Paid, Earned, Owned: 3 Business Advertising Idea Vehicles and How to Best Use Them

I remember participating in a 3-year strategy planning meeting a few years ago.  The Global Advertising team was presenting their advertising plans for the upcoming years.  Funny enough, the three vehicles that they organized their plan by was also used by a fortune 100 marketing driven company that I previously worked for.  These three business advertising ideas vehicles are universal across all businesses. What you need to know is that the best business advertising ideas come from these large marketing driven companies that have the research and dollars to create the best advertising campaigns and therefore, you should follow their tactical lead.  Unfortunately, many small business marketing ideas use these three vehicles, but in the wrong way.  I will also show you small business advertising strategy mistakes.

Paid, Earned, Owned

These are the three vehicles that capture three different marketing mix channels.  I will briefly explain below:

• Paid – The tactics within the marketing mix plan that provide (hopefully) an ROI due to a cost. (paid advertising vehicles such as TV, Print, or Radio).
• Earned – The organic traffic, awareness, or customer reviews that come as a result of offering a great product that generates buzz.  You cannot implement “earned” tactics since they come without your doing.  Today, the earned vehicle lives in the social media universe.
• Owned – This is your content, blog, or website that you maintain for the purpose of keeping consumers aware of new news about your products, helping your consumers to better use your products, communicating sales to consumers that visit your site in hopes to generate frequency and loyalty, etc.

This is pretty simple and straightforward.  But what is surprising is that many small business marketing strategies fail to properly use these vehicles.  For example, in the earned vehicle, small business owners are trying to “own” the conversation by pushing content, reviews, and feedback via their social network.  Consumers are smart enough and trained today to be skeptical when it comes to online reviews and referrals.  It needs to be  natural and that is why earning “earned” is more effective then owning “earned.  Develop a consumer targeted product that fits a need and you will earn your share.  Don’t develop a mediocre “me too” product and then try to own this vehicle by selling yourself.

Another example where small business marketing strategies fail is in the owned vehicle.  Small business owners are selling their products too hard on their site which turns consumers away.  Rather then pushing your product on consumers, effective small business marketing strategy would be to communicate “new uses” of your product, or “recommended tips”, etc.  These are communication strategies which sell your product in an indirect way because you are helping consumers to better use your product.  They will naturally see the benefits of your product in this way.

The three business advertising ideas vehicles seem pretty straightforward at first, but you need to check your small business advertising strategy to make sure that you are leveraging each vehicle appropriately.

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Business Advertising Strategies to Increase the Effectiveness of Promotions
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Targeted Advertising Strategies for your Small Business

Tagged as: advertising, marketing