Maximising ROI: A Deep Dive into Paid, Owned, and Earned Media for Influencer Marketers

Key Takeaways

• Tracking return on investment is crucial for influencer marketing. It shifts the focus from vanity metrics, such as likes and followers gained, to business outcomes.
• Each media type plays a unique role. Paid media is helpful for promotion with clear results, owned media helps build long-term connections, and earned media, being organic, boosts credibility.
• A well-rounded influencer marketing strategy should combine different media types through cross-promotion and content repurposing.

Return on investment (ROI) is important in influencer marketing because it measures campaigns' true impact and profitability. While many brands overemphasise vanity metrics like engagement rates, follower count, and likes, tracking ROI shifts the focus from surface-level metrics to bottom-line performance.

ROI ensures an influencer marketing strategy is not just sparking attention but also driving conversions, boosting sales, and benefiting the business overall. As a result, 70% of brands launching influencer marketing campaigns track ROI. Put simply, it aligns marketing efforts with tangible business outcomes, ensuring brands invest wisely in the right influencers and strategies.

However, ROI can be challenging to define. Some types of campaigns easily produce results, whereas others increase sentiment and work indirectly to boost your brand.

Types of media: The difference between paid, owned, and earned media

Understanding the different types of media--this is created content, like ads, social media posts, or emails designed to promote your brand--is essential for any digital marketing strategy.

Let's start with a definition of each type of media.

Define Paid Media

Paid media refers to any paid-for ads bought by a company. It includes:

• paid social media advertisements
• sponsored influencer posts
• sponsored links on search engines

Paid media is beneficial because it gives brands full control over the platform and messaging. It also allows them to track how many people clicked on the ad directly. Typical goals are to drive traffic, increase brand awareness, and generate leads.

Define Owned media

Owned media is content your brand creates and distributes through its channels. It encompasses a range of hosted and distributed content, for example:

• marketing emails
• blog posts
• social media posts on the brand's account

Owned media gives brands complete control over the message, design, and timing. This makes it an excellent choice for developing a strong brand voice and building connections with consumers over time.

Define Earned Media

Earned media is content created organically about a brand by people who are not associated with the brand. This content is not paid for or developed internally. Consumers value earned media because it is genuine and credible. Therefore, it is highly advantageous as social proof for brands.

What is an example of earned media?

Types of earned media include:

• reviews
• organically created influencer posts
• unpaid coverage generated by third parties like journalists
• user-generated content on social media

Is social media paid, owned, or earned media?

Social media is one of the most complex areas, as it can fall under paid, owned, or earned media, depending on how you're working with it.

Here's a deeper analysis:

• Paid media requires an element of direct investment. On social media, this can be paying for social media ads or sponsoring influencer content.
• Owned media refers to content you control on your brand’s social media channels, like your posts, stories, and branded videos.
• Earned media is the exposure your brand receives organically when non-paid influencers or other social media users voluntarily share your content, mention your brand, or post their own content about your products.

Ultimately, social media spans all three categories. The classification depends on who creates the content and whether they were paid to do so.

Introducing shared media: What is the PESO model?

There are also more in-depth media definitions. One is the PESO model--an acronym for paid, earned, shared, and owned media. The addition of "shared media" introduces an extra branch of media that is co-created, distributed, or shared by both the brand and its audience. It fills the space between earned and owned media.

Types of shared media, as per the PESO model, include:

• social media posts shared by users on their own profiles
• co-branded posts and videos
• branded hashtag campaigns

Shared media is a common part of influencer marketing. A well-thought-out digital marketing strategy should use each type of media effectively.

Accessing Paid Media: Investing Wisely in Influencer Partnerships

When selecting influencers for paid partnerships, businesses must resist the temptation to rely solely upon superficial metrics like follower counts. Instead, they should focus on influencers who deeply understand their audience and can genuinely connect with them. The right influencer should be able to build trust in their audience and authentically promote the brand's products in a way that feels natural rather than forced.

When done well, influencers can create posts that go viral or inspire earned media through user-generated content (UGC).

Budget Allocation for Collaborations

Effective budget allocation in influencer marketing requires a balanced approach. Of course, low-risk options are available, such as affiliate marketing and product gifting. However, companies seeking the full benefits of influencer marketing should be prepared to invest time and money into their campaigns.

