Content Marketing

Learning Objective 1: Different types of content and content creation. Learning Objective 2: How can your companies content stand out from the rest? (not end up in the spam folder) ·       Products and brand content Learning Objective3: How to involve the consumer in the content creating process? ·       How to engage consumers to create content for you? Here is Jay Bauer's video about Youtility: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YAgk7EMd9xM Content marketing is not about viral marketing. And good thing, too, since your chances of pulling that off are slim to none. Content marketing is about sales. And you can’t do professional content marketing without marketing automation. Even if it’s just an email autoresponder of follow-ups for people new to your brand. Jay Bauer: In “inbound marketing” – the premise is that when they’re ready, the potential customer will find you. You create content that makes it easier for your company to be found via search and social media, and wait for the leads to roll in (http://www.convinceandconvert.com/digital-marketing/is-youtility-the-future-of-marketing/) Learning Objective 1: Different types of content and content creation. A Neil Patel's article 15 Types of Content That Will Drive You More Traffic Source: http://www.business2community.com/content-marketing/a-new-twist-on-content-0297897#o0eC7BEwwlMP8pzV.97 In short, content that provides value. Source: http://www.e-intellisense.com/content-marketing/ Check the example of gifographic here Crazy egg animated video about how to analyze content of the page here Jay Bauer says "if you sell something you create a customer today, but if you help someone you create a customer for life." The content that is effective is the content is that truly useful. Learning Objective 2: How can your companies content stand out from the rest? (not end up in the spam folder) ·       Products and brand content Source: http://briancartergroup.com/social-media-strategy/7-types-of-content-marketing-that-convert-to-profits/?hvid=4V6JZo 7 Content Marketing Questions Your Organization Must Answer You have to answer these questions: What are the buying stages of my prospects? What does that make our funnel look like? What content do we have for each stage of the funnel? What is the conversion rate for each of those pieces of content- what % of content-consumers does it get to the next funnel stage? Where is the bottleneck? What kinds of content are we missing? How can we improve our results? Until you’ve answered those questions, you don’t have strong content marketing. The 14 Stages of Organizational Content Marketing Evolution And if you’ve been focusing on buzz only… well here are the stages of content marketing evolution in an organization, as stated by your very excitable marketing person: “Oh no: We don’t have content!” Yay! We have a blog! Oh, no! Our blog isn’t getting any attention! Oh, no! Our buzzy posts aren’t getting shared! Oh, no! We need more types of content! Oh no! We don’t have enough budget! Yay! We have more budget! Yay! Now we have lots of content! Oh, no! Our content isn’t organized! Yay! We purchased marketing automation! Oh, no! We’ve had marketing automation for 3 months and haven’t set it up! Yay! We are tracking the success of our content! Oh, no! Our content isn’t effective enough! Yay! We have a new comprehensive content marketing plan! Yay! We are coming up with new content for the bottlenecks! Yay! We have content marketing ROI! 7 Types of Compelling Content that Convert …here are some tips on creating content that converts better and gets more sales: Dispel lies & myths about your niche to gain authority and trust. Arouse fear and worry about making the wrong decision to gain trust. List the mistakes customers make in your niche to gain trust. List the problems it will help them overcome and show your offering’s benefits to get into the consideration set. Prove the unique superiority of your offering to beat your competitors. Tell stories of customers’ specific results. Film testimonials from customers to gain trust. Walk prospects through how your offering will change their experience of life or work activate their emotions. Learning Objective3: How to involve the consumer in the content creating process? ·       How to engage consumers to create content for you? Source: http://www.convinceandconvert.com/digital-marketing/is-youtility-the-future-of-marketing/ Jay Bauer's examples: Geek Squad understands YOUtility. I was at a conference a couple years ago where Robert Stephens, the founder of Geek Squad, was speaking. He showcased their YouTube channel which has hundreds of instructional videos on how to set your DVR, swap out a hard drive, and tasks of that nature. Someone asked him a great question: “Let me get this straight Robert. You’re in the business of fixing things?” “yes” he nodded. “But yet, you have all these videos showing people how to fix things themselves. How does that make business sense?” “Well, our best customers are the people that think they can do it themselves. But even if they can, someday they’ll be over their head, and who will they call for help? We’re betting it’s the company whose logo they looked at for 8 minutes when we gave them free video help.” Vanderbilt University Medical Center understands YOUtility. They provide free of charge for expectant mothers a Baby Time mobile app. It includes a contraction timer, a phone book to list contact information for people to call when the baby is on the way, a checklist of items to bring to the hospital, and driving directions. Taxi Mike understands YOUtility. Mike drives a cab for Banff Taxi in Alberta, and to stand out from the rest of the drivers, he produces an online and offline guide to the local hotspots. Taxi Mike’s Dining Guide is a simple, 8.5×11, tri-fold rack brochure, printed on bright yellow paper, and available for free just about everywhere in town. In his guide, Mike tells you the best BBQ places, clubs, happy hours, patios, places for kids, and other insider info. Wisely, he also includes a map of the downtown area on the front. The portable size and map make it perfectly logical to bring Mike’s Dining Guide with you when out on the town in Banff. And then, when you’re blurry-eyed at 12:30am, you pull out the guide and there is Mike’s phone number in big, bold letters. Your Company Can Do This In a world where every prospective customer is facing an invitation avalanche, where every business is asking people to follow their tweets, read their blog, or watch their videos, you must resist the temptation to communicate solely and endlessly about your company, hoping for a quick sale. Helping can replace selling, or at the very least reduce the friction within that sales transaction. And you can do this. You can help your customers learn – like Geeksquad. You can help them plan – like Vanderbilt. You can help them enjoy – like Mike the Taxi Driver. If you want to succeed in a world where the balance of marketing power has swung dramatically in favor of the customer, you need to become a YOUtility. Plenty of examples how to involve customers in content creation http://trendwatching.com/trends/CUSTOMER-MADE.htm The easiest way for brands to dip their toes into CUSTOMER-MADE and tap THE GLOBAL BRAIN is to announce product or service development contests, open to consumers from around the world. Let’s start with some CUSTOMER-MADE contests held since our last update: they go beyond the usual ‘send-us-your-product-idea-and-win-a-voucher-for-a-free-ice-cream- and-don’t-expect-us-to-actually-do-something-with-it’: The Nokia Concept Lounge took place in summer 2005 (some brands DO get it, and surprisingly it's often the brands that already have a strong competence in design or product development: ;-), but we thought the initiative was too well executed to not mention in this update. The lounge invited designers in the Benelux to share ideas and design the next new cool phone. Not surprisingly, in a GLOBAL BRAIN world, entries came from all over, with the winner being a Turkish designer, Tamer Nakisci. His wrist-band style phone (the 'Nokia 888') must have had phone manufacturers from China to Finland drooling. All of the examples above are a great way to really get started with CUSTOMER-MADE. But only a few companies have truly integrated this way of thinking into everything they do. One of the leaders in integrating CUSTOMER-MADE into its corporate fabric, P&G, is not slowing down: its Connect + Develop program and other innovation projects now produce more than 35% of the company’s innovations. In fact, R&D productivity at Procter & Gamble has increased by nearly 60%. In the past two years, P&G launched more than 100 new products for which some aspect of development came from outside the company. Among P&G’s most successful connect-and-develop products to hit the market are Olay Regenerist, Swiffer Dusters, the Crest SpinBrush, and the Mr. Clean Magic Eraser (source: HBR, March 2006). P&G also recently rebranded its Tremor Moms program to Vocalpoint. In their own words: ‘’Vocalpoint is a unique marketing brand powered by the Procter & Gamble Company that helps companies do a better job developing products and services that moms care about and want to talk about. We work with this influential group of moms to help companies in industries that include entertainment, fashion, music, food and beauty. We collect feedback and generate valuable knowledge and insight for our clients through surveys, product sampling and previews of products and services.” P&G as the champion of CUSTOMER-MADE, to the point of selling its co-creation expertise to others. Not bad. Moving past contests and gifts, this is where it gets really interesting: co-creators receiving a cut of whatever gets developed based on their input, suggestions, design or ideas. Check out: “Jetzt ist Ihre Kreativität gefragt!“ Austrian manufacturer Frenkenburger recently asked customers to come up with new flavours for its all natural hemp milk drink, Trinkhanf. Plain hemp milk is highly nutritious but tastes bland, so Frenkenburger previously launched mango/ginger, cocoa/vanilla/maple and coffee-flavoured varieties. To further expand the Trinkhanf line, Frenkenburger challenged creative customers to create tasty new flavours using fruits, herbs, or other natural ingredients. A panel of judges is now in the process of picking a winner, and the winning recipe will go into production. Aware that co-creators should share in profits, Frenkenburger will pay the winner one euro-cent per bottle sold. Granted, that's not exactly spectacular, but it beats a 25 dollar voucher ;-) Let's not forget CUSTOMER-MADE as an ongoing conversation, in many ways the Holy Grail of marketing. Think companies not just staging contests or asking for themed, detailed suggestions, but really hopping on the Cluetrain Manifesto. The following examples are a start... In the UK, Orange has set up Talking Point, where customers can tell Orange how they feel about all sorts of things - not just phones. Orange promises to listen, and to use the info to shape the way they think about and do things in the future. A number of questions (like “what in your life would you like to see technology improve?”) make it easier for visitors to share their thoughts. This isn't really a sparkling conversation, but it's better than nothing, in what is still very much a one-way arena.

Sensory Marketing

LO 1: How do people use their 5 senses in order to receive advertising messages?

LO 2: How to develop a creative message using one or more senses?

How does it differ through different channels?


To watch: A TED video about sensory marketing by Simon Harrop is the CEO of Brand Sense, the global experts in sensory marketing, specialising in sensory retail, space consultancy and product development.

What is sensory marketing?

Sense: Any of the faculties, as sight, hearing, smell, taste, or touch, by which humans and
animals perceive stimuli originating from outside or inside the body. 
(Oxford English Dictionary) 

Sensory marketing:  Marketing techniques that aim to seduce the consumer by using his
senses to influence his feelings and behaviour. 
(American Marketing Association) 


Several findings have demonstrated that sight is one of the most important senses to be target, but the question is: Do you think the loyalty impact is congruent to the sensory importance? According to Martin Lindstrom the answer is: No.







Sensory marketing has been defined as “marketing that engages the consumers’ senses and affects their perception, judgment and behavior. The purpose of sensory marketing is to generate subconscious triggers that involve consumer’s perceptions of non concrete notions of a product and the personality of the brand (Krishna, 2011) .

Sensory marketing field has the power to create a brand image that is linked to the identity and lifestyle of the customer. The end result of the individual experience or “experience logic” and its value comes from the five human senses, which perceive and interpret the event, either separately or united (Krishna, 2011).

Source: http://adage.com/article/digitalnext/sensory-marketing-frontier-mobile-advertising/296655/
Sensory branding is a marketing approach that has been in use for decades. It empowers brands to forge emotional associations and connections with people through multi-sensory experiences such as sight, sound and touch, which solidify positive feelings, thoughts and opinions about a brand.
Sight is the most stimulated sense in sensory marketing for obvious reasons -- the majority of us can recognize Coca-Cola by its red and white logo. Marketers are also utilizing sound to complement sight, because positive sounds are a great way to inspire lasting memories that tug at people's heartstrings, such as a catchy tune, jingle or song associated with a brand.

Sensory marketing goes beyond just advertising, too. Research has shown that sounds influence people's moods when shopping and can positively impact their purchasing behavior. This is why wine stores play classical music to inspire a quiet, reflective mood that complements the product, while a bar might blast rock music, which has been proven to drive more beer consumption.

According to  http://www.samresearch.com/sensory-marketing.html
which gives a general definition of the concept, sensory marketing is an effective tool in gaining sensory consumer insights for a marketing strategy.

It measures and explains emotional consumer decision-making by variability of products,
concepts, packaging, and marketing mix scenarios to ensure long-lasting success. 

Sensory marketing is defined as a way of:

• measuring and explaining consumer emotions
• spotting and capitalizing on new market opportunities
• an opportunity to maximize product profitability
• ensuring first and repeat purchase (loyalty)
• ensuring long-lasting product success 

It is an effective marketing application which gives to companies a real opportunity to
maximize product profitability.

Some extracts from HBR article The science of sensory marketing

"Much of the new research centers on “embodied cognition”—the idea that without our conscious awareness, our bodily sensations help determine the decisions we make. For example, people who had briefly held a warm beverage were more likely than people who had held a cold one to think that a stranger was friendly; this was demonstrated in an experiment by Lawrence E. Williams, of the University of Colorado at Boulder, and John A. Bargh, of Yale. "

The author of the 2013 book Customer Sense: How the 5 Senses Influence Buying Behavior, Aradhna Krishna got into the field because she was fascinated by certain questions: Why does wine taste better in a wine glass than in a water glass? Why is an ad showing a piece of cake more engaging when the fork is placed to the right of the cake? Why does the smell of cinnamon make a heating pad seem to work better? Krishna realized that the senses amplify one another when they are congruent in some way.


Thinking about sensory effects is an established practice in some consumer industries, such as food, cosmetics, and hospitality. For example, Hershey’s has long been aware that the tactile pleasure people get from unwrapping the foil around a Kiss transforms an ordinary piece of chocolate into a special experience. But many companies are taking their thinking much further. Consider this campaign by Dunkin’ Donuts in South Korea: When a company jingle played on municipal buses, an atomizer released a coffee aroma. The campaign increased visits to Dunkin’ Donuts outlets near bus stops by 16% and sales at those outlets by 29%. Another example is Olay Regenerist thermal facial products, which are engineered to generate heat upon application (although heat isn’t necessary to their functioning) to signal that they are working.

Still, in wide swaths of consumer industries, companies remain focused solely on visual attributes and give little thought to other sensory effects. Product developers and marketers need to change that, Krishna says. Bank executives should make sure that branch offices exude the reassuring, wealth-suggesting aromas of wood and leather. Manufacturers of products with embedded motors should think about those products’ sounds—are they tinny whines or solid, low-pitched hums? Luxury clothing manufacturers doing business online should consider what message is conveyed when goods are shipped in bubble wrap versus high-quality crinkly paper.

Kotler (1973) had already mentioned the need for brands to position them differently that
according to the price or the assortment. He started to explain the influence of the point of
sales physical environment on the behaviour of the customers and gave a definition of the
atmosphere as “the creation of a consumption environment that produces specific emotional effects on the person, like pleasure or excitation that can increase his possibility of buying”.
He considered the creation of this atmosphere as the most important strategic way of
differentiation for retailers. 

According to Rieunier (2000), the components of atmosphere are:  

- Visual factors: - Colours of the surrounding  - Materials  - Lights  - Layout (space, cleanness)

- Sonorous factors: - Music  - Noises

- Olfactory factors - Natural smells  - Artificial smells

- Tactile factors - Materials  - Temperature

- Gustative factors - Sampling 

The following statement sums up the characteristics of each colour and their impact on consumer behaviour (source: Leatrice Eiseman, Impact of colours on consumer purchase behaviour, April 17, 2000. ):

Red
Highest stimulation hue: strong excitation power. Red increases the pulse and heart rate, as it raises blood pressure, and stimulates appetite.
Really popular in restaurants as it increases appetite. However, due to its exciting properties, red is more likely to be used in bars.

Orange
Orange is friendlier than red, but still stimulate appetite and attract attention, especially among kids and teenagers.
Companies like Burger King or Dunkin Donuts use orange as main colour.

Pink
Sweet and appealing. The perfect colour for sweets.
Mainly used by candies producers as Sweet’N Low, and sweet shops.

Yellow
Comforting colour. It can also mean tangy, creamy or delicious connected to aliments.
Popular hue for tea houses or pastry shops.

Green
Meaning of refreshment and nature. Connected to vegetables, it is means healthiness for the consumer.
Green is a delicate colour, as if not used in the right environment it is not appealing but can be repelling.

Blue
Associated with sea and sky calmness, suggest trust and serenity.
As blue icy hues refer to purity and coolness, this is the ideal colour for products like bottled water.

White
Sign of purity, cleanness and coolness. White is the basic colour, as it brings out everything else.
In a restaurant, white is used everywhere the customer expects for cleanness (plates, kitchen…)

Black
On a packaging, black is symbol of top-of range, quality and sobriety.
As it is the darkest colour, black is exclusively used to create a very specific environment.

The light is also a major component of the environment. According to Rieunier (2002), the
differences come from the light source and its intensity: natural light, or softened artificial
one, will increase the well-being sensation and the time spent in a point of sale. On the other
hand, artificial and intense lights will increase customers’ dynamism. 
In

Media Plan

Problem: Media plan 


Learning objectives (LO):

1. Different channels that can be used in your media plan 

2. How should you conduct research (what to research?)

• Media habits in Russia

3. Paid-owned-earned

4. Roles of different agencies

1. Different channels that can be used in your media plan 

In tandem with the evolution in information and communications technology (ICT), consumer purchasing behavior and corporate advertising strategies have also changed. Consumers are now able to gather information through various media channels at each stage of the purchase decision-making process (need recognition, information search, alternative evaluation, purchase decision, and post-purchase behavior). Accordingly, companies must determine the appropriate media channels through which to promote their products in order to reach target consumers. Different media channels will generate different marketing and communication results (Chen and Hsieh, 2012).






Source: JongRoul Woo , Joongha Ahn , Jongsu Lee , Yoonmo Koo , (2015) "Media channels and consumer purchasing decisions", Industrial Management & Data Systems, Vol. 115 Iss: 8, pp.1510 - 1528

This is evidenced by global corporations’ advertising expenditures: in 2012 alone, these totaled USD 492 billion (Zenith Optimedia, 2013). In addition to changing the amount spent on advertising, companies have gradually changed their marketing approaches. While print media advertising expenditures decreased by 3 percent per year from 2009 to 2012, spending on internet media grew by 18 percent annually over the same time period (Zenith Optimedia, 2013). Many companies have begun using a cross-media advertising strategy, using multiple media channels to market their products. This approach has proven more effective than using any one media channel (Naik and Raman, 2003). Because a consumer’s choice of media channel for obtaining product information varies depending on the product category and the consumer’s personal characteristics (Bhatnagar and Ghose, 2004; Konuş et al., 2008), companies can take advantage of these factors to develop an appropriate media mix. However, there is little known about the specific factors that influence consumers’ choices of media channels for product information. Accordingly, companies develop a media mix for their product based on marketing experts’ experience and intuition, and largely fail to optimize their marketing performance.

2. How should you conduct research (what to research?)

Source: JongRoul Woo , Joongha Ahn , Jongsu Lee , Yoonmo Koo , (2015) "Media channels and consumer purchasing decisions", Industrial Management & Data Systems, Vol. 115 Iss: 8, pp.1510 - 1528

