Generating media attention is often the difficult part of a company’s marketing strategy. You have great products, a fresh design, and a target audience – but how do you get people talking about your brand?
These days, there’s so much focus on ensuring your social media posts generate interest that we forget about other forms of advertising and marketing.
Well, if you’re stuck on how to develop a strong strategy for your brand then you’re in the right place. We’re going to take you through the three core types of media that marketers use to stand out:
Owned
Paid
Earned
These three media types encompass the entire landscape. You’ll naturally start thinking about how you deploy them on social media platforms – but it also includes websites, television, radio, print, search engines, and other publicity resources.
Read on to discover the difference between paid, earned, and owned media, and how you can utilize each type to nail your marketing goals and reach a broader audience.
In This Guide:
Understanding the Media Landscape
Defining Owned, Earned, and Paid Media
Creating a Compelling Owned Media Strategy
Maximizing Paid Media Impact
The Power of Earned Media
Measuring the Effectiveness of Owned, Earned and Paid Media
Integrating Media Channels for Success
Frequently Asked Questions
Understanding the Media Landscape
Before we dive into earned, paid, and owned media, it’s worth us taking a step back to understand why you want media attention at all. The current media landscape is a huge, ever-moving body of fact, opinion, news, and entertainment. Tastes shift and your brand can rise and fall very quickly.
While there’s still a role for traditional media outlets like newspapers and TV, it’s increasingly common for brands to focus on social media, like Facebook, X, Instagram, and TikTok. The market conditions dictate that you need a social media presence, as it often targets audiences more successfully than any other media.
The Role of Media in a Comprehensive Marketing Strategy
When it comes to creating a marketing strategy, therefore, you need to take the existing media landscape into account. It's impossible, for example, to target specific demographics unless you have an understanding of where they access their news, opinion, and entertainment.
After all, advertising goes where the market is.
If you want to make an impact in your industry, then you need a media strategy. Even B2B companies have to work on brand reputation and have a social media presence, even if it's only on LinkedIn.
Defining Owned, Earned, and Paid Media
In order to execute a marketing strategy, you need to look at ways to get your brand into the media spotlight. This is where earned, owned, and paid media come in.
These three types of media each have their own characteristics and can work well on their own. However, for the best results, it's worth using all three to have complete control over your marketing strategy.
We'll go into each type of media in more detail later – but here's a quick definition of each to get started.
Owned Media: Channels Controlled by Your Brand
Owned media is any channel that you control. The most obvious ones are your company website, blog, and social media profiles. These are the places where you can upload your content, edit it, and do whatever else you like with it.
All businesses need owned media to promote products and control their company brand. However, audiences know that you'll put a positive spin on everything, so you can't rely on owned media alone to be successful.
Paid Media: Channels Paid For by Your Brand
Paid media is effectively advertising. It's any channel you pay for to reach a target audience. We're talking ads, sponsored content, working with influencers, backlink SEO tactics, etc.
There's a lot of paid media opportunities available and platforms like Google, X, Facebook, and YouTube love it when you pay them to boost your content.
You can get higher views with paid media, but engagement rates can be much lower than organic content.
Earned Media: Channels Earned Through Brand Reputation
Earned media is the holy grail of media types. You achieve it when people share your content organically. This could come via customers sharing your amazing products on social media. News websites might write about your successful, impact-driven marketing campaigns. Perhaps you have a positive TV documentary made about your brand.
Earned media is really effective because customers are more likely to trust brands that are recommended by others. While celebrities and influencers can help build this trust – via paid media – there's no better channel than earned media!
>> Learn more about earned media here
Creating a Compelling Owned Media Strategy
Now, let's look at each of these media types in more detail. Owned media encompasses anything that sits under your brand's ownership. That's usually things like:
Websites
Blogs
Social media accounts
In-house publications
Leaflets and guides
Signage
If your company controls a media channel, then it's considered owned media.
Crafting Engaging Content for Owned Media
So, what do you do with owned media? Well, the benefit of this media type is you have full control of it. You can align your content to fit your marketing strategy and connect with your audience. It's easy to track results – especially on your social media profiles and website when using a tool like CisionOne.
It's also fairly cheap and easy to set up, which is why small businesses like local shops and cafes will usually start marketing via owned media. They'll make an Instagram account, create a Google Business Profile, and set up a website.
From here, you need to make your content engaging. This usually involves highlighting your products or services, offering behind-the-scenes glimpses of your brand, and being personable with your new customers.
Some brands, though, will be a little more mysterious. You see it with movie studios all the time. They'll release a small glimpse – perhaps only a graphic or a photo – of an upcoming movie on their social media accounts. Audiences wonder what's going on, and by doing so, they generate earned media buzz that originates from owned media.
