Whoopi Goldberg defends Trump attending Knicks NBA Finals Game 3

Earned media builds trust faster than advertising because people trust third parties more than brands. When brands lack credible earned media, they are increasingly invisible in AI answers and discovery experiences. Unlike paid or owned media, earned media cannot be bought or published directly.

For brand discovery questions — when users ask who leads a category rather than specific facts about a brand they already know — AI models rely more on earned media and journalism than on owned content. Marketers have the tools to influence some (not all) conversations about their brands. So, while earned media isn't always a direct result of owned media, owned media can help you get more attention from third parties.

The team at Zen feel like a true extension of our in-house team and we are grateful for the work we’ve done together thus far, and are excited for future opportunities. Every activity and interaction with Zen accelerated positive outcomes and a return on our investment – a testament to their expertise, creativity and quality of work. The team at Zen had a strong track record, a deep understanding of our space and a shared passion for our mission. Finally, as brands integrate more AI into their communications workflows, the question shifts from “how powerful is our AI? By monitoring those conversations through tools such as Meltwater’s GenAI Lens, communicators can see how their brand or industry is represented inside major AI platforms, helping them catch inaccuracies or bias before they spread. Swope points to early reports from OpenAI and Anthropic that reveal what people ask large language models, and how the models respond.

It’s a core part of knowing who your audience is and how to stay relevant and in front of them. Monitoring earned media gives you a real-time view of your brand’s reputation. In many cases, it’s what potential customers trust the most. Earned media is what other people are saying about your brand to other people. I’d recommend working with them to founders or executives seeking to defne their own brand, drive the conversation in their industry and, ultimately, set their company apart from the pack.

Knowing the differences between earned and paid media can help you find new ways to reach your target audience and increase sales. Sometimes the fastest way to reach larger audiences is through tastemakers — people who have a major influence on trends or what’s considered fashionable. In this way, earned media is similar to influencer marketing — it allows brands to capitalize on the trust and goodwill publications have with their audiences.

Looking for a B2B Marketing and PR Agency that can give your B2B a competitive edge?

Multiple studies from 2025 and 2026 find that earned media accounts for 82–95% of AI citations. The timeline of how earned media compounds into AI citation advantage is documented in how earned media citation authority accumulates over time. AI engines prefer earned media because earned media is what they were trained to recognize as credible. (Aggarwal et al., SIGKDD 2024) Structure matters, but it is insufficient without earned authority. Pages with proper metadata, semantic HTML structure, and answer-first organization are cited more than those without. AI visibility is not a future concern for B2B brands.

Benefits of earned media

A rise in mentions after or during an influencer campaign can expand your brand’s reach, indicating genuine engagement among your audience. Audience growth is worth tracking, but it should be viewed alongside engagement quality. The #PartyNeverStops campaign generated £3.68M in sales, an 18x return on ad spend, 91M video views and reached 11.9M unique users in the UK. Choosing the right metrics for influencer marketing begins with setting specific, measurable and time-bound goals aligned with your broader social media marketing strategy.

The deal will comprise $800 million in cash and stock, as well as an earn-out consideration of $200 million based on future brand growth over a three-year timeframe. “The ones waiting for the dust to settle are losing ground they don’t yet realize they’re losing. “The companies investing in earned media and AI authority right now will pull ahead IMHO,” she said. Molly McKinley, founder of Redtail Creative, a marketing and strategic communications consultancy in Raleigh, N.C., pointed out that predictions like Gartner’s tend to treat AI adoption as inevitable and uniform. “Employees who report high information overload are 52% less likely to report high intent to continue working at the organization and 30% less likely to report high strategic alignment,” Gartner reported. “That said, earned media and PR can do double-duty, building visibility and refining a brand’s positioning and identity to give clear signals to the LLMs.”

Answer The Public

Every May, hospitals celebrate nurses Many nurses struggle with finances year-round Nurses are the people who show up for others every single day… Payactiv Visa Card users with direct deposit (minimum required) enjoy fee-free3 real-time EWA transfers and additional exclusive discounts. Because our economy—and our world—flourish only when the people who work to create it have an honest chance to prosper. Learn how Earned Wage Access and our suite of tools can make a real impact on your employees’ Financial Wellness.

