Content Marketing Creator Marketing Marketing Social Media Marketing
talking to your owned audience

How to Build an Owned Audience

By Joe Youngblood

Navigate This Article:
Introduction
What is an Owned Audience?
4 Main Types of Owned Audiences
Here is How to Build an Owned Audience
Every Platform For Owned Audiences Ranked
How to Select Owned Audience Platforms and SaaS Tools
What Should My Owned Audience Marketing Mix Include?
How to Convince Customers to Join Your Owned Audience
Owned Audiences vs. Rented Audiences
Tactics to Build an Owned Audience

Introduction

Digital Marketing is getting tougher and tougher. It used to be that social media platforms and search engines like Google would send your website massive volumes of traffic that you could monetize as long as you followed some simple rules. However, in recent years it has become the normal for social media platforms to dramatically restrict outbound traffic to your website or disallow it altogether. Meta’s platforms for example appear to have algorithmic components that understand commercial posts and ensure they are seen by extremely few of your fans or followers. Other platforms have made changes that also make it difficult for creators to reach their audience and earn off-platform revenue, for example YouTube no longer considers a subscriber to also opt-in to new video notifications and Reddit now hosts images and videos natively instead of being a link hub for the web. Most of social media today is now what I and others might refer to as “rented audiences” (now we have Owned, Earned, Paid, and Rented), sure you gained followers but that is only the first step of many the platforms will require before you can monetize that audience for yourself – if you ever can.

Then came the bombshell last month, a moment which I have been predicting for over a decade, Google introduced “AI Overviews” large chunks of text generated by their internal generative AI (Gemini) that takes content from the web and republishes it (i.e. spins it) for their users then provides some non-descript “link cards” below that content and often out of sight of the web searcher.

That spells a lot of doom for organically reaching your audience and “renting audiences” is now likely to become the norm. This means it will be much harder to build and grow a business or be a solopreneur on the web over the coming years.

There is a little glimmer of hope, however, at the end of the tunnel for creators and brands and it comes in the form of one of the oldest types of communication on the internet – email – and in new technology such as mobile apps and podcasts.

Owned Media, as it’s widely known, is becoming more and more popular according to Google Trends.

Traditionally Owned Media has only been things like your website, your blog, email marketing campaigns, self-hosted videos, your PR newsroom, etc… Some even include Social Media as Owned Media but due to the severe restrictions on reach here we are now referring to this as “Rented Media” and a majority of your social media audience is a “rented audience” that you pay for via your using of the platform and creating content (if your content goes ‘viral’ we would refer to that portion of the audience as “earned”).

Here I make an argument that there are now 4 major types of Owned Media Audiences and that some of these are found on platforms which the brand does not completely control but which are designed to host such Owned Audiences.

What is an Owned Audience?

Owned audiences are typically ones where you have unfettered access to reach them (within limitations such as user opt-ins and laws against spam).

4 Main Types of Owned Audiences

1. Email Newsletters – Most prevalent and common and considered the easiest to build. Just collect emails and have something to say.

2. Mobile Apps – Expensive to build in most cases but extremely powerful with things like push notifications.

3. Podcasts – As of yet no major podcasting services have decided to use algorithms and keep subscribers from getting notified about their favorite podcasts. If built correctly, these become an owned audience and an extremely powerful way to build revenue and sales.

4. Direct Traffic – Anyone who visits your website or app directly, typically prior to looking elsewhere for whatever it is they need. Most often this audience is nebulous, hard to define, and unreachable directly.

There are other types of owned audiences. For example a course hosting website that also sends instant notifications to your students or a platform built just to monetize premium content that sends out notices when new content is uploaded. Owned audiences might also include opt-in SMS messaging, opt-in print campaigns, etc… While these exist, the messaging from them is often one-level and unable to be edited or used to promote something else OR is frequently perceived as spammy. The first 3 out of the above 4 types of owned audiences give you access to your own audience after you build it to send the messages you want (the later one is completely inbound and you speak to them via banners, popups, and calls to action on your website/app).

