done something noteworthy. Good stories tend to have at least one of these elements:

• Novelty: Is there a new development in your company you can share? Perhaps a new product, service, or location?
• Human interest: People like reading about people, so if you can tie your story to a person, you’ll have an easier time getting coverage.
• A news hook: Is there a trend in your industry or a recent news event related to your business? The more timing plays into your story, the better it will do with the audience.
• Controversy: Does your business challenge the status quo in some way? Note that taking a controversial stance can easily backfire, especially for small businesses.
• Impact: Does your business do good for the world or at least for your local community? That’s something people like to read.

2. Conduct Media Outreach

An easy way to garner free media coverage is by conducting media outreach, which means proactively reaching out to journalists and pitching them stories about your business.

The first thing you need to do here is to build a list of journalists and media contacts who are likely to show interest in your story. You can do this by searching on social sites like Twitter or LinkedIn for relevant keywords or hashtags.

News aggregation sites like Google News also give you the ability to search for specific topics or keywords. You will then see who has written about similar issues in the past and can add them to your list.

In any case, take note that media outreach isn’t just about pitching story ideas to reporters; it’s also a valuable way to build relationships with influential people in your industry. 

3. Utilize User-Generated Content

Make no mistake; earned media is more than journalists and reporters. It also includes aspects such as user-generated content.

User-generated content, or UGC, refers to media created by users rather than brands. It includes blog posts, social media posts, images, and videos.

The best part about UGC is that it benefits from a halo effect. People are more likely to trust and engage with content created by their peers than content created by brands themselves.

With that in mind, using UGC in your social media marketing strategy can help boost your brand’s exposure, reputation, and sales. Some creative ways to utilize user-generated content include:

• Creating a hashtag,
• Featuring the content in a blog post,
• Organizing online contests, etc. 

A handy tip:

Develop a press kit: A press kit (also known as a media kit) is an information packet that you send to journalists when they’re writing a story about you or your business. It includes press releases, background information, high-resolution images of your products, and contact details for someone they should get in touch with if they have further questions or would like to schedule an interview.

Conclusion

When it comes to media placement, it’s all about top-of-mind awareness and brand exposure.

Communication problems during the COVID-19 pandemic have been immense, with brands facing many challenges.

Moreover, there is no single way to get your brand or product visibility. And no one media placement will work for every product or service.

However, understand the value of each placement to a consumer and narrow down your brand objectives. That way, you can determine which post will provide the highest return on your investment.

Weigh the cost-effectiveness and audience of each media placement. Then you can identify which channels best serve your brand’s needs.

It’s best to look at your brand’s target market and define its most relevant attributes. Thereafter, gauge the target group’s consumption habits across various media.

From there, you can begin putting together a plan to reach your target audience via the media placements that will have the most significant impact.