Recent empirical analyses related to media planning fall into two categories: analyses of cross-media channel synergy and analyses of consumers’ choices of various media. Cross-media channel synergy is crucial to understand because firms typically develop media strategies under the assumption that there are synergistic effects among media channels. For example, Naik and Raman (2003) showed that advertising strategies utilizing both TV and print media can positively affect a company’s sales. In contrast, Dijkstra et al. (2005) found that, while strategies employing multiple media types might be as effective as either TV or print advertising alone, the use of too many media channels may negatively affect consumer attention and advertising effectiveness. Naik and Peters (2009) proposed a model of online and offline advertising to detect within-media and cross-media synergies. Their analysis provided evidence of the within- and cross-media synergistic effects of offline (TV, print, and radio) and online (banners and search) media, demonstrating that these effects influence how consumers value different product brands. Voorveld’s (2011) experiment analysis indicated that combining online and radio advertising resulted in more positive affective and behavioral responses than using only one medium. Moreover, Lim et al. (2015) demonstrated synergistic effects among TV, mobile TV, and internet advertising. While these studies suggest that cross-media synergies exist, researchers have not yet provided sufficient detail to inform real-world media planning strategies.
Effectively planning a media strategy requires understanding not only the cross-media synergistic effects of various channels but also consumer media choices. There is a significant body of literature showing that these are related to consumer characteristics as well as those of the media. Using a model of consumer TV-viewing habits, Rust and Alpert (1984), Rust et al. (1992) and Shachar and Emerson (2000) showed that viewers’ preferences for program types vary depending on their demographic characteristics. Moreover, Tavakoli and Cave (1996) used discrete choice modeling to demonstrate that program content significantly affects consumers’ viewing patterns. Similarly, Wendel and Dellaert (2005) developed a model explaining consumers’ media channel choices as a function of the situation specific to the time and place of usage and the perceived benefits offered by the channels, such as being trustworthy, detailed, time saving, easy to access, personal, stimulating, and informative. This research demonstrated that both the perceived benefits and the usage situation influence consumers’ choice of the media channels they use to obtain product information. Lin et al. (2013) developed a model to predict consumers’ use of multiple media types (print, TV, radio, and internet) within a short time period. Their results suggested that consumers who relied heavily on computers for information were less likely to also use traditional forms of media. Moreover, Woo et al. (2014) econometrically analyzed the effects of the internet and smartphones on consumer media use and found that the advent of the internet has negatively influenced consumers’ use of print, radio, and TV, though the arrival of mobile internet increased their use of TV. Although these studies have facilitated identification of the media channel preferences of a given consumer, they have not clarified which media channels actually affect that consumer’s product purchase decisions.

Example of a survey:

We applied this model to data provided by Media and Consumer Research (MCR), a large-scale marketing research project conducted by the Korea Broadcast Advertising Corporation (KOBACO) to identify patterns in consumers’ media usage and purchasing behaviors. The survey consisted of face-to-face interviews with 6,000 respondents (aged 13-64) in 41 South Korean cities in October and November 2011. To obtain a representative sample of the entire South Korean population[1], KOBACO used purposive quota sampling to identify respondents according to geographic region, gender, age, and income. The MCR data includes consumers’ demographic information, lifestyle factors, and media usage behavior as well as purchasing behavior in various product categories. Table I provides descriptive statistics of the sample, and Figure 1 summarizes the contact ratios (i.e. the proportion of people who use a specified medium more than once a week) for ten significant media channels.

We analyzed consumers’ information search behavior for nine different product categories: milk, instant noodles, shampoo, mobile phones, TVs, cars, mobile communication services, credit card services, and life insurance. To address the specific goals of the study, we used participants’ responses to the question: “What kinds of media channels for product information influenced you to make a purchase decision?” As independent variables in our analysis, we used socio-demographic characteristics, including age, gender, education level, and household income, as well as lifestyle variables related to early-adoption, brand-loving, and impulse-buying tendencies.

Russia's largest media

http://www.russiansearchtips.com/2015/01/top-10-russias-largest-media-2014/
Despite the highest reach, TV stands for only 47% of advertising expenditures in Russia, however the experts predict a slight increase in 2015 based on experiences from other economic downtimes in the country.

In 2014, online advertising grew the most, TV and radio – slightly, while print lost a low of advertisers’ money.

Despite Yandex’s monthly audience surpassed Channel 1 already in 2012, all in all TV continues to be the most popular medium in Russia. According to TNS, the leading TV channels reach 99% of the Russian population. 73% of Russian people watch TV daily, and 93% – at least once a week.

Internet is one of the fastest growing media in Russia when it comes to advertising spend. The latest numbers from ACAR (Association of Communication Agencies in Russia) show that online advertising expenditures in Russia grew by 20% in H1 of 2014 comparing to the same period of the previous year, and the trend continued throughout the 3rd quarter of the year.

Print in Russia have been losing both audience and advertising budgets for several years, and 2014 was not an exception. During the entire 2014 print lost 10% of ad spend per quarter.
Radio has been the most stable medium in terms of both audience and advertising expenditures.

