Brand communication has always being evolving with the sophistication of internet. In the past, the traditional way of passing information about the brand was done through TV ads, Newspapers, Billboards, Magazines, Films etc. (Elena & Herrera, 2008).The traditional way of communication is one-way communication and it made the audience to participate in a passive way. With the evolution of digital marketing, it has become a necessity for every business today to have its online presences well as offline presence. Every media communication that a business uses today has its online version in addition to the traditional offline communication. Online communication is through blogs, community posts, websites, social media posts, forum discussions, search engine ranking and marketing, digital ads, interactive content marketing etc. The online communication is usually through written form of communication. This digital communication is two-way, interactive and makes the audience to actively participate in discussions and creates high level of engagement and help to develop positive intentions and attitude towards the brand’s products or services (Wan, 2019)

This paper discusses the three important media types such as Paid media, Owned media and Earned media (POEM) that is most used for establishing communication between the businesses to its target customers. Each media type has its own role and features in passing the message to the end customer. The relationship between the brand’s marketing efforts with its selection media mix is correlated with the long term sales growth (Jayson et al., 2018)

Literature Review

Previous literature work on POEM model has described how each media has contributed to establish a connection with the customer. (Lovett & Staelin, 2016) conducted an experiment with TV show and found that paid media and owned media provides reminding effect, while earned media shows more enhancing-enjoyment effect which means socializing the content with others makes its more enjoyable. According to (Stephen & Galak, 2012)  earned media can be divided into traditional and social form and authors found that social earned media(online community, blogs) are more effective from traditional earned media(press mentions and publicity) for online kiva community. According to (Srinivasan et al., 2016) owned media (website of the brand) has greater significant effect than other the media in generating more sales.(Mattke et al., 2019) concluded that each media generates positive brand attitude, for the paid media, product must be relevant and important to customer, owned media should be informative and earned media should rely on the opinions of the influencers who post. (Mattke et al., 2019) every company should design a non-irritating media.(Macnamara et al., 2016) (Wan, 2019) suggest that combined media of POEM is very effective than when used separately. (Wan, 2019) found that owned media along with positive earned media combination are very effective on credibility, consumer engagement and help creating positive brand attitude.  (Harrison, 2013) found that owned media along with earned media combination is a very efficient as a brand multiplier to reach non-buyers as well as buyers. (Van Gisbergen, 2014) found that without proper analysis combining all the media can result in waste of money, so the author concluded that media planning is very essential for every organization.

POEM in Marketing

Paid media is the paid channel used by the brand for advertising itself through a third party for exchange of payment. Example TV ads, pay per click ads etc. According to (Kiprop Eric Kibos et al., 2014; Lieb & Owyang, 2012) Owned media is fully company controlled channel wherein all the information or activity is directly controlled by the brand. (Macnamara et al., 2016; Wan, 2019) defined owned media as the firm initiated communication. Earned media is formed by the people views about the brand or company. What the people say about the company or brand form this media. It can be defined as customer initiated communication. It’s the most influential media among the other media types (Lovett & Staelin, 2016; Stephen & Galak, 2012; Wan, 2019)

With the growth of technology and innovation, the marketing world has taken tremendous transformation from offline to online. Each media type has its traditional as well as the digital form of engaging with the customer. Traditional form of communication is very old, one way and passive way in transferring the message to the audience. Traditional paid media is through television advertisements, billboards, cards, notice etc. (B, Kiprop Eric Kibos et al., 2014; Lieb & Owyang, 2012; Macnamara et al., 2016; Xie & Lee, 2015) While the digital paid media is through pay per click ads also known as Search Engine Marketing and video ads, pop up ads, social media sponsored or promoted ads, display ads etc. constitutes to online paid media. Traditional Owned media is through magazines, news-letter, physical company store etc. Whereas its online form is the website of the brand, brand’s social media account, emails etc. According to (Stephen & Galak, 2012) traditional earned media was in the form of word of mouth reviews of the brand from the customers. While the online earned media is the electronic word of mouth, reviews, discussions, posts, opinions created by the people about the brand. The digital media has made the communication very engaging, improved the loyalty among customers, and paved way for more healthy competition. With the two way communication, the feedback from people helps the brand to provide improved quality products or services.(Srinivasan et al., 2016)

Conclusion

Though all the three media is helping the organization to create awareness, increase sales and generate profitability, they are acting in different directions. No one media type is alone sufficient in present scenario. But the right mix up differs for every company based on their goals. The combined media (POEM) together when put into practice can help the organization to increase its customer base, target its customer effectively, monitor the marketing performance and take effective control actions. But each organization needs differ and their requirement of different media for establishing the link with the customer is not same for all (Van Gisbergen, 2014). Media planning for each company according to their products or services, budgetary constraints, goal, vision has to be done keeping in mind the advantages and disadvantage of each media (Van Gisbergen, 2014; Wan, 2019). As pointed by (Jayson et al., 2018) brands allocation of more media investment will not guarantee more market share, a proper balance of media planning, monitoring and control to direct them to the long term business goals is the key for better brand’s profitability.

References

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