There is a gold mine of value in owned media because you can promote your brand and your local dealers without having to spend any money on publication costs. There is a very good article on Search Engine Land that helps define owned media.
In their view, there are three kinds of media in modern marketing:
- Paid Media is primarily advertising — PPC in search and social, display ads, TV spots, etc.
- Earned Media includes what others say about your company in reviews and social media channels, as well as things like organic search rankings
- Owned Media is all digital content that you own or wholly control, such as your website, your blog, your Facebook page, mobile apps — as well as microsites and landing pages
A landing page gets special attention in the drawing because it’s where paid gets paid off and if you don’t control the landing page, you don’t control your marketing.
It’s an old story for us. We see clients who are willing to co-op very brand friendly banner ads for their dealers but then ignore where the consumer goes next. Where they go next, the landing page, is the most important step in the process. Recognizing the importance of a landing page is huge for you and your local dealers.
Or, how about a landing page that is shown as a result of your dealer locator? Isn’t it better to show an interested consumer a landing page instead of a white page listing or a link to a dealer’s site loaded with your competitors’ information?
Let the dealer link to a landing page from their own site or from their social media site. It will be loaded with great content and not cost anyone a dime in publication costs.
The first step to take advantage of free owned media is to help your retailers build landing pages that are loaded with great brand content/promotions and enhanced with local dealer input. Think of an online newspaper ad builder that builds and hosts a digital landing page instead of a newspaper ad (or better yet, do both in one tool).
Now you have a system where you can connect your local retailers to your and their owned digital channels. And, because the system hosts the landing pages, you can track, measure and improve every page every second of every day. That’s the definition of agile marketing and it’s free of publication costs!
The hidden challenge is that the power of your co-op rules and dollars doesn’t work with owned media unless you rewrite your co-op rules. It’s time.