Hey there, my fabulous listener, welcome to episode 205 of the Small Business Made Simple Podcast.

Thank you for lending me your ears today – I know you have lots of choices, so I sincerely appreciate me being one of them!

If you’re enjoying this podcast – I’d love you to take a screenshot and share it on your socials and tag me in it.  How cool would that be!

Don’t forget you can get the show notes for this podcast at www.socialmediaandmarketing.com.au/205

Before I get started on today’s episode – how did you go with last week’s episode? Episode 204? If you didn’t listen into that one – then once you are finished here – slip back there for even more small business made simple GOLD!  We are talking e-Invoicing with the Australian Taxation Office – so one not to forget!

Anyway, on to today’s episode.

Today I am talking about the digital marketing strategy referred to as the POEM model.

Yes, it’s an acronym!  Most unlike marketers to come up with something like this right?@?@

POEM

P – Paid

O – Owned

E – Earned

M – Media  

So Paid, Owned and Earned Media.

Paid media is any form of media that requires you to pay for that media to get additional exposure to a warm/cold or hot audience.

Examples pay per click (PPC), or social media paid marketing.

The benefits of Paid media are immediate results, scalable and measurable results and the greatness of testing!  Love a good test and measure!

Owned Media is quite simply using the assets you already have – like an email list, social following, website and so forth. 

The benefits of owned media are longevity, loyalty, targeting and just knowing you are having an impact on other humans in a positive way – organically!

Earned Media is media created by others – so others talking about you.  I might use the term user-generated content, for instance, instead of earned media.  There is no financial consideration (money paid) for this – it’s organic.

The benefits of earned media are higher quality leads, built trust, brand awareness and, in hopefully most cases, cost effectiveness.

POEM is a great way to check in with your marketing strategy or plan.

Do you have some POEM in it!

If you are always and just paying for media – you are doing it wrong.

If you are NEVER paying for media – you are doing it wrong.

If you are never earning your spot or extending your community through earned media – you are, yes, I am afraid so, doing it wrong.

POEM serves as the framework for your digital marketing strategies.

POEM works to deepen and strengthen your brand and your relationship with your existing customers.  It works to bring brand awareness and bring in new customers.

So, let’s think about how to use POEM in a small business.

Paid media is simple – it’s a Facebook Ad, an Instagram Ad, a google ad – or of course, it could be radio, tv or newspaper if you take it from digital paid to just paid.

Of course, research needs to go into a well paid ad.  From experience, I would say a percentage of money has a very low return at the beginning when you start playing with paid media.

You can do it yourself or you can pay an agency.  Either way, have VERY specific metrics, goals, and measurable outcomes for ANY paid media you do.

We can slap up an ad with a $20 daily budget for 10 days and get loads of reach, but whether an ad is successful depends on what you measure.  And honestly, you need an ROI, so the measurable bit almost always should be $$$.  Especially if you are going through an agency.  Sort the good ones from the bad by specifically measuring success!

If you are running ads to be more popular, aka get more likes, follows etc, you are wasting your vain money.  Please don’t do that.  OK, there’s probably 1 or 2 circumstances where I might recommend it, but 98% of the time, do you do ads for likes, follows etc.

So next is owned media.  Most of my podcast is all about owned media and how to do that better and with more success.

My biggest tips think community over sales, think collaboration over competition and be consistent.  The more “owned” media you can build, the more successful your brand and business will be.  Remember, we don’t just want to attract people who will one day do business with us, but also people who will refer business to us.  Not everyone is your buyer, but everyone probably knows a buyer for you!

Earned media is about others talking about you – or using others’ platforms to market yourself.  Think PR – think UGC – user-generated content.  There are probably two tricks here.  One, write them for others to publish!  Using media to extend your brand awareness and what you do is a terrific way to market.  It doesn’t always result in immediate sales, but with a longevity marketing strategy, earned media is a great piece of the puzzle.  When I say write something – a blog, an article etc – or hop on some podcasts as an interviewee or local/national radio to give your thoughts or point of view – it doesn’t have to be written.

And my number two trick here is working out how you can encourage more people to mention your content in their media.  Eg/ if you sell dresses or courses, how do you encourage your buyer, who has probably had a fabulous experience with you, to let more people know about the experience.  For example, how do you encourage them, right now in your marketing, to tag you on social media, to forward an email from you and so forth.  UGC is like testimonials but more organic and less structured from their end.  It’s just them celebrating a great experience with your business with their community.  This frankly equals just about the best marketing you can get – like word of mouth but digital!

You can hear from all this that you clearly need a good mix of all three media in your marketing strategy.  You need to invest some money into marketing and a paid strategy, you need to work better at creating owned media and put some energy, thoughts and strategy behind a campaign to get more earned media.

POEM – remember it when you are strategizing next time for your business.

But that’s it for another week, and another episode of the Small Business Made Simple Podcast.  Thanks again for listening.

I’d love you to come into my Facebook Community and continue the chat in there.  If you aren’t a member of the Like Minded Business Owners Group – head there and join up!

See you next week on the podcast for episode 206!

But in the meantime, let’s hang out on social and get social on social – you’ll find me on Instagram, Facebook and my fav LinkedIn.

But whatever you do,

……..remember small business peeps, as my opening song says, there’s no point in dreaming small!