What does a successful Owned media campaign look like?

Owned media – channels owned by a company, such as its website, service pages, blogs and social media – is one of the most useful tools businesses can use to boost a brand’s image, increase its Google Search page ranking and drive traffic to the website.

As owned content is managed by the company, it acts as an interface between a company and its target audience, allowing you to tailor your messages depending on where you think potential readers are in the sales funnel or around specific campaigns.

We touched upon how businesses can use an Owned media strategy to improve lead generation and how Owned campaigns can be used to amplify press coverage in some of our previous blogs, but what exactly does that look like?

Below we give an example of an effective Owned media campaign, why it’s so successful and why you should be taking lessons for your own B2B strategy.

Airbnb’s Owned media campaign

Airbnb has quickly become one of the most popular apps in the age of the shared economy, priding itself as the world’s largest community-driven hospitality platform. The service differentiates itself by offering a more personal experience than a hotel, allowing home-owners to rent out spare rooms or entire houses or apartments and letting travellers stay in a little home-from-home wherever they go.

Key to the company’s success is its website. The content is laid out in short chunks of information for both travellers and hosts in order to get started on the platform. There’s also info on destinations, prices, customer support, the company’s hospitality standards and the quality of hosts.

Blogs and social media – a match made in heaven

The company’s blog and social media use is another example of an effective Owned media campaign, with regular, relevant content for its audience. For example, some of its most recent blogs look at how hosts can make guest-friendly home improvements or what to do when guests turn up late.

And, as you’d expect for a company like Airbnb, it’s pretty active on social media with a large following on most of the big platforms. The company portrays a light-hearted voice which proves popular among its 672,000 followers on Twitter. The company is even more popular on LinkedIn, where it shares mostly company updates with its 760,000 followers.

Two-way communication is key here. Rather than relying just on its content and posts to do the brunt of the work, the company regularly interacts with users in its community to create engagement and a community feel.

Own it

Airbnb knows its audience well, and it tells by having its website, blog and social content aimed directly at its two key targets – hosts and guests. Driving visitors to the website and improving SEO and search engine ranking are two important drivers for successful Owned media campaigns, both of which can be reached through effective blogging and social media amplification.

When comparing Airbnb’s owned strategy to your own, consider the following areas the company currently excels at:

• Website – easy to navigate with small chunks of useful information dotted around the homepage
• Blogs – interesting and informative pieces with a variety of topics targeted towards its audience
• Social media – amusing posts that engage with users and direct traffic back to the website
• Tone of voice – light-hearted and aimed at creating a conversation among its followers

Devising a successful owned media campaign should be a part of your overall Inbound PR strategy.