The primary objective of marketing is to drive tangible business outcomes in both the short term and the long term. An integrated marketing strategy that combines the strengths of different marketing tactics and channels can yield superior business results. By using the strengths of each approach, business leaders like you can boost brand visibility. You can also engage your audience regularly and achieve brand resonance. This blended marketing strategy is sometimes called the PESO Model™.
The PESO Model™
The PESO model™ stands for Paid, Earned, Shared, and Owned media. It is a framework that helps business leaders deploy successful marketing campaigns through various media channels. Here's how the PESO Model™ defines each marketing channel:
Paid Media
Paid media includes traditional and digital channels. Your business pays to display your content or messages. Paid channels includes print and broadcast TV ads. It can also include out-of-home, digital display, or programmatic ads. Online paid media includes sponsored or boosted social media posts and paid search results. The best use of paid media is to amplify reach, target specific demographics, and generate immediate visibility for your brand or product.
Earned Media
Earned media refers to publicity or exposure gained through organic methods, such as media coverage, press mentions, online reviews, and word-of-mouth referrals. It can be powerful in cultivating positive relationships with journalists, influencers, and customers. Earned media adds credibility to your brand's message. Consumers see it as unbiased and trustworthy.
Shared Media
Shared media is social media and other community-driven digital channels. On these channels, users actively engage and share your brand's content. This includes social media posts, user-generated content, and online discussions. Shared channels foster interaction by encouraging and participating in relevant brand conversations. Shared media allows your brand to nurture meaningful relationships with your audience.
Owned Media
Owned media are the channels your business controls. These include your website, blogs, email newsletters, and branded content. SEO also falls under owned media. Brands use owned media to build brand identity. You can also use it to share valuable content with your target audience. Owned media is the foundational element of every marketing strategy, providing a platform for brands to highlight expertise, products, and services.
By blending marketing tactics within paid, earned, shared, and owned channels, you can extend your marketing reach, enhance brand visibility, foster audience engagement, and drive better results. The PESO Model™ is critical for business growth in today's competitive marketplace.
Why is a Blended Strategy Important?
As they say…now, more than ever…consumers are inundated with involuntary brand messaging and are voluntarily consuming more content daily.
No matter what industry your business operates in or who your target audiences are, competition for brand awareness, brand engagement, and customer acquisition is fierce. Capturing attention and remaining visible is exceptionally challenging. At the very least, your brand must have a presence on the channels where your target audience consumes content. If your business isn’t engaging with prospects or customers there, your competitors most likely are. A blended marketing strategy across multiple channels can make your company more successful in a competitive market in several ways.
Increased Visibility
Combining channels and tactics enhances visibility by amplifying your presence online and offline. Paid media lets you target specific audience demographics. You control where and when your marketing messages are displayed. Earned media, such as press mentions and word-of-mouth referrals, organically extend your visibility to new audiences. Shared media platforms encourage content sharing and engagement, reaching a larger audience. Your website (owned media) provides a controlled platform to engage with your audience, further increasing visibility.
Broader Reach
Broaden your reach by engaging with different audiences across multiple platforms. Through paid media, you can extend your message to new audiences. Earned media channels magnify reach through third-party validation, touching audiences beyond your immediate network. Shared media platforms expand reach through peer recommendations. Owned media channels enhance reach by delivering valuable content directly to customers, who share it with their networks.
Enhanced Visibility
Paid media can demonstrate your mission and values through targeted advertising, which can contribute to a reputation of authenticity and trustworthiness. Earned media, like press mentions and endorsements from reputable sources, provides valuable third-party validation. Shared media leverages social proof and peer recommendations. Owned media allows you to establish your company as a thought leader through high-quality, informative content. Enhanced credibility can help your brand earn the confidence and loyalty of your target audience.
Standing Out from the Competition
Mixing channels and tactics can help you achieve brand differentiation in a crowded market. Through paid media, you can target specific audiences with tailored messages that feels like your brand showed up just when they needed you. Earned media can strengthen consumer trust through meaningful messaging and community partnerships. Shared media facilitates engagement and interaction, allowing your brand to connect with your audience on a personal level. You can use owned media to showcase your unique identity, values, and expertise, establishing a distinct brand voice. A blended strategy creates a unique brand experience that engages your target audience and sets your brand apart from the competition.
Optimized Performance
Blending marketing channels and tactics provides a comprehensive framework that achieves better results. Targeted paid media can earn immediate results in engagement and conversion rates. Earned media contributes to performance optimization by enhancing credibility without a great deal of investment. Shared media fosters community engagement and virality, amplifying reach and organic growth. Owned media provides a platform to establish brand identity, showcase expertise, and nurture relationships with your audience, increasing customer retention. In short, utilizing multiple channels can optimize marketing efforts across the entire customer journey, from awareness to conversion.
A blended marketing strategy creates a comprehensive, multi-faceted marketing approach that helps your brand stand out in a competitive market. This approach uses the strengths of multiple channels and tactics while minimizing their weaknesses. It delivers greater resilience, flexibility, effectiveness, and better results. In short, combining the quick impact of paid marketing with the long-term benefits of organic efforts contributes to steady business growth and profitability.
Start with Your Goals
The best place to start building a blended marketing strategy is to identify your overarching business goals. Understanding your goals allows you to develop a strategic roadmap integrating various marketing channels and tactics to maximize resources and achieve optimal results.
Certain channels align better with certain goals. Deciding the best channel for a goal depends on many factors. These include your target audience, goals, budget, and available resources. Here's a general guideline for selecting channels based on common marketing goals.
