Earned Media Value (EMV) 101: What It Is and How to Use It

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Earned media value (EMV) is a way of measuring the impact of your content, both in terms of impressions made and the influence it generates. While you can use earned media value to assess the success of any piece of content, from a blog post to an advertisement, it’s especially useful for understanding how well your influencer marketing campaigns are performing. 

With earned media, you rely on other parties to spread the word about your business, including clients, followers, and influencers. EMV is one of the most widely used KPIs in the industry, with 67% of businesses already tracking the ROI of their influencer marketing campaigns.

Earned media value is rather unpredictable. Your social media ROI, however, can be significantly impacted by earned media value. How can you then make this kind of marketing effective for the clients of your company or agency?

This guide will explain how earned media value works and why it matters:

What Is Earned Media Value?

Earned media value is the value of your content. It’s how much it’s worth to you, and it’s different from traditional forms of advertising.

Earned media value is not just about how many views you get, but also about the quality of engagement with your audience, whether they’re commenting or sharing your video or web page.

Why Earned Media Value Matters?

Ever wondered how much your content is worth? Earned media value (EMV) is a way of measuring the value of earned media, or how effective your content is at generating and driving traffic, impressions, and other actions. 

EMV can be used as an indicator for determining how your content performs across all platforms and whether you’re getting a good return on investment from what you’re creating.

How to Calculate Earned Media Value?

To calculate the EMV of a particular piece of content, subtract the cost of producing it from the earned media value generated by that content. Then divide this result by two. So if you spent $10,000 to produce a video that generated 100 million impressions on Facebook and YouTube combined, then your EMV would be $1 million (100 million impressions minus 10,000 production costs).

In order to truly understand how to use earned media value in marketing campaigns, we need first to understand why brands are so keen on using it in their advertising strategies.

Audience Management Matters

One of the top three strategies employed by marketers in marketing is audience segmentation. Audience management is a key part of the process of creating content, measuring the success of content, and creating more effective messaging for future campaigns. It’s what allows you to measure the ROI of your marketing efforts.

How Can Brands Use Earned Media Value?

Earned media value is a new way for brands to understand the value of their content. It’s easy to see how it can be used to make better content, but there are also a lot of other ways that you can use your earned media data.

Here’s how EVM can help you:

  • Create a plan to measure EVM – the first step in tracking the progress of your earned media strategy is setting up processes and metrics that will help you track its impact.
  • Use EVM to make better content – by understanding what types of posts perform well with audiences, brands will be able to craft more effective messages going forward.
  • Use EVM to help you decide on what content should be shared. When marketers know what works best, it becomes easier for them to make decisions about which pieces should go out into the world (and which ones should stay home).
  • Understand your audience through their actions and preferences – social listening tools allow companies to see what people are saying about them online so they have insights into who their customers really are and what makes those customers tick, something that was previously impossible without hiring outside consultants at great expense for each piece of research conducted independently from one another instead as part of an ongoing process instead.

Understanding the Way Your Content Performs

At its core, EMV is a way to measure your content performance across all platforms. Content marketing is actively used by 82% of marketers. More than 60% of marketers gauge the effectiveness of their content marketing approach. It’s hard to get a sense of how valuable your content is or what people are saying about you without some kind of metric. 

EMV gives brands the ability to track earned media value in real-time, helping them make better decisions about where they should spend their marketing dollars and which platforms produce the best results. 

To get started with EMV measurement, start by tracking how much attention each piece of content gets on social media using a tool. Then use an analytics platform to measure how much traffic each piece of earned media generates over time relative to other forms of marketing like PPC ads or email campaigns, making sure you’re comparing apples-to-apples when doing so.

Whether you’re looking to build your brand or drive sales, it pays to know what earned media value is and how it can help. By calculating the value of your content across all platforms and evaluating which channels are performing well for you, you can make smarter decisions about which kinds of content will reach a wider audience and help tell the story of your brand in new ways.