What is owned media? Should small and medium-sized businesses (SMB) do it? If they do, what is important for success?

Should small and medium-sized businesses (SMB) like ours do owned media?

Yes, we are looking for a small scale “informational” media outlet. If you are a small-scale “informational” rather than a large-scale media outlet, you should do as much as possible.
There is no need to aim for large scale media like news sites. Creating a place to provide useful information to your customers will help you gain their trust. However, it is difficult to continue, so it is important to establish a system that can be done in-house or with the support of a reliable partner.

I want to outsource article writing, but will it still be effective?

For small and medium-sized businesses (SMB) that have a lot of contact with their customers, throwing the entire project to an outside company that is not involved with the company is a sure-fire way to fail.
An outside company cannot understand the customer’s sense of skin and daily interactions. It is essential for you to take the initiative in sending out information yourself, and to come up with the original story. It is a good idea to borrow outside help in the form of corrections to your writing and follow-up on how to proceed.

If I start owned media now, will it be effective in attracting customers?

It is difficult to attract new customers, and it is recommended to use this information for the purpose of increasing the trust of customers who have already visited the site and become fans.
Many companies are now disseminating information, and there is almost no first-mover advantage in attracting new customers. Instead, it is more effective to use it for “nurturing prospective customers” or “making fans” to increase the purchase rate of those who come to the site once and to deepen the relationship with existing customers.

This year’s theme is a bit more complicated: owned media.

The first thing I would like everyone to know is what on-demand media is all about.

The term “owned media” is a rather blurry term, and in fact, we call it “owned media” to encompass a wide range of sizes.

I think I can divide it into two parts, and I would like to tell you about each of them, whether it is worth doing, and what you need to pay attention to if you do it.

Please have all of you who are receiving sales at this stage or who have received owned media services in the past, take a moment to review and keep this area in mind. Because it is scary.

We hope you will listen to the end.

We only speak about the important parts, so you can contact us or search for the incidental parts.

On-demand media is not a new weapon or concept.

First of all, “owned” means “owned by oneself,” so it refers to a variety of information transmission media that can be controlled by oneself and used to convey information.

On top of that, I want you to know that owned media is by no means a recent development, but it is not a powerful weapon or something special that someone created about five years ago.

When we are approached by a customer who asks us to create owned media, it is as if to say, “We have created a new and wonderful tool for small and medium-sized businesses (SMB) that has never existed before, and we would like to work with you to create it.” I would like to create a new tool for small and medium-sized companies.

That would make me curious.

Many of us feel that we have created something like a “new special technique” that has never been done before and that matches the current times.

But this is nothing new. It is just a concept that has been around for a long time and is now on the Internet.

There are pros and cons to putting it this way, but I will summarize it in a simple way.

Extension of the direct marketing world

Many of you, when you distribute flyers, do not distribute a sales flyer every time, but rather, for example, a 00 newsletter, a 00 letter, etc. I believe that there are many people who distribute flyers.

I am sure many of you have heard of the saying, “Posting three or so informational, informative, useful, or recent status reports, followed by a light sale flyer or notice about the fourth time will get a better response.

This is a common technique used in direct marketing.

Rather than selling from the outset, we use some kind of media to build relationships with our customers, and then we pick up people who will become our customers and approach them individually.

Unlike mass media advertising, in which we “send out the same thing to everyone and reap the rewards when the response comes back,” we approach each customer individually and watch their reactions to directly connect with the customers we want to reach and the customers for whom our products are useful. This is a way to connect with the customers we want to reach and the customers for whom our products are useful.

Think of it as creating a place.

At this time, for example, you may have a 00X newsletter, or a flyer, or a booklet, or better yet, you are getting to know your customers, and although you are not selling to them on a regular basis, you are building a relationship with them by bringing them something like a so-called “souvenir story”.

It is hard to understand because there is no place for a website or homepage, but you are going to create a place of relationship with your customers.

On the web, “owned media” is a way to provide information to customers and create a place to communicate with them.

Strictly speaking, there are many ways to understand this, but if you want to understand it in a nutshell, this is OK.

For example, “Do you all know about these things?” or, “What is a good thing to do?” By providing information, we gain trust.