Brands should start by identifying their campaign goals—whether it's to boost brand awareness, engagement, or direct conversions—and then allocate the budget accordingly. Throwing money at the biggest influencer possible may feel like the answer. But, while this may increase the reach of your campaign, micro and nano influencers tend to offer better engagement for lower costs.

Unsure how much an influencer will charge? Here at Kolsquare, we offer the free Kolculator that provides a rough estimate of how much it will cost to work with an Instagram or TikTok influencer.

Consider reserving a portion of the budget for content amplification, such as paid ads promoting top-performing influencer posts, to increase visibility. Finally, allocate funds for tracking and measuring ROI, ensuring that the campaign’s performance is continuously optimised.

Tracking the Campaign's ROI

When tracking and analysing how successful your paid media campaign is on social media, it’s important to align your metrics with the specific goals you set. This ensures that you're measuring the right aspects of your campaign’s performance.

To keep things simple, start by measuring direct ROI, focusing on conversions, sales, or leads generated directly from the campaign. click-through rates (CTR) reveal how many people took action, such as visiting your website or engaging with your call-to-action.

Next, monitor reach and impressions to understand how many people were exposed to your campaign. Engagement metrics--likes, comments, and shares--show how well your content resonated with the audience.

However, the true and more long-term benefits of the campaign may be hidden. Earned media value should also be tracked to calculate the value of organic mentions, shares, and user-generated content. This metric is essential for understanding whether your paid and owned media is amplifying your position in online conversations.

Tracking these key metrics will help you gauge the campaign's overall performance, ensuring your budget is being optimised for the best possible outcomes.

Owned Media Strategies: Cultivating a Personal Brand

When influencers develop their own media assets, they benefit from the control they have over them. Creators can cultivate platforms such as personal blogs, websites, or podcasts to connect with their followers directly. This independence helps build trust and authenticity while also opening the door to multiple revenue streams.

Strategies for Growing an Influencer’s Owned Media Channels

To grow their owned media channels, influencers should diversify and create additional content across platforms they fully control. They can expand their owned media by engaging their audience through newsletters or exclusive communities.

For example, Instagram now offers subscriber-only posts, and many creators ask for donations through Patreon. This provides regular, more predictable income and prevents the frustration of transforming hard-earned expertise into content for little remuneration.

Examples of Owned Media: Influencers Monetising Their Owned Media

This is a strategy most easily followed by influencers with expertise that their followers deeply value.

Here are a couple of examples:

• Vanja Moves: Like many fitness influencers, Vanja Moves creates workout programs that her followers can buy directly from her website. These content packages strengthen her credibility and showcase her expertise in the mobility and fitness niche.
• Jamie Lang: Jamie Laing successfully expanded his owned media by leveraging his reality TV fame and strong social media presence to co-create the popular podcast. This move into podcasting diversified his content and solidified his position as a versatile media personality in the UK.

These case studies illustrate how influencers can successfully monetise their owned media by maintaining creative control, building a loyal audience, and creating sustainable revenue models.

Earned Media from Social Media: The Gold Standard of Influencer Marketing

Earned media is generated through organic mentions, shares, and recommendations. These organic, non-funded promotions are often considered the gold standard in influencer marketing.

When social media users create promotional content because they love a product--rather than for pay--their followers view these endorsements as genuine. While a well-executed paid campaign can easily overcome doubts, earned media is uniquely authentic and effective at boosting a brand's reputation.

Tactics for Influencers to Boost Earned Media Potential

Encourage influencers to focus on authentic storytelling that resonates deeply with their audience. Creating relatable, shareable content, such as behind-the-scenes moments or personal experiences with a product, can inspire other creators to share it.

Collaborations with multiple influencers can also expand reach and generate cross-promotion, further increasing earned media. In addition, actively engaging followers through comments, Q&A sessions, or hashtag campaigns encourages them to create their own content around the responses they receive.

Tools for Tracking and Quantifying the Value of Earned Media

Earned media value represents the cost it would have required to take up as much of a conversation through paid advertising. It can be calculated by comparing the organic exposure generated by influencer posts to the cost of traditional media buys, allowing companies to assign monetary value to their place in the conversation.

Tracking and quantifying earned media can be done using a variety of tools and metrics. Social listening tools like Kolsquare's can help tell you how often your brand and related hashtags are mentioned.  

Kolsquare's social listening tool helps you benchmark your brand's influencer marketing performance and track competitors with custom dashboards. Gain insights into share of voice, audience engagement, and EMV across specific regions, empowering your brand to stay ahead in your industry.