Required Assignment 4.

2:
Evaluate a Brand's Paid, Owned and Earned Media
Strategies
<Khushi Agarwal>
Suggested time: 120 minutes
Assignment Instructions

In this assignment, you will choose a brand of your choice or consider MakeMyTrip and reflect
on its marketing strategies. Record your responses in the table provided below.

Note: This is a required assignment and counts towards programme completion.

1. What types of paid, owned and earned media does the brand use? Why are they utilising
these channels? In other words, what is their aim for utilising these channels?

My company, Nurrish, is a food and beverage company that produces vegan products such as
oat milk, almond milk etc.
They use paid, owned, and earned media for marketing their products.
In paid media, they use sponsored advertisements on websites and Google ad campaigns.
Their aim for utilising this was, when Nurrish launched their oat milk, they wanted to grow their
customer base fast and create awareness for the product among customers at an early stage.
Thus, they paid other websites to have their product ads featured on their page and invested
in Google ad campaigns. As a result of this, they saw a large click-through-rate and a rise in
sales. Their objective was a short-term boost in sales for their product through paid media
which is exactly what they got.
In owned media, they use their social media channels such as Instagram, YouTube and
Twitter and use their podcast to promote their products. Every alternate day they post reels on
Instagram and use the Instagram Live feature to talk about how their products are better than
the rest. They have even started a podcast where they speak in detail about their products
and provide lots of information on how veganism is the best way of life. Their aim of doing this
is to gain customer loyalty and long-term advantage so that when they launch new products,
customers will always come back to them for purchases.
In earned media, they rely on reviews and recommendations, likes, comments and ratings for
promotions. On their website, they have a column where customers can leave their reviews
and mention their experience in using the product. On all their social media channels, when
customers like and comment on their posts and videos it adds credibility to their brand. One of
their reels, which explained how their oat milk is made got over 10,000 likes and 200
comments. As a result of this, their sales of oat milk boosted. When new customers see that
old customers are happy using their products, they also buy the product. Nurrish’s aim for

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 using earned media is long-term growth and customer trust. Very often, they get queries about
their products because of word of mouth and recommendations from other people. Earned
media is thus the best and most long-lasting method of marketing.
In this way, Nurrish utilises the POEM framework, paid, owned, and earned media.

2. What is the brand doing well?

Nurrish, which is a food and beverage brand that produces vegan products such as oat milk,
coconut milk, etc. are excelling in their marketing. Not only are they making use of the POEM
framework which is paid, owned, and earned media, but are also nailing their SEO strategy.
SEO strategy has two parts, on-page optimisation and off-page optimisation.
On-page optimisation is when the brand uses very relevant keywords and content and
creates a structured website to rank higher on the SERP (search engine results page) and so
that web crawlers and spiders can identify it easily.
Nurrish is doing this extremely well. Firstly, they thought of what kind of keywords and
phrases their customers would use to try and find their products. For example, words and
phrases like, vegan, oat, almond, dairy-free, cruelty-free, and healthy are all something that
customers would use to find vegan foods which is what Nurrish incorporated on their website
and their campaigns. When they launched their oat milk, they used the term “Mr. Oat” in all
their campaigns. They also added this term on the content on their website which makes it
easy for customers to find their site. It also differentiates their website from others which
makes them rank higher on SERP. They also use long-tail keywords such as “most healthy
oat milk brand” which targets specified searches.
Web crawlers and spiders visit updated sites more frequently to scour for information. Thus,
Nurrish updates their site very often to include new words, phrases, and information which the
crawlers can pick up.
They also focus on website structure. All titles, file names and URLs contain their main
keywords which makes it easier to appear on SERP. They format their content well with
bullets and bold text at the appropriate places. All pictures and videos also contain
descriptions so that it can be picked up by crawlers.
Off-page optimisation are actions other than those performed on the website to rank higher on
the SERP.
Inbound links is the most critical in off-page optimisation. Inbound links are links to a website
from other websites. The more inbound links, the more trustworthy the website is considered.
Nurrish finds other vegan sites and reaches out to them to incorporate valuable inbound links.
They even found inbound links to competitors’ websites and reached out.
In these ways, Nurrish’s SEO strategy is very good.

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3. What measures could the brand take to optimise its content marketing strategy? Suggest
three key initiatives.

Content marketing is focused on creating, publishing, and distributing relevant, high-quality

content for a targeted audience. Content creation, distribution and interacting with customers
are the components of a good content marketing strategy.
As good as Nurrish’s POEM framework and SEO strategy is, it still needs to improve its
content marketing strategy. Here are three ways on how they can improve.
Content creation includes, collecting information online, curating and creating fresh content.
While Nurrish are already doing the first two very well, they need to focus on creating fresh
content. Although it is difficult and costly, it is very effective, highly relevant, and distinctive.
The information that they put out will be completely different from others which will improve
the brand’s credibility. It will also build brand awareness and cultivate loyal customers. Putting
out fresh content will also increase inbound links since websites want to include links to those
brands that have the best and most unique information.
Secondly, Nurrish must focus on its distribution strategies. They must identify what their target
audience is and which distribution channel is best for putting out the content that is created to
that target audience. Then they must develop and document a distribution plan which will help
them track their performance and see which distribution channel is benefitting them the most
and thus, focus on that. For putting out more detailed and in-depth content, Nurrish can
create blog posts for the website and even start a podcast. For posting pictures and putting
out concise content they can use Instagram and Twitter. For posting relevant videos, they can
use YouTube. Thus, they must choose appropriate distribution channels to put out content in
an effective manner.
Thirdly, Nurrish must come up with good content interaction strategies. Engaging with
customers is very important and helps in creating loyalty and attracting more customers.
Customers respond to content with queries and comments and thus, the company must plan
for this. Many customers have questions regarding the production of the oat milk and how it is
better than other brands. If Nurrish answers these questions effectively, it can help the brand
image. Nurrish can use the Instagram live feature and answer questions weekly on Instagram
and Twitter to help in engagement. However, they must be careful because issues can go
viral very quickly.
Thus, these are three key initiatives in which Nurrish can improve their content marketing
strategy.

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