Have you ever pondered the true impact of your marketing efforts across different media types? Many B2B marketers grapple with distinguishing between earned, owned, and paid media, let alone leveraging each effectively. This blog unveils actionable strategies to not only differentiate but also to synergise these media types for your marketing triumph. From enhancing your organic content to mastering the art of paid advertising, we provide a roadmap designed to elevate your brand’s visibility and engagement.
The Difference Between Earned, Owned, and Paid Social Media Ads
Earned Media
Earned media, often known as the badge of customer trust and brand authority, remains elusive to many. It encapsulates the visibility you earn through word-of-mouth, whether digital or verbal. But, how do you amplify your brand’s voice without direct investment?
- Strategize Influencer Collaborations: Begin with identifying influencers who resonate with your brand values. Draft a collaboration plan that focuses on mutual benefit and authentic content. Utilise tools like BuzzStream to streamline your outreach efforts, ensuring each partnership aligns with your brand’s ethos and marketing objectives.
- Leverage Customer Reviews: Encourage your satisfied customers to leave positive reviews on platforms relevant to your industry. Integrate a seamless process for review submission post-purchase. Highlight these testimonials across your digital properties to build trust with prospective customers.
- Create Shareable Content: Produce content that provides value, entertains, and educates, making it irresistible to share. Implement social sharing buttons prominently on your content pages. Analyse your most shared content to refine your content strategy using tools like SharedCount.
- Engage in Social Listening: Monitor brand mentions and industry discussions using tools like Mention. Engage in these conversations genuinely, offering insights and assistance. This proactive engagement can transform neutral audiences into vocal brand proponents.
- Host Virtual Events: Organise webinars, Q&As, or virtual roundtables with industry experts. Promote these events across your channels, encouraging participation and sharing. Post-event, distribute key takeaways and clips to extend the content’s lifespan and reach.
Owned Media
Owned media stands as your brand’s cornerstone, encompassing websites, blogs, and social media accounts. Yet, the challenge lies in utilising these assets to consistently engage and grow your audience. Maximising the impact of your owned media can significantly enhance your brand’s authority and customer loyalty. It’s about crafting a content ecosystem that educates, engages, and converts your audience.
- Content Personalisation: Utilise data analytics to tailor your content to the preferences and needs of your audience. Implement CRM and CMS tools like Salesforce and WordPress to segment your audience and deliver personalised content paths.
- SEO-Driven Content Creation: Optimise every piece of content for search engines. Conduct keyword research using Google Keyword Planner to align with what your target audience is searching for. Incorporate these keywords naturally in your content to boost visibility and traffic.
- Interactive Content: Incorporate quizzes, surveys, and interactive infographics to increase engagement on your owned media. Tools like Apester or Ceros can help create immersive experiences that encourage longer site visits and higher interaction rates.
- Video Marketing Strategy: Develop a robust video content strategy that covers educational content, behind-the-scenes, and customer testimonials. Utilise YouTube and Vimeo as platforms to extend your reach, ensuring each video is optimised for search with descriptive titles and tags.
- Regular Content Audits: Conduct bi-annual content audits to assess the performance of your owned media. Use Google Analytics to identify content gaps, underperforming pages, and opportunities for repurposing. This ensures your content remains relevant and engaging over time.
Paid Media
Paid media often serves as the accelerator in your marketing engine, propelling your brand into new territories and audiences. However, the vast ocean of paid advertising options presents a daunting task: how do you ensure your investment translates into measurable returns? Below, explore five unique strategies that push beyond traditional approaches, ensuring your paid media not only captures attention but also captivates and converts.
Micro-Targeting with AI
Leverage artificial intelligence to refine your targeting strategies to an almost personal level. Platforms like AdEspresso facilitate AI-powered optimization, analysing thousands of ad variations to pinpoint the most effective combinations of messaging and imagery for specific audience segments. This micro-targeting approach ensures your ads are shown to those most likely to engage, increasing your conversion rates exponentially.
Voice Search Optimised Ads
As voice search becomes increasingly prevalent, tailoring your paid ads to voice queries can set you apart. Use natural language processing tools to analyse voice search patterns and incorporate these conversational phrases into your ad copy. This strategy ensures your brand remains visible in this evolving search landscape, capturing early adopters and tech-savvy consumers.
