The three doors to right business marketing: Owned, Paid, and Earned Media
The last decade witnessed a boom of new web portals so much so that several businesses today have their complete existence online. With SEO, keywords, and website traction becoming household names, the awareness regarding business marketing, particularly online marketing, has shot up like never before. Even the Covid-19 pandemic couldn’t slow down the online medium. If anything, people consumed more online content during the Coronavirus-induced lockdown.
Now, if you think of business marketing as a building, then — owned, paid, and earned media — are certainly its pillars. Any individual working in the domain of communication lives by these three types of media content. However, businesses, MSMEs in particular, often tend to overlook the benefits of these pillars in ensuring them greater brand visibility and thereby, higher growth. Before delving into their advantages, let’s quickly understand the difference between them.
Owned media: The Harvard Business Journal defines owned media as “anything under companies’ direct control such as websites, newsletters, catalogs, and blogs”. At the risk of oversimplification, it refers to any content that is owned, created, and distributed by you, and that you have complete control over.
The more owned media content a business has, the larger is its digital footprint. The several sources of owned media are — the content of your website, white papers, blog posts, catalogs, video, podcasts, testimonials, case studies, and employee stories, among others.
Advertising experts say that while the paid and earned media get the lion’s share of attention, owned media will be the battleground for businesses in the coming times as this is the source content about a business, its values, its team, its services/products, and much more.
Paid media: As they say — where the money goes, the focus follows. This holds true for paid media content, which requires a rather decent amount of investment from a company. As the name suggests, paid media is what you pay for, like — advertising and sponsorships. Paid media content can be obtained on social media platforms, websites, blogs, publications, and others.
After the advent of social media platforms, many businesses have started thinking of paid media as archaic or and unnecessary. However, paid media remains one of the quickest ways to drive traffic. Moreover, the return on investment is easier to track in the case of paid media. Not to forget, paid media has been hailed as the best way to reach a newer audiences and newer territories. The most prevalent types of paid media are — search engine ads, paid social media, banner ads, native ads, out-of-home advertising, digital out-of-home advertising, and newspaper/magazine ads, among others.
Earned media: Any publicity secured through organic means falls under the bracket of earned media content. This type of coverage is probably the most contested space among the businesses as audiences have greater trust in the earned media content. This is subtle, clever, and innovative marketing.
Here, the role of advertising platforms and PR strategists increase many folds as they are the ones trying to make sure that your crucial business developments become newsworthy content for major media publications. Earned media not only paves the way for a bigger audience base but also for potential mergers, acquisitions, and most importantly funding.
Major sources of earned media are — word of mouth, reviews, and testimonials; blog posts about your business or product; magazine, website, and newspaper articles; shares/retweets of your business content, mentions on any social media platforms, among others.
Why your business needs a right mix?
Now that the definitions are clear, it is important to note that these three types of media content are not be dealt with in silos. Rather there has to be a right mix of the three so as to maximize their impact. While the owned media forms the bedrock of your communication strategy, paid media secure new markets for you, and the earned media gives your business the much-needed validation.
Several enterprises think of the marketing cost as an elastic one and trim it at the first hint of a budget crunch. However, it must be acknowledged that the right marketing with a targeted approach can do wonders for a business and change its fortunes. Professional help in communication strategy helps you ensure that the content you send out is unique, clearly structured, well-presented, search engine optimized, stylistically appealing, relevant, and thought-provoking.
Today, more and more companies are hiring online marketing firms as they understand how effective media planning — via owned, paid, and earned media — can transform the landscape of their businesses.
So, shift the gears of your communication strategy to leave your competitors behind!
About the author:
Neha Bahri, Founder, Director, Bconnect Communications