A concept that you may remember from Introduction to Marketing is the idea of Paid, Owned, & Earned media. This is just a convenient way of organizing our media into understandable chunks. And we can just as easily organize our digital media the same way.
When it comes to creating value for our customers, it’s important to know all of the different places you can expend your marketing efforts to get the biggest pay off. Since you’re probably already familiar with the concept of Paid, Owned & Earned Media, this comic might resonate with you.
Now, I know explaining a joke never makes it funnier, but I want to walk you through each of the panels is this comic because, while funny, it actually hits pretty close to home for a lot of digital marketers.
First, Paid media. As you know, this encompasses all of the media we use to reach consumers through paid means. In a nutshell, advertising.
In the comic, this is illustrated as a billboard. But this could just as easily be a magazine or newspaper print ad, TV commercial, radio spot, or heck, even a banner towed by an airplane. In the digital realm, paid media might be a Google ad on a search engine results page on your laptop, a Facebook ad on a tablet computer, Youtube preroll video on your mobile phone, or any number of other digital-based advertising opportunities. As the comic shows, it’s essentially buying the attention of the consumer. We’ll talk a lot more about Paid media when we get to the “Communicating Value with Digital Tools” section of the course.
Next up is Owned media. These are, of course, all of the forms of media that we “own” or have direct control over.
With traditional owned media it might be sending a direct mail to a marketing list we own, sending out press releases, a print newsletter, or even using a utilizing a retail location in new ways. In the digital realm, owned media might be your website, social media accounts, Youtube channel. Again, anything that we have direct control over to get our message out.
So, for example, here’s an email from Adorama informing me about a special promotion they have going on. I’ve purchased things from Adorama in the past and chances are they’re analytics is sophisticated enough to know that I have recently been looking at digital cameras. This is a highly targeted direct mail over an owned media channel.
Email is an owned media channel because Adorama owns the email marketing database list that they use within their email marketing system. Utilizing owned media is about getting the most from the resources you directly own and control. What can you add to the website that could provide additional value to your customers or prospects? What databases can you leverage for email marketing or customer insight to improve your offerings. Owned media is one of, if not the most, important aspect of digital marketing.
Earned media is the most elusive of the three, because you have no control over it.
Traditional earned media might be exposure on the nightly news, a word-of-mouth mention between two friends, even a famed star from the Michelin guide. Examples of digital earned media might include celebrity mentions, uh pseudo-celebrity mentions, ratings and reviews on the thousands of ecommerce and reviews sites, and electronic word-of-mouth on social media networks. Oh wait, let me update that for you. When you think of earned media, think of the stories bloggers, newspapers and magazines run, all of the comments your customers make about you online, the reviews and ratings left online. There’s a reason why firms craft press releases and send them out every time their CEO sneezes. You set the budget for your paid advertising, and you own that fancy website, but you’re completely at the mercy of others when it comes to earned media. Well, ok. Maybe not completely at their mercy. There are a lot of things you can do to,well, earn that earned media.
Now, the last frame of the comic, the punchline, funny as it is, is actually the truth for a lot of firms. The reality is that no matter how much time and effort you invest time or money in paid, owned, and earned media, the consumer doesn’t owe you anything. To resonate with consumers your message has to have authenticity. To keep customers your product or service has to provide real value. That’s what this course is about, finding ways to create, deliver, communicate, and capture value. For authenticity we can turn to user-generated content and electronic word-of-mouth. And that’s what we’re covering next session.