Owned, Earned, & Paid Media: A Quick Guide
Owned, earned, and paid media are valuable tools that help promote and connect your business with potential customers. Building an effective digital marketing strategy requires understanding the differences between these three media types and how to use them to reach your business and marketing objectives.
If you’re new to digital marketing, these concepts might be confusing. In this post, we’ll explain the difference between these media types and how they can be used to create a diverse and successful digital marketing strategy.
Owned Media
- Website
- Apps
- Blog
- Newsletters
- Email marketing
- Organic social media posts
With owned media, you can control when you publish content, where it’s published, and how it’s worded. With a well-planned content strategy, you can utilize owned media to boost your business’s visibility and build a rapport with your audience.
Generally, owned media is considered “free,” but maintaining your website and creating engaging content will require time and effort. Producing or refreshing content regularly to generate and maintain engagement is crucial; SEO services can improve your owned media’s return on investment by taking some of that workload off you.Earned Media
- Reviews
- Social media shares, mentions, and reposts
- Backlinks
- Press releases and news features
- Rankings on search engine results pages (SERPs)
Earned media has a couple of downsides. First, you usually have no control over what people say about your business. Second, it can be challenging to track and respond to social commentary and customer reviews without help from reputation management solutions.
To set your business up for positive earned media, use your owned and paid media channels to create and promote helpful content that generates value for your audience. And don’t forget to ask your happy customers for reviews!Paid Media
- Paid search/PPC (Google Ads and Microsoft Ads)
- Paid social (Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, LinkedIn, etc.)
- Display ads (Site banners, video ads, etc.)
- Sponsored and boosted posts and content
- Tradition media (TV and radio spots, print ads, billboards, etc.)
- Retargeting ads
- Geofencing ads
Paid media typically offers a faster return on investment than owned or earned media and more precise audience targeting capabilities based on location, interests, habits, and demographics. It also allows you to test different messaging and measure what’s working and what needs improvement with relative ease.
The biggest downside to paid media is that the traffic goes away once you stop paying. Depending on your industry, location, and how well you manage and optimize your paid media campaigns, it can also be expensive. That’s why educating yourself on the advertising networks or working with an experienced partner is crucial to success.Combining Media Types for Success
Owned, earned, and paid media have advantages and downsides. An effective digital marketing strategy will incorporate all three media types around your business objectives (and SMART goals) to help your business grow.
If you need help putting your digital marketing on the path to success or need to audit your current marketing efforts, SEO Rocket can help! Schedule a free, no-obligation consultation with us today.