Create interesting & engaging content

• And the happier your customers, the more positive earned media you'll get the next time they're chatting with someone who's looking to buy a product like yours.
• Fashion brands earned less than half the median on every channel we studied this year, proving social media is a crowded and competitive space for these brands.
• A multi-touch attribution model works best here, especially in PR and marketing campaigns where earned media builds awareness at the top of the funnel.
• TrendKey DataTimelineVoice search24% of AI interactions voice-powered; 67% YoY smart speaker growth; 89% wearable growthBy 2026Multimodal AI40%+ citations will include video; infographics gaining weightEnd 2026AI agents35% of BI queries powered by AI agentsBy 2026Personalization78% offering real-time personalization; 65% federated learningBy 2026
• Financial Services brands sat at or below the median on all four channels we studied this year, despite increasing post frequency across the board.

A growing audience signals that people are regularly interested in what you have to share, amplifying your brand’s reach and awareness. Meltwater's social listening analytics provides a wide array of valuable insights to help teams understand brand perception, audience sentiment, and emerging trends. We can show impressions, reach, view-through rates, and which audiences we’re actually talking to — it’s all at our fingertips” Sprout Social helps you understand and reach your audience, engage your community and measure performance with the only all-in-one social media management platform built for connection. When reporting to stakeholders about your social media impact, it’s valuable to include a high-level overview of your earned media value.

Our strategists pinpoint what you want to say as a leader and how to have the greatest impact on your target audience. By placing articles earned media in respected industry and business publications, company leaders can get their message in front of high-value audiences, including decision-makers, investors and officials. Earned media has the potential to reach influential segments of the market that traditional marketing efforts overlook.

Earned media, a powerful and influential aspect of public relations, is often misunderstood despite its profound impact on brand reputation and reach. Forbes Business Council is the foremost growth and networking organization for business owners and leaders. Therefore, you’re going to want to reach consumers.

Sharing insights as an expert voice enables smart leaders to punch above their weight and earn outsize PR for their companies. However, here’s where business thought leaders can leverage a significant strategic advantage. But access to earned media is challenging, with countless companies competing for limited space in business press and other media channels.

We increase offsite brand signals via digital PR and guest placements, then monitor AI referral traffic from tools like ChatGPT or Gemini to optimize for generative search results. This ensures search engines and users retain access, protecting ranking and traffic during structural changes. We implement template optimization, enabling best-practice SEO elements—like titles, headings, and meta descriptions—to be automatically applied across extensive page sets. The strategy and partnership we have built provided a success framework that we can use in other areas of the business for continued growth.” “NPD delivered actionable advice on both technical and on-page SEO which has been transformative for our site. Search engines may struggle to find your content with a new structure, broken links can frustrate users, and backlinks you’ve built up over time could be lost.

15 Best Email Marketing Platforms 2026 Review & Comparison

This makes it more affordable for businesses with large lists and moderate sending volumes. Larger businesses can pick and choose tools to create their own custom platforms. Yes, it’s a solid email marketing and marketing automation tool. And you can cross-promote other newsletters to encourage them to do the same with yours.

A newsletter lands in someone's inbox. For a wider list, browse our roundup of the best newsletters across industries. Some creator newsletters generate their entire revenue through subscriptions and sponsorships alone. As you can see from the advice and examples in this post, modern marketers are leading the revolution in email marketing and continuing to push the boundaries with email width and so should you. Let’s dive in and discover if you should go big, or go home with the width of your email marketing campaigns.

You’ll start by learning the core concepts of digital marketing, including how to create engaging content, optimize for search engines, and use social media for brand growth. The migration process from your existing provider to Zoho Mail is simple, and you can create custom domain email accounts for all of your employees with no downtime. You’ll also examine how digital marketers and e-commerce specialists use data to assess and improve performance and tell stories with data. You can also preview the email in your inbox by sending a test email.

Pinpoint the people who’ll love your stuff most.

