All You Need to Know about the difference between Owned Earned and Paid Media

The marketing tactics done online varies over a wide range of activities. This can be classified into mainly three named Owned Media, Earned Media and Paid Media.

Owned Media is just the media that you have total control about. This generally will be the company website, company blog. However even though the Youtube channel, Facebook Page or Twitter Page or Google Plus Page is owned it is having total control by the authorised people at the company.

Earned Media  is the exposure you are getting when your content is shared over social media or tell to their peer through word of mouth publicity. This means that the brand mentions are earned through different channels.

Paid Media is obtained when the content is given in the form of landing pages or Call to Actions through paid advertising and sponsored ads. This generally include Google Adwords and Facebook Ads along with banner ads on other websites.

Media	Example	Role	Benefits	Challenges
Owned Media	Website Blog Mobile App	Building Long Term Relationships with existing customers	Control Cost Effective Niche Audience	No Guarantee Takes Time
Earned Media	Word of Mouth Social Media Channels	Listening and Responding	Credible Key Role in Sales Transparency	No Control Negative Reviews Difficult to Measure
Paid Media	Adwords Sponsored Ads	Quick leads in Short Period of Time	In demand Immediate Control	Poor Credibility Low Response

Obtaining visits through owned media takes time. This is generally done through Search Engine Optimization of the Company Website and Company Blog. With the updates from Google and other search engine coming up which also include the pagerank algorithm one can not guarantee the visits to the website.

Getting visits through earned media is easy compared to owned media. Through genuine conversations through social media sharing of the brand can be achieved. One of the disadvantages of this is that if a negative review happens it will also spread fast which might ruin the brand. The effectiveness of the campaign can generally be measured through the likes and shares among social media.

As far as lead generation is concerned paid media is quick and easy method. One of the disadvantage of paid advertising is that most people know that they are clicking on the paid ads by Google and the trust factor and credibility is often overlooked.