What’s Old is New Again: Why Earned Media is Rising in Importance

Not long ago, the digital upstarts looked like the future of news. BuzzFeed News, Vice and their peers ran newsrooms hundreds of journalists strong and carried valuations in the billions. Then the floor gave way. BuzzFeed shut down its Pulitzer-winning news division in 2023, and Vice filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy the same year.

Meanwhile, the outlet everyone had written off as a dinosaur kept growing. The New York Times now counts roughly 13 million subscribers and is targeting 15 million by 2027.

Wait, I thought old-school news organizations were dying? What gives?

Here’s the reality: In a world of fake news (the actual kind), disinformation, bots and social media echo chambers, people are turning to traditional media outlets more than ever for information they can trust.

So what does this have to do with you, the business-to-business (B2B) or professional services marketer?

At this point, you may be thinking one of the following:

“I get why public relations matters for consumer brands, but it’s just not relevant for B2B companies or professional service firms.”

“We’re not a huge company with a big communications department. We don’t do anything particularly newsworthy, so press coverage isn’t a priority.”

“We already do extensive marketing, have a blog and place paid ads. If a reporter contacts us, great, but we don’t need to do proactive PR.”

If that sounds like you, you’ve found the right place! I urge you to take a seat and hear me out for the next five minutes.

Earned media may be the biggest opportunity you’re missing out on.

What Earned, owned and paid media Actually Mean

A quick recap:

• Earned media — Exposure you don’t pay for: news mentions, analyst coverage, customer reviews, podcast appearances, content shares
• Owned media — Content you control: your website, blog, e-books, videos, social media accounts
• Paid media — Sponsored promotion: advertising, advertorials, promoted social media posts

Each has its place, and the strongest programs use all three together. But a modern professional services marketing strategy can’t leave out earned media

Why earned media Is so important right now

Professional services buyers aren’t choosing a product off a shelf; they’re choosing an advisor they’ll trust with something that matters. That decision leans heavily on what credible outsiders say about you.
Greentarget and Zeughauser Group have tracked exactly this question among in-house counsel and C-suite executives since 2010. In the 2025 State of Digital & Content Marketing Survey, 88% of these decision-makers named traditional media like The Wall Street Journal a valued source of business, industry and legal information — up from 79% in 2022 and the highest in seven years. Among the C-suite specifically, it reached 90%. Even as AI-generated content floods the internet, the people who hire firms like yours are leaning harder on trusted editorial sources to cut through the noise.

Paid Reach Is Getting Harder to Buy

For most professional services firms, “advertising” now means digital: paid search, display, sponsored content and paid social like LinkedIn. And audiences have gotten remarkably good at ignoring it. The average click-through rate on display ads sits well under half a percent, and a large share of internet users run ad blockers that keep those ads from loading at all. Even when an ad does get through, many people distrust it on sight.
Paid still has its place, especially for retargeting people who already know your firm. But it’s poorly suited for the job that matters most in professional services: earning the confidence of a skeptical, high-stakes buyer. An ad asserts that you’re worth hiring. A quote or feature in a publication your buyers already trust shows them that a credible, independent party thinks so — which, as the Greentarget data shows, is exactly what they’re looking for.

AI Has Raised the Stakes

When buyers turn to AI tools like ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity or Google’s AI Overviews to vet a firm, the outputs are built largely from earned media, not your own website (owned media). Earned coverage now shapes not just what people read about you, but what the machines say about you too. For a full discussion about earned media and AI, read our blog, “Law Firm PR in the Age of AI: Why Earned Media Matters More Than Ever.”

What Earned Media Does for Your Firm

It doesn’t matter if you’re a boutique law firm, a mid-size engineering consultancy or a global tech company: When your experts are quoted in a story or your news is featured in a target publication, your brand gains a boost in more ways than one.

Greater reach

Merely appearing on the homepage of a website that gets hundreds of thousands of views per day can boost your brand visibility. Even if only a fraction of visitors actually read the article, that’s still thousands of people learning about your company. And those who don’t read it? At the very least, your brand will be familiar the next time they see it.

Third-party credibility

Earned media not only extends reach, but it also boosts trust. If your brand mattered enough to a respected publication, then it will matter to many people who trust those sources. Savvy audiences today are quicker to trust these outlets — and, therefore, your company — rather than the “news articles” their great aunt is blindly sharing on Facebook.

Increased web traffic

Coverage often includes a link back to your site, sending motivated referral visitors your way — people who read something credible about your firm and want to learn more. This traffic tends to arrive already warmed up.

Better SEO and domain authority

When news outlets link to your website, it improves your domain authority, a signal of your site’s trustworthiness. The same credibility signals increasingly shape whether AI tools treat your firm as an authority worth citing

Where do You go from here?

You may be thinking, “This all sounds great, but one does not simply appear in The New York Times.” True. But you may not need to.

The key is to target media outlets that are relevant to your particular audience. This is especially true for B2B and professional services companies.

If you sell a solution that helps succulent growers do their jobs better, then being featured in Cactus and Succulent Journal (yes, that’s a thing) may be more valuable than showing up in The Wall Street Journal. For a law firm or AEC firm, the right trade publication or vertical newsletter usually beats broad consumer press.

Owned media and content marketing still matter, but they reach their full potential only when paired with a public relations strategy. You can produce the best content in your category, and it won’t move the needle if the right people never encounter it through a credible third party.
So look at your budget and priorities. If you want to be where your audience is already looking, move your public relations efforts higher up the list or find a partner who can help you get that valuable earned media exposure.