PAN Communications
Content Amplification: How to Expand Audience Reach with Earned and Owned Strategies
Content Amplification: How to Expand Audience Reach with Earned and Owned Strategies
PAN Communications
As the amount of content being created and shared through online news outlets and social media continues to grow, amplification of earned media stories and owned content is increasingly important for an effective communications strategy. That goes for companies in every industry, from healthcare to security to finance.
What is Content Amplification?
Content amplification is designed to drive views and extend reach by placing links to a specific piece of content around the web, making it appear as “recommended” for targeted audiences defined by their demographics (e.g., location, industry, etc). Sites on which content would appear could include the Washington Post, Fast Company, and more.
Companies can maximize the ROI of their earned media coverage and owned content assets – whitepapers, blog posts, eBooks, research reports – with a content amplification program. One of the leading vendors to consider is Outbrain. This native advertising platform optimizes engagement. The more interesting your content, and the more traffic you drive to it, the more you’ll be positioning your content as recommended on websites that can impact your brand lift.
How Content Amplification Works
Pick a piece of owned content or a piece of earned media coverage to which you would like to drive clicks and increase views. In selecting a story secured through the PR program, consider amplifying an article that highlights your company’s key messages, a priority business unit, or a new offering. If it’s a piece of earned media coverage, make sure the article isn’t behind a paywall. This way the audience won’t be limited to those with a subscription to the publication. You aren’t limited to amplifying a top-tier business press story – you may want to consider promoting a strong piece of trade or regional coverage that highlights key themes or products.
Next, you’ll work with Outbrain – or a similar amplification vendor – to develop some compelling headlines for the content or coverage. Headlines follow the same best practices as any article headline: short and catchy draws clicks and readers. You’ll decide where to focus your amplification – either targeting a national US or EMEA audience or focusing on specific geographic locations based on priority regions. You’ll also select a budget (typically $500 or more) to amplify your content. Cost is only incurred for secured click-throughs, so it is easy to stay on budget. Once you complete the program, you can analyze your results to determine what worked and how to modify for the next campaign.
Case Example: Trinity Partners
PAN recently applied a content amplification strategy for client Trinity Partners, a life sciences consulting firm, leveraging a whitepaper’s insights on the clinical and commercial attributes that drive ultra-orphan, non-oncology drug success. This helped position the brand as an industry thought leader through the asset and get the company in front of a niche audience that would be most receptive to this kind of information.
In addition to driving the campaign with traditional PR tactics in the form of a news release and across Trinity’s corporate channels, whitepaper authors’ social properties and select employees’ channels, PAN amplified the research with Outbrain and through a parallel email marketing campaign with EndPoints News. PAN also used the data to serve as a relationship builder with high-value media targets and employed a variety of internal communications tactics to ensure executives disseminated the news to their networks through a variety of platforms.
The multi-faceted approach to promoting Trinity’s owned content asset was very successful. The whitepaper received more than 2,400 downloads with social engagement witnessing a significant spike around the whitepaper release date. A number of leading industry executives also reached out to Trinity directly, commenting that they’d seen the whitepaper and sharing positive feedback. Trinity received several inbound requests from new business prospects and secured a sizeable new project for the firm.
PAN can help you design and execute a content amplification program to help drive additional eyes to your earned and owned assets, and move ideas among high-value audiences. Reach out to PAN today to learn more about how this and other strategies might help elevate your next campaign.
