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Earned Media Value (EMV) Meaning
In the digital marketing world, much of the terminology is spoken in abbreviations. CPC, CPM, SEO, SEM, PPC, KPI, CTA… the list goes on. While terms are useful for building a strategy, campaign, or content, they can often be overlooked and misunderstood. Another commonly confused term in marketing is Earned Media Value (EMV), an important metric for businesses to measure their influencer marketing, public relations, and earned media collaborations.
In this article, you will learn how to calculate your EMV and why businesses should measure their earned media value to see if their marketing strategy works effectively.
What is Earned Media Value (EMV)?
Earned Media Value (EMV) is a performance metric representing the value and money a brand can expect to gain from third-party promotions they have not paid for. This can be through UGC, public relations, user reviews, or any other organic mentions, online or offline.
Some of the most common examples of EMV include customer reviews, free press coverage, social media posts from external sources, and any other free organic media mentions.
EMV is an important metric as it measures how healthy your company’s reputation and organic mentions are. Consumers rely on reviews before purchasing a product. So, the more trust you gain amongst your followers, the better. Uncovering your earned media value will allow your brand to evaluate how effective your external collaborations and reputation are.
Earned Media vs. Paid Media
There are two types of collaborative media in marketing: earned and paid. We also must note that owned media is an important marketing term, however, for this article, we will only focus on earned and paid media. Why? Owned media is any content your brand owns and can publish for free. When speaking about earned and paid media, these include external parties and sites that come into play.
Earned media is any content where others are talking about your brand. This can also be called word-of-mouth marketing or free media, as it often spreads from influencers and customers who genuinely enjoy your brand. The more earned media a company receives, the more user trust.
Paid media is any content your brand pays to be displayed in an advertisement or sponsorship. This is content not owned by the original company and can include anything from traditional to digital advertising. While this type of advertising can be very effective, especially with specific targeting, it is more spendy and less organic.
How to Calculate Earned Media Value
There are three important elements in calculating earned media value. These include the CPM (Cost per thousand impressions), impressions, and an adjustment variable. This variable depends on the campaign objectives but can be the total engagement, number of clicks, CTR, or any other performance metric.
Earned media value formula
The formula to calculate your EMV is as follows:
EMV = impressions x CPM x adjustment variable
This formula will be used per campaign, and once again, the adjustment variable will depend on the campaign’s goals and objectives.
For example, if your campaign’s objective was to increase website clicks, this will be your adjustment variable. Say the campaign received 10,000 impressions, a CPM of $2, and 2,000 website clicks. The EMV formula would look like this:
EMV = 10,000 x $2 x 2,000 = $40,000,000
Now, instead of using clicks, let’s do an example using interactions as the adjustment variable. For this campaign, you have 3,000 impressions, a CPM of $1, and 500 interactions. The EMV will be as follows:
EMV = 3,000 x $1 x 500 = $1,500,000
When using CTR in the EMV formula, write the numerical value instead of the percentage. For example, if you have a CTR of 3%, you will use 0.03 in the formula.
A higher EMV indicates that more people mention your brand across media platforms, indicating more brand awareness, reach, and sales.
Importance of EMV
Measuring the value of your organic media promotions is essential for marketers and brands. A brand’s earned media value can resemble how well a marketing campaign or strategy works. When calculating EMV, you can use different adjustment variables to compare the campaign’s earned media value for multiple objectives.
Overall, EMV can help brands enhance their marketing efforts and optimize campaigns. This is vital to a business’s long-term profit and influence. While this isn’t the only important performance metric, earned media value it’s a must-know in marketing.
If you want to know more important metrics for measuring your social media and marketing strategies, here are 10 of the most important metrics to use in 2024: