MT357 Unit 4 Owned Digital Asset Audit Example

Course	MT357 Digital Marketing Platforms and Strategy
Unit	Unit 4
Paper type	Owned digital asset audit
Length	About 950 words, 6 pages double-spaced
Format	APA 7 student paper
School	Purdue University Global
Program	BS in Business Administration
Updated	October 2026

Free sample paper for MT357 Unit 4

The Richest Record Is Rented: An MT357 Unit 4 Owned Asset Audit for a Secondhand Camera Dealer

[Student Name]

Purdue University Global

MT357: Digital Marketing Platforms and Strategy

Unit 4 Owned Asset Audit

[Instructor Name]

[Date]

The shop and its asset figures are composite; the framework and sources cited are real.

What this part is doingSorting by control before value in the lead tells the reader the audit's main concern is dependence.

Why Control Comes First

Edelman (2010) distinguished owned media, which a company controls, from paid media, which it buys, and earned media, which others create about it. For a small shop, a fourth category matters: rented assets, such as a social account or marketplace storefront, which the shop builds but a platform controls. An owned asset can be fixed tomorrow; a rented one can change its rules without notice. The audit therefore sorts before it evaluates, asking the same four questions of every asset: who controls it, how large it is, what it contributes to trade-ins and what happens if it disappears.

Owned Assets

The email list holds 21,600 addresses, of which 7,900 opened at least one message in the last 180 days. Among them are the recent mirrorless buyers, the group most likely to hold lenses worth trading. The shop controls it fully. If it vanished, the shop would lose its cheapest way to reach past customers. Its weakness is that 13,700 addresses have been inactive for six months.

The website hosts listings, value pages and the quote tool. Its problem is that product pages are deleted when an item sells, so links from search engines and forums to those pages break. Each sale erases a page that had been earning search traffic.

The trade-in quote tool takes a seller through nine steps, from choosing the camera brand to uploading serial number photos. It finishes 31 percent of the quotes it starts. Most abandonment happens at step seven, where sellers must photograph the serial number. This is the asset most directly tied to the objective.

The shop has published 64 lens guides, of which 11 draw about 70 percent of organic visits. The remaining 53 draw little traffic and have not been updated in two years.

Rented Assets

Instagram holds 11,200 followers. They are mostly buyers who enjoy seeing new arrivals. The platform controls who sees each post, and organic reach has fallen. If the account were lost, the shop would lose a buyer channel, not a seller channel.

The YouTube channel has 1,900 subscribers. Videos of lenses being graded draw steady views from photographers researching switching systems, which makes it modestly useful for trade-ins.

The marketplace storefront carries 9,800 feedback ratings and produces 36 percent of revenue. It is the shop's richest customer record: years of buyer and seller history, all visible to the marketplace and only partly to the shop. The marketplace can change fees, policies or search ranking at any time, and it does not allow the shop to export buyers' contact details. A suspension would remove over a third of sales and the shop's most visible public rating in a single day.

The shop's most valuable record of its customers sits on a platform that can change the rules without asking.

What this part is doingNaming the marketplace dependency as the audit's central risk shows the sorting by control produced its main finding.

Earned Assets

The map listing has 412 reviews, averaging 4.8 stars. Many mention fair grading, which is exactly what a hesitant seller wants to know. Forum mentions on two photography forums recommend the shop for trade-ins. The shop does not control these, but it can respond to reviews and encourage satisfied sellers to post.

Contribution to Trade-Ins

The quote tool, email list and value pages contribute most directly, because each reaches or serves people who are ready to sell. The map reviews and forum mentions help sellers trust the shop. Instagram and the marketplace contribute mainly to sales, not trade-ins. Chaffey and Ellis-Chadwick (2022) recommend auditing assets against the specific objective rather than general engagement, and by that standard the follower count matters far less than the quote tool's completion rate.

Three Repairs, Ranked by Effort

The first repair, and the cheapest, is to keep sold product pages live. Instead of deleting a page, the website should mark the item sold, show similar items and link to the quote tool with a line inviting owners of the same lens to sell theirs. This takes a few hours of web work and turns every sale into a page that can attract sellers.

The second repair, of moderate effort, is to shorten the quote tool. Moving the serial number photo from step seven to after the seller accepts an offer would remove the main point of abandonment. If completion rose from 31 to 36 percent, the shop would gain about 17 trade-ins a month at current quote volume.

The third repair, and the hardest, is to reduce marketplace dependence. Each marketplace buyer receives a packing insert inviting them to join the shop's email list for trade-in offers. Over time, this moves some of the marketplace's customer relationship onto an owned asset. Holliman and Rowley (2014) describe owned content as a way to build lasting relationships independent of platforms, and the email list is the shop's best tool for that.

