PESO – Paid, Earned, Shared, Owned

The public relations landscape is constantly ebbing and flowing with the advent of new digital platforms, the move from traditional media to online newspapers and magazines and the influencers market.

Whilst the PESO model is still very relevant; it's important to harness all of its powers to gain as much positive and trusted coverage as possible.

What is PESO?

Paid, Earned, Shared and Owned.

The latest generation of public relations talent is moving away from the segregated or siloed approach to marketing and PR practices. Silo models were generally a disconnected or incomplete combination of channels or isolation of one platform, process or system. In a nutshell, earned media was always the primary focus of public relations. Paid media in the form of advertising, shared and owned media is becoming more important in the circular management of communications. The rise of social media has changed the role of traditional public relations efforts that once concentrated on building relationships with journalists in order for them to report favourably on your product or service. 

This decade demonstrates that a winning marketing and public relations strategy should embrace campaigns with cross-channel engagement through paid, owned, shared and earned media. 

Paid Media

Any channel where you pay for marketing is referred to as paid media. It will involve a third-party platform to disseminate your messaging to your target audience. An example of paid media includes display advertising such as banners, radio, television and podcasts, paid influencers, content promotion, search engine optimisation and social media marketing. 

Paid media is a vital tool to build brand awareness and augmenting your reach across different platforms. Advertorials are a combination of advertising and editorial features that can include details about social responsibility, philanthropy efforts and organisational assets and achievements. Whilst most of these would traditionally appear in the job descriptions of advertising and marketing departments, there is a distinct public relations cross over. 

The benefit of paid advertising is that you have complete control over the content, advert size, placement, reach, frequency and, of course, budget. Advertising, however, can be very costly, sometimes in excess of hundreds of thousands of dollars. 

Earned Media

Traditionally, you would gain earned media through the connections that public relations professionals have built with journalists. They would positively write featured stories in print or online publications. Today, a PR pro will pitch bloggers and social media influencers who have garnered trust with their audience. Third-party articles and guest posts can backlink to a piece of owned content and the brand’s website which will enhance your credibility to various audiences. Google rewards backlinks by boosting content rank in search engine results pages.

Earned media is deemed organic and that you have ‘earned’ attention from the media. It is incalculable and trusted exposure through brand mentions, media awareness or content that a respected third party has freely produced. Earned media can include editorial gained in media outlets such as magazines, newspapers, radio, podcasts and TV shares or word-of-mouth social mentions, reviews, shares and recommendations.

Public relations specialists strive for this form of positive publicity, which results from cordial media relationships with reporters, editors, bloggers and influencers who publish articles based on news releases, story pitches, press conferences and trips. However, earned media can come with its own risks. A negative story about your brand can damage reputations and trigger crisis’ causing declining stock prices, waning support and public disapproval. Positive earned media is infinitely more powerful and respected than any other format. 

Shared Media 

Shared media is probably the most complex to understand. Its content is designed explicitly for user-generated circulation. Shared content can happen organically, but it is most successful when built into your content asset architecture. It is essentially any content shared about your brand on social media. This means that your customer has complete control over this form of communication, not your brand. You have probably seen a viral post where your friends have left comments. Often this shared media has flooded the internet so widely that you no longer know where it came from, but it does give your brand incredible publicity. 

You might remember the impressive marketing campaign that Spotify ran a few years ago. They engaged with their users based on music tastes and their favourite songs. Over 60 million users shared and compared their results with friends. This campaign was a massive hit for shared media content. 

Shared media is owned, earned, and paid media that is… shared. It's the clever use of unrecognisable integrated ‘click to share’ tactics so that people share it. It could be the most critical element of the PESO mix but equally the most challenging. 

Owned Media

Owned media is precisely that. You own it. Owned media encompasses all of the media that you own and operate, such as your website, blogs, Instagram, Facebook, Tiktok, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn, other mobile sites, newsletters and emails. These platforms offer immense opportunities for social media-savvy public relations writers. The more owned channels you have, the larger your footprint and reach, new followers and ultimately customers. 

One of the positives of owned media is that you control the content with good cost efficiency and the ability to target your niche audience. Even if you run a series of ads, it’s considerably more economical than traditional paid advertising. One important consideration is that you need to build trust with your audience. By encouraging interaction through various mindful campaigns, involving your relevant community and converting owned media into earned media will afford you credibility. Owned media channels give you valuable data that can help you improve future campaigns. 

Understanding the difference between paid, earned, shared and owned media will help you create successful public relations and marketing campaigns and direct your budget accordingly. All four strategies work side by side as long as you create the appropriate owned content that is relevant and useful to your audiences. The work Roam Generation does is just one piece of a marketing puzzle and works best in conjunction with the owned and shared media strategies as mentioned above.