Based on the experiences from the previous downturns (e.g. 2008-2009), the experts expect the following trends to prevail in the Russian advertising industry for 2015:
– Press will continue declining.
– TV will strengthen its positions on the market.
– Advertising budgets will be shifted towards performance-based activities.
– Channels that are normally used to raise awareness will see decreased budgets.
In other words, the Russian market is following the trend we have seen in many of the Western countries the last years. But since the overall market is going through such a rough time  we might see even more focus toward the performance-based marketing in the coming year.

3. Paid-owned-earned

According to David Edelman and Brian Salsberg, some strategic-marketing frameworks—such as the popular “paid, owned, earned” one—are in serious need of updating. Many marketers use this framework to distinguish different ways of interacting with consumers, forms of financing, and measures of performance for each contact. Yet the paid, owned, earned framework increasingly looks too limited. How, for example, should a marketing strategist for a company react to requests from other companies to purchase advertising space on its product sites? How should a company deal with online activists when they take hold of a product or campaign to push a negative emotional response against it?



Two media types must therefore be added to the framework: “sold” and “hijacked.” These new forms of media, which demand sustained investment and attention, challenge the traditional strategies, structure, and operations of most marketing organizations. Yet marketers should view their expanding range of media options not only as a challenge but also as an opportunity worth grasping, to encourage readers to share content or even create their own.

Five forms of media

Too many companies view marketing plans as little more than an exercise in where and when to buy media placement. Yet as the number of digital interactions increases, marketers must recognize the power that lies beyond traditional paid media.

Two new forms of media—‘sold’ and ‘hijacked’—challenge the traditional strategies of most marketing organizations.

Paid, owned, earned

Paid media include traditional advertising and similar vehicles: a company pays for space or for a third party to promote its products. This market is far from dying; options for marketers are expanding exponentially with the emergence of more targeted cable TV, online-display placement, and other channels, not to mention online video and search marketing, which are attracting greater interest. The second category, owned media, consists of properties or channels owned by the company that uses them for marketing purposes (such as catalogs, Web sites, retail stores, and alert programs that e-mail notifications of special offers).

Earned media are generated when the quality or uniqueness of a company’s products and content compel consumers to promote the company at no cost to itself through external or their own “media.” Starbucks, for example, announced in July that its Facebook fan base exceeded ten million people, the highest of any US corporation. The company directly links its recent strong performance to its social-networking efforts and “crowd sourced” innovations such as “My Starbucks Idea,” a Web site where anyone can suggest ways to make the company better. Similarly, Honda Japan undertook a promotion on the social-networking site Mixi, where more than 630,000 people registered for information about the launch of its new CR-Z vehicle. The company automatically added “CR-Z” to these users’ Mixi login names (for example, “Taro CR-Z”) and gave them a chance to win a car. Nonregistered users wondered why people suddenly had login names incorporating CR-Z. Thanks to the buzz, prelaunch orders reached 4,500 units, and actual sales topped 10,000 units in the first month. 

Sold

Paid and owned media are controlled by marketers touting their own products. For earned media, such marketers act as the initial catalyst for users’ responses. But in some cases, one marketer’s owned media become another marketer’s paid media—for instance, when an e-commerce retailer sells ad space on its Web site. We define such sold media as owned media whose traffic is so strong that other organizations place their content or e-commerce engines within that environment. This trend, which we believe is still in its infancy, effectively began with retailers and travel providers such as airlines and hotels and will no doubt go further. Johnson & Johnson, for example, has created BabyCenter, a stand-alone media property that promotes complementary and even competitive products. Besides generating income, the presence of other marketers makes the site seem objective, gives companies opportunities to learn valuable information about the appeal of other companies’ marketing, and may help expand user traffic for all companies concerned.

Hijacked

The same dramatic technological changes that have provided marketers with more (and more diverse) communications choices have also increased the risk that passionate consumers will voice their opinions in quicker, more visible, and much more damaging ways. Such hijacked media are the opposite of earned media: an asset or campaign becomes hostage to consumers, other stakeholders, or activists who make negative allegations about a brand or product. Members of social networks, for instance, are learning that they can hijack media to apply pressure on the businesses that originally created them. High-profile examples involve companies ranging from Nestlé (whose Facebook page was hijacked) to Domino’s Pizza (a prank online video of two employees contaminating sandwiches appeared on YouTube).

