Paid, Owned, Earned Media — Part 3 of 3 | Ep. 142

There’s a lot you can do organically to get your content discovered long term, but for quick growth and exposure, nothing beats paid media.

Welcome to part three of our series on using paid, owned, and earned media for content discovery. Part one was owned media in Episode 138, and part two was earned media in Episode 140. Which means today is all about paid media.

Now, the whole concept with this series is that you can use these different types of media to drive content discovery. And content discovery is something a lot of us forget about, but it’s important because once you go through the trouble of creating it, you want people to listen to it.

Paid media is another way you get people to find your content. The reason this is important is because at the end of the day, your content discovery grows at a faster rate with exposure from paid media. In other words, the faster you can put people in front of your content or put your content in front of people, the faster your business will grow.

At some point, you will hit a plateau in what you can do organically. At that point, the only way to reach more people quickly is to pay for it: to pay for ads and pay for exposure to those audiences.

Now, the trick is figuring out how to use paid media and what to say to make it effective.

Speed up your growth

The time for paid media is when you:

Have a proven business model.
Are confident in the thing you are selling and how you help people.
Are ready to scale that.

That’s when you need ads. Why? Because you need to speed up your growth. The hardest thing is to finally have something that works and to wait for people to show up. What you need is to put as many people in front of you as possible.

Once you’ve gotten there and you’re ready to scale, you’re ready to put that business to the test. Waiting for this thing to happen organically is just losing time, and it’s actually more costly than spending money on ads.

At the end of the day, you can start to measure the ROI, the return on investment, of running ads, but what you’re really competing against is the ROI of lost time. You can’t make money back for things that you miss because you’re going slowly. You don’t want to be in a position of running three months with no customers.

You might not be losing money, but you’re losing the potential to make money. That’s why this is important.

RELATED: Learn the specifics of how to run Facebook ads in interviews with leading experts Tony Christensen (Episode 137), Paul Ramondo (Episode 139), and Rick Mulready (Episode 141).

What I want you guys to be thinking about is how do I take paid media and build it into my content discovery plan? We’re gonna break this down into the basics:

What is paid media?
The role of paid media
Discovery tactics using paid media

What is paid media?

First off, what is paid media? It’s paid exposure. You are paying to show up in established channels where audiences are.

Now, why are Facebook ads always the No. 1 topic? Because Facebook is still the No. 1 place where people spend their time, and Facebook has developed its ad systems to really reach a targeted piece of that audience that you might want to speak to. It’s still the No. 1 player in the game, other than Google ads

So, Facebook and paid search are the top paid media. Then, other things that would fall in this category of paid ads would be like things like boosted posts or even sponsorships.

What are things in your industry that you can spend money on that get you right in front of the right people? A lot of people go to trade shows or they sponsor content, or they sponsor podcasts, or they sponsor Facebook groups, or events.

Are you showing up at an event with a booth or whatever it is? Are you speaking in an event? Think about how you can invest your money in places where your audience is going to be.

These are places where audiences already are. You’re paying to get in front of them in a meaningful, more impactful way, rather than it just happening organically.

The role of paid media

Exposure to new and old audiences

The role of paid media is to get you exposure, but not just any exposure — more exposure to old and new audiences.

The idea that you’re running ads to meet strangers is part of it, but it’s not just people who don’t know you. It’s also people who do know you. One of the best first places you can advertise is to people who already know you and have already come into your world.

Now, more exposure might mean more people, but it might also mean more frequency of message. In other words, it means people seeing you over and over and over again over time, so they continue to remember you when they get to that place of being ready to shop for your service.

Faster growth

The other role is faster growth. The only way to get more people into your world is to show yourself and your brand and your message to more people. And the only way to do that is to bring more people into your world more quickly.

That’s the role of paid media: Fast growth isn’t going to happen organically, because organic growth by definition has to happen in a natural way over time. The only way to speed up that process is to invest.

Brand awareness

Another role of paid media is broader awareness. It’s just physically impossible to meet everyone out there organically — and for everyone to find you. They’re just not always looking for you in the places where you happen to be.

Paying for ads can put you into places where they are, where you just can’t get organically.

Conversion

The last role of paid media is retargeting conversion, which means how do you take people who are in your world and convert them into people who are paying for your services?

A lot of times, people know of you, they just don’t know what you’re up to right now. They know you exist, but maybe they don’t know that you have a new offer that is perfect for them.

Being able to tell people about what you’re doing right now is part of the role of paid media. And honestly, the best ads out there are ones that you retarget.

Lay the groundwork

Now, before you get out there and start running paid ads, think about whether you have something available to capture people’s information. In other words, do you have a landing page that can take their information? Do you have a email sequence to follow up with people after they’ve seen your ad?

Part of advertising is building your inbound systems to be ready, to accept more people into them. So it’s a big caveat or red flag.

You have to have a proven business model, and your systems for communicating with your customers have to be developed. You don’t want to be pumping a bunch of people into your world, and then not taking them anywhere, not following through and converting and, and nurturing them into a sale.

