Remember when “the cloud” was going to change everything, and most of us just ended up with 17 versions of the same document named FINAL_v2_3_reallyfinal_FINAL?
Yeah, that’s a little how AI is starting to feel, except cooler somehow.
These days, it seems like every other headline promises a revolution. Faster content, smarter ads, perfect targeting, optimized solutions. The marketing and tech jargon would continue if you just asked ChatGPT to write it for you. In fact, I did ask ChatGPT what today’s marketers should focus on, and here’s what it told me:
“To stay competitive, brands must operationalize neural content frameworks that drive omnichannel engagement through AI-enhanced micro-moment mapping, sentiment-aware personalization, and end-to-end martech stack orchestration at scale.”
Yep, that’s where we are. Even if this made sense, without a strategic foundation, it’s just a business, marketing and technology thesaurus having a panic attack.
So, the reality is that you can leverage all the AI-powered tools you want (or can afford), but without a strategic plan, AI is just another shiny object we’re all chasing around the marketing playground.
And that’s why the PESO Model® is so important.
The PESO Model isn’t just a framework; it’s your strategic anchor. It’s the difference between using AI to amplify your content and reaching your goals and using AI because the CMO saw something cool on LinkedIn.
When you use the PESO Model to guide your approach, AI stops being chaotic and starts becoming clarifying.
Simply put, if your strategy is your GPS, the PESO Model is the map.
And AI?
If it’s just the faster car, that’s great—as long as you know where you’re going.
AI can be leveraged strategically with each PESO Model bucket—paid, earned, shared, and owned.
Let’s dive in and look at how owned media gives AI structure and purpose, how earned media gets smarter with AI-powered research, how shared media becomes scalable without losing its purpose, and how paid media hits harder when it’s driven by actual insights.
Turning Owned Media into an AI-Optimized Powerhouse
Hopefully, you’ve gone through the PESO Model Certification©, but if not, here’s the TLDR: owned media is your strategic foundation. It’s not just your blog or podcast; it’s your brand’s voice, perspective, and thought leadership, packaged in content you fully control (or…wait for it…own!). And it’s where AI can offer some of its best work, as long as it’s used with intention and grounded in strategy.
The PESO Model usually starts here because everything else—earned, shared, paid—needs something to amplify, share, or repurpose. It’s also because owned media lets you proactively shape your message, optimize for search, and build a consistent narrative.
AI-powered tools like ChatGPT, Moz, and others can speed up things like keyword research, headline testing, and content ideation. Plus, it can be your most valuable resource when you’re ready to start creating content. But without a strategy to guide these efforts, you’re just generating noise.
What keeps you grounded is the PESO Model framework and workflow: identifying priority keywords through domain authority analysis (thank you, Moz), aligning topics with business goals, and organizing your themes into content maps with subtopics and supporting base topics that build momentum over time.
This is your content strategy to ensure you’re not publishing for the sake of publishing. You’re building content that supports a larger strategic effort and moves your audiences closer to a decision through content grounded in strategy and data.
The goal isn’t more content—it’s content that performs.
Rethinking Earned Media with AI and the PESO Model
AI has a place in earned media, but let’s be clear about something: AI shouldn’t be in charge of your efforts or automating your relationships. It can help you be more efficient, more strategic, and better targeted, but there’s a bigger benefit. Combining AI-powered technology with the PESO Model helps you challenge what earned media even means.
Traditionally, earned media was limited to whatever coverage you could secure from a journalist or outlet. The list of outlets was finite, and the metrics you showed in your media coverage bordered on the absurd at times (to loosely quote Gini Dietrich, how can you garner “two hundred bazillion gazillion impressions?”).
In the PESO Model, earned media is about building authority, trust, and third-party credibility, leveraging multiple channels that extend far beyond the newsroom. It can happen in podcasts, newsletters, influencer endorsements, contributed content platforms, and syndication channels.
As part of that, AI doesn’t replace media relations; it expands your ability to create and identify new earned media opportunities.
And here’s where the PESO Model keeps you focused. It ensures you’re not just chasing coverage, like I heard a colleague protest against the other day. You’re integrating earned media into a broader ecosystem grounded in your strategy.
Your thought leadership piece becomes a source for AI-generated pitch themes. That pitch leads to a media interview, which links back to your owned content hub. The interview gets clipped, shared across platforms, and supported with paid media.
That’s earned media inside an integrated PESO Model ecosystem.
And the tools to help are everywhere.
AI tools like Signal AI can surface under-reported trends you can proactively comment on, and ChatGPT can summarize complex topics to help you shape bylines or prep spokespeople faster.
Plus, some media databases now include AI-driven insights on journalist behavior, allowing for better segmentation and outreach.
With the PESO Model, earned media evolves into a strategy that supports search, fuels social, and creates measurable business value. AI helps you scale the insights, while your strategy ensures you’re still telling stories that matter.
Keeping Shared Media on Strategy with the PESO Model
I don’t want to start on a somber note because I really do love shared media as part of the PESO Model. Unfortunately, too often, shared media is where many well-meaning strategies die.
Every platform is feeding a content-hungry algorithm, every audience behaves differently, and every metric seems like the most important one, until the following week. So much changes hour-by-hour that it’s almost impossible to keep up. And that’s exactly why the PESO Model is so valuable here.
