Smart Start: Media Types Explained

This guide will explore the basics of various media types, providing a deeper understanding of how each is used so companies of all sizes and industries can create a robust digital presence.

What’s Media?

Simply put, media is a form of communication that delivers information to an audience. Examples of media include:

• Blogs
• Magazines
• Newspapers
• Online publications
• Radio
• Television

No matter the source, the unifying characteristic is a focus on communication and disseminating content to a large group of people at once.

Though the end goal is the same, there are three types of media we’ll discuss in detail including owned media, paid media, and earned media.

What is owned media?

Just as it sounds, owned media is media that you’ve created. It includes assets such as:

• Blog posts
• Brochures
• Email marketing campaigns
• Newsletters
• Sales sheets
• Website content

As you can see, there are a variety of owned media platforms that have been used by marketers to reach their target audiences. You can start with a business website and a few carefully selected social media channels. Many businesses find they need multiple owned media platforms to meet their specific needs and audience preferences.

Think of owned media like you would the foundation of a house to which your other pieces of online content are built upon.

Creating and implementing a sound owned media plan comes with a number of benefits including:

• Cost-Effectiveness - You don’t have to pay to publish it on your website or even post it to your social channels. Other than your time, owned media is free.
• Control - You have full control over the messaging and voice of your content. This creates an opportunity to double down on authenticity and build brand awareness in exchange.
• Reach - Targeted social media campaigns and search engine optimization (SEO)focused content helps broaden a company’s reach to better connect with their target audience and relevant media sources.

The quality of your owned media plays a role in a company’s ability to earn valuable media mentions.

What is paid media?

Paid media, sometimes referred to as paid media advertising, is used to define any marketing tactics a company pays for.

Typically, with paid media, brands pay a third party to distribute their message on an external platform to an audience.

Examples include:

• Print advertising
  • - Billboards
  • - Newspaper and magazine ads
  • - Signage
• Radio commercials
• Television commercials
• Digital advertising
  • - Digital display ads (eblasts, banner ads, etc)
  • - Google AdWords (search, pay-per-click, etc)
  • - Social media advertising
  • - Sponsored, native, and influencer content
  • - YouTube and Over The Top (Hulu, Roku, etc) pre-roll ads

Paid media is one of the quickest ways to generate traffic and brand awareness because it is designed to speak to a particular audience. Digital advertising provides a level of sophistication older forms of advertising cannot, including detailed analytics. This information is invaluable especially to small businesses, which often have tight budgets. Seeing not only how many people are viewing various ads, but how many are engaging and demographics information enables marketers to better allocate advertising budgets and refine strategies over time.

Targeting audiences based on keywords, interests, zip code, and even age empowers brands to create messaging that speaks directly to their target audience to answer their questions, solve their problems, and address their pain points.

Additional benefits of paid media include:

• The increase in reach puts companies in a position to build brand awareness at a faster rate in comparison to organic efforts.
• Think of paid media as gasoline that will ignite your brand’s other forms of media including owned and earned. The targeting and timing capabilities of paid media serve as the perfect complement to a company’s other media.
• Paid digital media is a cost-effective way for companies to promote their business to their target audience. Data collection from paid digital campaigns empowers brands to make better decisions and leverage strategies that’ll maximize their ad spend.

According to eMarketer, Google and Facebook still hold the largest share of total U.S. digital ad spending, with 37.2% and 19.6% respectively.

What is earned media?

‘Authority’ and ‘credibility’ are two words that come to mind when talking about earned media, and that’s because it’s publicity gained from content that a brand has not paid for or produced on its own.

Think of earned media as digital word-of-mouth marketing that comes in the form of features, interviews, mentions, reposts, and more.

Benefits of earned media include:

• Awareness - Earned media mentions provide companies the ability to build relevant backlinks that can boost SEO performance and position the brand as an expert in their industry.
• Targeting - Crafting compelling press releases that speak directly to a community is an impactful way to build a digital presence. Targeting relevant media placements empowers companies to niche down and speak directly to their target audiences.
• Reputation - Connecting and building relationships with your target audience through consistent press release distribution and earned media mentions will create and solidify a positive reputation.

At Newswire, an overarching goal of our Press Release Optimizer is turning our clients’ owned media into earned media.

Through our MAP, we’ve combined our robust SaaS platform and the expertise of our Media and Marketing team to help small and midsize companies generate the results needed to stand out from their competition and secure their piece of market share.

Results, such as increased website traffic, improved search engine optimization (SEO) rankings and attracting more marketing-qualified and sales-qualified leads, are some of the positive outcomes companies that are part of the MAP can expect to achieve through consistent press release distribution.

In fact, our clients have landed features in top-tier publications such as Bloomberg, Business Insider, Cheddar, Forbes, TechCrunch, The Wall Street Journal, and more.

But, we don’t stop there. Earned media mentions are like a big play in the game. We build on that momentum by doubling down on the coverage to cast a wider net, capturing the attention of our clients’ target audiences.

Through our MAP, small and midsize companies are driving hundreds of media mentions, thousands of marketing-qualified and sales-qualified leads, and more search traffic for top keywords.