The answer is yes, yes, yes!
Two and a half hours (almost). That’s how long the average person spends on social media. And let’s not even think about the jump in screen time since the COVID-19 pandemic.
For a business, those 2.5 hours (144 minutes to be precise) are imperative because that’s the window they have to capture the attention of the consumer.
Paid, owned, and earned media (POEM) is how you crawl into this social time. While most brands accept the value of owned and earned media, many tend to ignore paid media.
That’s what we focus on here – why is paid media marketing essential for a brand.
What is Paid Media Marketing?
Owned media is content you, the brand, creates for your channels. Earned media is content another user, like influencers, create organically for you. And all marketing efforts that involve compensated placement come within paid media.
Let’s say you write a blog for your brand’s site. The blog becomes owned media. Now, assume a few of your current readers create a buzz around that blog. This buzz or organic promotion becomes earned media. To extend this buzz, you ask some influencers to share a sponsored post. This becomes your paid media.
In other words, through paid media, you buy the reach to an audience that was developed and maintained by another person or platform.
Paid media includes:
- Display ads
- Pay per click advertising
- Banner ads on a website
- Sponsored posts and ads on social media like promoted tweets, bumper ads on YouTube, and carousel ads on Facebook
How Does It Benefit Brands?
The amount of content created and published online is cataclysmic. With your customer inundated with content, cutting through the noise and gaining their attention has become near impossible. The operative word being ‘near.’
Paid media marketing is one way to increase your brand visibility, exposure, and gain those eyeballs.
It connects you with customers that are genuinely interested in your product or service. More than that, it promotes your brand message to an audience beyond those who follow you diligently.
Here’s how paid media is advantageous to a brand:
1. Reaching the audience where they are.
The only way to capture the attention of current and potential customers is to reach them where they are – in the digital world. Paid media marketing allows you to build a substantial digital presence.
2. Reaching the audience when they want.
Gaining the attention of a user is all well and good, but what matters more is reaching them right when they want it. That’s what paid searches (part of paid media marketing) enable. They connect you to the consumer at the precise moment the person actively searches for a product or service that you make!
3. Reaching the right kind of audience.
Paid media marketing on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter is an excellent opportunity for targeted advertising, i.e., getting your brand noticed by the right type of audience. It not only increases your exposure to the audience most likely to make a purchase but also tailors your content to the individual’s preference.
4. Reaching the audience more effectively.
Reaching your customer through online means is definitely easier than offline. That’s a given, especially after the novel coronavirus pandemic. It’s the number one benefit of digital marketing.
What makes paid media a vital cog in the digital wheel is its effectiveness at boosting all your content marketing efforts and driving business performance further.
Paid Media Marketing is One Egg in The Brand Basket
Any brand that ignores paid media marketing does so at its peril. They not only overlook a key component of digital marketing but also surrender a much-needed competitive advantage.
That said, an effective marketing strategy doesn’t rely on one tactic. So, thinking that paid media marketing is sufficient is egregious. It doesn’t have the staying power of organic efforts.
Therefore, work on owned and earned media too. For this, you need to prioritize social media marketing and influencer marketing – the two forms that will flourish in coming years.
