Have you heard the buzzwords in the digital world regarding the value of owned, earned, and paid media in digital strategy? Think of it as a Venn diagram, with each piece contributing to the overall success of your digital marketing strategy. Join me today as we get a little deeper into this topic!
Quote:
“I thought I knew who I was targeting, and when I took a step back and really thought about the types of folks I love to work with, I had to refine who that person was and so when you take the time to really round out the owned and earned media, it gives you an opportunity to get a better, clearer snapshot of who you’re targeting when you finally are going to move into that paid media piece.”
Topics and Timestamps:
- Facebook, Instagram and Whatsapp outage (00:34.9- 01:31.3)
- Significance of owned media (01:32.0- 02:06.7)
- Owned media channels (02:06.7- 02:49.9)
- Acquisition of earned media (02:51.2- 03:40.7)
- Paid media marketing (03:41.9- 04:00.4)
- Refining target market (04:29.4- 05:06.4)
- Importance of data in paid media (05:07.2- 05:37.3)
- Digital marketing trifecta (05:38.1- 06:18.7)
- Free website audit (06:44.1- 07:12.4)
Thank you for coming along for the ride, and I hope to see you again soon. Wherever you get your podcasts, subscribe to the podcast, and I’ll see you in the next episode!
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Transcription
Episode 2 I Own the land: Owned, Earned and Paid Media Explained
Are you ready to take your digital marketing to the next level, using tried and true methods and emerging trends? It’s Ashleigh and you’re listening to the digitally grounded podcast. We’ll talk about all things digital marketing from sales funnels and flywheels, social media, email marketing, and more. So if you’re ready to take your marketing to the next level, keep listening.
Today’s topic is about owned, earned, and paid media. So, if there’s one thing that we learned this week with Facebook going down and not having access to Instagram, it is that your own presence is so important and that’s what we do with Digitally Grounded. We help businesses transform their online presence so that it’s working for them 24/7 365.
So, as I mentioned, Facebook going down this week was phenomenally bad for a lot of different businesses. Some businesses I read were actually could not communicate with their customers because they were using Facebook messenger primarily, or they were using WhatsApp primarily.
There are plenty of businesses out there that don’t have a website or just have a website that is functioning as a digital brochure and not really leveraging an email list on top of that so they had no way to connect with their customers for that day.
I want you to just stop and think about what that would do to your business if you didn’t have those owned media pieces-because owned media is things like owning your own space online so that means having your website, having access to your customers outside of any other channel, email is great for that, having contact information for your clients and potential customers, and all of that.
Those things are key because if you have that information, it really doesn’t matter what goes down or what algorithms change. You still have access to your people. So when you’re thinking about this whole digital marketing trifecta of owned, earned, and paid media, I like to think of it as almost like a Venn diagram with three circles.
Owned media is your space that you own online, so your domain, your hosting that supports your website, and the presence and experience that you give your customers. On top of that, there’s also the email list, which is another big point when it comes to owned media. Once you have access to your customers’ and potential customers’ information, you can contact them outside of any channel, that is content, and that is media that you own outside of any other entity as I mentioned.
Earned is where we get into that social media side of things, so earned media is when you’re putting things out there, you’re providing value to people and they are rewarding that by sharing something or liking your post or commenting on something. Those sorts of interactions fall in that earned media. Earned media can also be when it comes to going back to the website, things like optimizing the content on your website for SEO or search engine optimization. That is the organic search results and all of that. So if you’re creating all this wonderful content for your clients and customers, it only makes sense for you to optimize it so that it can reach the right people and that is where the earned media circle sort of rounds out.
And then we have the paid media, and paid media is things like doing Google ads, sponsorships, doing social media ads, like even with Facebook ads, anything where you’re exchanging money for that space to present or promote your offers. So, when you’re thinking about this whole trifecta of owned, earned, and paid, I think in the early stages of business, a lot of times, paid media just kind of falls by the wayside, and that’s fine.
I personally think that it’s more important to focus on owned and earned, especially in the beginning, because having that organic search engine optimization or that organic growth of your presence and building trust with your audience, all of that is extremely important and you need to take time to actually get to know the customer, get to know the person that you’re targeting because many times we think we know who that person is and this happened in my business in the early stages, I thought I knew who I was targeting, and when I took a step back and really thought about the types of folks I love to work with, I had to refine who that person was and so when you take the time to really round out the owned and earned media, it gives you an opportunity to get a better, clearer snapshot of who you’re targeting when you finally are going to move into that paid media piece.
For business owners that are already doing paid media, especially now with all the algorithm changes and how people are counted and analytics being what they are, every entity doesn’t necessarily count the things the same way so it’s really important to know what your numbers are, what your costs are, and how the data is being analyzed or how the data is being interpreted so you can really make a clear decision about how that paid media is going to be run.
One other thing that I wanted to mention is when it comes to this overall trifecta of owned, earned, and paid media, it all is a part of a greater holistic series, right? There’s a greater rounding out that needs to happen when you’re talking about building your business, building business development, connecting with your clients, and staying connected with those clients so that they keep coming back to you because you keep giving them value and helping them out. And that is a part of a greater holistic marketing campaign but it is so important to own the land versus just borrowing it. Right?
So, that is the topic of today’s episode, and I just wanted to encourage you today to just take a look at your campaigns, take a look at your web presence and ask yourself, is there anything that I can refine here? Is there anything that could be revamped? And just take a little review. I’d be happy to invite you to get a free audit. I offer web presence audits, I can take a look at things for you, give you a quick rundown of some things that you can do to help revamp or help reach a goal that you’re trying to reach and that is very easy to do, that the information in the show notes will have the links and you can go sign up for that and we can do a free audit together and get you started on creating the owned and earned media presences specifically owned presences that are really going to help your business flourish.
All right. That’s all we have for today. I’ll see you in the next episode!
The Digitally Grounded podcast is written and produced by me, Ashleigh Lindsay, our editor is Jessica Marshall, and our music is ‘Summer Hip Hop Upbeat’ by Lightbeats. Thanks for listening!