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It’s perfect for higher-education marketers targeting prospective students and parents. It’s a great fit for email marketers aiming to optimize cadence and audience segmentation. Explore content planning tools with these free content calendar template examples, designed to help marketers organize posts, campaigns, and publishing schedules. From campaign planning to content calendars, Smartsheet helps marketers stay aligned, hit deadlines, and prove impact. It's ideal for small teams or solo marketers who prefer simplicity over complexity. Real estate businesses using HubSpot improve lead response times through automated workflows that trigger immediate follow-up when prospects engage with property listings or submit inquiry forms.

Email Marketing Strategy: Warm Up a Cold List

Email marketing tools are included in its ‘Marketing Hub’, a powerful marketing automation platform. This doesn’t just make Moosend’s pricing very straightforward. But that’s balanced against some serious flexibility and advanced features.

• Purchase email lists from FrescoData & save time and efforts in building your database and instead focus on converting more leads with an apt database.
• If you’re using email marketing to generate survey responses, make sure to include an incentive (just like Miro did) while also ensuring your survey is extremely short and easy to take.
• It's ideal for small teams or solo marketers who prefer simplicity over complexity.
• Businesses can also take the feedback from these surveys and apply them to their offerings, creating what is hopefully a better product.
• Before you send the email, you can preview it as a specific contact or preview a specific email client.

Measurable Results and Insights

While deliverability often depends on technical factors, there are plenty of non-technical ways to help your email newsletters reach the inbox. AllTrails creates retention by showing users how easy it is to navigate the app and what they can do with it. Things like promotional offers, gated content previews, and newsletter highlights convert existing awareness into tangible website visits. When done correctly, your email marketing campaign can show great success and lead customers to act, which is what all businesses want when developing their campaigns. Many email marketing companies (including Mailchimp) have a strict, permission-based policy when it comes to email addresses, which means that sending to purchased lists is prohibited. We are going to look at some of the many different types, so you can create the best email marketing campaign for your company.

Lead Nurturing Email Marketing Campaigns

From welcoming new users to promoting sales or gathering feedback, every email type serves a strategic purpose. With it, businesses can encourage repeat purchases from existing customers or re-engage people who haven't bought in a while. Email gives you a direct line to your customers through their inboxes. Here's why businesses across industries rely on email to connect with their audience. Whether you're launching your first campaign or refining an existing email marketing program, understanding these advantages helps you make the most of every message you send.

In an age of email automation, it’s easy for email campaigns to feel a little robotic. I have always appreciated DAVIDsTEA's email marketing, and they continuously deliver, especially with this cheeky email marketing re-engagement campaign. I think this email from UncommonGoods expertly creates a sense of urgency by focusing on the value of acting now but in a more palatable and less demanding way. Paired with a low-friction CTA, the copy is simple and effective.

For example, when I ran the email marketing for a literary website, I set up an automated email series that nurtured leads over days or even weeks. One of the reasons I rate email marketing so highly is because it gives you the ability to deliver personalized messages straight to your audience’s inbox. At the start of my marketing career, I managed two small email lists and quickly discovered why email marketing delivers an average ROI of $36-40 for every dollar spent. Learn email marketing best practices from creating a strategy to building a list to tracking results.

When you think of "holiday email marketing," your mind might jump straight to Christmas, but there are other holidays sprinkled throughout the rest of the year that you can create campaigns around. I love the simple, guilt-free messaging here, from the endearing egg images to the great CTA button copy. The eye-catching imagery and user-friendly design make Mob Kitchen’s newsletter a winner, but I especially love the prompt to provide feedback about the content itself. The balance is especially important because its newsletters are so long. Dropbox also uses a grid layout that’s simple and user-friendly to demonstrate its product as a diverse solution.

Demographic Definition with Key Examples

When you have well-defined target audience types informed by strong research, you can stop waiting for buyers to stumble upon your brand and start actively pursuing them with precise messaging. For more on getting surveys in front of the right people, see our guide on survey distribution methods. In this article, you'll explore what demographic questions are, when to use them, how to ask them effectively, and 52 demographic survey question examples to get you started. Whether you are new at conducting surveys or refining your techniques, this post equips you with tools to gather and use demographic data effectively. It works best when customers control the field and it’s paired with preference data (sizes, categories, style, or goals) so targeting reflects what people actually want.

