The PESO Model: paid, earned, shared, and owned.
The PESO model sorts your marketing channels into four media types: paid, earned, shared, and owned. It is the modern evolution of the classic owned, earned, paid trichotomy, with shared media made explicit so social and community get a deliberate decision. The go-to-market motion you chose decides which media types lead, and the channel mix allocates the communication and distribution elements of your marketing mix across them. Allocate to the motion and the plan compounds; spread evenly and the spend scatters.
The PESO model sorts your marketing channels into four media types: paid, earned, shared, and owned. It is the modern evolution of the classic owned, earned, paid trichotomy, with a fourth bucket, shared, that makes social and community explicit. (Marketing channels and owned, earned, paid media are the same topic.) The one idea: the channel mix serves the motion and allocates the marketing mix. The go-to-market motion you chose in Step 11 decides which media types lead, and the channel mix takes the communication and distribution elements of the marketing mix (Step 12) and allocates them across the four buckets. Define the lead media types the motion calls for first; a mix spread evenly across all four scatters the spend, while a mix built to serve the motion (which serves the strategy, which serves the goal) holds together top to bottom. The PESO model was introduced by Gini Dietrich of Spin Sucks.
Definition
What is the PESO model?
The PESO model is a way to sort your marketing channels into four media types: paid, earned, shared, and owned. Paid is media you pay for. Earned is coverage and reach you earn. Shared is your social and community presence. Owned is the channels you control outright. Together they are the channel mix, the place where the abstract moves of a plan become specific paths to a buyer. The channel mix is not the same thing as the motion or the marketing mix, and confusing the three is where plans go wrong. The motion is the engine that decides how you reach buyers (Inbound, Outbound, ABM, Paid, PLG, or Partners). The marketing mix is the seven elements you set to run that engine, including communication and distribution. The channel mix takes those communication and distribution moves and allocates them across the four PESO media types. The order is fixed: motion first, marketing mix next, channel mix last. Jump straight to channels and you run media the motion never called for.
The relationship
PESO vs owned, earned, paid.
The channel mix began as the classic owned, earned, paid trichotomy: three media types describing whether you control the channel, earn the reach, or pay for it. That model held up for years. The PESO model keeps all three and adds a fourth, shared, to make social and community explicit. So the honest version is simple: classic owned, earned, paid is PESO minus shared. Teams adopted PESO because organic social and online communities grew large enough to deserve their own bucket rather than being split awkwardly between earned and owned. If you have only ever used owned, earned, paid, nothing you know is wrong; PESO just pulls the social and community layer into the open so it gets a deliberate decision.
The four media types are easy to hold once you anchor each to the question it answers. Paid: did you pay for the placement? Earned: did a third party give you the reach? Shared: did an audience carry it socially? Owned: do you control the channel outright? The table below maps each bucket to the channels that typically sit inside it.
A note on overlap
The four buckets are not airtight, and that is fine. A single piece of content lives on an owned blog, earns organic search traffic, and gets shared socially, touching three media types at once. The test is not which bucket a tactic could belong to, but which media type carries its primary role in your plan. Sort by the dominant role, allocate budget and effort to the buckets the motion leads with, and treat the overlaps as the bonus reach they are. PESO is a planning lens, not a filing cabinet.
The four media types
Paid, earned, shared, and owned, defined.
Every plan touches all four media types, but not equally. Each is a bucket you fill deliberately, and together they are the channel mix the motion runs on.
A worked example
A complete PESO channel mix, end to end.
One company, all four media types, allocated to serve an Inbound motion behind a revenue goal. The same mid-market analytics SaaS from the marketing-mix step, now deciding where its communication and distribution moves run:
Read top to bottom and the mix coheres: the lead buckets for an Inbound motion (Owned, Earned, Shared) carry the weight, while Paid stays deliberately light so the plan compounds on content and reach rather than on bought clicks. Change the motion and the emphasis shifts, but all four media types are still accounted for.
Where the channel mix fits
The channel mix sits just below the marketing mix: the marketing mix answers "which moves," and the channel mix answers "which media types those moves run on." It is the last allocation step before the customer journey (Step 14).
How to build the mix: lead media types first
Do not split the budget evenly across four buckets. Start from your saved motion, define the two or three media types it leans on most, then fill in the rest. An Inbound motion leads with Owned, Earned, and Shared; a Paid motion leads with Paid, Owned, and Earned. Defining the lead buckets first keeps the weight where the motion needs it and stops the supporting media from diluting the channels that actually carry the engine.
Which media types lead?
The motion decides which media types carry the channel mix.
No single bucket leads everywhere. A self-serve PLG motion lives on Owned and Shared, the product and its community; an enterprise ABM motion leans on Owned and Paid to reach a named buying committee; an Inbound motion compounds on Owned, Earned, and Shared. The walkthrough reads your saved motion and orders the four media types accordingly, defining the leads first.
No motion on file yet? Then there is no prioritization to apply, and the walkthrough simply presents the four media types in canonical order: paid, earned, shared, owned. Set your motion in Step 11 for a prioritized walkthrough.
The walkthrough
Build your channel mix, in the order your motion needs.
