The goal of any online presence should be to engage customers, drive traffic and ultimately generate sales. One of the key concepts to keep in mind is whether your digital media focus for driving traffic and interest should be paid, owned or earned. Promotional Consultant Today explains these important online strategies, which are also the topics an education session taught by David Burnett, CAS, of AOK Marketing during The PPAI Expo.
Let’s start off with some basic definitions:
Paid – This is what a brand pays to leverage a channel. For example: Google AdWords for Google, Promoted Tweets on Twitter, Promoted Facebook Updates, etc…
Owned – This is a channel or platform you control. The best example is your website/blog.
Earned – This is the traffic you obtain by building an audience, being recognized as an authority and rising in the rankings on Google.
Let’s look at the role each one plays in your online presence.
Paid – If your site is not well known, this can be the catalyst that shifts you into generating earned media. You can scale, you can turn on and off, and you can control the message. The downside is that there is a lot of clutter, with rising costs and falling response rates.
Owned – This should be the central hub, the foundation that builds long-term relationships with existing and potential customers. You have great control with niche targeting ability, longevity and cost efficiency. However, it takes time to scale, there are no guarantees, and not everyone trusts company communications.
Earned – It’s the most credible of the three and provides a key role in the sales environment. However it can be hard to scale, hard to measure ROI and you have no control over the audience.
So where should you focus?
First, identify your target market (using personas is a great way to segment messaging) and your unique selling proposition. Also, take a closer look at your competitors and what they are doing on the different media channels. Are they on Twitter? Do they primarily focus on email and print catalog distribution? Are they well ranked organically and do they spend a lot of money on AdWords?
Once you have done some competitive research, you can tell you where your competitors are and aren’t making an impact. You should be able to identify opportunities to fill the gap, and to see what kind of content they are promoting that generates lots of engagement.
Always start with your owned asset. After all, it’s really the only thing over which you have full control over. With it you can build a solid foundation for your business for years to come.
Source: A promotional products industry veteran of 15 years turned online marketing specialist, Dave Burnett and his firm AOK Marketing bring a groundbreaking approach to big and small virtual marketing projects. Burnett appreciates and shares with his listeners the challenges and confusion surrounding online marketing and clarifies what it means for real-life, in-the-trenches business people. Friends are great and content is even better, but how can online marketing impact the bottom line? Burnett works with some of the best and the brightest in the industry and, by attending one of his presentations, you will learn steps that even the least computer-literate person can implement the very same day.
Burnett will present the following sessions at The PPAI Expo 2014:
Today, January 13: Search Engine Optimization – A Starter Course, 3:30 – 4:30 pm
Tuesday, January 14: 10 Pillars of Online Marketing, 9:20 – 10:20 am