Every company wants to attract attention to their brand and generate leads for business growth. Good marketers know that creating engaging content is foundational for brand awareness and lead generation. But sometimes the value of how to best promote marketing content using media channels is overlooked. Marketers can find it confusing to select the right media types, time-consuming to integrate media with other marketing tactics and worry about making expensive mistakes by getting the media mix wrong.
No matter what the size of your business, using a mix of different media types is a highly effective way to build brand reach and generate leads. Media types are generally described as three main categories: paid, owned and earned. Each media type offers different amounts of reach and scalability and uses different amounts of budget, time and effort to create impact. Each media type also has specific relevance to how your marketing efforts help move customers through your sales and marketing funnels.
Combining paid, earned and owned media is important to make sure the right audience sees your content and that enough numbers of the right audience see your content. Achieving that balance will deliver stronger brand awareness and better lead generation.
What are the differences between paid, owned and earned media?
There’s no doubt that blending all three media types will help grow your brand, attract new business and keep existing customers. While all three are valuable components of any marketing plan, it’s important to understand the differences between each media type.
- Paid media is when you pay money to use a third-party channel to share your messages. Examples include sponsorships, paid search results and paid advertising on websites or social media networks.
- Owned media defines the content types across locations your business fully controls. The most obvious example of owned media is your website. Blog sites and social media channels, which extend your online presence beyond your website, are also examples of owned media.
- Earned media describes any content generated for your brand that you haven’t written, or paid for, directly. This media type is always published by a third-party, such as press, analysts or customers. It is defined as ‘earned’ because when third parties like what you’re saying or doing so much, they’re prepared to publicly endorse your brand. That is, you’ve ‘earned’ their mention. Examples of earned media include influencers, review sites, social media posts, a news story or a TV news segment.
How can paid, owned and earned media help your business?
When designing campaigns to grow a brand and generate leads, it is rare for stand-alone marketing tactics to succeed. The same is true of paid, owned and earned media. Think of the three media types working together as a three-legged stool. Each has an individual role to play in amplifying brand awareness and lead generation efforts, but each is also strengthened when integrated together.
The three types of media help businesses grow because each supports a different part of the sales and marketing funnel.
- Paid media makes it possible to specifically target unique audiences and is ideal for reaching customers and prospects across every stage of your sales and marketing funnel.
- Owned media is a powerful tactic to engage audiences who are already moving through your funnel. This audience already knows your brand and, therefore, are ready to consume content that is a layer deeper than brand awareness.
- Earned media, by virtue of third parties talking about your brand, is ideal for attracting new audiences into the top of the sales and marketing funnel. Imagine how instrumental the right influencer could be in spreading your brand’s reach to new audiences and boosting your brand’s credibility.
Does my business need all three media types?
Best practice marketing plans generally include paid, owned and earned media types for three reasons. First, today’s audiences read content on multiple platforms. Sometimes audiences are loyal to a particular platform but often audiences skip between platforms. If you use only one media type, you risk losing some of your audience attention.
Second, the marketing rule of 7. This age-old marketing rule states that an audience needs interact with your brand an average of 7 times before making a purchase[1]. Following that logic, the more media types your business uses, the more likely your target audience is to see your brand and interact with your content.
Third, average attention spans are diminishing. It’s possible your audience will skim over content delivered through one media type, only to engage with it through another media type. For example, someone could easily miss your marketing message in their LinkedIn news feed, but if their favourite Instagram influencer mentions your brand, they suddenly notice your content.
Given that each media type influences a different part of the sales and marketing funnel, we recommend clients to integrate at least two, but preferably all three, media types into marketing plans.
An example of paid, owned and earned media working together
Combining all three media types together provides a highly effective strategy to grow your brand awareness and generate leads. Here’s an example of using all three types together to grow awareness and generate leads for a new solution your business is launching. Your marketing plan might include tactics to:
- engage an influencer to help promote your offering to new audiences (paid media)
- load engaging content to your own website to describe the new offering and explain its benefits (owned media)
- run social media campaigns to drive more traffic to your own website, some of which is paid activity (to reach specific audiences) and some of which your marketing team manages (paid and owned media)
- publish a blog from one of your company’s thought leaders to highlight the benefits of the new offering (owned media)
- brief journalists and analysts on how your new solution can benefit users, which they use to create articles for their company websites and social network followers (earned media).
The more media types you use to share your company’s messages, the more likely it is you’ll contact the target audience at the right point in their buying process to help nurture their interest or close a sale.
Getting started with paid, owned and earned media
There is no template for how to get the mix of paid, owned and earned media just right for your unique business requirements and marketing needs. It can take some testing and trialling to figure out what combination has most impact on your brand awareness and lead generation goals.
If you’d like to learn more, the Outsource team offers expert marketing advice to get the most out of the budget, time and energy you invest in paid, owned and earned media. Contact us for a time to talk more.
[1] https://www.b2bmarketing.net/en-gb/resources/blog/marketing-rule-7-and-why-its-still-relevant-b2b
