Owned media consists of the content that is created and distributed through a brand’s own marketing channels, this usually includes the company blog, dedicated email campaigns, the brand’s social media channels and similar such other digital and offline mediums that the brand chooses to broadcast about itself on. Using these content channels, the idea is to share more about a brand’s service, product, industry expertise and to engage in conversations with potential buyers. All of this is crucial today in building and strengthening customer relationships.
On the other hand, earned media consists of press coverage that’s not paid for, customer reviews, social media mentions and similar mediums. Companies do not have full control over earned media.
Owned media allows brands to control their messaging and to make sure it aligns with their service, product, values as well as core goals.
Typically, it’s a brand’s marketing team that controls or runs the messaging tactics used in a brand’s owned media content plans. But are there more creative ways for marketers to also capitalize on these mediums to drive or support their sales counterparts?
Let’s dig deeper.
Developing Sales Thought Leadership Via Company Blogs, Social Media
B2B Sales at the heart of it is about trust, value and positioning yourself as someone who understands your prospects’ challenges and needs. Sales leaders can align with their marketing counterparts to co-create relevant blog articles and social media posts around each of their product expertise and industry insights, to use the content later to impact sales conversations.
If you have a target account ‘’X’’ who deals in CRMs, and you’re selling an AI product that integrates with CRMs such as this to boost intuitive messaging; writing about the revenue benefits of the integration under your byline is one way to establish better thought leadership and create an initial buzz with a tech prospect.
Read More: SalesTechStar Interview with Kristy Schafer, Vice President of US Sales at Optable
Dedicated Newsletters in your Name
Newsletters, like most of a brand’s owned media are run and controlled by the marketing department or content teams. This is a big opportunity for sales leaders to partner closely with their marketing counterparts to build out differentiated prospect lists and then use it to run newsletters in their respective names (based on which sales leader’s team is going after which account and prospect), with the aim of sharing blogs or podcast participations or general tips and insights. Each sales leader can use the initiative to develop their own ‘’subscriber’’ base which is in a way a gathering of their warm prospects who engage with their content.
Using Podcasts to Warm Up Key Prospects
There are no dearth of podcasts in B2B SaaS, and across other industries as well today. What’s stopping you from starting one as a B2B sales leader? A brand’s marketing team can work closely with their sales team to create podcasts that feature each of the sales leaders talking to their key prospects in individual conversations. The theme can range from anything, from industry practices to predictions about the future of B2B tech. A lot of premium B2B SaaS companies already do this to pursue healthier business relationships.
B2B sales is evolving everyday. As salestech becomes more sophisticated to allow sellers to scale their efforts and drive better impact, the impact of innovative salestech aligned to internal processes and goals can truly boost how marketing and sales align as well as how both teams optimize efforts to lead to aligned business growth.
