What Is Paid Media Marketing?
In the world of marketing tactics, categories, and strategies there is an increasing number of opportunities. Sometimes, however, good old-fashioned marketing tactics are renamed, as is the case with paid media marketing. Let’s look at what it is, and then we’ll talk about why it’s being focused on again, and we’ll wrap it up by talking about how you can integrate paid media into your marketing strategy.
What is Paid Media?
Paid media is advertising. When you buy space on any content channel or format, that’s advertising. You’re paying for a targeted audience to receive a specific message. So, an example of paid media can range from a Facebook advertisement to a radio commercial.
Why Now? What Makes Paid Media Different?
So why call it “paid media” instead of advertising? One of the predominant reasons why it’s now called Paid Media is because many of the tactics or approaches use social media. It could be (and sometimes is) called social media advertising, but paid media encompasses more than social media.
It’s also called paid media because it is in a grouping of media types that also includes owned media or content that you own and which you use to market your business (like a blog post or a social media post), and earned media, which is essentially online word of mouth marketing. For example, when a customer tweets about a product they just purchased from your company, that’s earned media.
The Role Paid Media Can Play in Your Marketing Strategy.
Paid media now provides you with the ability to create highly targeted advertisements. You can narrow down your target audience to 25-year-old women who live in towns with less than 20,000 residents and are searching for a specific keyword phrase. It’s a truly powerful medium, and with social media sites now reaching millions of people every day you can test, track, and leverage this tactic for exact results.
While owned and earned media are probably where you’re going to spend the majority of your time, energy, and budget, you can also leverage paid media to optimize those tactics. For example, let’s say that you create a white paper and you publish it. You may earn a few earned media posts on social media for that white paper. You can also promote that white paper with targeted social media advertisements. So, while your original focus was on your owned media (the white paper), you leveraged earned and paid media to promote the content and maximize your results.
When used in combination, owned, earned, and paid media can help your organization realize the full benefit of your marketing efforts. If you’re not currently using paid media in your strategy, consider focusing on one or two channels and fine-tuning your efforts. A little attention can reap tremendous rewards.
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