Owned Media used to support your CTAs
Proprietary audience engagement (e.g., social icons, hashtags, etc.)
So, for instance, if you’re in the insurance industry, you might document one of your website banner ads as follows:
Channel and ad unit: Banner ad
CTA: “Get a Free Quote” (no secondary CTA)
Owned Media used: Landing page
Proprietary audience engagement: None until after the click; then, a landing page with email SUBSCRIBER opt-in
As your spreadsheet comes together, you’ll quickly see opportunities to hybridize your paid media CTAs to both sell and help build or engage your proprietary audiences. Begin collecting these ideas on a separate spreadsheet while they’re fresh in your mind—but don’t take action on them yet. We have a lot more auditing to do first.
Owned Media Discovery
Your Owned Media resources provide the foundation for the vast majority of your PAD efforts. To optimize your audience-building potential, therefore, you need to document:
Each Owned Media asset
What team/individual(s) in your organization manage each asset (capture names and titles for later relationship-building efforts)
Current PAD efforts within each asset
How often each Owned Media asset is updated
Your findings might appear as follows:
In addition to documenting the Owned Media assets you already have, be sure to also capture what’s missing. Your PAD Audit is as much about what you are doing today as it is what you should be doing in the future.
Proprietary Audience Discovery
Once you have documented your Owned Media assets, you’re ready to analyze your existing proprietary audience assets—the SEEKERS, AMPLIFIERS, and JOINERS currently at your disposal. To aid in your analysis, let’s revisit our list of proprietary audiences:
SEEKERS AMPLIFIERS JOINERS
BROWSERS ADVOCATES CUSTOMERS
LISTENERS ANALYSTS DINERS
PROSPECTS COMMENTERS DONORS
READERS CREATORS EMPLOYEES
SEARCHERS INFLUENCERS FANS
SHOPPERS REPORTERS FOLLOWERS
VIEWERS REVIEWERS PARTNERS
VISITORS SHARERS SUBSCRIBERS
With this list close by, my recommendation is to:
1. Determine which proprietary audiences your company currently attracts, develops and/or engages.
2. Document the following for each of your proprietary audiences: a. The channels in which they exist
b. Who manages acquisition efforts (include names/titles)
c. Who manages messaging (include names/titles)
d. Who manages engagement (include names/titles)
e. Types of current acquisition and engagement efforts
f. Types of messaging (informational, promotional, etc.)
g. Types of audience segmentation and personalization used
h. Frequency of messages
i. Owned Media leveraged
j. Technology used to message (name of ESP, social network)
k. Cross-channel PAD efforts (e.g., promotion of email to FANS)
l. Consumer data generated (e.g., email, address, purchases, etc.)
m. Value of proprietary audience (as defined by managing team)
For example, a retailer’s audit of a few SEEKER audiences might look like this:
As you can see, your proprietary audience audit can get pretty detailed, even for SEARCHER audiences. Let’s take a look now at three AMPLIFIERS audiences for our fictitious retailer:
Finally, let’s take a look at how some JOINERS might look to our retailer:
While you might be tempted to cut corners with your proprietary audience discovery efforts, don’t. The more detail you can provide, the better you will be able to identify and prioritize new PAD efforts and phase out the ones costing you time and money.
EMPLOYEE and PARTNER Discovery
The next step in your proprietary audience discovery process is to assess the proprietary audiences your EMPLOYEES and PARTNERS have at their disposal. Many companies overlook these two JOINER audiences—which is a shame since they contain many of your best AMPLIFIERS, FANS, and FOLLOWERS. Assessing PARTNERS is pretty easy. You simply ask them to identify the proprietary audiences to whom they promote partner content, which may include:
Website
Blog
Email
Podcasts
Social Media (Facebook, Google+, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter, etc.)
Webinars
You don’t need the same level of details as with your own proprietary audiences—just enough to understand:
Who in their organization manages each channel
Whether they promote PARTNER content through each channel
What content they prefer to promote
Their publishing schedule and rules (if any)
Whether there is a cost or quid pro quo required to promote content
Your tack needs to be very different with EMPLOYEES. First off, you probably don’t have the time to talk to all of your EMPLOYEES to discover who blogs and who’s on what social network. Second, any discovery of that nature could come off as creepy and counter to the brand and culture you’re seeking to foster.