The typical small business owner is overwhelmed with marketing choices and the sheer volume of media options available today. However, one critical distinction sets successful entrepreneurs apart. The difference between earned media and owned media is the golden nugget of the media world and understanding it will build equity for you that will snowball in the coming years.
What Is Owned Media?
Owned media is 100% under your control, like your website, blog, email list, social profiles, and any other platform you own and operate. These are all digital assets you create, design, and manage entirely by yourself. Owned media is not a rented space on someone else’s platform; it is actual digital real estate, which builds and increases in value over time. All your top of funnel lead magnets and conversion pages should funnel visitors to your owned channels because it’s where you build trust, capture leads, and ultimately, create the most return by driving repeat audiences.
Most common examples of owned media channels:
Website and blog: Your virtual headquarters where you have complete control over messaging, design, and user experience.
Email lists: Direct line to customers and prospects without any algorithm interference.
Social media profiles: Your channels on platforms like LinkedIn, Instagram, or Facebook.
Branded podcasts and videos: Podcasts or YouTube channels that you create and host on your own platform.
Newsletters or community hubs: A centralized space to nurture and interact with your most engaged audience.
Resource libraries: Collections of guides, FAQs, or downloadable assets that establish your brand as an authority.
Paid advertising can help support your owned channels, but it’s a different investment than owned media. Unlike traditional media, where value only accumulates from paid advertising, the owned assets you create and manage can only appreciate in value over time as they gain authority, backlinks, and organic search visibility. According to a study by Content Marketing Institute, 84 percent of B2B marketers say that content marketing helped create brand awareness in the past 12 months, and 76 percent report that content marketing helped generate demand and leads.
What Is Earned Media?
Earned media refers to third-party exposure that’s won through providing a quality product or service or quality content. The big difference here is that it is earned, not paid for and you do not directly control it. Others, voluntarily, are talking about your brand. Earned media has a higher level of credibility than anything you can self-promote because it is independent. Earned media is your reputation in action. Others believe enough about your brand that they are willing to talk about it. Each earned mention of your brand builds credibility and extends your reach across third-party networks that you have not paid to be a part of.
Earned media can come in many different forms, some of the most common forms of earned media that have meaningful impact on driving business results are:
Customer reviews and testimonials: Verified feedback on Google, Yelp, and industry reviews
Press coverage and media mentions: Articles, interviews, features in publications
Social media shares and mentions: Organic social media posts from customers and influencers
Word-of-mouth recommendations: Personal referrals and community discussions
Influencer or partner shoutouts: Mentioned by an aligned brand or influencer
User-generated content (UGC):Content created by customers or fans that features your product or service
Key differences
The dimensions of difference between these two types of media encompass key areas that influence how each type of media operates. Those small business owners who have a handle on the differences can use the right tools at the right time to be competitive against larger businesses with larger advertising budgets.
Let’s look at the overarching differences between owned and earned media:
Control: With owned media, you have full control of your message, timing, and presentation. Earned media is in the hands of third parties. They choose if they want to mention your brand and what they will say about it.
Cost: Gartner’s 2024 CMO Spend Survey reveals that marketing and advertising budgets have decreased to 7.7 percent of company revenue. Owned media requires an initial investment in website development and content creation, while earned media requires investment in customer satisfaction and relationship-building.
Buyer’s Journey Impact: Owned media is effective at all stages of the funnel, from initial awareness and interest, to consideration, to post-purchase engagement. Earned media often has the most influence at the decision stage, when third-party validation often is that final push that owned media cannot provide.
Longevity: Owned media has a cumulative value that builds over time. Earned media creates exposure that eventually fades unless it is reinforced with more owned media.
Measurement: Owned media analytics make it easy to track the performance; earned media impact is often assessed indirectly through mentions, reach, or referral traffic.
How Owned and Earned Media Work Together
To create synergy between owned and earned media, make sure you have a strong foundation on both sides. Your owned media should be valuable enough to share; and your customer experiences should be so great that people will want to talk about them. Here’s how to connect the dots between owned and earned media:
Make sharing effortless: Include social buttons, encourage reviews, and create assets designed for easy distribution.
Convert earned traffic: Ensure every piece of owned content has potential to generate earned exposure and converts visitors effectively.
Repurpose earned wins: Feature testimonials, press mentions, and influencer quotes back on your owned media.
Engage continually: Respond to mentions, share gratitude, and build relationships with those who promote your brand.
According to BrightEdge research, organic search—a primary driver of traffic to owned media—delivers 53 percent of all website traffic, far outpacing paid search at 15 percent. This means your owned content assets work continuously to attract visitors who may then become earned media advocates through reviews, shares, and recommendations.
Building Your Media Strategy
For small businesses, the answer is simple. Start with owned media as your base, then work to earn credibility with stellar customer experiences. Each delighted customer can turn into earned media—a review, a social mention, a friend-to-friend recommendation. Systems are key here to ensure you are creating value people want to talk about again and again. Ideally, it should feel like a perpetual motion machine: create → share → measure → improve
A sustainable strategy is both structured and measurable:
Foundational owned media: Build out and strengthen your website, create a regular cadence of content, and grow your email list.
Extraordinary customer experiences: Make it part of your operating system to ask for and respond to reviews.
Meaningful measurement: Measure owned media by reviewing your analytics (traffic, engagement, conversions). Track earned media with Google Alerts, review, and social mentions. Check out my article on Share of Voice to learn more about this.
Long-term thinking: Choose metrics that tie directly to your business goals (qualified leads, customer acquisition costs, etc.)
Cross-channel consistency: Look and sound the same on every owned and earned channel (tone, design, messaging).
When you do both well over time, you create a marketing system that compounds and scales so small businesses can start to compete with quality, not quantity.
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