Selling with Content

Search is first source for company news, then online news, then print

The British PR company Edelman has been doing an international survey on the topic of "trust" for eleven years now. Because they are a communications company some of the questions always drift over into media topics. This year's study (2011) was no different. With 5,075 responses from 23 countries the study offers an international perspective often hard to find. One finding answers a questions many in the B to B world ask a lot these days: how do people now find out information about companies? This is an important question ask because as potential buyers begin searching for information, understanding where they are looking helps marketers know how to reach them at this critical time.    

When respondent were asked where they "generally go first" for information about a company, search was the top choice (29%), followed by on-line news sites (19%), and then print sources (15%). Going to the company website received only 11%, and social media only 5%.
Some observations:

• When people want news about a company, the perspective of a 3rd party seems very important, otherwise why wouldn't they just go to the website of the company in question?
• With all the consumer buzz over social media, it does not seem to hold up well as a business news source. Great place to keep up with friends? Yes. Place to find information about companies? Not so much.
• For those who say that print is finished as a communications medium, think again. While a third place finish may not be great compared to a few years ago, it is still prominently on the map.  

Download the entire Edelman study HERE.

 

Should your emphasis be on earned, owned, or paid media?

When I was a kid, there was one kind of milk you could spend money on only, the white kind. But now you choose from whole, skim, 1%, 2%, organic, and chocolate. Media is a lot like that. You used to spend money on it for one thing only: exposing customers to marketing messages. Now you choose from “bought media”, “owned media”, and “earned media.” The definitions:

Bought media: media you pay for like print ads and banner ads.

Owned media: media you own and control such as your company website and blog or newsletters and digital magazines your organization publishes.

Earned media: exposure you “earn” by posting content on social networks, forums, and websites that you do not own. Examples are comments posted on blogs, photos shared on Facebook, or videos uploaded to YouTube. Here is chart from a presentation from Alex Wong that illustrates this:

Conventional wisdom says each of these media has different strengths:

Owned media is best for reaching your current customer base. Since your organization should have the most complete list of your own customers, publishing a newsletter or digital magazine to that list should provide the best coverage available anywhere.

Bought media is best for reaching new customers. The weakness of “owned media” is that it reaches largely people who are already customers or inclined to become them, so it is less likely you will reach customers of competitors or new customer just coming to your market. “Bought media” strives for total market coverage which will include the groups you miss with owned media.

Earned media enables your biggest fans to advocate for you. Every company has customers who, if properly motivated, will advocate for you online. While this is basically an organic process that you have no direct control over, smart organizations find ways to encourage this process along. Many mistakenly think that earned media is free. While there is no charge for posting content on most social media sites, the task of doing this requires staffing for the function, and adding staff is never free.

Earned, owned, or paid media. Which should you emphasize?  
If your customer are heavily involved in social media, then earned media needs your attention. If you have not asked about your customers social media involvement in a year, you need to ask again.

 If you sell a utilitarian product like car batteries, or commodity products like toothpaste or paper towels, paid media might be best. When was the last time you saw a passionate bog post or successful newsletter about toothpaste?

If most of your business comes from repeat customers, you need to think more about owned media.

Different media work best for different situations. Along those lines, I prefer skim milk in my morning cereal, but 1 or 2% % for hot coca.

See Alex Wong's entire presentation on slide share

"Online media is bought on religion or politics"

Susan Bratton’s “DishyMix” podcast came up with up one of the funniest and succinct descriptions of how media gets bought during her interview with media metrics guru, Jim Sterne (photo at left). Sterne is the founder of the eMetrics Marketing Optimization Summits where online wizards gather to interpret data from online programs and ad campaigns.

In the world on online ad metrics you would think that the numbers would speak for themselves and there be little room for the human element. Wrong. When Sterne talks about how media decisions get made, metrics and all, the human element is still very much present.

According to Sterne media is bought on either "religion or politics." According to Sterne, “If it’s religion, your CMO 15 years ago was good at buying television. So television gets all the money ‘cause that’s what he knows. Or, she really was a brilliant “search” marketing person, so search gets the focus. She’s the hammer and everything looks like a nail.”

“Politics is where the corporate search guy is going to get more money because he has known the CMO longer or has more power.”

Sterne summarizes, "You know it’s religion if they say, 'You know I’ve always done it this way and it’s worked for me.' It's politics when they say, 'Gees, we don’t have enough resources and this seems like the best way to go."

Click to listen to or download the DishyMix podcast featuring Jim Sterne here