Fast-forward to the digital age, and the opportunities for business owners and marketers to personalize and segment their marketing messages have grown exponentially. Further, tools like the brand’s website, the company’s email database, the business’s social media platforms, its newsletters and its blog offer marketers another outsized opportunity that their pre-digital-age predecessors never dreamed of. That opportunity is a chance to completely control their own brand messaging throughout the entire marketing process, all without having to depend on (or be at the mercy of) traditional media outlets like newspapers, magazines, television news broadcasts and the like.
When used strategically and effectively, all of these new digital-age tools for brands — known as owned media assets — can be harnessed to help reinforce the brand in consumers’ minds, all while boosting sales and consumer loyalty. Even better, owned media can do all of these things without the brand having to pay a dime for media impressions, leading to boosted brand exposure at a minimal cost.
Need more reasons to put owned media to work for your outdoor brand? Consider these six top advantages to developing and employing owned media for your company:
1. Total control
With owned media, brands can enjoy complete control of their messaging, when and how it is delivered, who it’s delivered to and more, all without having to depend on (or having to lobby) traditional media outlets for coverage. This enables brands to deliver their messaging on their own terms and their own timelines, and to say exactly what they want, how they want in that messaging — an advantage that was afforded only in paid advertisements before owned media was an available messaging option.
2. Added reach
With owned media, brands can also repurpose their content across multiple owned media platforms as they please, enabling them to maximize the reach and impact of each piece of content they create. This means that the same exact video that garners all the likes on Facebook can also be shared on Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn and other social media platforms, enabling the brand to reach more viewers (and more potential consumers) with each piece of content it shares.
3. Message longevity
When a brand shares its content on social media, its website, its blog and other owned media platforms, the content can stay there indefinitely, as opposed to the one-time positioning of advertising via avenues such as radio, television and newspaper spots. This allows the content to be discovered, viewed and even shared well after its original post date, giving it the potential to continue influencing consumers far into the future. Further, having a deep library of owned media can also lend credibility to a brand and position it as an expert in its field, not to mention provide SEO benefits when consumers search for a topic that the brand has covered in a past blog article, for example.
4. Added organic traffic
As noted above, having robust owned media assets in place can boost a brand’s SEO efforts — which can serve to attract new visitors to the brand’s website and social channels. Of course, in the process, this creates the potential to generate added brand awareness and new customers at a minimal cost. (And to really rev up the effectiveness of your outdoor brand’s blog articles, etc., use tools like the SEMRush Keyword Magic Tool or Google’s Keyword Planner to track down and incorporate keywords with the greatest potential for bringing in a bigger audience.)
5. Content versatility
With owned media, brands can post a wide range of content types, from short and to-the-point, text-only posts to photos, videos, audio clips, long-form written blog articles and combinations of all the above. As such, the range of posting options with owned media allows a brand to express itself in nearly any way it chooses — a freedom offered by few paid-placement opportunities.
6. Cost efficiency
Of course, as mentioned earlier, because brands own their owned media platforms, placing content there is free of charge for them. While a brand can choose to pay the social platforms to have select posts boosted to a larger-than-normal audience — when employed with the right posts, a worthwhile strategy for gaining added exposure and, hopefully, a larger following — non-boosted posts cost the brand no more than the time and effort required to generate and place the content.
Could your outdoor brand use the help of a group of experienced marketing professionals to effectively establish and utilize an array of owned-media assets? At TBA Outdoors, our fully integrated marketing firm boasts a team of seasoned specialists (and outdoors fanatics) who can cover all aspects of marketing — including owned media, brand strategy, creative, social media, e-commerce, analytics, public relations and much more — all in one place. And as certified brand strategists, we can also help you with the big-picture adjustments sometimes needed put your outdoor brand on a course to long-term success.
To get started with professional guidance ranging from a simple website analysis to a comprehensive strategy tailored to boost your outdoor brand’s overall performance and identity, contact us today.
