How to move from paid to owned and earned media?

09/11/19 • 10 min

The Digital Marketing Podcast with Mandar Marathe

The terms paid, owned and earned media have gained some importance in digital marketing. With the world economy in a recessionary state, brand managers and chief marketing officers are forced to deal with reduced marketing budgets. Consumer decision making process has undergone a transformation, leading to an increased focus on owned and earned media.

What can a new age CEO /CMO do to transform their organisation’s marketing and sales efforts and align them with today’s economic scenario. Here are three crucial strategies that your organization can leverage.

Hire the right people for the job

Make these critical hires, irrespective of your marketing budget.

Social media and online reputation management: Either hire an adept digital agency or hire smart people who can orchestrate your social media efforts. Social media marketing is not a choice, it’s a mandate. Figure out the people part first, tools for social media and online reputation management are a secondary concern.
Search engine optimization: All your owned media – website / blog / mobile site needs organic traffic from search engines. SEO is a low cost, long term alternative to driving relevant traffic to your owned properties.
User design: Your owned media needs to be user friendly; otherwise they are a piece of junk. Most organizations lack design thinking and this malaise comes from that fact that top executives don’t understand the science of user design and make decisions based on their gut. Hire a digital creative agency or visual designers that have a reputation / formal education in design.

Allocate marketing budgets wisely

It’s a CMO’s job to allocate marketing budgets. Along with your top marketing team, make rational choices.

Consciously decide to invest in long term projects over short term initiatives. Be brutal while ideating. Throw out ideas that don’t fit the following guidelines:
- Heavy focus on paid media
- Short term
- Results cannot be measured
Split your marketing budgets between paid, owned and earned media. Pass on this mandate to everyone in your marketing team and to your partner agencies.
Forge strategic alliances / barter deals: Invest time and muscle behind forging strong industry relationships. Structure deals that are mutually beneficial and long term in nature.

Revisit your customer

Your customer has changed. He has moved on with time. Consumers research on the internet before making a purchase. They check and compare product prices before stepping into a retail store. They log on to social networks to get opinions of friends and family. It’s time to revisit your customer. Unearth the latest consumer behaviour survey (or ask a consumer research agency to do one).

Once you understand how your customer is making purchases today, invest wisely in every step of the consumer purchase cycle. Here are some thought starters:

Consumers research on the internet – Invest in SEO and paid search.
Consumers seek opinions on social networks – Get on social media.
Allow consumers to buy online – Make your site ecommerce enabled.

Hire the right people for the job

Make these critical hires, irrespective of your marketing budget.

Social media and online reputation management: Either hire an adept digital agency or hire smart people who can orchestrate your social media efforts. Social media marketing is not a choice, it’s a mandate. Figure out the people part first, tools for social media and online reputation management are a secondary concern.
Search engine optimization: All your owned media – website / blog / mobile site needs organic traffic from search engines. SEO is a low cost, long term alternative to driving relevant traffic to your owned properties.
User design: Your owned media needs to be user friendly; otherwise they are a piece of junk. Most organizations lack design thinking and this malaise comes from that fact that top executives don’t understand the science of user design and make decisions based on their gut. Hire a digital creative agency or visual designers that have a reputation / formal education in design.

Allocate marketing budgets wisely

It’s a CMO’s job to allocate marketing budgets. Along with your top marketing team, make rational choices.

Consciously decide to invest in long term projects over short term initiatives. Be brutal while ideating. Throw out ideas that don’t fit the following guidelines:
- Heavy focus on paid media
- Short term
- Results cannot be measured
Split your marketing budgets between paid, owned and earned media. Pass on this mandate to everyone in your marketing team and to your partner agencies.
Forge strategic alliances / barter deals: Invest time and muscle behind forging strong industry relationships. Structure deals that are mutually beneficial and long term in nature.

Revisit your customer

Once you understand how your customer is making purchases today, invest wisely in every step of the consumer purchase cycle. Here are some thought starters:

Consumers research on the internet – Invest in SEO and paid search.
Consumers seek opinions on social networks – Get on social media.
Allow consumers to buy online – Make your site ecommerce enabled.