The PESO Model framework forces discipline in your shared media approach. Instead of chasing trends or dumping content into 14 channels, all with the same caption (please don’t do this) because “just in case,” you’re grounding each move in your strategy. You’re deciding what to post, where, when, and why, because you already know what your owned, earned, and paid media are doing, and you’ve outlined the role your shared media plays.
But we’re talking about AI, too, and AI can help. Tools like ChatGPT, or even the AI-powered native platform tools, can turn a single long-form blog post into a week’s worth of social content across platforms, all tailored to your audiences’ preferences.
Plus, you can use predictive scheduling to optimize for reach, sentiment analysis to track engagement and tone, or even machine learning to suggest creative improvements.
But AI doesn’t give you a strategy, it just amplifies whatever strategy you feed it.
For example, say your owned content centers on workplace culture. Your earned media includes a podcast guest spot. AI can help you extract quotes, create teaser copy, and generate visuals to promote it across Instagram, LinkedIn, Threads, and even TikTok.
But where’s your strategy? The PESO Model is what tells you which messages to push where, how to support them with paid media, and why it matters to your business goals.
Shared media doesn’t work when it tries to be everything to everyone. It works when it’s a focused, coordinated extension of your integrated content strategy. AI can help scale and streamline, and the PESO Model ensures you don’t lose the plot while doing it.
Paid Media That’s Fueled by AI and Driven by Strategy
Paid media can scare many marketers and communicators, and for good reason. Too often, when we hear paid media, we think of big ad buys—TV spots, full-page magazine placements, or Google display ads.
Yes, those are part of the picture, but in a PESO Model framework, paid media isn’t just about buying impressions; it’s about amplifying strategic content to the right audience at the right time, using the right technology, and, most importantly, doing it measurably.
The PESO Model reframes paid media as a precision lever, not a blunt instrument. It starts with content that’s already working—owned articles that resonate, earned coverage that builds trust, and shared media that sparks engagement.
Paid media becomes the tool that extends reach, accelerates discovery, and closes gaps in the marketing funnel we’re all chasing. And with AI tools layered in, it becomes smarter and more effective than ever, again, as long as it’s grounded in strategy.
For instance, platforms like GA4 or Meta’s Advantage+ use machine learning to optimize delivery across channels, getting you a bigger bang for your buck. But the real magic happens when your PESO strategy informs what content you boost, who you target, and why.
Let’s say you’ve got a high-performing article on data privacy and compliance within your industry. You can use AI to identify lookalike audiences, test headlines, or adjust creative in real time, but only because you’ve already defined its role within your integrated campaign.
Paid media isn’t just for awareness anymore. It’s for amplification, retargeting, and lead generation, and when it’s plugged into the PESO Model, AI doesn’t just make it efficient, it makes it strategic.
With paid media in the PESO Model, you’re not chasing reach for the sake of numbers; you’re using paid media to drive real, measurable business outcomes, guided by a clear, integrated roadmap.
Why AI Integration Only Works with the PESO Model in Place
Integration isn’t a nice-to-have in the PESO Model; it’s the entire point. Without integration, you’re running four disconnected media strategies and calling it a multichannel campaign.
Or, as we’ve seen many times before, you’re calling it a PESO Model campaign when what you really have are a bunch of tactics being executed in silos.
With integration, you’re building a marketing engine, and when you add AI into that equation, the efficiency, insight and output can be staggering, again, as long as it’s grounded in your PESO strategy.
The PESO Model is designed to support exactly this kind of strategic coordination. Owned media creates the foundation, earned media adds credibility, shared media extends reach, and paid media boosts results.
But integration is what connects them all into a single, purpose-driven campaign. As with other areas, AI accelerates what the model already enables.
So, imagine this: your owned blog post (developed using AI-informed keyword research) sparks a byline idea. ChatGPT helps you refine the pitch, which lands in a niche trade publication. That article is then used across your shared media channels, with AI curating pull quotes, captions, and video clips. Then, paid media amplifies the most engaging post, while GA4 reveals that users who saw the earned piece and clicked a paid ad are converting at 3x the rate.
That’s not a silo; that’s an integrated system.
AI can now flag content gaps, recommend repurposing paths, or automate reporting dashboards showing how your paid, earned, shared, and owned efforts work together. But those AI insights get lost in tactical noise without the PESO framework to coordinate efforts.
The future isn’t more tech, it’s better orchestration leveraging the technology and tools you have access to today. The PESO Model gives you the blueprint, AI gives you the horsepower, and integration is how you win.
Turning AI Ambition Into a Measurable PESO Model Strategy
If you’re leading a marketing or communications team and trying to figure out how to integrate AI effectively into your strategy without falling into the trap of chasing the latest tool or trend, the PESO Model can give you the structure you need.
It’s not about AI versus humans; it’s about building a system where AI enhances your expertise, automates what it should, and supports a strategy that’s grounded in measurable business outcomes and aligned with your organization’s goals.
That’s exactly what we’ve built our new Spin Sucks PESO Model Dream Team to support. Whether you need help launching a new PESO program, training your team, or creating a complete marketing and/or communications ecosystem that integrates AI and new technologies, we guide the way without sacrificing strategic focus.
Shoot me a note at TClaytor@ArmentDietrich.com, or connect with me on LinkedIn, and let’s make AI work smarter for you, your team, and your business.