By having them always remember and imprint themselves on the customers they serve, when the need arises, customers will think, “Oh, that company used to send us helpful information, and they will be helpful to us when we actually receive their services, This is the kind of company that will be kind to us when we actually receive their services, and that they may be the right company for us.

In short, small and medium-sized businesses (SMB) should think of owned media as a place where they can post articles and disseminate information.

Please have that image first.

The media that are being used as success stories are not what small and medium-sized businesses are aiming for.

I think you will feel that it is not so special.

Now, if you remember when owned media first came out, the success stories were those of large media and news sites as examples of owned media success.

We can create 100 pages, 1,000 pages, or more… and from there, we can successfully channel people to the real service site and brand it.

Many such things were held up as success stories.

Of course, there is success in that form. However, that is the approach that large and well-capitalized companies can take.

What we want you to envision by the term “owned media” is an extension of direct marketing, but on a narrower scale. Never imagine that you can create or produce media. It costs a lot of money to do it. You have to hire people or outsource a lot of work.

The cost is usually not enough for a three-figure sum; think four-figure sums per year flat.

It is enough to provide information rather than on-demand media!

So, should we do another small-scale information provision on our website?

If a company can support us in this area, we would definitely like to have a relationship with them.

Of course, it depends on the company. In the case of a bad company, they may send you four articles a month that are cheap (300 or 400 yen per article) and of course of low quality, and you may receive 100,000 yen a month just for that. This is nothing but evil, so it is definitely not a good idea.

Instead, they could teach you how to do it and how to think about it during the meeting, and then correct you. Or, a proper writer would write the document, and you would check it regularly. Such a partner company would be good.

We live in an era where you have to get information out ahead of time to make a sale.

It is definitely better to provide information if you do.

The reason I added the word “if possible” is that it is a lot of work. There are various formats, such as video, audio, and the most common text format, but all of them require various techniques.

If it is a video, you need to have the skill to speak in this way, and you have to set up various settings beforehand. For audio, there is no video, but you have to set up the microphone and the content of what you are going to say. Even for writing, writing is difficult if you are not used to it. There are even writing schools, so you need to prepare for a variety of things, such as having people who can write, outsourcing, and finding a place that can correct your writing.

And considering that it must be done on a somewhat continuous basis, it is better not to do it half-heartedly and just try one for now.

However, after all, these are not times when you can suddenly reap and sell.

This is something that you are also realizing.

After all, as consumers, it is difficult for buyers to find out which is best for them and which is best for them.

Still, which company will deal with us properly, deal with us honestly, and have the expertise to do so?

I would like to have a proper grasp of such things before taking any action in the form of an inquiry.

We don’t live in the old days where the only way to get information is to ask a sales person. The asymmetry of information has broken down.

Nowadays, people gather information on websites, and then select a good place to inquire about, so when they search or look at a website and find no information that they want, the response will drop.

It is essential to have a system in place to ensure continuity

We should do the information dissemination itself, but it is quite difficult to just do it in that context, so if we are going to do it ourselves, we need to set up a system that allows us to do it ourselves.

Basically, at first, it is better to work well with a company that can assist you.

The point is that basically you all have to take the initiative to do this, especially small and medium-sized businesses (SMB), which have many contacts with customers and with people.

If you are a large company and the customers feel that they are dealing with a company rather than an individual, you can have an outside agency do the reporting and write an article and publish it. If you are selling a skin-feel that customers suddenly visit, or if you are selling a sense of intimacy in a street store, you will fail if you do not involve everyone.

The reason is that there is no way that an outside firm could write an article with everyone knowing about the customers and their daily interactions.

If we wanted to do that, we would have to have a full-time resident, listening undercover on the side, or work there for a year, which would increase costs considerably.

If you are going to do this, it is better to create a system that allows you to pick up information that can be transmitted inside the company, and to put it in writing in an easy-to-understand manner, even if it may be a little dull at first.

We must not avoid your involvement.

The bottleneck in this process is the part of writing and taking good photographs.

It would be a good idea to have only that part of the correction done by an outside party at first!