Blockchain for Ad Transparency
Implement blockchain technology to bring unparalleled transparency to your paid campaigns. Blockchain platforms like AdChain offer a ledger-based verification system, ensuring your ads are displayed as intended, combating fraud, and providing clear, unalterable metrics for each campaign. This level of transparency builds trust in your marketing efforts and ensures every penny of your ad spend is accounted for and optimised.
Interactive and Augmented Reality (AR) Ads
Create immersive ad experiences by incorporating interactive elements or AR into your paid media. Platforms like Snapchat and Facebook offer AR ad formats that engage users by allowing them to interact with your product in their environment. This innovative approach not only increases engagement rates but also fosters a deeper connection between your brand and its audience.
Predictive Analytics for Ad Timing: Utilise predictive analytics to determine the optimal times to launch your paid campaigns. Tools like Google Analytics predict when your target audience is most active and receptive, enabling you to schedule your ads for maximum impact. This method goes beyond simple demographics or interests, incorporating user behaviour patterns to ensure your message reaches its audience at just the right moment.
How to integrate a paid and organic social media strategy
Not all promotional posts need to be paid
The common misconception that every promotional effort requires a budget can deter brands from maximising their organic reach. The truth is, not every promotional post warrants a paid strategy. Recognising the potential of organic reach can transform your approach to social media marketing.
- Leveraging User-Generated Content (UGC) for Organic Amplification: UGC stands as a testament to your brand’s impact and resonance with its audience. Encourage your community to share their experiences with your products or services through reviews, photos, and testimonials on their social channels. Initiatives like branded hashtags or contests can galvanise this activity, providing you with rich, authentic content that can be repurposed. Highlighting UGC not only enhances your brand’s credibility but also significantly extends your organic reach without dipping into your advertising budget.
- Mastering the Art of Hashtag Research: Hashtags serve as the compasses of social media, guiding users to your content amidst the vast digital ocean. Deploy tools like Hashtagify or RiteTag to unearth high-performing, relevant hashtags that can catapult your organic content into the spotlight. It’s not just about quantity; the strategic selection of hashtags—balancing broad appeal with niche specificity—can dramatically amplify your post’s visibility, engaging both existing followers and untapped audiences alike.
- Crafting Serial Content to Foster Audience Habituation: Serial content—regularly scheduled posts united by a common theme or narrative—hooks audiences, encouraging habitual engagement with your brand. Whether it’s “Tip Tuesday” or a monthly expert Q&A, serial content promises recurring value, prompting audiences to seek out your brand proactively. This tactic not only bolsters organic engagement but also fosters a sense of community and anticipation around your content, amplifying its reach without financial outlay.
- Strategic Collaborations for Cross-Promotional Organic Growth: Identify and partner with complementary brands or influencers who share a synergy with your target audience but do not compete directly with your offerings. These collaborations, ranging from joint live streams to co-created content, can open your brand to new audience pools. The mutual sharing of this content across each collaborator’s channels can significantly boost organic visibility and engagement, leveraging shared trust and authority.
- Optimising Content for Shareability: The cornerstone of organic reach lies in crafting content that resonates deeply with your audience, compelling them to share with their networks. Content that educates, entertains, or inspires, adorned with interactive elements like polls or infographics, stands a higher chance of virality. Analyse engagement metrics to understand what resonates with your audience, using insights to refine content strategy continuously. The goal is to create content so impactful that your audience becomes your brand advocates, extending your reach organically.
Boost your best organic content
Identifying your top-performing organic content presents an opportunity to amplify your success. Not all content will perform equally, but those that do can serve as key players in your marketing strategy.
- Utilising Analytics for Data-Driven Selection: Dive deep into your social media analytics to pinpoint content that has naturally resonated with your audience. Look beyond surface-level likes and shares; engagement metrics like comments, save rates, and the time spent on post offer richer insights into content performance. This data-driven approach ensures you’re investing in content with proven appeal, maximising the efficiency of your ad spend.
- Smart Budget Allocation for Boosting: Transitioning organic content to paid should be a judicious decision, guided by clear objectives—be it enhancing reach, driving traffic, or increasing conversions. Allocate budgets smartly, starting small and scaling based on initial performance metrics. This phased approach allows for real-time optimisation, ensuring your investment yields the highest possible return.