Demographic analysis (usually abbreviated to DA) examines and measures the dimensions and dynamics of populations, including whole societies or groups defined by criteria such as education, nationality, religion, and ethnicity. Formal demography limits its object of study to the measurement of population processes, while the broader field of social demography (or population studies) also analyses the relationships among economic, social, institutional, cultural, and biological processes that influence a population. Formbricks is open source, privacy-first, and supports self-hosting for teams that need full control over sensitive demographic data. Formbricks supports link surveys, in-app surveys, and website surveys so you can reach respondents wherever they are.

Geographic differences can also inform global companies’ regional HR policies. Together, they visualize demographic data on work engagement by age, gender, job level, work location, region, and time. Real-time demographic data enables brands to adjust their content strategy immediately. They provide valuable data to analyze current strategies and future brand messaging, campaign ideation and visual design. TikTok’s business dashboard provides demographic breakdowns of who watches specific content categories.

Place demographic questions strategically

This is all about targeting your marketing efforts effectively, not stopping people from buying your product. In this guide, we’ll help you learn who’s already interacting with your business and your competitors, then use that information to develop a clear target market as you build your brand. Personalization is key to effectively engaging customers and driving conversions in behavioral segmentation. To effectively leverage behavioral segmentation in your marketing efforts, you need robust data collection methods and advanced analysis techniques. Understanding behavioral segmentation is crucial for any marketer aiming to effectively reach and engage their target audience.

• This section explores three niche market examples in different industries, along with products and services that consumers in these niches might purchase.
• High school (including GED)C.
• Data visualization tools further enhance your ability to communicate insights effectively and make informed decisions.
• Demographic data allows you to sort survey results into categories of your choosing – and identify trends within those categories.

Core Demographic Types or Categories

For instance, knowing that 20% of your target audience is aged allows you to tailor marketing strategies effectively. In relation to organizations and demography, organizations face various liabilities that affect their continued survival. These have followed the lives of samples of people (typically beginning with around 17,000 participants in each study) for many years and are still ongoing. Other indirect methods in contemporary demography include asking people about siblings, parents, and children. In 1855, Belgian scholar Achille Guillard defined demography as the natural and social history of the human species or the mathematical knowledge of populations, of their general changes, and of their physical, civil, intellectual, and moral condition. Made up of the prefix demo- and the suffix -graphy, the term demography refers to the overall study of population.

Once your market segments are defined, marketing teams can select the clusters that represent the best opportunities to win. The advantage of segmenting the market is that marketing teams can create tailored messaging that aligns with the distinct characteristics of each group. In this comprehensive guide, we take a deep dive into the topic of market segmentation.

Introducing Appinio, your gateway to unlocking the power of behavioral segmentation effortlessly. Implementing behavioral segmentation can present various business challenges, ranging from data privacy concerns to integration issues. By leveraging behavioral data to understand and cater to their customers' needs and preferences, companies can create personalized experiences that resonate with their audience and drive long-term success. Airbnb leverages behavioral segmentation to personalize its recommendations and enhance the booking experience for its users. Starbucks employs behavioral segmentation to enhance its loyalty program and drive customer engagement. These tools can help you segment your audience, automate campaign delivery, and track performance metrics to optimize your marketing efforts over time.

Challenges With Getting and Using Demographics

As for the values of an individual scale, we recommend having at least three values on it. As for deliverables in impact maps, they are first and foremost linked to specific business goals, not customer journey stages and your persona’s experience at each of them. As Arthur already mentioned, impact mapping and personas are two different techniques. Now, in impact mapping, we can take the same online store. An example of persona motivations would be something like “easy product search” or “clear checkout process” if we take an online store. Also, be sure to download our Persona creation guide and access it whenever you get stuck.

When you have a target audience in your sights you can then work to present your product and all of its benefits, tailored specifically to the needs of your target market. Rather, it can be a strategic tool for making critical business decisions about where to expand, what to build, and how to grow. Being more specific with messaging and value propositions will set you apart from the competition. You can use all the information gathered to target audiences by age, location, purchasing habits, interests, and more to create more effective digital ad campaigns. Using different types of market segmentation guides you toward the marketing strategies that will work best. Netflix has the perfect model of behavioral segmentation, with each user receiving recommendations completely unique to them and based purely on their viewing behaviors.

