The PESO Model: A Quick and Easy Explanation

PESO is a 4-quadrant model that helps you analyze how your business/brand’s content appears to your audiences. It’s incredibly simple, and helps you see your business’ content strengths and weaknesses at a glance. We have:

• Paid

• Earned

• Shared

• Owned

Paid: Advertising - Social Media sponsored posts, TV Ads, YouTube Ads, billboards, radio spots, etc. You can have a very broad reach with Paid, but the authority of message decreases due to the barrier to entry being that you are paying to convey a message. 

Earned: News - Maybe the local newspaper or TV station picked-up a story that surrounds or mentions your brand, this is Earned. Authority is very high, but message control is very low since the message is not coming from your business, it’s coming from an independent source.

Shared: Social - Not just social media, but in-person networking, too. This is ‘word of mouth’. When someone organically shares something about your business/brand, it also has high authority as it’s someone else’s positive assessment of your work.

Owned: Content - this is the content you are creating and sharing on your own volition, it’s your business/brand’s opportunity to emphasize market positioning and tell your story, the way you want to tell it. Strong photo and video content should be a core component to your Owned media strategy.

Content, Content, Content

OwnedMedia / Content is the starting-place, as well as the core of your business’ Paid and Shared strategies. By having a well thought-out strategy for content, you can tactfully push your owned media out to the other content consumption channels.

Case Study: Harman Construction

Let’s take a quick glance at how Harman Construction has been nailing (pun intended) PESO this Spring.

Paid:

Augmenting audience reach and brand awareness by using Owned Content as YouTube Pre-Roll Ads.

Earned:

Being mentioned in relevant community media outlets.

Shared:

An industry partner writes a post and gives Harman Construction a ‘shout-out’.

Owned:

Harman’s video strategy both lives on its own, as well as funnels content to the Paid and Shared areas of the PESOModel.

Do a PESO analysis of your business/brand, you’ll quickly discover how you are/aren’t communicating with your audience. By integrating your content marketing strategy, you can own your content and push it to Paid and Shared channels, and then through the great work you ultimately do, move to Earned media exposure as well.