The Trifecta of Marketing – What You Need to Know

It’s often said that ‘all good things come in threes’, and it certainly seems to be the case in everything from Hollywood blockbusters to digital marketing. 

When you’re creating a strategy to market your business online, there are three main areas to focus your attention on:

• Earned media
• Owned media
• Paid media

These are known as the ‘trifecta of marketing’ and in this blog post, we’ll explain what it all means!

Owned Media

Owned media is exactly what it sounds like – it’s any media that your business creates and shares online. From blog posts and videos to social media posts and newsletters – your owned media helps you extend your online presence and reach people across lots of varied platforms.

There are many benefits in investing in the creation of owned media.

The biggest one is the boost that it will give to your position in Google’s search rankings! Google gives priority to websites that are regularly updated with quality content that is relevant to its audience, and they also include social media interactions in their algorithm. Check out our blog on SEO here.

Another major benefit of growing your owned media is that it puts you in a position of authority in your industry, helping show your expertise and give potential customers confidence in your brand. You can do this by creating other types of content such as tutorials, infographics and podcasts. It depends on your business and your customers.

Once you’ve got your owned media sorted, next up is earned media!

Earned Media

Earned media is all the ways your brand gets free publicity – through social media mentions and comments, review sites or even content that has been picked up and shared by a third-party site. Basically, it’s the online version of word-of-mouth advertising!

One of the reasons this type of marketing is so valuable is because it builds trust and credibility for your brand. Customers will be more inclined to make a purchase from a brand they’ve heard good things about, especially when it’s from their friends or people like them. According to Nielsen, 92% of consumers believe recommendations from friends and family over all forms of advertising.

Earned media can be slow to build but over time the results can be very impactful. For a start, you will have an audience who are aware of your brand based on your positive reputation. 

To succeed with earned media, you need to do three things:

•   Create great content.
•   Increase your Google search rankings.
•   Connect with your audience through meaningful content and conversation.

Paid Media

While owned and earned media can make a big impact, you might need an extra boost to fully leverage your brand online. This is where paid media comes in.

Paying for advertising online is one of the most effective ways to get your brand seen, but you have to be very strategic about how you do it otherwise you could invest a lot of money without seeing any results. 

And people who see your ad are still likely to research your brand online before they make a purchase, so it’s important that your owned and earned media tell a positive story!

But once you’re happy with your online presence, paying to promote your brand online can expose you to new audiences and help get the ball rolling while you wait for the longer-term benefits of earned media to kick in.

Examples for ways to use paid media include:

• Social Media –You can choose to promote your ads to your existing audience, or target people who don’t currently follow you. Facebook and Instagram now let you add a shop to your social media profile linking directly to your products.
• Google Advertising – This is a really effective way of directing traffic to your owned media sites.
• Influencer marketing – you can pay online influencers to tell their audiences about your business and promote your products.

When all three elements of the ‘trifecta’ are employed together, you will have one of the most powerful digital strategies to help propel your business forward! We’ve given a very brief overview of how it works, but the key factor tying each element together is a great website that meets all the requirements for Google to show it to people.

Get in touch if you’d like to talk about how we can help you!