Here is How to Build an Owned Audience

Step 1: Determine who your audience is – This might sound silly to some of you reading this, but for those who are completely new to audience building you have to know who your target audience is. Consider that you’ll have at least 2 groups of audience members Buyers and Non-buyers. There are good Non-buyers and there are bad Buyers and other various ways to break these 2 groups down, but in large part you want to focus your efforts on Buyers or consumers that are likely to become Buyers. You should know as much as you can about them including age range, gender, geographic location, and what things they like.

Step 2: Determine how you want to reach your owned audience – The single most prevalent way is via email, but there might be options out there that allow you to own your audience in a platform setting. Of course, caution is warranted here considering platforms can change their minds at any time they wish. Some of these methods will be freemium others will require you paying for services up front.

Step 3: Use your current reach, website traffic, and other marketing to build your owned audience up in your preferred way. – The most common tactic here is the tried and true (and hated by many users of the web) “popups” that request users to join your email newsletter. There are other tactics you can also use though such as having influencers recommend joining your email newsletter or downloading your app OR building multiple owned audiences for specific types of marketing reach. We’ll discuss those all later.

Every Platform For Owned Audiences Ranked

We considered cost to get started, revenue streams, and how you access your audience to determine these rankings of the best platforms for owned audiences.

1. Substack – Free to get started and use, and powerful.

2. Patreon – The original creator revenue platform allows you to build an audience with free content and has paid tiers creators can customize. Your followers get emails when you post.

3. AppPresser – Turn your WordPress website into a mobile app and send push notifications to between 10,000 and 1 million devices per month at a fairly low cost.

4. Buzzsprout – Probably the best Podcast hosting service online that packs everything a podcast needs to get started and growing in for a really low monthly price.

5. Comedy Drop – Just for comedy creators with instant email notifications to followers and subscribers and tons of revenue streams creators can turn on at will. It comes with a variety of tools and features for creators such as event posts, collections, and post scheduling – all free.

6. Buy Me a Coffee – Probably the most basic Owned Audience platform on the web, but still quite powerful. Accept small donations or monthly donations from your fans and send them updates via this platform.

7. Podbean – Another great podcast hosting service for your owned audience marketing efforts.

8. Beehiiv – Like Substack but with a monthly fee based on number of subscribers and more on-platform tools

9. Mailchimp – One of the best email distribution services, allows you to collect emails and gain opt-in approval and then send messages out to your subscribers.

10. Podia – An amazingly powerful platform with a ton of monetization options built in along with email newsletter and blogging. For creators who don’t already have a website or blog and want to build those along with a newsletter, Podia is a great option.

11. Memberful – Owned by Patreon, Memberful is a membership website system where you can build a premium content access system for email newsletters, podcasts, publications, courses, etc..

12. Shoutem – A no code mobile app development and hosting platform that comes with a lot of features along with WordPress and Shopify integration.

13. MobiLoud – Likely the single best way to turn your WordPress website into an app with push notifications, but also one of the most expensive starting at $199 / month and going as high as $999 / month.

14. Supercast – More of a membership platform for Podcasts, this platform is used by some of the biggest names in the business. Seamlessly merge your public podcast episodes AND your premium episodes all while monetizing your audience and reaching them without interference.

15. UScreen – Made for only video creators to monetize, the platform combines a monthly fee and video-specific montization options such as renting and pay-per-view.

16. AWeber – The automations built into AWeber could be life changing for a creator. Not only can you place your email list here, but you can instantly notify subscribers about new blog posts, youtube videos, and more with AWeber’s built-in automation. If you can get your social media followers to subscribe, you can even build separate lists that send out notifications when you make a post, giving your biggest fans instant notice of your new social media content and increasing engagements. AWeber also has a price cap, so there’s a maximum amount you’ll ever pay per month to use the tool.

