Digital Marketing Channels: Which is best suited for your business?
Since 1994, online marketing channels have changed how consumers view products and services. As of today, there are more than 4.3 billion active internet users, which presents an appealing opportunity for brands to shift their marketing campaigns online.
In the four months that followed, 44% of internet visitors clicked on it, providing the business with a huge advertising boost.
Misible Fact: The first web-based banner ad was created in October 1994 as a result of a marketing campaign for AT&T. “Have you ever used your mouse to click RIGHT HERE? YES, YOU WILL”.
What is a digital marketing channel?
Telemarketing, print commercials/ads, and billboards dominated the advertising business for decades, but now it’s all about reaching your target audience online. Digital marketing channels are venues via which you may educate your target audience about your brand, product, or service.
However, not all digital marketing platforms are suitable for all of your business objectives. Some are better suited to specific sorts of audiences, while others are built differently to achieve different goals.
The majority of your objectives will most likely be related to generating leads, increasing brand recognition, enhancing conversions, and so on. Each kind of digital marketing channel serves a particular purpose. This article will explain the many sorts of internet marketing channels and why they should be included.
But first, let us look at some of the advantages it offers over traditional or offline marketing.
- It’s effective – With digital marketing, you can have a razor-sharp focus on whom you want to target and when you want to target them
- It gives valuable insight – Digital marketing works best with data, the more data you have the better understanding you have of the audience you are targeting.
- Costs you less – When compared to traditional marketing, digital marketing can cost you only one then of that price.
This list can go on and on.
Most common digital marketing channels
Promoting your product and services requires careful consideration when selecting the appropriate digital marketing platforms to use. You will want to choose the channel that most effectively targets your audience and generates a return on investment. How you share information and what kind of information you share depends on the channel you use.
The different types of digital marketing channels
- Content Marketing & SEO (Search Engine Optimization).
- Paid Marketing or PPC (Pay Per Click Marketing) or SEM (Search Engine Marketing).
- Email Marketing.
- Social Media Marketing.
- Affiliate Marketing.
Content Marketing & SEO (Search Engine Optimization)
Content marketing is a strategic marketing technique that focuses on developing and delivering useful, relevant, and consistent content in order to attract and maintain a specific target audience – and, eventually, to generate productive customer action.
According to a survey done by SemRush, which comprised over 1500+ organizations from various industries, the main goal that content marketing was used for
- Increase brand awareness
- Attract more traffic to their website
- Generating leads
- Increase sales and revenue
- Customer loyalty and engagement with their brand
To use content marketing effectively, you must offer the right content at the right time. From the point of awareness through the point of purchase. One such great way to bring content in front of the right audience would be SEO.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO), as the name implies, is the result of enhancing the visibility of your website page on internet search engines such as Google, Bing, and others. Assume a person makes an internet search for ‘How to Bake a Pizza.’ If your recipe’s web page is among the top results, the user is more likely to click on it. Here are a few easy ways to do it.
An efficient SEO strategy consists of numerous related strategies, such as (but not limited to) keyword research, content production, backlink building, technical website optimization, and others. The major downside is that SEO is that it can become technical and time-consuming for the typical business owner, especially since the algorithms used by search engines like Google to rank content are constantly modified.
Paid Marketing or PPC (Pay Per Click Marketing) or SEM (Search Engine Marketing)
If used effectively, Pay Per Click may be one of the most powerful online marketing platforms. The purpose of PPC is to convert idle users into engaged prospects, who may then be converted into purchasers. While SEO assists businesses in ranking organically for their chosen keywords, SEM focuses on increasing website traffic from search engines via paid adverts. Bing Ads and Google AdWords are the two most popular paid marketing services.
SEM enables companies to place sponsored adverts on search engine results pages. Except for an “Ad” designation, these adverts resemble organic search results in Google. They show at the top of the search results, before any organic search results, providing you with high visibility and immediate brand awareness.
SEM is popular among business owners because it is simple to construct tailored search results advertising based on keywords and the searcher’s location. This means you may target your adverts to a certain demographic or geographic location. You may even go a step further and target rival terms, allowing you to “steal” some traffic from a competition.
PPC results have been shown to produce 150% more conversions than organic visitors. Clearly, a sponsored search may be a win-win situation for your marketing operations but bear in mind that you will have to spend a certain amount to obtain that specific individual or lead. If you want to read more about how Google ads can help your business, click here.
Email Marketing
Email marketing is still one of the most widely used and efficient forms of digital marketing. Although email is not the most cutting-edge technology, it allows you to implement the most recent trends in content marketing, such as personalization and automation, without jeopardizing your marketing budget.
Why go with Email Marketing?
Misible Fact: According to HubSpot, the average ROI for email marketing is $38 for every $1 spent – an astounding 3,800% return on investment for something as easy as email.
Email marketing is an excellent approach to advertising your products and services, creating relationships, inspiring customer loyalty, and obtaining essential feedback from consumers. When set up correctly email marketing can help create highly focused communications that allow you to understand where your customer is in the purchase cycle. Creating email campaigns for each stage of the customer lifecycle allows you to build loyalty and increase conversions.
The varieties of emails you can send are virtually unlimited. Most customers are already aware with the brand newsletter, you can provide frequent updates on the company’s activities. You can also send emails when you introduce a new product or service, redesign your website, establish a new store, or hold an event.
Social Media Marketing
With more than 80% of consumers reporting that social media, particularly influencer content, has a significant impact on purchasing decisions, businesses across industries are driving the evolution of social media marketing (SMM) from a standalone tool to a multifaceted source of marketing intelligence.
Social media marketing (SMM) uses social media and social networks—like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram—to market products and services, engage with existing customers, and reach new ones.
Why use social media marketing?
- Humanize your business – People tend to trust products that have a more personal touch to them because it makes them approachable and easy to believe.
- Drive traffic – It is the simplest way to increase visitors to your website. It can also help with lead generation and customer acquisition.
- Build relationships – These platforms enable you to network, get valuable feedback, hold debates, and communicate directly with your fans via both direct and indirect lines of contact.
A couple of social media channels that are recommended
- YouTube – Communicate with your audience with content with long or short-form video content.
- Facebook & Instagram – Instagram is and has always been about photographs, and its video feature is also quite popular. Instagram has the greatest engagement rate of any of the major social networks.
- LinkedIn – LinkedIn is a professional network, but it’s also a motivating community that rewards leadership, education, and basic values. In addition to networking, finding prospects, and sharing industry knowledge, it’s a terrific location to showcase your corporate culture and establish your personal brand alongside your business identity.
- Twitter – Many individuals use Twitter to stay up to date on news, follow companies, and obtain customer support. When a consumer says anything wonderful about you, retweet it, and don’t forget to address people’s inquiries whenever feasible.
I’ve highlighted a couple here, but there are several additional social media platforms, such as Snapchat and TikTok, that may be utilized for community building.
Affiliate Marketing
Other dealers can help online retailers offer their products and services. This is known as affiliate marketing, and it occurs when one company provides another company’s items as an add-on or deal package alongside its own. Affiliate marketing, as a marketing or promotional channel, may be beneficial in generating leads and increasing sales. Affiliate marketing is a full-funnel approach that should be implemented regardless of where your target audience is in the customer journey.
Wrapping Up
Digital media is continuously growing, and so is internet marketing. The various digital marketing channels operate differently and, as a result, provide varied outcomes. Furthermore, what works for one brand may not always work for you. The ideal scenario is that you try several channels and techniques to find which combination works best for you.