What the Audit Changes

Before the audit, the shop measured its digital presence by follower counts, and Instagram looked like its strongest asset. Sorted by control and contribution to trade-ins, the picture reverses. The quote tool and the email list, which the shop fully controls, matter most for the objective. The marketplace, which the shop does not control, matters most for revenue. Instagram matters least for either.

What this part is doingShowing how the ranking changed once assets were sorted by control demonstrates the audit's value.

Limits

Asset sizes are counts, not measures of value. The audit did not measure how much each asset contributes to trade-ins precisely, which the measurement framework in Unit 9 will address. The marketplace's export limits may change.

References

Chaffey, D., & Ellis-Chadwick, F. (2022). Digital marketing: Strategy, implementation and practice (8th ed.). Pearson.

Edelman, D. C. (2010). Branding in the digital age: You're spending your money in all the wrong places. Harvard Business Review, 88(12), 62-69.

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

MT357 Unit 4 instructions, in plain terms

Unit 4 asks students to audit the digital assets a business already has. Instructors expect assets to be sorted by control, owned, rented and earned, before they are evaluated, since control determines what the business can fix. Each asset should be described with the same attributes: who controls it, its size, what it contributes to the objective and the risk if it disappeared. The audit should identify dependencies, especially on platforms the business cannot control. Contributions should be judged against the specific objective rather than general engagement. Repairs should be ranked by effort and expected effect. Limits should be noted. A table of assets is common, but the analysis of risk and contribution belongs in prose so the reader can follow the judgments.

How this MT357 Unit 4 example is built

The sample explains why control comes first, citing Edelman and adding the category of rented assets. Owned assets are described: the email list and its inactive majority, a website that deletes sold pages, the quote tool and its step-seven abandonment and the lens guides. Rented assets follow, including the marketplace storefront, under the highlighted line that the most valuable customer record sits on a platform that can change the rules. Earned assets close the inventory. A section judges contribution to trade-ins, citing Chaffey and Ellis-Chadwick. Three repairs follow, from keeping sold pages live to a packing insert that moves marketplace buyers to email, citing Holliman and Rowley. A section shows how the ranking changed, and limits close the audit.

Reading the MT357 Unit 4 grading rubric

Asset audits are mostly judged on clear categorization by control, consistent description, honest assessment of dependence and practical repairs. Graders reward audits that ask the same questions of every asset. Platform dependence should be identified and its risk stated. Contribution should be judged against the objective. Repairs should be specific, ranked and tied to findings. Recognizing that follower counts may matter less than conversion tools shows maturity. Frameworks appear in APA 7. Audits that rank assets by audience size alone, or that ignore the risk of relying on platforms the business does not control, miss the point of an audit, which is to find what the business can rely on.

MT357 Unit 4 help from the desk

Asset audits often list social media follower counts as the main measure of strength. Another common weakness is overlooking tools such as quote forms or checkout flows, which may matter more than any audience. Some students ignore platform dependence entirely. Repairs are frequently generic. Before drafting, list every digital asset the business has and ask who could delete or change it tomorrow. Assets someone else controls belong in a separate column. Then ask which asset most directly produces the outcome the objective measures. That asset is usually where the first repair belongs.

Get an MT357 Unit 4 example written to your instructions

Name the business your section uses and list whatever digital assets you know it holds; the Unit 4 prompt and rubric complete the request. A custom audit comes back in 24-48h sorting every asset by who controls it and ranking repairs by payoff against effort. Your first one costs nothing, even for a composite business. The paper above is an original model document written by our desk, not a submitted student paper and not an official Purdue University Global document.

More MT357 papers and BS in Business Administration samples

MT357 Unit 4 questions, answered

What counts as an owned asset?

Anything the business controls and could keep if a platform disappeared: its website, domain, email list, customer records, apps and the content it created. Social accounts and marketplace storefronts are usually treated as rented, since the platform sets the rules and can change reach or access. Reviews and press are often grouped as earned. Use the categories your course reading uses.

How do I audit a business when I lack internal data?

Work from what is publicly visible, such as the website, social profiles, review counts and search results, and mark estimates clearly. Many sections accept a composite business built from public examples if it is labeled. Say what you could not see, since an audit that admits its gaps is more credible than one that invents precise figures.

Should the audit include recommendations?

Usually, and ranking them helps. Pair each recommendation with the finding that prompted it, an estimate of the effort involved and the expected effect on the objective. Three well-argued repairs tend to score better than a long list, because the grader can see why these three were chosen over everything else the audit found.

Where can I find a free MT357 Unit 4 sample paper?

The complete MT357 Unit 4 owned asset audit is on this page, sorting a camera dealer's eleven assets by control.

What is the central risk in the MT357 Unit 4 sample?

The marketplace storefront carries 36 percent of revenue and the richest customer record, but the marketplace controls it and limits exports.