17. Kajabi – An owned media platform built for creators that has been around quite some time. It is packed full of tools and options to help you drive revenue and if their testimonials are correct creators can directly make a lot of revenue with this platform. They’ve even gone so far to build an “experts” marketplace into the platform AND have a mobile app platform you can brand as your own. Unfortunately, it comes with odd maximum limits such as a cap on products, active customers, and contacts.

18. Curated – Build a curated email newsletter by using a Chrome bookmarklet to add content from around the web including your own content. Then add your own commentary, schedule, and send it out. It’s a really neat feature but it would probably be best if this was added to a more general platform instead.

19. Flodesk – A newsletter builder and distribution platform focused on the aesthetics in the design of your newsletters. It has a price cap of just $35 / month for unlimited email subscribers, which is incredible. Unfortunately they lack a lot of other tools you might need for Owned Audience Marketing.

20. Subscribestar – A platform really similar to Patreon that allows creators to sell access to premium content at specific support tiers per month. The fees come in higher that Patreon too.

21. Liberapay – A European version of Patreon.

22. OnlyFans – rated XXX content at a monthly rate, ranked last since most creators will not want to use this platform.

How to Select Owned Audience Platforms and SaaS Tools

1. The first thing you want to know is how you want to reach your owned audience. Through email, push notifications, podcasts, or some other medium (i.e. print mailers, on-platform notifications, and SMS).

2. Now consider what you want to accomplish. Are you seeking on-platform sales or do you want to send traffic to a website? Are you looking for monthly subscribers or do you want more views on your social media content?

3. Ask yourself if your goals are inline with what your target audience is willing to do. Ask yourself if the target audience or part of them might be willing to pay for things from you, is the content and communication medium a good fit too?

Examples: Do you think construction workers will pay $1,000 / year for an email newsletter about all of the funny things you run into? Will a group of business people engage with your app push notifications for blog posts about historical businesses?

If the answer to your questioning is “No” go back to 2 and start again, if the answer is “yes” continue.

4. Make sure you examine the pricing of each platform and that you understand each tier and the features provided. Calculate the max cost for 1 year of this tool / service / platform and ask yourself if that sounds reasonable. Will you be able to cover, double, or 10x this cost by end of the period? Pricing for these can get out of hand quickly which is one I reason I look at capped cost platforms or tools where the maximum priced package offers unlimited everything. Scaled pricing platforms and tools are the norm though and you’ll more than likely select one of these so do the math and know the impact of your scaling on the cost.

5. Now look at the features for the owned audience platforms / tools / services you selected. Before you purchase build some mock marketing campaigns around them and write down how they work. Now estimate impact on your marketing AND on your time budget for these things. IF everything here feels right and you’ll accomplish your goals then pull the trigger. IF you run into problems during these mock experiments go back and look at your options again or search for more options than provided above (there’s bound to be more) or even consider custom development or systems like Zapier to fill in gaps. Keep doing this until you feel the plan is solid on paper and you’re ready to start using the systems you’ve selected.

6. Some of the above platforms / tools offer collection methods but others do not. For example an email newsletter platform might just help you build and distribute the platform but not gather the emails, or a mobile app might gain authorization from users to send push notifications but you need to get the app installed first. Work out your collection methods and understand some this will come with extra marketing expenses. For example on WordPress you probably will want to use a nicely designed popup modal that appears only after a user has shown interest on your site and is therefore likely to join, the best of these all cost at least a yearly or one-time fee. Podcast and App marketing are also financially intense and there are few, if any, built-in tools on platforms like Substack and Beehiiv to help build your newsletter quickly.

7. Finally, if you have a current website, social media presence, etc.. consider how your owned audience platform(s) and tool(s) will integrate with your current stack. Does your platform have a WordPress integration that will connect to your WordPress website? Is there a way to automatically add buyers from your Shopify store into the owned audience platform? Do not start building until you understand this part, a lot of brands and creators get giddy and start buying stuff they don’t need up front and then cancel months or years later after not using it.

What Should My Owned Audience Marketing Mix Include?

