4 min read
What is the key to marketing success? Understanding your customers, and building and maintaining relationships with them by meeting their needs and wants. One type of marketing that can help you do this efficiently is owned marketing – but what is it and what are its specific benefits and best practices?
What Is Owned Marketing?
Owned marketing is a set of customer-focused strategies and tactics that are implemented through your own brand channels, also known as your owned media.
These owned channels include your website, app, blog, social media pages, email, SMS, forums and any other media that you own and have complete control over.
Owned marketing follows a pull marketing strategy. This means it is used to get your messages out to the market and to increase demand for products or services. In other words, it helps pull people towards your brand. It can also help you establish your brand and voice.
How Is It Different From Paid Marketing and Earned Marketing?
Owned marketing is a term often used in conjunction with the concepts of paid marketing and earned marketing, but what is the difference?
Paid Marketing
Paid marketing includes any marketing activities that you need to pay for, including paid ads, retargeting, native advertising, influencer marketing, sponsored content, and external events or conferences. Paid marketing adopts a push strategy – it pushes products and services out to customers.
Earned Marketing
Earned marketing is third-party endorsement or promotion of your brand achieved through your own efforts. By consistently driving value through your owned media, you can attract PR, customer ratings or reviews, word of mouth (digital and in-person), shares and retweets, interviews, and guest posts.
Earned marketing adopts a pull strategy and is arguably the most valuable as you can’t pay for it and you can’t create it yourself.
What Are the Benefits of Owned Marketing?
Owned marketing offers a number of significant benefits:
- Total control
Having control over your owned channels means you can control the entire customer experience. This means you can leverage your owned media assets to grow long-term relationships. Plus, you don’t have to worry about whether or not an ad was seen.
- Cost efficiency
Because you do not have to pay publishers and web owners to market for you, you can drive down customer acquisition costs. Once these channels are set up, the only investment needed is your own time and resources – or any outsourcing.
- Broad reach
Original content that ranks for long-tail keywords and targeted social media posts can expand the reach of your brand faster than other forms of media.
- Versatility
Because of the variety and versatility of owned marketing channels, you can communicate in different formats to suit your audience. For example, you can create different types of content and use different text and media.
- Longevity
As opposed to paid and earned media, which might disappear after each campaign or get lost online, owned marketing doesn’t have an expiry date. You have your channels as long as you want them and can keep your message in position indefinitely.
What Are the Best Practices for Successful Owned Marketing?
While owned marketing offers multiple benefits, to be successful, you need to be targeted, deliberate, and focus on the right people and channels.
- Set SMART Goals
No owned marketing strategy will succeed without the setting of SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, and Timely) goals. Goals that specifically outline what you want to achieve overall, and for each campaign, can act as your guiding light and a benchmark for your efforts.
- Collect and Use Data
To ensure your owned marketing efforts hit the mark, you need data. After all, the more you know about your audience, the more targeted your messaging can be. Your owned media is a valuable data source and therefore, drill into it with machine learning analytical software for accurate customer insights.
- Create Highly-Personalized Experiences
Use these data-driven insights to create highly-personalized brand experiences at every touchpoint – from your website landing pages to your email campaigns. AI-driven tools can help you understand user intent and interests for hyper-personalized experiences that go beyond action-based interactions.
- Reach Out at the Right Time
To deliver truly personalized experiences, you not only need to hit customers with the right message, but also need to hit them at the right time. Leverage AI tools to help you map cross-screen journeys enabling timely communication for maximum impact.
If you know your customers, owned marketing can be extremely effective for delivering personalized experiences. However, don’t expect immediate results. Owned marketing is a long game, but it is one worth playing.
Do you want to boost your owned marketing efforts? Here are 5 ways to capitalize on your owned channels . Have a question? We are here to help! Get in touch with one of our specialists today for an exclusive consultation.