- Engagement-Driven Content Repurposing: Transform your top-performing content into multiple formats to capture a wider audience across different platforms. A popular blog post can be reimagined as an infographic for Instagram, a detailed thread on Twitter, or a discussion prompt on LinkedIn. Each repurposed piece should be tailored to the platform’s unique audience and content consumption habits, ensuring it resonates and drives engagement.
- Leveraging Ad Platforms for Targeted Boosts: Platforms like Facebook and Instagram offer sophisticated targeting options that allow you to boost your best organic content to audiences based on demographics, interests, and behaviour. Utilise these tools to ensure your amplified content reaches those most likely to engage with it. The precision targeting capabilities of these platforms mean that your boosted content is not just seen but seen by the right people.
Optimise All Your Posts Using A/B Testing
This methodology allows marketers to make data-driven decisions, enhancing the effectiveness of their content by understanding what resonates best with their audience. By systematically comparing two versions of a post, marketers can refine every element of their content strategy, from the messaging and imagery to the timing and format, ensuring maximum engagement and conversion rates.
Comprehensive A/B Testing Plan
Begin with a structured A/B testing plan that covers various elements of your posts, such as headlines, visuals, call-to-actions (CTAs), and content length. Use tools like Google Optimise or Optimizely to set up and manage your tests. Ensure that each test has a clear hypothesis and measurable success criteria, focusing on one variable at a time for accurate results.
Audience Segmentation for Targeted Testing
Divide your audience into distinct segments based on demographics, interests, or past interactions with your brand. This segmentation enables more precise testing, as the preferences can vary significantly across different audience groups. Utilise Facebook’s Audience Insights or Google Analytics for deep segmentation, tailoring your A/B tests to uncover what appeals to each specific segment.
Iterative Testing for Continuous Improvement
Adopt an iterative approach to A/B testing, using the insights gained from each test to inform subsequent ones. This continuous cycle of testing, learning, and optimising allows for ongoing refinement of your social media strategy. Document the results and insights from each test in a central repository, enabling a culture of data-driven decision-making within your marketing team.
Engagement Metrics as Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)
Beyond click-through rates and conversions, consider deeper engagement metrics such as time spent on page, interaction rates (likes, shares, comments), and view completion rates for video content. These metrics can provide richer insights into the effectiveness of your content, guiding more nuanced optimizations.
Cross-Platform Testing for Holistic Optimization
While A/B testing is common on platforms like Facebook and Instagram, don’t overlook other channels where your audience is active. Conduct platform-specific tests to understand the nuances of each and develop a cross-platform content strategy that leverages the unique strengths and audience preferences of each channel.
Target Your Ads to People Similar to Your Organic Audience
The power of social media advertising lies in its ability to target content precisely to the audiences most likely to engage with it. By targeting ads to users who resemble your organic audience, brands can extend their reach while maintaining high relevance and engagement. This strategy leverages the insights gained from organic interactions to inform paid advertising efforts, creating a cohesive and effective overall social media strategy.
- Lookalike Audience Creation: Utilise the lookalike audience feature available on platforms like Facebook and LinkedIn to target new users who share characteristics with your existing audience. Start by defining your source audience—this could be your most engaged followers, recent website visitors, or past purchasers. The platforms’ algorithms will then find new users with similar profiles, expanding your reach to potential customers who are likely to be interested in your brand.
- Refining Lookalike Audiences with Custom Data: Enhance the precision of lookalike audiences by incorporating custom data from your CRM or email marketing platform. This integration allows for the creation of lookalike audiences based on highly specific criteria, such as product interest or lifecycle stage, ensuring your ads reach individuals with a high propensity to engage with your content.
- Balancing Reach and Relevance: When creating lookalike audiences, marketers face the challenge of balancing reach with relevance. Experiment with different degrees of similarity to find the sweet spot where your ads reach a sufficiently large audience without sacrificing the specificity that ensures high engagement. Monitor performance metrics closely, adjusting the parameters as needed to optimise for both reach and conversion rates.
- Cross-Channel Lookalike Strategies: Beyond social media, explore lookalike audience capabilities on other advertising platforms such as Google Ads. This cross-channel approach allows for a more comprehensive reach, capturing potential customers across the web and on different devices. Tailor your messaging and creativity to suit the context and user behaviour on each platform for cohesive cross-channel campaigns.