Leverage Existing Audiences to Expand Your Own

Navigating the vast landscape of marketing strategies can be daunting, especially when deciding how to allocate additional budget. Options abound, from newsletters and referral programs to editorial blog posts and programmatic SEO.

To streamline this process, we can categorize marketing strategies into three types: Owned, Rented, and Borrowed. These categories represent the communication channels you own, rent, or borrow to reach your audience.

Each has its place in a comprehensive marketing plan. The ORB Framework offers a practical approach to crafting a successful marketing plan applicable to any business or marketing campaign.

The ORB Framework visualizes audience depth using concentric circles. At the core, the audience is private. As you expand outward, you reach more people, albeit with reduced depth. All marketing efforts should funnel back to owned platforms. Rented platforms should also lead back to owned platforms to mitigate the risk of losing reach or access.

After mapping out your marketing experiments and channels, you can identify which owned platforms to invest in, engage your audience to grow them, and borrow other people’s audiences to expand your reach. It’s simpler than it sounds!

Owned Platforms

Owned platforms offer more control, reach, and predictability over your audience. Successful creators and brands often count blogs, email lists, communities, podcasts, or text message lists among their most effective marketing channels. Choose the owned platform that best aligns with your skills and your audience’s needs. Blogs, email, communities, podcasts, and text messaging are here to stay, offering direct lines of communication with your audience. Video is an emerging owned platform, and tools like Wistia Channels can help transform your website into a video destination.

Rented Platforms

Platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, Snapchat, YouTube, TikTok, Quora, Reddit, Pinterest, Medium, mobile app stores, browser extensions, SaaS platform plugins, and messenger apps are rented platforms that control the end user’s experience. There are trade-offs to using these platforms, including reduced reach, ambiguous algorithms, censorship, pay-to-play, and ephemeral content. However, there are also upsides, such as discoverability, shareability, and meeting your audience where they already are. It’s important to commit to a few platforms that your audience uses and expects you to be on.

Borrowed Platforms

Borrowing other people’s audiences is crucial to growth on owned and rented platforms. It involves leveraging someone else’s platform to gain exposure to their audience. Guest posting, collaborations, shoutouts, and speaking at conferences are some examples of borrowing someone’s audience. However, most people adopt a passive approach to borrowed platforms, which isn’t effective. An active approach, where you actively seek out collaborations, is necessary to make the most of this strategy. The magic of borrowed platforms is that they’ve already attracted the right people, earned their trust, and kept their attention over time. To effectively borrow someone else’s audience, make a list of everyone and everything that has the attention of your intended audience and work out a win-win collaboration.

In summary, a successful content marketing strategy comprises three components: owned, rented, and borrowed platforms. Owned platforms are the top priority since they offer a direct relationship with your audience. Rented platforms provide discoverability and interaction but also come with their own set of challenges. Borrowed platforms offer the opportunity to leverage existing audiences for growth. By understanding and effectively utilizing the ORB Framework, you can craft a winning content marketing strategy that drives growth and engagement.