D176 Task 2 Distribution and Promotion Plan Example

Getting the Savings Question in Front of Homeowners: A Distribution and Promotion Plan Across Owned, Earned and Paid Channels for a Composite Smart Thermostat Campaign

Student Name

School of Business, Western Governors University

D176: Content Marketing, Task 2

Course Instructor

Month Day, Year

Getting the Savings Question in Front of Homeowners: A Distribution and Promotion Plan Across Owned, Earned and Paid Channels for a Composite Smart Thermostat Campaign

Purpose and Campaign Goal

Hearthline's Comfort That Pays You Back campaign introduces its composite smart thermostat to practical homeowners aged 35 to 64 in a five-state region who want to spend less on energy but have no interest in fiddly gadgets. The campaign's anchor content is a blog post answering four questions homeowners ask before buying a smart thermostat, ending with a savings calculator. Creating the post is only half of content marketing; it works only if the right people see it. This plan sets out how the post will be distributed and promoted across owned, earned and paid channels, on what schedule and budget, and how results will be measured against the campaign goal of 12,000 qualified leads in three months.

Why Use Three Kinds of Media

Marketers commonly distinguish paid media, such as advertising; owned media, such as a company's website and email; and earned media, such as press coverage and social sharing. Research on a lending marketplace found that both traditional earned media, such as press mentions, and social earned media, such as blog and online community posts, affected sales, and that social earned media helped drive traditional coverage (Stephen & Galak, 2012). The plan uses all three because each reaches the audience in a different way: owned channels reach people who already know Hearthline, earned channels carry the credibility of trusted third parties, and paid channels reach new people precisely.

Owned Channels

Website and blog: the post will be optimized for the searches the audience uses, such as does a smart thermostat save money and smart thermostat rebate, with a clear title, plain-language headings and a fast-loading page. It will be linked from the product page and the homepage during launch.

Email: Hearthline's list of about 80,000 past customers of its other home products will receive the post in a launch email segmented to homeowners in the launch region, with a subject line built on the audience's main question.

Product packaging and inserts in the company's other products will include a short link to the savings calculator.

Earned Channels

Utility partnerships: Hearthline will offer the post, adapted with each utility's rebate details, to the marketing teams of eight utilities in the region for use in customer newsletters and rebate pages. Utilities are trusted sources on energy savings, and their endorsement fits the audience's practical mindset.

Home improvement media: the public relations team will pitch the post's four questions as a practical story to regional newspapers' home sections, local television consumer segments and home improvement writers.

Community sharing: the post will be shared in neighborhood and homeowner groups by customers who participated in early testing, and it will include simple sharing buttons.

Paid Channels

Search advertising: paid search ads on terms such as lower heating bill and thermostat rebate, limited to the launch region, will drive readers to the post rather than directly to a product page, because the audience is still deciding.

Social media advertising: sponsored posts on the platforms most used by the 35 to 64 age group will target homeowners in the region with interests in home improvement and saving money, using a short video of a real family installing the thermostat.

Retargeting: readers who visited the post but did not use the calculator will see a reminder ad featuring their possible rebate.

Schedule and Budget

Weeks one and two: publish the post, send the launch email, begin paid search and social ads, and pitch media. Weeks three through six: utility newsletters run, earned coverage appears, and paid ads are adjusted based on early results. Weeks seven through twelve: shift budget to the best-performing channels, publish a follow-up post answering questions readers ask, and continue retargeting.

The promotion budget is $180,000: $70,000 for paid search, $65,000 for social advertising, $20,000 for retargeting, $15,000 for public relations support and utility co-marketing materials, and $10,000 held back to reallocate to top performers after week six.

Metrics Tied to the Goal

Research on content marketing emphasizes aligning content and its measurement with business objectives rather than activity alone (Holliman & Rowley, 2014). The primary metric is qualified leads, calculator users who request installation information, by channel. Supporting metrics are cost per qualified lead for each paid channel, calculator completion rate from each source, email click-through and lead rate, the number of utilities and media outlets that feature the content, organic search rankings for target terms and, after purchase, the share of buyers who first encountered the post. Channels whose cost per qualified lead is more than twice the campaign average after six weeks will lose budget to better performers.

Matching Channels to the Buying Journey

The channels are not interchangeable; each serves a different moment in the homeowner's decision. Paid search reaches people at the moment they are actively looking for a way to lower their bills, which is why those ads lead to the blog post rather than a sales page: readers at that stage want answers, not a pitch. Social advertising and earned media reach people who are not yet searching, planting the idea that a thermostat could help before the next high bill arrives. Utility newsletters reach people at a moment of trust and relevance, when they are already thinking about their energy use. Email to past customers reaches people who already trust the Hearthline brand and may be closest to buying. Retargeting catches readers who were interested but did not act. Planning the schedule around these moments, for example increasing search spending in the first cold weeks of fall when bills rise, puts the budget where the audience is most receptive.

Reusing and Extending the Content

Content becomes more valuable when it is repurposed rather than published once (Pulizzi, 2014). The post's four questions will be turned into a short video series for social media, a one-page printable guide for utility customer service desks and a set of answers for the company's customer support chat. Questions readers submit through the calculator and comments will shape the follow-up post, keeping the content responsive to what the audience actually wants to know.

Conclusion

Owned channels reach Hearthline's existing customers, earned channels add the credibility of utilities and trusted media, and paid channels reach new homeowners at the moment they search. A staged schedule, a budget with room to shift toward what works, and metrics tied to qualified leads give the campaign a clear path from content to customers.

References

Holliman, G., & Rowley, J. (2014). Business to business digital content marketing: Marketers' perceptions of best practice. Journal of Research in Interactive Marketing, 8(4), 269-293. https://doi.org/10.1108/JRIM-02-2014-0013

Pulizzi, J. (2014). Epic content marketing: How to tell a different story, break through the clutter, and win more customers by marketing less. McGraw-Hill Education.

Stephen, A. T., & Galak, J. (2012). The effects of traditional and social earned media on sales: A study of a microlending marketplace. Journal of Marketing Research, 49(5), 624-639. https://doi.org/10.1509/jmr.09.0401