That really depends on what kind of business you are, what kind of owned audience you have, and what your goals are. Here are some ideas though.

👉 Reach is The Main Objective – When looking for a platform or an Owned Marketing solution keep in mind that your number 1 objective is not engagements or sales but reach instead. The more of your Owned Audience that you reach, the more likely you are to make sales to them as long as the collection techniques used ensured you built a high-quality audience.

👉 Meet or Exceed Your Audiences Expectations – If you tell your audience that you’re going to post content to your premium feed first but they see you posting it minutes before or not at all, then you’ll get fewer subscribers into your Owned Audience and you may lose some. If your audience is expecting deals, then post deals to them. If they are expecting newsletters then write them.

👉 Use the Mediums Effectively – In Owned Audiences you have 3 main communications mediums: Emails, Push Notifications, and Podcasts. In some cases you may use SMS or other communication mediums too. Each one of these has their pros and cons and your audience members may have preferred ways they use each medium. For example you can say things in a podcast that simply wouldn’t fit in a Push Notification or even an email newsletter.

👉 Consider Automation Whenever Possible – Owned Audience Marketing can benefit greatly from automation flows when used correctly. Recommend products to your customers based on past purchases or other behavior, resend unopened email newsletters, and automatically update your biggest fans on new content. There are more automation options possible too. Determine up front what you want to accomplish with your efforts then look for platforms or services that offer automation that lines up those goals.

👉 Never Cross Streams – You may find that your owned marketing efforts start utilizing different platforms and services. For example you might use one service to collect, write, and publish a newsletter and another to send automatic updates when you post new social media content. As you build out your campaigns you want to make sure your platforms and automations are not overlapping each other. As owned audience marketing becomes hotter and hotter as do fan engagement / revenue platforms more and more features are being added and it might soon be really easy to accidentally send your fans the same content from multiple sources.

👉 Social Media Platforms Are Not Owned Media Platforms – No current social media platform works as an owned media platform, though YouTube did for a long time that is no longer the case. Any social media with an algorithm main feed for users that also rely on ads as their primary/only revenue source such as TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn should not be trusted should they offer you Owned Audience tools. For example on Facebook we had a page enrolled in subscriptions and got 5 subscribers in day 1. When we posted our exclusive subscriber-only content no one saw it though, not even those 5. The Page’s subscriber growth has not budged since (over a year).

👉 When You Start Using an Owned Audience Platform, You May Be Stuck With Them– The worst part about Owned Audiences today is that platforms are frequently (but not always) impossible to move on from should they prove too costly, inefficient, hard to use, or in effective. With some exceptions, this means when you decide to use a platform to maintain your audience you will need to stick with them through thick and thin and price hikes. Research your options well and make sure you know what the features available are and how they might impact your owned audience marketing efforts. You also want to be aware of the limitations and how those impact your marketing efforts.

How to Convince Customers to Join Your Owned Audience

Rented audiences from social media, earned audiences from search, or paid audiences from advertising can be converted into owned audiences with a little work and know how. The question is, how?

1. Exclusive Content – The number one way to get more users to join your owned audience is to promise them some exclusive content. Perhaps research or interviews or even memes.

2. Exclusive Deals – Pass on discounts and deals to your owned audience members.

3. Better notifications – Promising instantaneous notifications might be a big win for you, especially if your audience is frequently finding your content later.

4. Invite Influencers – Having someone with even a moderately decent sized following on a social network that would be willing to share your content could have a big impact on how you build your owned audience. For example if you sell software to the dog grooming industry finding a dog groomer on X or Instagram or TikTok and giving them free access to your premium email newsletter for a year might win you more exposure and signups, especially if they share passages, nuggets, or screenshots from it to their followers.

5. Using Paid Ads – Is your target audience in constant pain? Are there questions they are always asking that your newsletter or podcast or app might solve, at least temporarily? Try running search ads on those long tail keywords (if Google allows you to). On social media run ads highlighting how your owned audience might help your target audience or how it might make them feel.

