Digital Media

Digital Marketing - Study Notes:

In digital marketing, as in traditional marketing, we distinguish between types of media, based on the control a brand has over the media in question. The three main categories of digital media are:

• Owned
• Paid
• Earned

Owned

This is media that incorporates a company’s own content, packaging, point of sale (POS), and people who come into contact with consumers. In digital marketing, this relates to a website, mobile app, blog, social media profiles, and any other platform that you develop and control.

Example: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

For example, the Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (HMH) blog Shaped is written by educators and for educators. It publishes both short-form and long-form content that answers the big questions that teachers are asking today. Moreover, it offers these insights to educators for free.

By tapping into this demand and filling what it calls the ‘content white space’ that no-one else is targeting, Shaped has been able to attract both traffic and qualified leads. In fact, the blog attracted 2.9 million views in 2022 alone and far exceeded its target for marketing leads – primarily through owned media!

Paid

This includes any digital media that you pay for, such as paid search, banner ads, video ads, retargeting, and social media advertising. One of the main goals of paid media is to drive visits, also known as traffic, to your owned media, website, and app from people who know or are interested in your product or service. Your aim is to drive them to take action and buy.

If your product or brand hasn’t generated sufficient awareness or interest levels yet, you can use paid media to build awareness and interest to grow the pool of people who are looking to take action and buy.

Example: Rohlik

Rohlik, the Czech grocery retailer, used Facebook’s paid shopping ads to drive fantastic results. It experimented with Advantage+ ads, which use automation to enable ecommerce and direct-to-consumer retail and brand advertisers to potentially achieve better performance, greater personalization, and more efficiency. This automated approach delivered a lot more value from its budget by targeting customers in the right locations, at the right time. Rohlik saw three times more incremental sales with Advantage+ shopping campaigns, compared to usual campaigns.

Example: HP

HP is another example. It used its sponsored hashtag #HPRadicalReuse to promote its sustainability credentials on TikTok. This led to a “unique reach of over 68 million in the US and over 1.4 billion video views of the hashtag during the campaign. Post-campaign, the hashtag continues to amass views, exceeding 9 billion views”.

The key to HP’s success here is that it provided the means for users to co-create new content using the hashtag. Users could showcase their own methods for reusing plastics, while also bringing HP’s message to a broader audience. This had much greater appeal for TikTok users than a branded advertisement.

To give users an idea of how to use the hashtag, HP first worked with TikTok personalities to create partner content. For example, it worked with a comedian who showed that even telling jokes could encourage people to reuse plastics rather than throwing them away. The comedian would stand by garbage cans and tell stories and jokes to discourage people from discarding plastics. The idea from HP here was also to demonstrate that anyone can make a positive contribution, which is an inspiring message to attract more interaction for the hashtag.

Earned

This is free publicity generated by consumers through reviews or recommendations, as well as any non-paid promotion by influencers, and influential people who speak about and share content related to your brand or products.

Example: Glossier

Glossier has become a major player in the beauty industry by leveraging earned media through user-generated content (or UGC), influencers, and social media engagement. The company encourages its customers to share their experiences and reviews on social media, which has significantly contributed to its growth. Glossier also collaborates with influencers who align with its brand values, further extending its reach and credibility. These 500+ brand ambassadors have contributed to the company’s phenomenal growth – it is valued at over $1 billion today.

It is unsurprising that the company’s founder, Emily Weiss, is a former beauty influencer herself. As she said in a recent interview: “At Glossier, something we’ve always stayed very true to, since pre-launch, day one, is that every single person is an influencer.” This philosophy ensures that Glossier identifies a constant stream of new opportunities for earned media promotion.

Note: User-generated content (or UGC) refers to content that is generated by users, rather than by the brand itself. This may include reviews and recommendations, or more detailed content such as blogs, videos, podcasts and so on where users share their thoughts about a brand. Whilst this is often earned media, in some cases brands may collaborate with users and invite them to write content (such as a guest blog on a website, for example), so USG can also be a form of paid or owned media. 

Benefits of different types of digital media

Let’s now consider the benefits of these three different types of digital media.

Owned

Examples of owned media include your website, mobile app, social media profiles, YouTube channels, and podcasts.

Some benefits of owned media include:

• Cost efficiency
• Flexibility
• Longevity
• Power of developing a go-to platform for your audience

Owned media is important for creating trust and legitimacy, because it can become the flagship platform that promotes all that the company is, sells, and does.

Note: Owned is ‘always-on’, by default. This means that if you create great content, it can draw traffic 24/7. Paid media, on the other hand, is only on while the campaign is running.

Paid

Examples of paid media include paid search – also known as pay per click (PPC) – paid social, display ads, paid video, and paid influencers.

Some benefits of paid media include relatively fast turnaround times and scalability. With paid media, you can quickly reach a very specific audience – big or small – on paid platforms such Meta Ads or Google Ads. By using paid media, you have control over where, when, and what is seen. Most importantly, however, you can control how much you will pay each day, month, and so on. You can plan for expected performance, optimize return on investment (ROI), and refine the traffic that paid media strategy drives.

• Inbound paid media is useful for driving sales and conversions.
• Outbound paid media is good for building awareness and generating familiarity.

Earned

Examples of earned media include shares on social media, as well as reviews, mentions, and reposts.

Earned media brings some very strong benefits:

• It’s organic (and therefore cost-effective).
• It creates credibility and builds brand reputation.
• Its impact tends to live on longer than paid media.

Nowadays, consumers don’t just listen to what brands are telling them. They rely heavily on peer reviews and will listen to advice and recommendations from influencers, experts, and friends before investing in a product or service. As a result, earned media can have a significantly positive impact on the fortunes of a business or brand.