What’s an owned audience? (And why should you care?)

Do you know the difference between an owned audience and one you’re just renting?

If not, keep reading. This is one of the rare pieces of marketing advice you should actually care about.

An owned audience is an audience that belongs to you, not a third-party social media platform.

If you have 10,000 followers on Instagram, but you don’t have any way of staying in touch with them beyond Instagram, you have 10,000 followers, but you do not have an owned audience.

Alternatively, if you have 10,000 followers on Instagram and 5,000 people also subscribe to a mailing list via your website, you have an audience of 15,000, and 5,000 of that audience is owned. If your Instagram account got deleted tomorrow, you’d still have those 5k followers, and a direct line of communication with them.

Why do I need an owned audience?

The example above shows what we call content diversification. Or in other words, not relying on one third-party platform for your entire content marketing strategy.

The reality is, we all think we’re safe. But things happen. Accounts get hacked. Algorithms change and glitch. Presidents go on a power trip and ban TikTok. Platforms fall out of favour.

Just look at the app formerly known as Twitter. What was once a huge cornerstone for content marketing is now basically just a graveyard for bots and men on the wrong side of history. When Musk took over in 2022, both ad revenue and public opinion took a dive, and on a personally annoying note, my own Twitter follower count became meaningless overnight.

And that’s the reality. We’re living in an age where any trillionaire can buy and ruin any social platform they want. Policy can change at the drop of a hat. And freak tech glitches or cyber-attacks are becoming increasingly common. There’s no ‘safe’ platform on which to build a rented audience.  

Despite all this, a lot of us are still putting all our eggs in one basket. Especially when we’re dealing with niche or highly specific industries (B2B thought leaders and LinkedIn, I’m looking at you). We find the platform that works best for us at the time, and we stick to it until our hand is forced otherwise. But let this be your sign to diversify before you’re forced to.

How to build an owned audience

Crucially, all this isn’t to say you should jump on as many platforms as possible in case something happens to one of them. That’s bad marketing advice.

Instead, continue all the good on-platform stuff you’re doing as usual. Be where your audience is. Throw your efforts into consistent, sustainable work on 1-2 accounts. But add an owned element. And make it complement the rest of your efforts. It doesn’t have to be hugely complex.

Say, for example, you’re getting good results with thought leadership content on LinkedIn. You’ve built your follower count. It’s all going wonderfully. That’s great. But consider how you can bring that audience with you off-platform. Can you get them signing up for a weekly, bi-weekly, or monthly newsletter? Do you have a free download or asset you could put behind an opt-in form? Any way you can start collecting email addresses is going to help you build that owned audience.

Getting it right really depends on who you are, who you’re trying to reach, and what steps you want your audience to take as a result of following you. But trust me, there is an owned strategy that works for you.

Nurture the audience you can take with you

So, I’ll sign off with this. When you’ve built an owned audience, an audience that comes with you wherever you are, the next time you have something important to share, you won't be crossing your fingers and hoping the algorithm decides to show it to the right people. You’ll already know how to reach them directly.

Because followers are great. But an audience that chooses to hear from you directly is one of the most valuable things your marketing will ever build.