6. Shoutouts – When Patreon fisrt launched nearly every YouTuber realized they could just type the name of their top supporters on an end title card and that was enough for monthly support donations of $5-$25. In aggregate this number ads up, plus you get to reach them with messages in the future. Consider finding ways to incorporate shoutouts to your subscribers to help convince them to join.

Owned Audiences vs. Rented Audiences

At the start of the internet it was considered there were only 3 big buckets of marketing traffic / audiences online: Owned, Earned, and Paid. Owned would be content you owned such as your website and organic sources that led to that such as Search and Social Media. Earned would be things like word of mouth, media coverage, and social shares. And Paid would of course be any paid advertising.

In the year 2002 a typical search engine would likely offer Owned Media (SEO traffic to your website) and Paid Media (PPC clicks to your website).
In the same year when social media started it would offer Owned Media (organic social media clicks to your website), Earned Media (clicks from shares on the social platform), and Paid Media (advertisements running on the platform).

However, by 2006 things had begun to change. Facebook, the largest social platform at the time having edged out MySpace, would introduce the first social media algorithm feed for users dubbed the “News Feed”. This was the first successful attempt at inserting a blackbox tech divider between a brand and their downstream audience who had expressed interest in staying connected. The Owned Media portion of social media would began to decay quite rapidly here. By 2016 most other social platforms had fallen in-line with similar methodologies when YouTube began requiring that uses both subscribe to a YouTube channel AND opt-in to notifications in order to be notified. Reddit would be the final nail in this coffin introducing new tabbed experiences in 2018 on desktop.

Not to be outdone Google, by far the most dominant of search engines by this time, would begin to decay the Owned Media portion of their platform as well in 2012 when they introduced the Knowledge Graph. The Knowledge Graph would be followed by Featured Snippets in 2014, a massive highlight at the top of search results. Then by 2015 Google would introduce People Also Ask, a prominently displayed section of multiple questions (typically 4) that when tapped or clicked expands to display mini featured snippet like answers. Finally in 2024, 12 years after beginning to make the changes Google would introduce AI Overviews along with an unfounded and spurious claim that these increased clicks but without using standard “blue link” display of links and instead using aesthetic “link cards” which are less condusive to clicks and are often hidden from a user’s view. Microsoft’s Bing, the only search engine of any competition to Google, has a similar solution called “AI Summaries”.

The insertion of tech algorithms controlled in blackboxes by large tech corporations between a brand or creator and their audience is now complete. The future appears to be these platforms using this friction as leverage to drive advertising sales and then to take the content and offer it to users without branding or downstream traffic possibilities using generative AI. In a few years time the major platforms might even introduce ways to create content on-platform that will soak up the remaining downstream traffic while giving creators and brands small incentives to use these tools.

From here on out I recommend referring to traffic from such systems as “Rented Media” or “Rented Audiences” because while you might be able to drive SOME organic traffic / conversions / sales the platforms will require an increasingly tremdendous amount of creative input and activity in order to do so or even small amounts of money such as X’s monthly subscription or Boosting content on Facebook.

Rented Audiences have these typical characteristics

  1. Exists on a large platform that is mostly advertising supported.
  2. Requires certain activities in order to maintain reach such as frequent posting or recent collection of engagement signals.
  3. Restricts or limits reach to the audience via an algorithm or other interceding systems (except for common spam filtering or simple stack ranking like PageRank or Upvotes or combinations of these).
  4. Platform reserves the right to restrict audience reach based on potential to not generate revenue for the larger platform (i.e. Facebook killing reach to YouTube links, etc…).
  5. Platform reserves the right to restrict audience reach if they assume content is not original or high quality enough.
  6. Platform may charge a fee to reach a larger portion of your audience but not 100% for a flat or upfront rate (i.e. Boosting on IG and Facebook will reach more audience but never a guarantee to reach all of your followers possible).
  7. AI may be used to summarize, generate, and give your audience content based on your content or competitor content with or without citation.
  8. Your audience may be advertised to easily by your competitors.
  9. Platform may openly recommend your audience engage with another brand, creator, or channel based on their interactions with your content.
  10. Platform may use your content or products to drive revenue for themselves directly.
  11. Platform frequently works to reduce traffic / sales / conversion to you without their direct benefit.

