What Is Owned Media?

Owned media comprises media that a company completely owns and controls. Examples of owned media include your company website, blog, mobile app, email newsletter, or posts on your social media profiles. The primary advantage of owned media lies in the absolute control it affords you over the message you wish to communicate to your audience. However, the main challenge is the full responsibility you bear for content creation, management, upkeep, and associated expenses.

Owned, paid, and earned are the three types of media. Paid media is advertising you have to pay for, such as pay-per-click ads, social media advertising, paid promotions, and video ads. Earned media happens when others share messages about your company because of an emotional connection they experienced. They could share a news story, leave a review, or mention your company on social media. Along with owned media, you can use these categories to form a media strategy. 

Types of owned media

Owned media gives you the opportunity to lay the foundation for your company as you seek to connect with your target audience. Since you have complete control of the message you convey through owned media, you can establish your brand voice, mission, values, and presentation. Take a look at these three types of owned media you could add to your marketing strategy.

Company blog

As a companion to your website, your company blog is where you offer content in the form of articles, infographics, videos, white papers, photos, and other helpful content to educate and assist your target audience. For instance, a potential customer searching for information on gardening in tropical climates could come across your blog article on the topic. With careful placement of links to your products or services, you might gain a new customer. At the very least, you will facilitate brand awareness and begin to establish your company as a trusted source of information.  

Having a company blog can benefit your company by:

• Driving traffic to your website

• Increasing brand credibility and trust

• Engaging customers and potential customers

• Generating leads

Social media

Facebook, Instagram, X (formerly Twitter), LinkedIn, TikTok, and YouTube are examples of social media platforms on which your company can create a brand account. While companies must adhere to the rules and limitations set by the platforms, you still own the content creation process on social media. Short social media posts, videos, and images attract potential customers to your products or services. This type of owned media allows you to interact with your target audience through comments, which helps establish brand loyalty.

You can use all the major social media platforms at no cost to your company, making this type of owned media advantageous to businesses of all sizes. Social media also allows you to reach a global audience, and many platforms provide analytics tools that help you target the users most interested in what you're offering.

Establishing a presence on social media can help your company by:

• Increasing brand awareness

• Humanizing your brand

• Engaging in social listening to stay on-trend and competitive

• Providing customer service and support

E-mail marketing

Since billions of people worldwide have an e-mail address, e-mail marketing can be an efficient and effective way to nurture leads, generate repeat sales, and strengthen customer loyalty. E-mail marketing campaigns are typically low-cost and have a high return on investment. You can utilize them to send welcome messages, newsletters, confirmation emails, discounts, promotions, surveys, links to your blog, and many other purposes tailored to the needs of your company and your customers.

The advantages of e-mail marketing include:

• Sending customers to your product pages, downloads, and other target areas

• Conducting A/B testing to optimize your messaging

• Personalizing your messages to increase engagement

• Accelerating the sales funnel process

Related terms 

• Paid media

• Earned media

• Media strategy

Learn more about digital marketing

Learn more about owned, paid, and earned media by earning your Google Digital Marketing & E-commerce Professional Certificate on Coursera. This beginner-level series can help you learn skills in search engine optimization, display advertising, email marketing, and more.