If you’ve ever tried to get into a very exclusive club, you might starting getting creative with the different ways you can get in.
The longest way might be just to get in on your own merits. Get to know the people who are hanging out at the club, but start by meeting up with them in other places. Once they get to know, like, and trust you, they’ll invite you to go clubbing with them.
Another option is to get to know the bouncer, or better yet, the owner of the club. When you get in, you probably won’t know anyone else there, but because someone vouched for you, everyone will automatically assume you belong there. From there, it’s just a matter of the rest of them getting to know you before you’re in.
Last, but not least, is the option of bribing the bouncer. No one likes that person, least of all the people who put in the time to build the necessary relationships to get into the club, but once you’re in, you’ll have an opportunity to win them over.
Trying to get your brand in front of your target audience is not that different from trying to get into an exclusive club. The first option relies on your owned media, the second option is earned media, and the third option is paid media.
Unlike getting into a club, increasing your brand awareness doesn’t rely on just one method. Ideally, you should be using all three in such a way that each one increases the effectiveness of the others.
Before we can understand how to do that, we first need to make sure we know what we’re talking about when we say paid media, earned media, and owned media.
Table of Contents
1) Paid Media
Paid media is exactly what it sounds like: it’s visibility you pay for. This includes:
- social media ads,
- Google ads,
- print ads,
- TV commercials,
- podcast and radio commercials
- billboards, etc.
In some ways, paid media is the easiest way to get your brand in front of new prospects, but easy isn’t the same as effective.
As with our club metaphor, getting in is just the first step. It’s what you do with your time in the club that will determine whether or not your time there is a success.
The same goes for growing your brand awareness — getting your brand in front of people is just the first step. From there, you have to engage and convert those leads, and in some ways, it can be harder to do that from paid media than from earned media or owned media because people know it’s an ad. They know you’re trying to sell them something, and that makes them put their guard up before they even read/watch your ad.
So, on the one hand, you’re paying to get that content in front of people so you need to it be effective in order to get a return on your investment. At the same time, it can be harder to get a return on that investment because people are naturally distrustful of ads.
That doesn’t mean paid media isn’t worth the investment. It just means you need to be especially strategic when planning your paid media campaigns. Everything from the goal of the campaign, to the keywords you target, to the call to action (CTA) you use needs to be very carefully thought out to make sure you’re getting the best result.
Then you need to be sure to measure the results of all your campaigns and conduct A/B testing to make sure you end up with the most effective ads.
The first thing you need to do is choose your advertising platform. For example, if your target audience tends to spend a lot of time on Facebook, then it might be worthwhile to invest in Facebook ads. If they’re more likely to spend time on TikTok, then try running ads there.
As with any form of content marketing, I always recommend diversifying your assets. That means running ads on two or more social media platforms, or on one social media platform and Google ads.
You never want to be entirely reliant on one platform for your lead generation because that leaves you vulnerable if something ends up happening with that platform and you can’t run ads there anymore, or your target audience leaves the platform in droves because it got taken over by a crazy billionaire. Make sure you have options.
My preference for keyword selection when it comes to paid media is to target keywords people tend to use at later stages of the buyer journey because it’s easier to convert those leads. People in that stage also tend to be more willing to click on and view ads.
That said, I have seen plenty of ads targeting informational keywords. There can be value in that as long as you a) understand that those leads are not going to convert right away and b) you are very confident in your ability to lead those prospects all the way through your funnel so you can convert them when they are ready to buy.
2) Earned Media
Earned media is when someone else puts you on their platform and you did not pay for it. This includes things like press releases and news outlets covering something your business is doing.
Earned media is by far the most valuable type of media you can get because it requires someone else to vouch for you and give you space on their platform. In most cases, the people seeing your content already trust that platform and visit it regularly. Not only does that get your brand in front of a wider audience, it does so in such a way that that audience is already primed to like and trust you because someone else they like and trust vouched for you. Now they just need to get to know you.
The downside to earned media is you don’t own the platform, which means you don’t have full control over your content. For example, when submitting press releases, you’ll obviously submit content that paints you in a golden light, uses specific keywords, and is in a tone aligned with your brand.
First, the editor could decide to reject your submission, in which case you have to either change the content to meet their requirements or try other publications.
Second, even if they end up accepting your submission, it’s unlikely they’ll end up publishing exactly what you submitted. Instead, they’re going to make tweaks and changes so it fits their brand and appeals to their audience.
