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Owned media, earned media, paid media, shared media … these terms get thrown around a lot and can become confusing. Here’s which you must have, which gets the best results, which gets you the quickest results, which one keeps on giving.
We’re sharing what these terms mean and the differences between them all. Plus – which one do we recommend that you use? And what’s the fifth type that you don’t hear people talking about but that your business definitely shouldn’t overlook?
One of the services we provide is helping entrepreneurs pull together and integrate these and other types of marketing strategies. This is the type of focus that your business needs to have when you’re trying to grow your business to a million dollars plus – we know this because we’ve helped multiple companies grown to multi-million and multi-billion-dollars.
Let’s talk about the standard trifecta of terms that you probably hear most often – owned, earned, paid – along with a separate distinctive category of shared media.
This is when you are leveraging your own platform that you own, create and control. This can be something like your website, your own email list, and even direct mail.
Some people put social media into this group as well, but we put it in it’s own group of shared media because it actually overlaps a couple, and is different enough that it should be its own.
You need to make sure that owned media is always part of your marketing strategy.
Shared media is content your brand creates to share on third-party platforms like social media – Facebook, YouTube, Twitter. Think of it like a rented space; you don’t own the platform but you do own the message. It’s a hybrid – it’s sort of like owned media yet it’s not because since you don’t own social media platforms, bad things can happen. Your account can get shut down, you can get blocked … you don’t own the space; you can only own the message that you’re putting on it.
You also don’t own the message that OTHER people may be putting on it, which is a very important distinction.
This type of media can also encompass collaborative content, such as when we have a guest entrepreneur come onto our podcast and we share information about their business. For them, it’s a hybrid of owned and earned media but it would be grouped into shared media.
Shared media can also include some types of user-generated content when you’re encouraging your followers to share it.
Earned media is part of the trifecta of types of content that you’ve probably heard about most often (owned | earned | paid). This is when other people talk or share about your business, product, or content.
This is most forms of user-generated content.
It could be word-of-mouth which is still the BEST type of marketing that your business can have. It can include press and public relations such as being interviewed on local or national press; reviews and testimonials.
These are things given voluntarily by other people. You aren’t forcing or paying them to do it; they’re talking about you mostly by their own volition. Even media coverage (when it’s not a paid placement) is because the media outlet thinks you have something newsworthy.
You can see where user-generated content can fall into this category, while some types of it – such as responding to a contest or some way that you’re encouraging them to speak about your business – would fall more into the shared media category.
As you likely already know this covers advertising and any type of paid or sponsored content. When you are paying to leverage a third party, such as pay-per-click advertising on social media.
It also includes paid influencers or microinfluencers (even when they are only “paid” via product or service and not cash), sponsorships such as something official (Like we had coordinated with the Dallas Cowboys) or sponsoring someone else’s post (when a paid influencer adds a sponsored tag on their post).
This also encompasses traditional paid advertising media such as radio, televisions, magazines, newspapers, billboards.
Any time you are paying to have your message put somewhere, it falls under paid media.
Out of these four, which one does your business need?
The answer is: all of them
It’s the WHEN that depends.
We understand that a brand new business just being started may not have the bandwidth to get press coverage on a regular basis – or perhaps at all. And press coverage can be one of the most widely spread and trustworthy platforms (after word of mouth).
Or maybe you don’t have a big budget right now to squeeze in any paid media like pay-per-click advertising.
Think of these types of media like a stool. We all know that if a stool only has one or two legs, it’s not going to be very sturdy and will fall over. However, as soon as you have three legs, or even better four, you have a much more stable base.
(I still prefer four over three. I have a cute little bistro table outside on the balcony that only has three legs, and if you put something just a bit heavier in just the right spot it can still topple!)
These four media categories together form part of a holistic marketing strategy. Marketing isn’t anywhere nearly as effective when you are doing it in silos, which is why you always want to integrate and think of your marketing tasks as part of a whole.
Although, as I always say, if you’re just starting out and don’t know what to do, or even if you’ve been in business for a while and don’t know what to do, start with anything – it’s still better than doing nothing.
All of these types of media encompass your ability to tell a compelling story about your business, which is a critical part of your overall branding.
Some of the cons are that there are no guarantees. It’s not guaranteed that when you put a message out, anyone is going to see it or respond.
Also, company-owned communication isn’t as trusted as some of the other channels. No surprise there; you’re talking about yourself.