Hannah Ritchie, Lucas Rodés-Guirao, Edouard Mathieu, Marcel Gerber, Esteban Ortiz-Ospina, Joe Hasell, and Max Roser (2023) – “Population Growth” Published online at OurWorldinData.org. What about key metrics such as fertility rate, life expectancy, and migration? The UN projects that the demographic examples global population will peak before the end of the century – in 2086, at just over 10.4 billion people. According to the UN data, the world has passed "peak child", which is defined as the number of children under the age of five. This means that today’s population size makes up 6.5% of the total number of people ever born.2 It was only a century ago that there were 2 billion people.

Demographics can be classified into various categories, each providing valuable insights into population characteristics. Understanding these components enables you to analyze societal patterns effectively. You can think of them as key traits that define groups within societies, such as age, gender, income, and education level. Demographics encompass various characteristics like age, gender, income, and education level that define a group of people. The word is derived from the Greek words for “people” (demos) and “picture” (graphy).

Demographics allow companies to understand their target audience after surveying a certain population. A modern segmentation strategy starts with demographics for context, uses behavior to confirm intent and timing, and adds psychographic inputs where customers explicitly share preferences or goals. It’s most useful in categories where needs, budgets, or routines change across stages, because you can adjust message angle and timing without rebuilding the whole journey. Instead of vague, generic messaging, you can develop stronger, direct messaging that speaks to the unique needs and characteristics of your target audience.

8 Types of Market Segmentation With Real-World Examples

Segmentation has helped brands like Canon tap into newer markets and grab up to 40% of the market share, and MetLife save up to $800 Million in customer acquisition costs. Segmenting your target audience into smaller groups allows you to pinpoint the messaging that will be most relevant to them, and where and when to engage with them. Accurate enterprise segmentation will help you increase revenue from additional sales, and the ROI of your marketing spend. These methods have helped well-established brands like Canon increase their market share up to 40% and saved MetLife $800 million by reducing customer acquisition costs through the effective use of social media. 🧠 Understand the importance and benefits of research for making the most impactful and strategic decisions. They're "directors who need to present monthly metrics to the board" or "power users who manage complex multi-team workflows." That level of understanding is what separates good segmentation from great segmentation.

The graduate needs messaging about long-term growth and compound interest, while the older professional requires content about asset protection and tax-efficient withdrawals. Instead of guessing who might buy a product, marketers use concrete demographic segmentation data to draw boundaries around their ideal buyers. AI supports continuous refinement through automated testing and optimization, enabling hyper-personalization at scale. Failing to update segments regularly as customer behaviors evolve wastes resources on outdated targeting.

Companies that use demographics to define their target market and create consistent messaging have a greater chance of survival. Microsoft empathizes with customers’ needs, providing them with leading software products. Messaging must be consistent across all channels to demonstrate the value their brand provides to their target market. Marketers use these concepts to develop a demographic segmentation consistent flow of marketing campaigns, ads, social media posts, packaging, and other messaging that raise customer awareness. Demographic segmentation can be extremely impactful for a business’s marketing strategy.

TikTok demographics and usage

By focusing resources only on receptive audiences, you eliminate the cost of reaching people who will never convert. Instead of broadcasting the same message to everyone, you create personalized content that resonates with specific subsets of your audience. This guide covers what audience segmentation is, its benefits, types, common misconceptions, methods, and how to apply it successfully. They may be used by those companies to build a profile of your interests and show you relevant adverts on other sites. They may be set by us or by third party providers whose services we have added to our pages.

Time on page, scroll depth, and video completion rates all provide valuable signals about true interest level. Segment your list based on how interested leads are in your content. Just because someone converts on a content offer doesn't mean they actually liked it.

How to start geographic segmentation

We excel at recruiting hard to reach audiences and building segments that drive measurable ROI improvements. AI handles data processing and pattern recognition at scale, but strategic decisions about positioning, messaging, and creative execution still require human judgment. Companies adopting these technologies now build capabilities that compound over time, while late adopters struggle to catch up.

