Today, brands that want to attain the highest level of exposure and buzz in the market must approach digital marketing channels in an integrated way i.e. converged method which is the merging of paid, owned and earned media.
As defined by Jeremiah Owyang, an Industry Analyst at Altimeter Group, a Converged Media Workflow is a simple yet comprehensive diagram that represents complex streams that coordinate paid, owned and earned channels in a holistic manner across an entire customer experience – beyond a siloed approach. As a result, the entire customer experience has a greater net benefit to customers and brands than individual deployments.
Brands that do not have this form of efficient workflow to merge these three mediums will certainly lose out on opportunities. The Altimeter Group released a report titled, The Converged Media Imperative: How Brands Will Combine Paid, Earned and Owned Media which echoes the importance of coordinating these 3 channels of digital marketing and playing to their strengths in order to maintain their brand image and reputation.
A recent Nielsen Report released in April 2012 demonstrated that all mediums of paid advertising be it print, television, online or radio showed a gap in “trust”.
As illustrated by the graph above, a large proportion of respondents mentioned that they do not trust any of these forms of advertising on their own. However, “recommendations from people” scored in the upper quartile with 92% of respondents trusting this source. Further, the graph illustrates that owned media scored much higher than paid media, but was lower than earned media. The 2012 U.S elections debates for instance is what I consider the ultimate form of earned media. However, winning debates in isolation would not result in victory for either candidate; it would be their ability to utilize a combination of paid advertising, owned media and earning it through forms of debates that could ultimately lead a candidate to victory.
My thoughts:
Paid media: works so long as you have money being continuously pumped into glitzy ads. The minute you stop spending, paid media stops doing the work for you. Today, paid media seems to have less credibility than it did a decade ago.
Owned media: the upfront costs to establish a brand and its reputation can be quite high as it often takes time to scale. However, as long as you continue to do the right things, you do not have to keep pumping money into owned media to receive pay offs. Owned media ultimately allows you to invest in a long term asset with the hopes of decent if not high payoffs in the years to come.
Earned media: when done well, I think this is the best form of media. First, it sends out a brand message at no cost, yet it carries much more credibility than paid media as indicated by the Neilsen report. However, it can be very challenge to keep in check. To ensure its best use, you would need to utilize paid media to get your brand awareness started and owned media for some maintenance.
Convergence: the key is to focus on the strengths of each of the mediums and minimize the weakness they have to offer. Also, it is important to have a consistent voice, expressing what the brand represents. Converging paid, owned and earned media will solidify your brand in your customers’ and potential customers’ minds.