Previous Episode

How to make a good pitch deck

What goes into making a good pitch. This is what we have in every pitch deck:

1. Executive Summary - What the entire presentation is about. High level numbers for spends, returns, RoI, leads, CPL, Reach etc. which talks directly to the decision maker - the CEO / CMO / CTO who wants to have a birds eye view.

2. Roadmap to get there - Clearly define business goals and KPIs to measure the goals. Also include a strategic overview of how to achieve our goals.

3. Details - Don't be afraid of giving everything. Think as if you have the client signed up and give complete details. Be transparent and comprehensive in your pitch presentation

4. Competitive landscape - Your understanding of the competitors strategy, gaps, and overall industry.

5. Non-negotiable - What you need from the client to achieve success. Any dependencies that you have on your client before you sign up. Be open, honest and upfront with all the assumptions you are making.

6. Case studies - Show how you have done it for other clients

7. Costs, Team, Next Steps

Next Episode

3 golden rules of client servicing

Clients are the lifeline of an advertising industry. No clients, no business, no revenue, no agency.

This is a universal truth. And if you are a client servicing person, you know it more than I do. For those who have opted to service clients (and be the face of your agency), it’s time to understand and learn the rules of engagement. If you follow these three golden rules, you will have a happy client, a happy boss and a happy pay check ;)

Rule No. 1: Clients are human beings

Just like you and me – some clients are smart, some unreasonable, some number driven, some go by their gut, some give your nightmares and some give you a pat on your back. To err is human and so is to service clients. Treat them as human beings and try to understand their psyche. If you have a degree in human psychology or you are a natural expert at studying human behaviour, you are one up on your client servicing peers.

Over a period of time, try to get into the psyche of your client(s). It will help you devise good solutions to all marketing briefs (Remember: The first target audience for your brilliant idea is your client.)

Rule No. 2: Clients need to be educated

‘The client is always right’ – whoever said this needs to be shot in his head, twice. All of us need education. For folks working in the digital advertising industry, the web transforms every single day. There is new stuff to learn and old stuff to unlearn. While you learn, it is important that your client learns with you.

Share industry reports with your clients on a regular basis, proactively. Clients love to see that you are taking pains to learn their business. Make sure that you send a competition scan or a relevant blog article to your client. A case study shared would be icing on the cake. All clients love to be pampered with data, industry insights and new learning.

Do this to expand your horizon, and your clients understanding of the advertising industry. For client servicing folks in the digital advertising industry, here is a small 6 slide presentation structure that will wow your clients:

Slide 1: Internet trends – growth of the internet vs. growth of your client’s business category (industry)– You can get this data from Comscore

Slide 2: Competition website traffic comparision graph (YOY) – from Comscore or from Alexa

Slide 3: Search insights of competitors, and growth relative to category. – From Google Insights for Search or Google Trends

Slide 4: Snapshot of competitors on Social media – manual research

Slide 5: Display media activity of competitors– from Nielsen or ViziSense

Slide 6: Summary and Recommendations

Rule No 3: Clients need attention

We are working in an economy where attention is a scarce commodity. As client servicing people, we work on multiple accounts and service multiple clients. While this is challenging in itself, our attention spans are going down. We are on Facebook, on Twitter and on YouTube, and in between that we work on client campaigns and answer pressing emails.

Clients need attention. The better you get at turning around stuff quickly, the less attention clients will demand. Try and make sure you live by these productivity rules –

Be on time for meetings – value time
Keep your plate clean – If you get work, do or delegate.
Inform clients – one of the critical mistakes we do is not communicate. Let the clients know how much time will it take to complete the work and schedule accordingly. Pick up the phone. Emails are getting obsolete.
Time for yourself - If you have developed a good relationship with your client, let them know when you hit the gym or are not available to take calls. Keep time for your family. Do not pick up client calls after a certain hour of the day. I am saying this publicly to sensitize clients that we (CS) are human beings and our teams (creative, social, search etc.) are also human beings.
Effective networking – Know your client’s boss and his/her bosses boss. Know everyone in the hierarchy. Call frequently to make sure they recognize your voice and know your phone number. Networking should be effective, not just for the sake of it. Make sure your conversations are meaningful, especially if you are talking with someone higher up.

I shall turn over this post to you. What do you do to provide quality and god speed client service? Any other rules that you need to bring to notice for the greater good of the client servicing community? Share your comments.