A 4-step Market Segmentation Strategy & Market Segmentation Example

Demographic segmentation is a powerful marketing strategy that involves dividing a larger market into distinct segments based on specific demographic attributes. You measure the success of demographic segmentation through conversion and revenue per user by segment, retention and LTV differences, engagement by channel and cohort, incremental lift tests, and risk indicators like opt-outs. The best tools for demographic segmentation support unified customer profiles, real-time segment updates, cross-channel activation, and measurement and experimentation.

Key Demographic Segmentation Variables

Personas make it easier for marketing, sales, and product teams to empathize with and design for the customer. Combining both gives you a complete, three dimensional view of your customer, leading to more resonant messaging and effective product development. You likely won’t have the resources to target every segment at once. You might also run small scale A/B tests with targeted messaging to see if the segment responds as predicted.

For instance, age and gender give you some idea of your target audience, but no one believes that a 16-year-old tomboy and a fashionista of the same age will buy similar things from a clothing company. But knowing your customer base can still be done with respect for privacy, and it's the first step to reaching the right people at the right time with the right message. Of course, we live in the age of data privacy and it's important to build good consent management processes around personal data to meet legal requirements. Demographic audience segmentation is one of the most accessible and widely used forms of market segmentation due to its simplicity and the availability of data.

For instance, you may want to avoid slang or trendy language with an older audience. When developing your messaging, use language that the segment uses in their daily lives. The segment you choose to target will depend on your resources and your goals.

• As you implement demographic segmentation, measuring its effectiveness is crucial to refine your strategies and maximize results.
• According to Mailchimp's analysis of psychographic segmentation, an auto manufacturer might learn that a customer values luxury and status, and then design features that reinforce a sense of prestige.
• According to a study by MarketingProfs, businesses that use segmentation in their marketing strategies achieve an average return on investment (ROI) of 20% more than those that don't.

A clickable call-to-action is what takes your website content to the next level because it helps you generate leads and contacts. You'll be able to keep inviting them to events while sharing relevant content offers based on what you learned about them from past events. This omnichannel segmentation becomes increasingly important as 87% of marketers plan to maintain or increase their investment in mobile messaging and cross-channel marketing in 2024. Satisfaction-based segmentation is a powerful way to provide that personalized experience. Those with a high NPS score, for example, might provide opportunities to gather reviews, referrals, or even upsells.

Step Six – Select target market/s

Demographic segmentation is the practice of grouping audiences by measurable traits—such as age, income, occupation, education level, or household status—so you can tailor messaging, offers, and experiences. Let’s find out how you can stay ahead of the curve in 2026 and successfully roll out demographic segmentation for engaging, cross-channel customer experiences. Combined with behavioral and lifecycle signals, demographic segmentation turns into a more complete and effective part of your lifecycle orchestration. It’s a simple first step and easy to understand and explain across the business. Learn how to leverage data for personalized customer engagement through customer stories focusing on data activation and personalization strategies. See the latest trends in AI, data, and personalization, based on insights from nearly 4,500 marketers worldwide.

Forget spreadsheets – choose market segmentation software to measure and streamline your marketing strategy; as you grow, the technology will scale with you. She loves to perform in-depth software reviews to help software buyers make informed decisions when choosing project management software, CRM tools, website builders, and everything around growing a startup business. So while customer demographic segmentation provides a good jumping off point for audience selection, targeting translates these insights into the type of focused strategy that will best drive engagement and sales. For instance, it’s particularly suited to the education sector, where qualifications and age are key factors for institutions aiming to attract eligible students to their courses. In it, you’ll learn how to build this approach into a targeted marketing strategy, find examples of demographics in business, and get advice on how analytics fits into a segmentation roadmap.

Take a look at what content gets people clicking, and segment your list based on that. There‘s one segment that’s extremely interested in sales and marketing alignment, while another is far more interested in industry-specific solutions. Some of your leads and contacts are far more interested in specific content topics than others. Frequent buyers are your best customers, so offer them VIP treatment. This gives you explicit permission to send targeted content and dramatically reduces spam complaints.