No Media Should Stand Alone

Increasingly, interactive marketers are being asked to manage a wide range of paid and unpaid marketing communication — despite the fact that many marketing departments are still organized around traditional paid marketing channels. All types of online media (whether "earned," "owned," or "paid") can play specific roles in meeting marketers' objectives — especially when seamlessly working together. To find the right balance between these types of media, marketers should take stock of their resources, listen for the impact of earned media, look for opportunities to shift short-term paid media to the role of catalyst, and begin to build out a solar system of long-term owned media touchpoints.