Marketing campaigns are evolving into holistic strategies with PESO; no longer linear but 3D, 360 degree communications. Digital measurability creates a high-definition focus, with in-house marketing teams and business leaders seeing a clear picture of brand presentation and message delivery.
PR spins around PESO; a digital axis, integrating content in constant motion through multi-media channels.
The cookie-cutter mould has been broken. Communicators now need to look outside their own skill set and embrace PESO and online specialists as their digital allies. The alternative is PR departments losing their role to the unstoppable force of emerging communication experts.
What is PESO?
PESO is framework for PR communications; an acronym which stands for Paid Media, Earned Media, Shared Media, and Owned Media. PR needs to adopt PESO channels for marketing campaigns, with overlapping and converging strategies presenting a wider marketing narrative. Our article, PESO Power and the Marketing Revolution, looks at PESO in more detail.
Why Communicators Need PESO
Look at how target markets are receiving messages; social media and SMS; online searches and ad space; viral vines, Periscope video streaming, and Instagram; not to mention e-zines, enewsletters, and eblasts. Marketing channels are multi-faceted and PR professionals need to adapt to this reality and embrace new ways of communicating.
PESO is a challenge but it is also a golden opportunity for PR to widen its impact and reach.
Many clients now expect a multi-pronged marketing strategy and this forces communication experts to wise up to PESO whether they want to or not. If not, they risk losing control of marketing campaigns to other digital agencies wooing clients with measurable results.
PESO is not just a marketing model but a framework for PR survival.
Marketing messages need to be cohesive and joined up, with campaigns integrated within the PESO framework. The first step to embracing the future of communications is for PR experts to accept PESO to avoid becoming marginalized with less bite and a lower budget to boot.
How Mar Coms Can Embrace PESO
To welcome in new ideas it is necessary to let go of old concepts. Marketing departments need to change their own perception of what PR is. For PESO to be most effective, they need to not just act differently but think differently and break down traditional PR barriers.
PESO is more than a model or framework, it is a mindset. Every campaign should start with the question: What would PESO do?
Fitting PESO into campaigns retrospectively or randomly, piece-by-piece is counter-productive. PESO shouldn’t be an afterthought, but a tool to devise marketing strategy from the get-go. As well as representing channels of distribution, PESO shapes content and PR creativity.
What is vital is that PR professionals educate themselves on the wider workings of Paid Media, Earned Media, Shared Media, and Owned Media and how these inter-relate. PR departments do not need to know the intricacies of implementing PESO, but how it can be applied.
Utilizing the skills of PESO experts is a sign of a savvy PR department. PESO will always need the talents of skilled PR professionals, and embracing partnerships with PESO specialists is a logical next step.
PR departments should not seek to beat or compete with PESO experts, but join forces with them.
One sure way to embrace PESO is to simply try it. Outbrain or Taboola offers budget-friendly testing of Paid Media, with data analytics producing detailed measurable results.
Embracing PESO may feel like a leap in the dark for PR departments, but it is a necessary jump to a level that is already in place and rising.
What’s Holding PR Departments Back?
Fear of the unknown and PR’s future role. In the digital media landscape, PR is lagging behind SEO and display when it comes to Paid Media, revealing a real reticence.
PR is having an identity crisis. Communications now has more than one voice and communicators need to redefine what they are or risk losing their sense of professional power.
Some PR departments embrace PESO in theory. However, they don’t fully understand it and are creating campaigns in digital darkness. Education and partnership are key. Strategies within PESO can be finely tuned and targeted more than ever before and clear results readily seen.
There is also a somewhat old-fashioned culture within PR that Paid Media is somehow ‘cheating’, that good PR shouldn’t need PESO to amplify content. However, this is misguided as PESO still puts content at the core of campaigns.
PR agencies are in prime position to be the gatekeepers of PESO. As content creators, exceling in delivering on-brand marketing messages, they have a golden opportunity to lead the way in channeling creative content through evolving PESO channels. PR content is traditionally engaging, non-aggressive, and shareable, which slots effortlessly into place with PESO; a natural evolution that embraces technology and moves forward to the future with a stronger marketing voice.
Next time we reveal what the PR professional of tomorrow looks like.