Increasing Brand Awareness
The best channels are paid advertising, such as programmatic display ads, social media ads, and influencer partnerships. Also, earned media, like press releases and guest blogs, can be fruitful for brand awareness.
Generating Leads
Lead generation is best accomplished through content marketing on owned channels. Email marketing, paid display and video ad campaigns, and boosted social media lead forms are also impactful. Lastly, SEO and paid search strategies targeting high-intent keywords are imperative.
Driving Sales Conversions
The best channels are paid advertising, such as search and retargeting, and email marketing. Also, strong call-to-action messages on your website and landing pages are vital. They’re the last step to conversion.
Enhancing Customer Engagement
Social media is fantastic for deepening customer relationships. This includes both organic and paid posts. Email marketing, content marketing, and in-person events are also effective.
Building Brand Authority and Thought Leadership
Use earned media like PR appearances, speaking engagements, and influencer partnerships to establish thought leadership. Also, create content on owned channels and share targeted social media posts.
Conducting thorough research and testing can determine which channels resonate with your target audience. The challenge is two-fold. First, place your brand messaging where and when your customers want it. Second, reinforce the message through placement in multiple channels for the best results. That leads us to the next step in developing a blended marketing strategy.
What's the Best Media Mix?
As in most marketing questions, the answer is "It depends." There is no one-size-fits-all answer for the best mix of channels or tactics. Your best mix will depend on your industry, competition, target audience, goals, and budget. However, a balanced approach incorporating a blend of channels yields the best results.
Media Mix Optimization (MMO) is one strategic approach to determining the budget allocation across various channels that will achieve your best possible return on investment (ROI). It involves analyzing historical performance data and experimenting with combinations of channels and budget allocations. Then, those insights are used to predict how different media mixes will affect key metrics. These metrics could include sales, conversions, and brand awareness.
MMO follows a structured process that includes data collection, analysis, modeling, experimentation, and ongoing monitoring and optimization. An expert partner like Phase 3 can be invaluable in implementing MMO. We do this daily for our clients. By refining your media mix based on real-time data and insights, we can help you adapt to market changes and consumer behavior and maintain a competitive edge.
Strategic Messaging Integration
As you build your media mix, it is crucial to integrate the messaging and creative in your marketing campaigns. Integration ensures that your brand's visual identity and messaging align across different channels. This ensures your brand's voice remains consistent across all channels, reinforcing brand identity and recognition. Clear branding improves brand recall and recognition. It helps consumers to connect with and remember your brand. For example, consumers can tell when a social post doesn't match the sentiment of a video ad or blog post. Matching voice, tone, and sentiment in messaging is just as important as maintaining a consistent logo. Consistent messaging extends trust and authenticity with your audience. They will know what to expect from your brand, no matter where they encounter it. By prioritizing messaging and creative integration, you'll create more unified marketing campaigns that will resonate with your audience and achieve results.
Measuring ROI
Strategic data sharing between all channels and tactics informs strategies. A blended approach is needed to measure ROI. The strategy involves tracking and analyzing key performance indicators (KPIs) across all channels. This is to see how well each marketing tactic or channel performs and their impact on business goals. Tracking these metrics and optimizing strategies based on the results ensures that your blended marketing strategy delivers the most significant value and contributes to long-term success.
However, it can be complicated to analyze a combination of KPIs across multiple channels and tactics. Unified marketing measurement integrates and analyzes data from many marketing channels and touchpoints. It gives a full view of marketing performance. The process starts with gathering data from all channels, including digital advertising platforms, social media channels, email, websites, and more. Then, the data is consolidated into a single, unified dataset.
The goal of unified marketing measurement is to understand how every strategy and channel contributes to business objectives. By combining data from different channels, you can gain insights into your customer’s journey, identify your most effective marketing channels and tactics, optimize marketing spend, and improve marketing ROI. When you grasp the full impact of your marketing efforts, you can make better informed business decisions.
As in developing a channel mix, working with a partner that has the expertise to implement unified marketing measurement can make the process easier.
Phase 3's Strategic Approach
Our paid and owned media teams work together to shape the best-blended marketing strategies for our clients. When we collaborate on campaigns, we can analyze historical data, identify blind spots and optimization opportunities, share resources and ideas, and create the best marketing solutions to achieve our clients’ goals.
When we start with a new client, we take the time to audit and review their existing marketing strategies to inform our work. We use a problem-solving lens to find those common denominators that resonate with their target audiences and drive results. Through data, we show our clients what messaging and channel worked in the past and what didn’t perform. Then, we strategize with them to identify their marketing goals for the future.
After establishing that baseline of historical results and future expectations, we'll collaborate cross-functionally to integrate paid, PR, and creative for cohesive, data-driven blended marketing campaigns aligned with the client's goals. We strive to build campaigns that connect and convert based on a framework of strategic business decisions and planning that allows each channel to perform at its best.
The Bottom Line
Strategic marketing is fluid and ever-changing, but people will continue to consume content online and off. The best marketing strategy starts by meeting customers where they are, when they want to engage with you, and on as many channels as possible.
A blended marketing strategy that incorporates the strengths of different marketing tactics and channels can lead to superior business results. The PESO model™ is a framework for developing successful marketing campaigns across various channels and tactics.
Combining marketing channels and tactics enables you to maximize your reach to your target audience. You'll build credibility, adapt to changing consumer behavior, enhance customer engagement, optimize resources, and drive business growth. By embracing a blended and integrated approach to marketing, you'll position your company for long-term sustainability even in a competitive marketplace.
If you’d like to explore a blended marketing strategy, we can help you get started. Contact us today.