The best you can hope for is that they work with you to make these changes to your content before publishing it, but there’s no guarantee of that. More likely than not, they’ll make the changes they want to make and you won’t even find out about it until you see the published content.
If we go back to our club analogy, this is like getting to know the bouncer so he lets you skip the line, but only if you wear a certain jacket, or take off your signature hat. It might not be how you were hoping to present yourself in the club, but your choice is to abide by the bouncer’s rules or go elsewhere.
News Coverage
Another type of owned media happens when a media outlet decides to cover something your business is doing. In that case you have absolutely no control over the content that gets published about you because you’re not even writing a draft for them.
If they interview you, you can control what you say to them in the interview, but you can’t control which answers they’ll keep, which ones they’ll toss, and which ones they’ll snip until it sounds like you said something you had absolutely no intention of saying.
As doomed as I’m making it sound, news coverage rarely works out that badly, and when it works out well, it can work out very well.
For example, when you think of Anheuser-Busch in the news, you probably think of last year’s fiasco over the brand trying to make itself more welcoming to the LGBTQ community.
That was a disaster, but I still remember reading headlines about the fact that the company stopped bottling beer after a hurricane and switched to bottling water to be sent to hurricane survivors in need of clean water.
I never have and never will drink Budweiser, but those two stories have made me almost want to start drinking their beer because I like what they’re doing as a company.
That brings up another important point. It doesn’t matter how good your marketing is if people don’t like your product. Similarly, you have to make sure the people who already like your product will be on board if you decide to change your messaging. I’m on board with their messaging, but not their product. Clearly, a lot of people who were on board with their product were not on board with their new messaging.
3) Owned Media
Owned media refers to any content you have 100% control over creating and distributing without paying to distribute it. This includes social media posts that rely on organically getting in front of prospects instead of getting paid to increase their reach.
Social Media
On the one hand, you are in complete control of the content you post on social media. On the other hand, you can’t ever be in complete control when you don’t own the platform. A social media company could ban you from one or more of their websites if they don’t like something about your profile or one of your posts, and they don’t even have to tell you why you were banned.
Social media companies are also constantly changing their algorithm to make it harder for your content to get in front of people organically, which means you could wake up one morning and find yourself without an audience.
Not to mention the fact that social media sites could just disappear. Remember that time Facebook, Instagram, and Meta all shut down for an entire day? There were companies that couldn’t do any business that day because they used one or more of those apps to communicate with their customers. Without it, they were dead in the water.
Your Website
As much as I love social media for content distribution, I always recommend maintaining your own website and concentrating on creating content there first because it’s the only platform you own.
That means the content on your website is the only content over which you have complete control. You can say whatever you want, using whatever language you want, update it as needed, or delete it if it makes sense to do so.
Despite the fact that I put owned media last on this list, I always recommend investing in your owned content first. Make sure the landing pages on your website are very strong, and create blog posts for your own website before you start writing guest blog posts or press releases.
Your owned media should always take priority over your paid and earned media content.
Your Newsletter
Email marketing gets overlooked a lot as a form of owned media, but it’s one of the best ways to stay in touch with prospects and clients.
Our inbox is one of the last places online where we have almost complete control over the content we see there, so if someone gives you their email address, don’t throw away that opportunity to stay in touch. They’re saying they want to keep hearing from you, so make sure they keep hearing from you, and make sure it’s relevant to their interests.
If you use an email platform like Mailchimp or Constant Contact, it might seem like you don’t own your content, but you absolutely do. Those email addresses are given to you, not the email platform, and you can (and should) export them regularly to make sure you have all those email addresses in a separate place. That way you won’t lose all those contacts if your email marketing platform goes down, or if you lose access to your account for some reason and can’t get it back.
Use the platform, but don’t rely on it.
Conclusion
As with your three different options of trying to get into a club, your three main options when it comes to getting in front of your target audience all have their pros and cons.
The other thing they have in common with the club analogy is that getting in the door is just the first step. Once you’re in the club, it’s what you make of your time there that determines whether or not the experience will be a success for you.
The same goes for brand awareness. Making people aware of your brand is just the first step. From there, you have to engage your prospects and eventually convince them to start working with you.
That’s where the power of your content comes in, and that’s where we really shine. So, if you need help creating content that effectively attracts, engages, and converts high-quality leads, we can help.
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