Audiences first experience our brand in many ways. Some of them are within our control - owned media, while some of them are out of our control - earned media. Often times, we focus our our paid media budgets (search marketing, display ads, native ads, etc.) on only owned media that we control because we can control our messaging out there. Is that really taking control of our audiences' first interaction with our brand though - that zero moment of truth (ZMOT) as popularised by Google.

A large amount of possible touch points that they might first encounter our brand lie in the realm of earned media. They might read a blogger/influencer's post on your brand. They might encounter your brand while reading through a review/aggregation websites such as yelp or hungrygowhere, and even possible on the community forum that they read everyday before they sleep.

Take control of your ZMOT by putting paid behind your earned media as illustrated below.

Blogs, review websites, and forums:

We can promote press coverage, blog posts and reviews through paid search, display ads and native ads. This might sound weird. Why are we putting money behind media where we can't control our brand and messaging nor convert our customers? Earned media stays the most credible form of information for our audiences. As a brand, we can then pick and choose the relevant earned coverage most applicable to our messaging needs and amplify them, hence increasing our credibility.

Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn and Twitter:

When we get positive coverage by influencers or your partners on social media platforms (if they have pages on Facebook and LinkedIn), we can also amplify these posts and achieve the same increased credibility effect mentioned above. This can be done by requesting for them to grant you ad account manager access to their Facebook and LinkedIn accounts. From their Facebook ad manager account, you can create Instagram ads as well by tapping on their existing posts. For Twitter, it's slightly different. You will need to request for their written permission for you to whitelist their tweet.