Gaining exposure for your brand is a must. Word of mouth and product reviews will get you so far, but ultimately you need multiple types of media and a great digital marketing strategy to get your products or services in front of the right audience. Marketers often talk about owned media, earned media, and paid media. Each of these media types and adjacent strategies comes with its own set of benefits, and understanding them can help you hone your brand message and keep your marketing efforts consistent and effective.
Difference Between Earned, Owned and Paid Media
Your business may have access to more media than you realize. From positive comments on Facebook to an advertising campaign that went viral, there are plenty of opportunities to highlight people’s love for your brand. But which media type is which, and what strategy should you choose for the most brand exposure? Let’s take a quick look at the differences between earned media, owned media, and paid media.
Earned Media
Earned media means media created by engagement with customers, or even potential customers. People commenting on your fabulous product images or sharing your latest blog — that’s earned media. You can talk about how many hits your last article got, thank people for sharing, or reshare images of people using your products and services. It’s free marketing material that you earned via positive engagements with your user base. This includes feedback and engagement created via public relations exercises.
Public relations strategies are also a great way to achieve earned media placements where a target outlet covers a story about your brand, offers a stakeholder comment for an industry subject, or even podcast and other speaking opportunities. All of these tactics can lead to better brand awareness and an overall positive reputation.
Owned Media
Very simply, owned media is media that you have created or control. This can be your brand or product logos, slogans, images, blog content, website content, the products or services themselves, and anything you create to share on your social media platforms. Did you create an e-book based on expertise around your niche? That’s owned media. It’s often a powerful tool to place you as an authority within your market and ideal for generating trust with consumers or B2B buyers. Focus on creating content that adds value to your leads, naturally coaxing them down the sales funnel.
Paid Media
Our final media type is paid media. This is sponsored content, paid advertisements — anything you pay a platform for. You can combine paid media with owned or earned media; for example, you could pay Facebook to promote a new white paper you just wrote about factors impacted by your top product or business values. The goal of paid content is to extend the reach of your company, increasing brand awareness and exposure while broadening your target demographics, to drive sales and revenue upward.
Media Strategies for the Best Brand Exposure
It probably won’t surprise you to learn that there is no single, definitive media type that you can rely on for an effective media strategy. That’s not to say they don’t all have their uses — because they definitely do. Owned media positions you as an expert or trusted party in your field. Paid media puts your products in front of potential customers you may not have had contact with otherwise. Earned media demonstrates existing customer engagement, which organically generates further engagement while naturally boosting your brand’s reputation. But any one of these strategies on its own is nowhere near as powerful as combining all three media types for a full suite of marketing efforts with the furthest reach.
Utilizing your social media channels is a must. According to social media expert Sprout, nearly 4 billion people are now active across social media. That’s around half the world’s population. Every time someone leaves a comment on a picture or video you share, every time they share that content, and every time someone quotes one of your blogs, that’s earned media that’s entirely free for you to use as part of your marketing strategy. Combine that with sponsored ad placements and the right software to track who is clicking those ads and how effective they are, and suddenly you’re using all three media types to engage with a steadily growing audience.
Use Paid, Earned, and Owned Media With Help From Fifth & Cor
Figuring out your media marketing strategy needn’t be a daunting task when you have the right support and partnerships. Fifth & Cor is a marketing and innovation company focused on helping businesses make the most of all their channels, from spectacular content creation to paid media channels that really work. Contact Fifth and Cor to help you create a marketing strategy that encompasses all three media types and watch your business grow.