You will do your best to come up with the original story itself. We can provide consulting and writing correction services.

We ask them to correct us on whether we are conveying their intentions in an easy-to-understand manner, whether we are being too self-important, whether the Japanese is incorrect to begin with, or whether we should prepare a photo like this one because it doesn’t convey the message.

This would not cost that much.

Moreover, it is definitely better because the know-how will remain with you as a company.

Anyway, without your own involvement, first of all, a media system, a small owned media that you have in your company, is not viable. Because imagine this. If you send out a newsletter and it is written and sent by someone completely outside the company who does not understand the customer’s sensitivities, will you get a response?

The same is true for websites and homepages, and it is still very necessary to have a sense that the people inside are doing the work.

Again, one of the important points is that you should not avoid getting involved.

If you start now, imagine using it in the prospect nurturing stage rather than attracting customers.

And what I would like you to have a sense of is that on-demand media information dissemination used to be a common and basic way to attract customers, but nowadays the purpose of attracting customers has become quite strict and inefficient. The reason why is because everyone is doing the same thing and disorganized.

How many of the same companies are there in the world? There is no such thing as a one-of-a-kind company.

Therefore, if you search for keywords that your customers are likely to search for, and you find a long list of other companies’ media, you should stop thinking that you are trying to attract customers with your content.

The companies that have been running owned media for a long time and are probably ranked number one there and so on are investing a lot of money and keeping people around to do it, and if they continue to do so, they will not be able to win.

If that is the case, you should consider that it is not cosmetic to do it to attract customers.

So what is it for? It is used to nurture customers there for prospecting and lead nurturing.

Once a customer comes to the store, you could ask them to visit the website and look at such pages, or you could say to them, “Please take a look at this page we have created,” and give them something with a QR code on it.

You can put such things on inserts, DMs, postings, etc. as additional information. Rather than aiming for a final response out of the blue, you can start with thin responses, so-called micro-conversions. Starting from such a point, you can gradually get customers to know you, increase their sense of trust and interest in you, and then use the information to nurture prospective customers so that they will remember you when they need you.

Then, turn the customers who bought once into customers and loyal customers.

I would like to buy it again. Or, I wonder what the manufacturer is doing with the product I bought before, or what that store is doing these days.

I looked it up and found out that they have been doing this kind of thing recently, or that the product I bought before has this kind of background, so I’ll get involved again, or maybe I’ve fallen in love with this place, or something like that, and nurture them in that way.

For customers who have not yet bought, we nurture them. For customers who have already bought once or have had a good relationship with the company, the relationship is further deepened, and the process is called variously “becoming a fan,” “becoming a customer,” or “creating a loyal customer. It is best to think of it as such a medium.

Since much of the first-mover profit has been taken

The fact that SEO on its own can attract a bang for the buck is a good thing, if I may say so, because the profits have been taken up ahead of time. Where we started out, we did quite well with it, made a profit, reinvested it, and got on with the cycle, but it’s tough to start now and catch up there.

In order to increase the number of customers from, say, 5 to 10 or 15, we will create an area on our website where we will provide information first.

It would be a good idea for salespeople to post stories on the Internet about how they recently told a customer about something that got a big bite, in order to increase the response rate, for example.

rehearsal

Review.

First of all, owned media is not at all a recently invented magic wand with a very strong special technique. It is not a traditional sales pitch to customers, it is just a process of nurturing customers on the web, so don’t be too afraid of it.

To do or not to do. First of all, I would like you to have an image of what you should do. Providing information on a small scale, pages and dozens of pages, is basically what you should be doing. Whether you do it or not, you should definitely do it.

It’s a lot of work to just do it, so it’s better to get outside help at first.

However, it is not necessary for everyone to be involved at that time. It is better to work with those who will follow up on your involvement.

It is better to start with the image of using it to nurture prospective and loyal customers, since attracting customers on top of that is quite demanding nowadays.

I am sorry that this is a long article, about 15 minutes long, but please rethink your owned media and information dissemination with this in mind.

To be clear, the term “owned media” is only confusing, so “informational” is sufficient.

If you have any questions or concerns, please contact Roundup Consulting. Thank you for listening to the end.

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