Owned Media: Build and Amplify Your Brand's Voice

Owned media is any web property that an organization has complete control over and owns entirely by itself. This can cover various types of media channels, ranging from social media to websites or even blogging sites. Anything that you, as the business owner, have control over, can be classified as owned media, as the content put out on these channels is completely within your control.

Having owned media channels is very important in brand growth, especially when it comes to SEO capabilities. It can raise brand awareness and brand recognition across the market and even help you to effectively communicate with potential customers. However, it is important that before you dive into creating your owned media, you have a strong sense of brand identity and brand vision first.

Types of owned media

Diversifying your owned media is important. As a business owner, you should try to avoid limiting yourself to just one type of owned media and instead try to have a variety of brand content across different types of platforms.

Website and blog content

A quality website will give your customers a reliable platform to look to in case of questions, looking for updates or information on products or services. Having a website with strong content creation is important in having a solid foundation for your consumers to visit. This is also a place for retargeting, in case consumers are not ready to purchase when they first stumble across your brand.

Much like a website, a blog post is another great way to have complete control over what your consumers see. You can choose whether your website or blog posts have visual content or written content - whatever would suit your brand best. It should also be easy to operate and user-friendly.

Either way, the importance of quality content cannot be stressed enough. Without persuasive, creative content, the website will not be engaging or attract customers. The website should be optimized to look appealing but should also importantly have SEO (search engine optimization).

You should ensure there are a good amount of keywords relevant to your business integrated throughout your blog posts or website. There are some relevant tools you can use to get the list of keywords. However, if you are inexperienced with SEO, you can hire agencies to do your SEO optimization for you.

Social media profiles

Building a strong social media presence is imperative in this modern age. Most people use social media on a daily basis, making it a powerful place for businesses. Social media channels can be designed within your brand's particular style and tone. You should treat your social media accounts as an extension of your website to ensure that it fits seamlessly into your brand.

This makes it a great tool for branding and furthering your brand identity. Creating brand content on social media platforms is often quick and easily distributed, making it an easily owned media strategy to manage.

Social media channels are also useful for search engine optimization. Including keywords, looking at insights and analysis on different platforms and understanding how to boost your posts will all help with SEO. Getting your brand seen by people who are not your everyday customers is one of the benefits of optimizing social media platforms for your brand.

Email marketing

Although they are slightly different in form compared to websites and social media channels, email marketing campaigns are another form of owned media. These emails can be curated to fit with your brand's tone and sent to specific customers that have shown an interest in your brand before by signing up to a subscriptions list.

This helps to further your customer's awareness of the brand as well as help to boost sales rates - you can promote specific products or services that you wish to push through these email campaigns. Having a catchy header and visual content will help your customers to engage with this particular form of content, as many emails can often get missed within the influx.

Therefore, an interesting tagline is essential during the content creation process as this is what will get your email clicked on and help open rates, which could then lead to a conversion. However, typically, the email marketing strategy is geared towards product releases, unlike the other forms of owned media which are also central bases for consumers to look to.

Mobile app

Like websites, mobile apps can be a trusted source for consumers to look to. A typical trip from some businesses is to include special discounts upon the download of the app, giving the everyday customer an incentive to download the app.

By having the app on their phone, customers have quick access to a one-stop-shop of everything about your brand. However, there should also be a considerable amount of thought behind the design and style of the app - it should be fitting with your overall brand voice and tone.

Additionally, as with other forms of owned media, SEO capabilities are just as important here. Ensuring that you have optimized your app to garner as much traffic and customer attention as possible is extremely important - if no one knows about your app, then what's the point in making one? It might be worth focusing on creating an established website, so you can then promote the app through it.

Owned media is a great way to build your brand through aesthetics, style, tone and voice. With complete control over the media strategy, owned media allows you to build a brand exactly the way you want it, without going through the restrictions of earned media or paid media.

