Defensible moats. It’s one of the first strategy concepts you learn in business school.
But we are consistently talking about the least important moats. Moats around product, economies of scale, high-NPS… when we really should be talking about marketing moats. Here’s how to think about building owned media to create marketing moats.
Simple Example of Building a Marketing Moat
I own a software product in my portfolio that solves a very specific problem for the Etsy Sellers niche.
For this product, there are 10 keywords that create all the new customer acquisition.
I tirelessly work to own the front page for every one of those keywords.
Multiple blogs in separate domains ranking for them.
YouTube videos from multiple channels ranking for them.
Free chrome extensions that do a less better version of what the software accomplishes.
But these still aren’t entirely owned, there still is some risk.
Google and YouTube could change their ranking algorithms.
So we focus on email collection for our audience as well so we can have direct coms when we want.
B2B example of marketing moats
So let’s scale this up.
You’re a B2B software company who’s current distribution channel for acquisition is paid ads.
Say you figured out two channels that are working and you raise an A on this marketing arbitrage.
3 months after you raise your A, Y Combinator accepts two companies doing exactly what you’re doing.
Suddenly your CPC just doubled and your CAC tripled.
Channels you don’t own are variable, and higher risk. They’re also easier to duplicate, especially now with ad spy tools.
Owned media is the way to protect against this. Here are examples of owned media (they all have some risk):
- Email newsletters
- Company website when people are going directly to them
- SEO content for organic traffic
- Podcasts
Notice something in common witht he list? They are all old technologies. Tried and tested.
If they we’re doing them in 2000 and they are doing them now there is probably and owned media strategy related to them.
Conclusion
I want to challenge you to think about marketing as a portfolio of bets with risk premiums.
In this portfolio, you have riskier bets, short and long-term bets, and your portfolio should adjust depending on where your company is in its life cycle.
And I want to leave you with this — owned media is the bonds of your portfolio.
