Owning awareness vs just renting it

How do you generate awareness for your business or your ideas?

Do you rent awareness?

Renting awareness involves paying money to reach somebody else's audience. There are many ways to pay for awareness such as:

• Google AdWords and other search engine ad schemes where you rent keyword and phrase result placement.
• Banner ads which you rent on a per impression basis.
• Content syndication services such as online news release distribution that you buy on a one-off basis.
• Renting tradeshow booth space for a few days.
• Services like Groupon where you rent a day's email sponsorship for your offer to a targeted audience.

Now, there is nothing inherently wrong with renting awareness, just like there is nothing wrong with renting a car. However, you've got to keep on continually paying. If you stop paying, your awareness immediately goes to zero.

The alternative is to own awareness.

• Own the natural search engine result for your important phrases by creating content that people link to.
• Own a blog or YouTube channel that people talk about and share with others on social networks.
• Create an online media room for your newsworthy content.
• Become a thought leader and speak at conferences (if you get really good they may even pay you!).
• Have your own email newsletter.

I'm not advocating an either / or position here.

For most businesses, a both / and strategy is likely best. For example, I own the car that I use at home but I rent a car when in another city.

Similarly, the vast majority of my awareness is generated through my ownership of my own ideas and the content that educates about them. However, I still rent. For example, when I have a new book out, I work with my publisher, Wiley, to run sponsorships to raise awareness of the new book. I also pay to publish news releases through the news release distribution services.

Owning takes more time and requires different strategies than renting. But once you own something of value, it pays off for a long time. The business results can be staggeringly impressive too.

So what's the right ratio?

If more than 50% of your awareness comes from rentals, I'd say you've got to step up strategies to ownership. As a general rule, I'd say most businesses should aim for 75% ownership or better (but this is just a number I made up).

What do you think? Is ownership always better? What's the right ratio?

Hat tip to my friend Brian Halligan, CEO of HubSpot (and my co-author of our book Marketing Lessons from the Grateful Dead) for the spark of the idea for this post.

Image 1: Shutterstock \ Henryk Sadura
Image 2: Shutterstock \ Denis and Yulia Pogostins

Comments

[Simon Espley]

So in summary you are saying that all businesses should create their own content? Be that in the form of blogs, email newsletters or whatever. I agree.

I guess though that many companies will simply 'rent' the space - as they do with so many other services they utilise - to keep their inhouse functions focussed on what they deem core.

[Duncan]

Good post - like all forms of business the 80-20 rule comes into play. You need to own your destiny and therefore 80% should come from ownership and 20% rented referrals

[Raul]

Excellent way to explain this complex issue in a very easy way. Even showing how you claimed ownership of your name by not only using David Scott really shows how sometimes simple things can help you take ownership of your brand and image.

I read your blog and I always point other people to your great ideas. I think many people are not that committed to sustaining those channels to maintain ownership that is why little by little they keep on renting not know that at any moment they can lose what they thought they built.

[Connie]

David, I really enjoyed your post today and feel it is an excellent reminder to set our company apart from the competitor.
Connie
Truck Writers, Inc.

[David Meerman Scott]

Thanks so much for these comments. I tried this way of describing marketing with a group of bank CEOs today and they totally got it.

[Al Pittampalli]

Owning should be the ultimate goal, but renting is a mechanism to help achieve that goal. Businesses that do Groupon fail, because they rent awareness, and tomorrow it's gone. Businesses that succeed leverage Groupon's awareness, and convert it into their own. That's the key, is renting as a means to own. Great post, David.

[Adrian Knoll]

I think that owning is the long-term target of a business and it takes more time to acieve, expecially for a new business.
I tihnk that during time, as the amount of relevant key-content in your website increases you should be able to take those "Training-wheels" of rented-awarness and get most traffic from owned-awarness.

Thanks for the artikel.
I love short, simple and relevent content.

[Stan Dubin]

Speaking of renting versus owning, I noticed you gave credit to the two images you used in the post, but a link back (to the creators of the images) was not provided. Is that all that's required now?

[Lucy Thorpe]

Would you say that renting is the way to go when we need to build on our existing audience and pull in a whole bunch of new people? Or would you advocate continuing to attract new people slowly over time through social media?

[David Meerman Scott]

Adrian & Lucy -- yes, some rentals can work to build an audience. But it is like crack cocaine, you don;t want to get addicted.

Stan - I have an agreement with Shutterstock to use their images on my blog and this is how they have asked me to give credit.

[WebVisible]

I really like your post!!Renting awareness involves paying money to reach somebody else's audience.

[Lisa Woods]

A nice concise post – I agree with some of the other comments that the long term goal should be owning while in the interim driving awareness by renting.
Renting is obviously the easier and more frequently followed path by people – this can lead to a false sense of achievement while detracting from the need to create ownership and meaningful content.

[elastic bracelets]

Enjoy reading your post. In my opinion, I would not like to rent Google Adwords. I would not run banner ads and pop-ups. I would rent some Facebook ad space from time to time.

[philippe]

David, in the article, what do you mean by sponsorships? I think the way you used it was "I work with my publisher, Wiley, to run sponsorships to raise awareness of the new book"
if you could briefly expand on that I would really appreciate it!

[David Meerman Scott]

Phillippe - sponsorships such as with Amazon.com where they will send an email to everyone who has purchased one of my books in the past.

[Glass Votive Holders]

I don’t rent Google Adwords. I don’t run banner ads and popups. I have rented some Facebook ad space from time to time, but the stuff that we do on Craig’s List is free.

[Pepe Fanjul Jr.]

There is nothing inherently wrong with renting awareness, just like there is nothing wrong with renting a car..i always like your blogs this is one of them..

[Federico Pignatelli]

I read your blog and I always point other people to your great ideas. Renting is obviously the easier and more frequently followed path by people.

[Pier 59 Studios]

Renting is obviously the easier and more frequently followed path by people – this can lead to a false sense of achievement while detracting from the need to create ownership and meaningful content.it should requires only some awareness among peoples...