The PESO model builder reads the goal, strategy, motion, and marketing mix you already set, then walks you through the four media types with the lead ones first. Each bucket gets a short, specific coaching prompt; you write a line or two, or skip and come back. At the end you get an assembled channel-mix brief and a coherence check that confirms the lead media types your motion needs are all defined.
The test most channel plans fail
The channel mix has to serve the motion and the marketing mix.
A channel mix can be individually sensible and still wrong, because together the buckets do not serve the plan above them. The chain is strict: the channel mix serves the motion and allocates the marketing mix, the motion serves the strategy, the strategy serves the goal. Break the chain anywhere and the spend stops adding up to the plan. The channel mix has one extra obligation the marketing mix does not: it has somewhere specific to put the communication and distribution moves, and those moves have to land in the media types the motion actually leads with.
Reference examples
The channel mix that fits the motion.
Three motions, and the PESO channel mix each one calls for. Notice the lead media types follow from the motion, not from preference.
Why it pays to get this right
A disconnected channel mix looks like spend with no traction.
A channel mix that does not serve the motion does not announce itself. It shows up as a busy media plan and a flat result: a heavy paid program under an Inbound motion that should be compounding owned content, a thin owned experience absorbing expensive clicks, a community effort with no owned home to drive toward. Each line of spend is defensible alone, and the sum still misses, because the buckets are pulling against the engine. Allocating the lead media types from the motion, and measuring whether they move the goal, is how you keep spend and outcome connected.
What goes wrong
Five ways the channel mix goes wrong.
"We will run paid social and a newsletter" is a channel list with no communication or distribution moves behind it. Set the marketing mix (Step 12) first; the channel mix allocates its communication and distribution moves across the four media types.
An Inbound channel mix with no Owned media, or a PLG mix with no Shared community, is a plan missing its engine. The lead buckets for your motion are the ones you cannot leave blank.
Treating Paid, Earned, Shared, and Owned as equal spreads the spend thin. The motion tells you which two or three lead and deserve the weight; the rest support.
A heavy Paid program under an Inbound motion, or no Owned activation under PLG, pulls against the engine. The buckets must lean the way the motion does.
A blog post is owned, earns search, and gets shared; treating it as only one media type loses the overlap. Sort by the channel’s primary role and let the secondary reach be the bonus it is.
Why it matters downstream
The channel mix sets where the journey unfolds.
Once the four media types are allocated, the channels you chose are the surfaces a buyer actually moves through. That is Step 14, the Customer Lifecycle and Journey: mapping how a buyer travels from first touch to purchase to retention across the owned, earned, shared, and paid channels you just set. Allocate the channel mix first; then Step 14 traces the path a buyer takes through it.
FAQ
The PESO model: common questions.
What is the PESO model?
The PESO model is a way to sort marketing channels into four media types: paid, earned, shared, and owned. Paid is media you pay for, such as search and social ads, sponsorships, and affiliates. Earned is coverage and reach you earn, such as organic search, PR, reviews, and word of mouth. Shared is social and community, such as organic social, communities, and user-generated content. Owned is the channels you control, such as your website, blog, email list, and app. PESO is the modern evolution of the classic owned, earned, paid trichotomy; the fourth bucket, shared, makes social and community explicit. The PESO model was introduced by Gini Dietrich of Spin Sucks.
How is PESO different from owned, earned, paid?
They are the same idea at two stages. The classic model is owned, earned, paid: three media types describing whether you control the channel, earn the reach, or pay for it. The PESO model keeps those three and adds a fourth, shared, to make social and community explicit. So classic owned, earned, paid is PESO minus shared. Marketing teams adopted PESO because social and community grew large enough to deserve their own bucket rather than being split awkwardly between earned and owned. The terms marketing channels and owned, earned, paid media describe the same topic this page covers.
What is shared media?
Shared media is the social and community layer: organic social posts, communities and groups, user-generated content, and co-marketing with partners. It is the bucket the classic owned, earned, paid model left implicit, usually folded into earned or owned. PESO pulls it out because the dynamics are different: shared media is neither fully controlled like owned media nor wholly earned like coverage, it is reach that compounds when an audience participates. Naming it as its own media type forces a deliberate decision about the social and community play rather than leaving it as a byproduct.
Which channels are paid vs earned vs shared vs owned?
Paid: search ads, social ads, display, sponsorships, paid influencers, and affiliates. Earned: organic search and SEO, PR and media coverage, reviews and ratings, word of mouth, and organic mentions. Shared: organic social, online communities and groups, user-generated content, and co-marketing. Owned: your website, blog, email list, app, documentation, and any channel you fully control. A single tactic can touch more than one bucket, for example a piece of content lives on an owned blog, earns organic search traffic, and gets shared socially, so the test is which media type carries the primary role.
How do I decide the channel mix?
The go-to-market motion decides which media types lead. An Inbound motion leans on Owned, Earned, and Shared, since it compounds on content and reach. A Paid motion leans on Paid, Owned, and Earned. A PLG motion leans on Owned, Shared, and Paid. Define the lead buckets the motion calls for first, then allocate the communication and distribution elements of your marketing mix across them. The channel mix is the last allocation step before the customer journey: it decides where the communication and distribution moves actually run.
After the channels, the journey
The right channel mix carries the motion.
Allocate the four PESO media types in the order your motion needs, then map how a buyer travels through the channels you chose.
Next: the Customer Journey (Step 14) →