As social media continues to make it easier for consumers to communicate with one another and share experiences and information, companies are changing their marketing priorities to line up with the trends and greatest impact.  We now see companies focusing on Owned Media, Earned Media, and Paid Media in that order.

Forrester defined these three types of media in this blog post last month and you’ll start to hear this more and more as you attend various marketing conferences and strategy sessions.

The first priority for companies with a strong strategy in place will be to build a consistent base with their owned media such as their web site, blog, Twitter account, Facebook account, and newsletter.  Consumers will choose how they want to interact with a company, if at all, and having a presence in these areas builds a solar system that allows your company to be engaged regardless of the channel.

As your company builds its presence and successfully interacts with customers and prospects, the goal is to build that positive word-of-mouth into earned media.  It’s important to note that while earned media is something that will likely be tracked by your Marketing team, it has less to do with marketing and much more to do with the quality of your service or product and the sales and support experience your customers and prospects have with your company and your web site.  Make sure that the task force responsible for earned media is made up of the right people from the groups that have the ability to impact it such as Product Management, Support, Sales, and your web site team.

Last but not least is advertising, i.e. paid media.  While advertising is on a drastic downturn as consumers and prospects train themselves and use technology to ignore it, it is not going away.  Paid media is still a powerful way to ignite a marketing campaign actually being carried out via your owned media.  Many companies have used paid media as a catalyst for a larger online or social media campaign to do things such as naming a new product or submitting a short video to be the next commercial or idea for the company with wild success.  That said, advertising is becoming more valuable as a catalyst and not a foundation as it once was.

As social media and technology continue to impact how we all interact, advertising and other interruptive forms of marketing will continue to move to the bottom of the marketing to-do list and play a more supportive role in a company’s marketing strategy.

You don’t have to go too far to read about the impact of the economy on the ad market.  If you take a look at the article by Peter Kafka in today’s Silicon Alley Insider, you’ll see a chart that probably won’t make you jump for joy. (Watch the video below it. That’ll help.)

So when we all know that marketing and advertising dollars are not going to grow in 2009 and may even go down, what does that mean?  It means that companies are actually going to take the time to figure out how and where they’re getting the most for their dollars.  For those of us that are entrepreneurs, we’re already making sure we know how to best spend our money.  We don’t have a choice.  Every dollar counts. However, for large corporations, the Marketing team is going to have to buckle down and really analyze how they’re spending their budgets and the value they’re receiving for those investments.  The days of, “Hey, we spent our marketing budget and this year’s revenue also happens to have increased so it must be because of us.” are gone. 

For those companies providing internet advertising space, the news isn’t as bleak.  Most companies are seeing increased value every year by advertising online and that trend is not going to change.  The key is to make sure that your site is of value to your customers first, and your advertiser second.  If you’re in the newspaper or magazine industry, the trend is pretty much the opposite.  Also, many companies, especially us small businesses, are asking, “Do we really need a PR company?” For the most part with today’s technology and the many zero-barrier ways to communicate with the world, the answer is no.

Over the next year or so, quality of marketing spend and quality of the service or product being sold are going to take top priority for those companies that want to succeed.  The number of conversions will take precedent over the number of hits on metric charts.  Some big brands will need to actually improve the quality of their products that have made it so far due to the brand name or marketing dollars if they want to keep their customers.  Because, whether you take your clients to a game or not, they HAVE to buy the best and most efficiently priced product to succeed.  Recommendations and peer reviews are going to mean more in the commercial world now more then ever.  This is a great opportunity for businesses with quality solutions to step in and show prospective customers what they can offer because many companies out there can’t afford not to listen. You just need to know where the best places are to speak and be heard.