Maximizing Paid Media Impact
Paid media is usually the next step for a small brand that is trying to branch out and inform an audience of their existence. For larger brands, it's crucial to have a paid media budget that can be spent on the following resources:
TV and radio ads
Newspaper and magazine ads
Social media ads
Google Ads
Direct mail
Pay influencers
Of course, paid media costs money. However, it can sometimes offer a guaranteed return. For example, Facebook can offer brands a paid ad slot that sits on people's profiles until it surpasses 100,000 views. In this way, you can control parts of the paid media landscape.
Best Practices for Paid Media Advertising
You need to do your research before engaging in paid media. You wouldn't place an ad in a gardening magazine if you're a beauty salon, because you know that's not where your audience is. Well, the same principle goes into any form of paid media.
Do some background research on your target audience before looking for publications – be it magazines, newspapers, or social media sites – to place your ads.
You need to ensure your content is engaging enough to attract people to click on the ads, or at the very least remember your brand.
You can then monitor your campaign via a tool like CisionOne and get a full understanding of the ROI from your paid ads.
The Power of Earned Media
Earned media is the hardest, but most rewarding of all three media types. Here, you rely on others to share your brand's products, its message, and its identity.
Earned media exists everywhere, including:
Social media
Word of mouth
Reviews
Published opinion (e.g., features, op-eds, etc.)
The benefit of earned media is you don't have to do anything for the word to spread. Just be yourself! However, the drawback is you have no control over the narrative. So, if negative rumors spread, then you'll need to deploy an owned media and potentially a paid media campaign to smooth over any public relations issues.
Strategies for Earning Media Coverage
Smart PR is the best way to get good earned media coverage. A well-crafted press release can lead to earned media coverage, enhancing visibility and engagement for your product. You need to be proactive and build relationships with editors and journalists. Send them what they need and be sure to give them an exclusive now and again. That way your brand gets into their “Top 10 Gifts for Xmas” type of articles.
There is also a huge power in influencer partnerships, where individuals authentically promote content about you. The lines between paid and earned media can blur here. However, other social media users can spread the positive message of your brand without the need of influencers.
They do this through user-generated content. It might be reviewing a new beauty product, or sharing a new album with friends. However they do it, usually it’s a good thing if people are talking about and sharing your brand.
>> Now read this: 9 earned media strategies
Measuring the Effectiveness of Owned, Earned and Paid Media
The good thing about paid, earned, and owned media is it's pretty easy to measure all three types. The best way to do it is to use a tool like CisionOne to oversee all mentions of your brand. You can measure what campaigns have attracted an audience, and what happened with your less successful efforts.
Google Analytics is a great place to oversee your paid and earned media performance on your website. Likewise, you can subscribe to LinkedIn Premium, X Premium, and other social media accounts to get deep data on your media.
Remember, it's only through the act of measuring your content and tracking each media channel that you'll have a sense of its success. You can then figure out your ROI and take your learnings into your next marketing campaign.
Integrating Media Channels for Success
Brands rarely stick to one media type. Even a small start-up will quickly evolve from owned media, look at the impact paid media could have on its business, and try to generate a buzz from earned media.
If you can combine your entire marketing strategy in one place, then it's a lot easier to manage. Here's how to do it.
Combining Paid, Earned, and Owned Media for the Best Results
Whether you're working for yourself or as part of a wider team of marketers, it's important you combine your media channels into one platform. Only then can you see the effectiveness of each campaign and media type. For example, you might notice your short-form videos are doing really well for audience engagement on TikTok, but no one is watching them on X.
So, how do you integrate? Well, you can use various individual media tools like Google Analytics, LinkedIn Premium, the Meta Business Suite, etc. to oversee your results on each media type. Or you can use a tool like CisionOne to bring everything under one roof.
You can track your engagement and ROI across all media types and thousands of channels. All you need is access to your owned media profiles, data from your paid media campaigns, and an understanding of your brand. You can begin monitoring your media strategy from the platform and see what media types are working, what aren't, and what you could be doing better.
Frequently Asked Questions
By now, you hopefully have a good basic understanding of paid, owned, and earned media. However, if you want to know more, then check out the answers to these frequently asked questions.
In what ways does paid media complement earned media within a comprehensive media strategy?
Paid media is great for amplifying your earned media. If you get positive press coverage, for example, then use paid social media ads to share it with more people. You're paying to spread a good message sparked by someone else. This is better than direct advertising as the message carries more credibility.
What are the key indicators of successful earned media, and how do they impact brand loyalty?
A good return on earned media is high engagement. If people are sharing your story then they're doing the work for you. Look for metrics like social media shares, mentions, and positive reviews. Be aware of sentiment, though. High earned media engagement that's all negative could be really damaging for your brand.
What strategies can businesses employ to transition smoothly from an owned media launch to significant earned media coverage?
If you launch an owned media campaign, then you need to ensure it's newsworthy enough for people to take an interest. Make sure it's sharable and reach out to influencers and journalists who might be interested. Movie studios do this all the time when launching a new trailer. You can also use paid media – such as ads – to get your message out there and encourage more earned media.
