Executing Online Campaigns – Owned Media
Using our framework of Owned, Earned, and Paid Media, we have a couple different ways to organize how we think about executing an online marketing campaign.
Let’s start with Owned:
As we’ve seen, we want to always strive to drive traffic back to a digital property that we own. Once on an app or website, we have the tools to measure the interaction in great detail and control the experience much better than on a rented property like a social media platform. While social platforms cannot be beat for scaling up word of mouth and sharing content in a frictionless way, they can be tough to earn deep engagement depending on the conversion needed, as users are on to the next shiny object.
However, once a user is pulled onsite we have great control over how we unfold that digital experience. We can adjust the site architecture using a content management system (CMS). We can change copy, headings, calls to action based on our user persona. Swap out videos and photo galleries. Or change up the flow within a native app.
This can all seem a little ephemeral, so let’s dig in on how we tackle this in a day to day scenario.
Suggested workflow for managing online campaigns for Owned:
- Starting with our User Persona, we work backwards on creating great content that our target market will want to engage with. Think about outeducating your competiton and not outspending them with ad buys.
- We build a user-friendly sitemap and design that allows users to efficiently move through our website. Remember most digital properties have less than five minutes for time on site for their visitors. What do you want them to experience in under five minutes? This brutal simple fact forces you to really focus your messaging.
- Review your Key Performance Indicators (KPIs). What are we striving to achieve for engagement with this audience? For example, in a B2B situation it might be we want users to sign up for an email newsletter to get helpful tips for better running their company.
- As we saw with our SEO section, search engines love fresh content. We want to set up an editorial calendar for our blog and guided by our keyword research be assembling and releasing content on a consistent basis under the categories we defined in our sitemap. This content should follow best-practices for on-page optimization.
- These blog posts can be assembled into an email marketing campaign and sent out to an opted-in list (meaning users have agreed to receive communication). Don’t forget to include links on your social feeds as well.
- Over time, these online marketing functions develop a weekly or daily cadence that is striving to bring users to the website and reward them with value.
Key Takeaway: Developing a great experience on your own digital property means you can control and ultimately reap the rewards of that engagement. To earn this, you have to be consistently executing against KPIs, content creation, and staying close to your users.