At our beauty and fashion PR agency VLIV Communications, we work a lot with the marketing teams. We are SO impressed with how they manage everything on their plate. Their tasks are all-encompassing! It’s anything from ecommerce to brand strategy to the nitty gritty details. Things like ensuring the tissue paper for PR boxes and displays for trade shows are their daily job!
A lot of marketing leaders come to an agency like VLIV for PR support. Marketing teams excel at taking care of building the brand messaging and creating owned marketing assets and paid media. But? They know that editorial and earned media is a bit of a different beast.
Don’t get me wrong. Paid media is crucial! It helps drive traffic and conversion quickly, hyper-targets the exact audience you’re looking for, and easily monitors key metrics like CAC and CPA.
While we are huge supporters of paid media, it does have its limitations…but earned media can pick up the slack! What can earned media do that paid media can’t?
What Does PR and Earned Media Do For Fashion and Beauty Brands That Paid Media Can’t?
🖥️ Help with LLMs
Customers are relying on ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude and more for many things. This includes when searching for the best product or services to suit their needs. Many of these LLMs pull directly from earned media outlets – not from paid ads. This means the more editorial coverage you have, the better! It’s more likely it is your brand will tick up in LLMs for certain searches.
🤝 Build authority and trust
Beyond reaching consumers through their favorite AI tools, editorial coverage is key in another way. It has always, and will continue to, deliver an unmatched seal of endorsement that signal trust and authority. The editors at top-tier media have seen and experienced it all. To have them sing your product’s praises speaks volumes.
👩🏽💼 Turn founders and team members into expertst
Earned media also validates the founder and any experts at your company. They can flex their knowledge and expertise with strong fashion and beauty PR coverage. While thought leadership can (and should!) happen on owned and social channels, it should go beyond that. PR provides such a stamp of credibility to be quoted in a national publication that your target audience reads. To be quoted as an expert in your space in a top outlet? That offers a level of authority that paid media doesn’t.
