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How to use paid media in digital marketing
paid media 101
BiteSize Marketing is back! In the first season you learned about the basics of marketing like the customer journey, lead nurturing, buyer personas, SEO and SEM. In the second season we’ll take a deeper dive.
I’ve spent years running campaigns like these and co-created a similar series to educate sales on the topic. I’ve poured all this experience into these pieces. If you follow along the way you can learn a lot about paid media in digital marketing: understand its purpose, the advantages and limitations of different channels, and read some pro tips.
Are you interested in more? Scroll down to the end of the post for the video (coming soon) or go to the BiteSize Marketing page and check out season 1.
Disclaimer: This article contains affiliate links.
Made by Reka Veszeli, using Canva
WHAT IS PAID MEDIA?
While some models add a 4th type “Shared media” I prefer the traditional model, that incorporates it into the Earned media bucket. Diagram made by Reka Veszeli, using Canva
When working on a well-balanced, scalable, and measurable strategy, marketers must leverage the following three media types: paid, owned, and earned. Even if you specialize in campaigns related to only one of these – which is often the case at big corporations – you must understand how these work together and support you in achieving your business goals.
Paid media
Paid media is any marketing effort that involves paying for your content to be promoted. It can include both online channels (e.g. LinkedIn or Google ads, or ads via paid influencers) and offline mediums (e.g. radio or magazine ads).
The key advantage of paid media lies in its scalability and predictability. If you spend money, you’ll gain exposure. More money means more exposure. It also allows for a more predictable outcome. Depending on the chosen channel, you can estimate the number of leads you can expect for your budget. Additionally, paid media offers a significant advantage in speed. Compared to other tactics, depending on the complexity of the campaign, it can be launched almost immediately.
Keep in mind though, that the same predictability can be a double-edged sword, as ads disappear once the funding stops. Another downside of paid ads is their perceived lack of authenticity compared to organic recommendations or user research. Just think about your experience – how well you trust an ad?
Earned media
Earned media is any content about your business that you haven’t paid for. This type of media is always published by a third party (i.e., not you or your business). However, through efforts like public relations (PR) and creating educational content (e.g., blog posts, infographics, videos), companies can position themselves for earned media opportunities.
Earned media is an extremely powerful tool for marketers. According to HubSpot Research, 57% of people in the U.S. trust what they hear from friends and family the most when they discover a new product. When a company earns exposure this way, they are vouched for by a third party, making it more credible and reliable. Most of these efforts also offer long-term benefits, because past mentions, reviews, or media placements will benefit your brand and traffic long after they were published.
At first glance, this type of media can look low-cost, but you need to be aware that while there is a chance your content will go viral on its own, it’s more likely that you’ll have to allocate considerable resources into creating share-worthy content or maintaining a PR agency/person. Scalability is also a challenge of earned media – creating more content won’t automatically generate more shares and exposure. The biggest disadvantage of this media type is the lack of control. You can never guarantee your efforts will be rewarded by shares, likes, and media mentions. In addition, you can’t control what they will say about you. No matter how hard you try, there’s always a chance someone will leave a negative review on Google or post a rude comment about your business.
Organic traffic sits somewhat between earned and owned media. SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) itself is the process you carry out on your own website, but as a result you earn a organic traffic and a higher rank on search engines.
Owned media
Finally, owned media is any content or channel that you create and control yourself – your blog, website, eBook, or webinar, etc.
This control is the biggest advantage of this media type. Owning these channels means you decide what content they exhibit. You have the ability to edit, delete, or repurpose them as you wish. In addition, policy changes barely affect this type of media. A social media account can be shut down any day, making you lose the content published by an influencer or your ability to advertise there. On the other hand, your website is under your control, you own your email list, and you control the content you create yourself.
Owned media is essential for every organization, but creating content and hoping people will find it hardly works or can take forever. To gain customers, you need to use the other two media types to support this one.
Image made by Reka Veszeli, using Canva
Purpose and objective of paid media in digital marketing
Now that you’re familiar with the three media types and understand the pros and cons of paid media, let’s see how this translates into digital marketing campaigns. To do this, we’ll look at the sales funnel. (To learn more about the sales funnel and the lead journey read this blog post or watch Ep 2 and Ep 3 of BiteSize Marketing.)
In order to generate sales, you need marketing leads to enter your sales funnel by finding and engaging with you. Once they’re added to your database, you can target them with dedicated messages, but first, you need to recruit them. For most modern businesses, one of the most effective ways to attract net new leads to your database is via paid digital media campaigns.
Image made by Reka Veszeli, using Canva.
Sales funnel = the visual representation of the customer journey from being added to your system to purchasing your product or service.
Marketing lead = A contact with someone interested in your product or service, so a person who might be your next customer.
Net new lead = A lead who is added to your database the first time ever.
Why paid media and why digital?
Paid media campaigns can reach new audiences (people who aren’t familiar with you yet), increase brand awareness, and help you position your brand.
With the development of technology, targeting on digital channels like Google, LinkedIn, Facebook, or Instagram has become extremely sophisticated. This allows you to go after the exact buyer personas your product or service was designed for. Additionally, the detailed statistics most of these platforms offer provide valuable feedback on how your content is performing with your target audience, giving you insights to adjust your strategy, ads, or content.
Certain strategies, like retargeting, also offer a cost-efficient way to reach leads who might be aware of your brand, but are stuck at the top of the funnel withouth further engagement.
How paid media works with other types of media
As we established at the begining neither of these media types work on their own. Paid media is most effective when it’s supporting it’s two siblings – earned and owned media.
How? By acting as an amplifier. Your business invests valuable resources creating owned media – eBooks, webinars, blog posts, videos, etc. Select the most popular ones and use them for your next paid campaign. Drive awareness to your webite. Identify influencers in your area of business to run a campaign – that will hopefully spread on social media organically then. You were mentioned on a credible 3rd party blog? Run a paid awareness campaign celebrating it!
While paid media is ideal for generating top-of-the-funnel leads, once they are in your system you can use a variety of earned media and a significant amount of owned media to help them move down the funnel.
Today’s digital scene offers dozens of ways to promote your content. The best media mix always depends on your company’s business goals, target audience, product, services and budget. Since covering all of them would be impossible, in the upcoming episodes and posts I’ll be focusing on a selected few. Given my experience in B2B marketing, in the tech industry, I’ll be focusing on the following channels: LinkedIn, Paid Search, Content Syndication, and Webinars.
Related BiteSize Marketing episodes
(S02 Ep02 Coming soon)
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