Any successful advertising and marketing strategy includes an intentional mix of different media types. Picking the right mix for your company is crucial to the success of your campaigns. Being picky on the front end means qualified leads for your business.

The magic formula for success is a diversified media mix that allows you to maximize your budget and produce qualified leads for your sales team.

These are the three main types of media. We’ll walk you through how you can use them in an integrated way to maximize your marketing strategy’s full potential.

Paid Media

Paid media is a buzzword. It’s industry-speak to describe advertising and marketing strategies that require your business to pay to play. The ad platforms can vary (see below) but the concept is the same. Want to play? You have to pay.

Display Ads
Social Media Ads
Search Engine Marketing (SEM)
Offline Ads

Paid Ads work well for companies in all phases of their growth journey. Startups use paid media strategies to pull in initial leads for their sales team to cultivate into new accounts. Well-established businesses can use paid media to scale their volume of conversions. No matter the size of your business, paid media can accelerate your growth.

Owned Media

Do you own it and control it? If you write it, manage it, and don’t pay to promote it, it’s likely owned media. Here are some examples:

Company Website Updates
Content Marketing
Organic Social Media
Email Marketing
Word of Mouth

The only player you need to make it happen is you. You control the content, when it’s posted, and how often you make adjustments for maximum impact. The downside? You control the content, when it’s posted, and how often you make adjustments for maximum impact. The major challenge for all types of companies with this media type is consistency and maintenance.

Owned media might be the only media mix you begin with. Limited audiences for start-up brands will feel like they’re climbing a mountain but don’t fret. Keep the course! The bigger your owned media mix gets, the higher your ROI.

Earned Media

You’re sharing awesome content, and other brands are taking note. Earned media refers to any opportunity where another brand, news outlet, or publication reaches out and asks to collaborate for free. This trickle-down effect can result in opportunities like full story spreads in online publications and more:

Publicity from Media Outlets
SEO
Organic Influencer Collaboration
Being a Podcast Guest
Review Sites
Social Media

Earned media helps elevate a brand and put it on top. Word of mouth is the most original form of marketing and the most powerful. Every business that experiences major success in its journey generally has a strong organic presence in its field and industry. Earned media builds credibility and can help increase long-term ROI.

Each business and industry will have trends and popular media mixes that generate success. Finding a digital marketing strategist or partnering with a performance marketing agency like Caledon Virtual can help define the perfect media mix for your company’s initiatives.

Our team of digital strategists and performance marketers works with you to learn more about your business initiatives. Through reverse engineering your goals, we provide marketing benchmark KPIs that help achieve your company-wide initiatives.

Potential Media Mix Examples Based On Company Goals

Company Goal: Increase Incoming Leads

We recommend developing a 70% paid media, 20% owned media, and 10% earned media mix. This means your focus would be on marketing ad campaigns that drive traffic to your website or landing page for conversion.

Company Goal: Increase Brand Awareness Of a New Product or Service

We recommend developing a 60% owned media, 20% paid media, and 20% earned media mix. This means your focus would be developing content marketing ideas to describe a challenge your target audience experiences that your product or services solve.

Company Goal: Announce a Pivot From Your Normal Service or Product Offering

We recommend developing a 60% earned media, 10% paid media, and 30% owned media mix. To begin, you’ll book meetings with industry-leading publications and associations. At those meetings, you’ll pitch a collaboration or news story update on your company’s announcement. This strategy works for well-established businesses that have these earned media outlet relationships already solidified.

Drafting Your Marketing Strategy’s Media Mix

Start this process by defining a goal to achieve. Work with your company’s business team to uncover the business initiatives for the quarter and for the year. After that, determine how many marketing qualified leads you need to produce to reach the company’s growth initiative.

Understanding where you want to go and how to get there is your key to creating a successful and effective digital marketing strategy that optimally utilizes all three forms of media.

Need more help getting started? Schedule a performance audit report today to connect with a strategist. Click HERE

Caledon Virtual is a performance marketing agency that serves major DMA markets including (but not limited to); Los Angeles, Dallas, Miami, and New York.