It also takes time to scale. You can’t put a message out and then expect in a week to have a ton of sales. Yes, it can happen, but it’s rare to go viral. I see brand new entrepreneurs all of the time say ‘I don’t understand. I set up my website two weeks and I haven’t had any sales.’ Welcome to the world of entrepreneurship.
And if it does happen, it may be a fluke accident that you won’t be able to recreate. You won’t have learned what you need to know to consistently achieve the same results. But you can’t count on your owned media always reaching the right audience.
If this is the only type of content and messaging that you’re doing, it’s going to take you longer. You’ll still get there, but these organic methods do usually take longer.
The biggest pro for owned media is that it is the ONLY place where you can control 100% of the message about your business.
It’s usually highly cost efficient. Even if you’ve had a professional designed website and paid several thousands of dollars, it should have a lot of functionality designed to actually help you attract and convert clients … so it should be very cost-effective in the long term.
It’s not costing you to post each time you add a blog article to your website or additional information. It’s not costing you every time you add a message to Facebook or Twitter or other shared media.
It has versatility. You can pretty much do what you want on your website since you own the platform (although third-party platforms have guidelines you have to consider). You’re also talking to a niche audience (even though I think the term “niche ” gets thrown around a lot, sometimes incorrectly which confuses entrepreneurs about what they really need to consider about their niche.)
The best ting is that it has longevity. Any message you put out on owned media is there for a long time, and over time that content starts to snowball. So while organic marketing will take you longer, it also lasts longer unlike the paid media that you will need to keep paying to keep getting the results.
It’s clutter. Think about all of the ads you see on platforms like social media. You scroll through and it’s almost spammy.
There are declining response rates around some of the pay-per-click advertising platforms such as on Facebook. Partially because of the overwhelming number of advertisers on the platform – Facebook has millions of advertisers and you’re always competing for space against tons of others. Also because of the recent iOS 14 updates.
Poor credibility because the message is coming from you and a message from you will never be trusted as much as a message coming from an uninvolved third party.
It can help you immediately generate more demand. While owned and shared media are long-term strategies, when you add paid media your message will get out quicker and to more people.
It’s easier to scale, and you do still control the message.
Paid media can act like a catalyst that feeds your own platform – it’s sending people to your website – and can help create opportunities for earned media since you will be seen more and more often, which can help attract some of that earned media.
Often you have no control over earned media.
I think about all of the times I have been interviewed by television news crews over the years while on the job, those short news clips, we would have a super 10 minute conversation where I provide really insightful and intelligent response to the reporter’s or producer’s questions, and they always seem to air the worst 15 seconds of the entire interview where I wasn’t sharing the most important information and sounded completely stupid.
That’s how it can happen. They found something in that 15 seconds that they thought was important for their viewing audience, and that’s what they chose.
Sometimes earned media can be negative. If there’s a story and your business is part of that business it can come out negatively and you may not have control of the narrative.
It can be hard to scale because not everyone is beating down your door to interview you. It can also be hard to measure.
Getting earned media is a result of a well coordinated and planned marketing strategy so it can sometimes be difficult to obtain if you don’t have access to resources such as some of our own PR professionals who are skilled in obtaining media coverage.
This is the most credible source of media that there is because it is the closest to word of mouth.
Remember this can also encompass reviews and testimonials.
A Nielsen study shows that 88% of global respondents trust recommendations from people they know more than any other channel. You’re going to trust a recommendation from the person sitting right next to you right now (assuming that you know them) than you would from me if you don’t know me.
2/3 of people trust reviews and opinions and opinions posted online, and editorial content from newspapers and magazines… although some trust in online reviews have taken a hit in recent years due to some of the things we’ve seen go on with that in the news.
It’s still trusted more than any communication that you personally put out.
It’s transparent and lives on – it also has longevitiy similar to some of your own media.
People don’t talk about this a lot and some businesses aren’t even aware that it should be considered, but it’s just as important, and that is internal media.
This is things that you share with your own team.
If your business is more than just you as a solo entrepreneur, then you need to be considering internal media and communications. You need to think about what you’re sharing with your team, when and why; have a strategy around it. The frequency and cadence with which you share it. How they can access it.
Plus you will want your own team to be able to share your external communications, such as having some type of repository where the team can go grab a correct message that they can share on their own social media.
If you have a team, this internal communication strategy is just as important as the other types of media that you hear about most often.
and find out how we coordinate these types of media strategies holistically for ourselves, our clients and others who need it.
In this mini class we cover:
https://courses.vickywu.us/courses/5-types-of-media-mini-class/
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