Part of that is email sequences, and an email list, and a landing page to convert. You need to build all of that first. And if you don’t have that yet, you can look at simple systems.

One of the tools I like to use is called ConvertKit. It’s an email list and landing page tool where you can manage your entire email list, send emails, broadcast, build sequences, and all that. The link above will take you right to a page with a little bit of a discount.

Another one is Leadpages, which helps you specifically develop professional landing pages. You can check that out, too.

I just wanted to cover that first, because if you don’t have that to help with your conversion, then all this is a waste.

Discovery tactics for paid media

Seek out conversion

First things first. Retargeting current customers, or even current people in your world, is the No. 1 thing you can do with paid media.

Let’s say someone visits your website or they visit somewhere where you’ve been able to collect their email address. Maybe they just simply visited your site, where you have a Facebook Pixel set up.

You can later send ads to those people on Facebook. You’ve basically let Facebook know, “Hey, this person visited my site,” and then you can build an ad just to those people.

Now, imagine if all the people who showed up to your site in the past 30 days got an ad of something you’re selling them. If they visited your site, you know they are someone who at least knows who you are and have gotten slightly more familiar with what you do, but they might not know that you are currently marketing a new program or a new service or product.

Those people who have already gotten a little bit more familiar with you are the lowest hanging fruit in terms of people who might be interested in buying from you. They should be the first ones to see that you have something out there to offer.

So, follow them. Get their information and retarget them leveraging paid ads. Seek out conversion. Conversion should be your first goal.

Build consideration of your products

The second tactic is to figure out how to drive more consideration of your products in general.

How do you do that? Well, you build a list and you nurture people on your list over time, so that if they’re not ready now, they might be ready in three to six months for your next thing.

Clearly, you have to get them on your list to do that, so building people into your list helps you build that consideration.

You’ve got to figure out how to run some kind of paid ad that gives away something that makes people to want to give you their information. Their email is the next tactic, basically.

So, how do you build your list with an ad? Usually you give them some kind of freebie. It might be an ad saying, “Download my list,” or “Download my tips on how to do this thing. Download my free templates, or free tool. All you have to do is enter your email address.

Maybe it’s, “Hey, here’s a free seven-part course on how to do this thing. To enter the course, please provide your email address and I’ll send you the information.”

You give them an offer. You say, here’s the thing that I’ve created for you. If you want it, give me an email and I’ll send it to you.

It’s a very transactional relationship. If they don’t want it, they won’t give you the email. No harm, no foul. Either way, building your list with a freebie helps you build consideration for future purchases.

Create awareness

The third tactic with paid media is to introduce your content, yourself, your services, to other people. You’re not trying to sell them, but to introduce yourself. That’s called awareness. That’s you building attention, building an introduction to people that have no idea who you are.

You can run something promoting a post you already have so more people see it, or you can introduce them to your show in general and give them the top reasons to listen to it. Then send them to your email list or your podcast or your YouTube show, or whatever it is.

Bring people in, and just let them know that you have something that might be for them.

Now, this only works for the exact right people who will listen to your content that are looking for that exact thing. It doesn’t work for people that are just vaguely interested in your topic.

So for me, if I have a marketing show, it’s not for just everyone in business. It’s going to be for people who actively seek out marketing content, who want to do marketing themselves and want to learn a little bit more or want to work on their personal brands.

They have to be actively in that headspace for the show to even be interesting. So that’s my caveat: You have to be hyper-targeted to the exact right people who are looking for your exact thing when you’re introducing your content and trying to create awareness.

Sell something small

The last thing paid media tactic to drive discovery is to sell something small.

You can look to recoup your investment in ads by creating some kind of evergreen thing. As you are paying for ads, the ads are starting to slowly pay for themselves by selling something small that someone in your audience would be interested in buying.

That might be a free-with-paid-shipping book or a $10 course or $15 templates. Anything in the range $1 and $20, but leaning towards that smaller end, will help you recoup your costs. If you can get your cost to like $2 or $3 per or conversion or less, then selling something along the way will help pay for the ads themselves.

Then, once you get your advertising to start to pay for itself, then you can ratchet up your budgets higher and higher.

Stop wasting time

Now, you might be thinking, what happened to reaching the largest audience possible? That’s just part of the goal here. Let’s go back to the role of paid media.

The biggest pool of people for me are people who might want my freebie. Those are people I’m bringing into my world who I’m going to try to build my list with.

The broadest piece of paid media is your list building. The smallest piece is you retargeting and selling people the things that you have. The things in between are going to be driving awareness of your content and recouping your investment by selling something small.

You’ve got to think of it as how do you bring people in who don’t know you versus people who do? And then, in those situations, what is actually going to be appealing to those people? That’s what these tactics are for.

If you want to help more people discover your content, you’ve got to leverage the power of paid media to grow your list, convert existing customers and existing traffic, and introduce yourself to new audiences. Don’t waste time waiting for organic growth. It’s just a way to lose more money over a longer period of time.

Once you’re ready, ratchet it up with paid ads.

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