In this view we must also adjust what we consider to be Owned Media or an Owned Audience. Owned Media audiences should have a few characteristics:

  1. A brand or creator should be able to reach their audience with zero algorithmic friction (outside of spam filters and legal requirements), this includes sending messaging that may damage the platforms or tools involved such as telling your users that you’re moving to a new platform/solution.
  2. The communication to the audience should be customizable with only minor reasonable restritions such as a character limit for push notifications, etc…
  3. Communications should be able to include calls to action without negative consequences such as download the podcast episode or fill out the lead form.
  4. Tracking of owned audiences should be allowed without restriction minus any legal requirements and user settings.
  5. Fees from platforms are transparent, upfront, and show you exactly how to reach 100% of your audience (i.e. flat-rate monthly fee or fee per x,xxx subscribers)
  6. An owned audience should be portable, meaning you can move them to a new platform or solution should you wish (i.e. export list of member emails).
  7. Platform may earn revenue via advertising but this cannot be to the detriment of your audience reach.
  8. Platform may earn revenue via advertising and share some of this revenue with your brand if you opt-in.
  9. AI may use your content but only if you opt-in and allow it do so and only in ways that enrich your audience reach not detract from it.

Tactics to Build an Owned Audience

Now that you know all about owned audiences and rented audiences, about the plaforms and tools, here are some tactics to help you build you owned marketing audience.

Tactic 1: The YouTube Request – No matter how big your YouTube channel you can always slip in a request in part of your video asking users to join your owned audience and providing a link in your description. The conversion rate here is probably small but repeated and adjusted over time you’ll see your owned audience grow and that will put more money in your pocket as a creator and as a brand give you a lot more consistent exposure. One tip here is to try and separate this from your “subscribe” and “hit the bell” requests so you’re not inundating your viewers with too many calls to action at once.

Tactic 2: The Instagram Link in Bio Comment – Create a link in bio with any of the tools (they’re all nearly identical with no real value in one direction or the other). Then at the very top of this page add a link to the collection for your owned media audience channel. Whenever you make any post on IG make sure to comment with call to action to join this owned media channel and tell users it can be found on the link in bio.

Tactic 3: Premium Podcast Content – Podcasts are a great way to build visibility quickly and reach an entirely new portion of your target audience. As you start to build this audience begin to form an idea for what might compell your listeners to pay for a premium subscription. For example Andrew Huberman’s Huberman Lab has a $10 / month premium subscription using Supercast that gives listeners exclusive episodes, early access to live events, and contributes a portion to scientific research: https://www.hubermanlab.com/premium

Tactic 4: Same Content but Better – This tactic can use any variety of platforms and works by telling your fans / viewers / listeners that the same content with some slight improvements can be seen elsewhere either for free or a small fee. For example in this blog post I could have said “More tactics sent to our newsletter subscribers, subscribe now” to drive more newsletter signups. Comic artists encourage users to move from major social networks to their owned media platforms like Patreon or Comedy Drop by giving those fans extra scenes to a comic that might be funny. A meme page might also do the same telling users there are exclusive versions of a meme on the owned media site.

Seriously though, we’re beefing up our own newsletter. Subscribe now (below) and we will be sending out more Owned Audience Building tactics for free in the near future, join now. It’s a free newsletter!

Closing

The web is changing and fast. Big tech is banking on AI replacing you and your content. Owned audiences have never been more important than right now. I hope this article helped you understand their importance and how you can start building them too.

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Joe Youngblood

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Joe Youngblood is a top Dallas SEO, Digital Marketer, and Marketing Theorist. When he's not working with clients or writing about marketing he spends time supporting local non-profits and taking his dogs to various parks.

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