In each case, passionate consumers tried to persuade others to boycott products, putting the reputation of the target company at risk. When that happens, the company’s response may not be sufficiently quick or thoughtful, and the learning curve has been steep. Toyota Motor, for example, mitigated some of the damage from its recall crisis earlier this year with a relatively quick and well-orchestrated social-media response campaign, which included efforts to engage with consumers directly on sites such as Twitter and the social-news site Digg.

In a related phenomenon, the evolution of new kinds of media means that consumers are engaging more often in real-time conversations, particularly on social networks and other digital platforms. Helping consumers to express themselves is a scary and significant reversal of the control marketers have traditionally tried to maintain over brands. While most marketers are already exploring tools to monitor conversations in social media, they need to develop triage and action engines to ward off people seeking to hijack their media.

One consumer electronics company, for example, has recognized that every review or rating posted about its products creates the possibility of a hijacked conversation. It now responds to all comments within 24 hours: positive feedback gets a thank you, an invitation to become a Facebook friend, and special offers; negative reviews get explanations of how to fix issues, instructions on how to navigate an interface more easily, or follow-up questions to learn more about what the consumer didn’t like. Some hotel chains, recognizing the importance of travel sites (such as the popular TripAdvisor), likewise encourage satisfied guests to post comments online, while employing staff to follow and answer negative comments. These conversations become an interactive public-research project to gather information for future improvements. In effect, the evolution of media types means that a company’s marketers are now on the front lines of its efforts to deliver outstanding goods and services.

A good article "Sample Marketing Plan With Paid, Owned, Earned and Shared Media" at pearanalytics.com :

According to research done by Forrester, during nearly two-thirds of  the buying cycle (early research phase), your prospects are using online search, talking to peers and reading what the experts have to say to form their opinion of you before they attempt to call you and generate a lead for your sales team.  Peter O’Neill refers to this as the “Customer Decision Journey” — and yes, this is primarily for you B2B folks.

4. Roles of different agencies

A media agency (or media planner) is responsible for the strategic recommendation of media activity for your campaign. Working from your brief the planning process involves analysing the audience objectives and balancing the reach, frequency and costs of media options to deliver a detailed media plan that maximises advertising exposure and impact.

Planning should demonstrate a coordinated approach to different media and illustrate the thinking behind the proposed approach. Media planners work closely with advertising agencies to ensure the client's advertising budget is well spent, as well as adhering to the overall campaign strategy.

Communications council (Australia) gives the following description:

Media Agencies are generally a separate operation to the creative service agency and a media agency has the task of ensuring that the communication message works effectively. That means, it must be seen, read or heard by the right target, at the right time, in the right environment and at the right price. With a large volume of a marketing budget allocated to media investment, efficiency in delivering a strategy that meets the needs of the campaign is vital. Maximising the return on investment is also therefore a critical role that the Media Agency plays. There are now essentially 10 core job areas within a media agency and in each case they utilise specific skills sets to deliver the task at hand. In some instances these roles are merged and this will depend on the structure of the agency and their client portfolio.The core areas include:·

• Management: Generally responsible for the management of the agency, client group team or specific function.
• Strategic Planning: Identify the target audience, what the best media channels are to reach this target to deliver marketing objectives and to identify innovative ways of communicating to the consumer.
• Implementation Planning and Buying: This function is aimed to identify how the selected media channels can best be used in order to deliver the strategy (ie, what stations, day parts, programs, titles etc)
• Buying: To negotiate and place all media activity and leverage negotiations and increase added value benefits.
• Research: Manage industry research inputs and assist agency in utilising the range of proprietary systems to assist the planning and buying functions. Administration and Finance: To manage a range of administrative and financial functions generated by the buying role.
• Digital: Specialise in the identification of the right digital platform to meet the media brief and to undertake the role of planning and buying in this specific field.
• Digital Creative: To provide the creatives services for digital media messages.
• Modelling and econometrics: Provide econometric modelling services that assist in maximising client return on their marketing investment.
• Sponsorships and Promotions: For specific client brands and message combinations develop concepts to leverage media properties and express the brand’s key thought.