Defining your brand's voice

Do you have a distinguishing feature that you want to stand out about your brand? Whether it's an aesthetic, a color scheme or even a linguistic element, owned content is the best way to do it. Establish a strong concept of your brand and vision, curating it to a specific taste and attracting consumers that enjoy your brand for the personality it has.

It is also a great place to establish guidelines, especially if you are selling services. If there are any specific rules to your services or products such as return dates, cancellation fees, etc, then identifying them on your media pages is a useful way of ensuring your customers are aware before purchasing.

Crafting engaging content

Then comes the content creation. It's all well and good saying that the content needs to be effective, eye-catching and elevated, but what exactly should the content include?

Well, to begin with, it should be consistent with the message of your overall brand. Think about the values of your brand, the aesthetic and the voice and ensure that this comes across resolutely in your media pages. Are you more of a formal brand? Or do your products fit a more light-hearted, fun vibe? Is the overall message you want from your media pages put forward? All of these aspects should be considered.

You should also consider your target audience while you create your content. To get to know your target audience, you can conduct market research or consumer analysis, which will then help to give you a good idea of the type of content you should be creating. Your content should engage the audience, so knowing your target demographic is essential for any brand.

Lastly, your content should be distinctly unique and distinctly you. Every detail on that page is valuable, with each small image or word carefully thought over. You want people to identify with your brand and media that has had time and care put into it will be much more intriguing to people than a rushed, half-hearted page.

Implementing visual branding elements

Visual elements are a wonderful place to start with building your brand identity. Us humans take in visual elements easier than others, our eyes often being drawn to certain images over text and language.

Integrating eye-catching imagery throughout your media channels will help to drive traffic and get customers excited about your brand. This is important regardless of the media type, including paid media or earned media also.

Some aspects you should focus on here are the logo and brand identity as a whole. Often the logo is a stand-out feature of the brand as a whole, so designing one that is unique and special can make the difference - we all think of one thing when we see a yellow M against a red background!

Equally, the color palette is very important. Different colors can evoke different emotions within your audience, so you want to think carefully about the color scheme you want to use. You want the logo and the aesthetic to fit seamlessly with the color palette, as well as the brand itself.

For example, an aromatherapy brand may want to use soft, dusky colors to match their relaxation services. Meanwhile, a sports company might want to use bright, intense colors to help people feel motivated.

Likewise, the typography and visual branding should be similar across every media platform. Although different platforms have different specifications and rules, the content should, for the most part, remain consistent. Switching up the different forms of content can be distracting and can take away from the main message you want to get across of your brand.

So, how do you measure whether or not your owned media channels are effective? There are a couple of metrics you can look at to try and gauge whether or not your content is being received successfully by your audience.

Website and mobile app traffic and engagement metrics

Looking at the traffic score is a great way to identify whether or not your website is garnering enough attention. If your traffic score is low, likely, your content is not being seen enough and you may want to rethink your SEO plan.

Meanwhile, if your engagement is low, then that indicates that the content itself may not be interesting enough. Consider reading over your content and consider things you can implement to get higher engagement - perhaps an interactive module or better visual aids may need to be incorporated.

Social media metrics and engagement

Social media content has its own set of metrics. Like websites, these metrics can measure engagement, traffic and a multitude of other things, even giving you information on the location where you are engaging with most people. This could be extremely helpful if you know what your target audience is and allows you to easily hone in on your chosen demographic.

Email campaign metrics

There are a few metrics to look at when considering email metrics. These could be open rates, conversion rates or click-through rates, but all are equally helpful in examining different aspects. The open rate metric is useful in understanding whether your subject line and email headers are engaging enough, while the click-to-open rate is the number of people who have opened an email sent out from an email marketing campaign and clicked on a link. This will give you more information on how engaging the content is.

Reap the rewards of owned media channels

After you have established your brand, try to get a wide range of media marketing under your belt. Having a variety of beautifully crafted marketing pages can help to establish your brand and make it stand out against the rest. This can increase conversions and purchases while you maintain total control over the content that goes out! Win-win!

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