First, let’s quickly go through the criteria for which you use digital marketing. It is needed to narrow down the list of channels you need to implement your marketing strategy:
1. Company goals
Getting the word out: If your current offline efforts aren’t matching how your competitors are growing, this is a good goal to evaluate how digital channels can be leveraged to close the gap.
USP: Your target audience needs to know about your products or services and the factors that differentiate you from other “me too” players in the market. The goal is to solve the customer’s problems for which they are looking for a solution
Traffic and Sales: Probably the most important reason placed on top of the cause after building your brand and promoting your USP is driving traffic and creating a sustainable sales funnel.
2. The client’s goals
Send an analysis of your customer’s cadence, i.e. their browsing habits or the channels they are most present on, and start identifying the channels that would serve your audience the most.
3. Budget estimates
Since marketing is a cost-intensive segment, it’s great to have a clear amount of budget that you plan to spend on your final digital channel strategy.
4. Talent competencies
Before choosing a channel mix, you need to consider the mix of developers, designers, and domain-specific resources for search or social channel marketing.
When the key goals of your business idea mentioned above have now been confirmed, the ambiguity regarding the channel to choose has just become clearer.
Doing your preliminary research through expert articles like these will give you a good head start before you become the head of one of the best digital marketing channels that would try to get you on board, even if it’s usually not the best option.
The most popular channels are listed below, taking into account general marketing trends and typical goals of organizations.
This rule of thumb to measure what is best, adopted by most companies, should give you enough reasons to find the best suite, but also to explore channels that are appropriate for your industry, such as real estate aggregator ads or a hotel search engine that caters to you. to your target audience.
Search Engine Marketing (SEM)
This is a term that controls the visibility of your brand on relevant search results pages through a paid exchange with well-known search engines such as Google or Bing. However, if you’ve heard of Pay Per Click and not SEM, it’s because it’s one of the main features of SEM that has gained popularity.
Your target audience may be entering relevant keywords or search phrases in search of solutions that you can perfectly answer. Search engines like Google offer an SEO tool like AdWords to bid and place a brand link or product thumbnail above “organic” search results (more on “organic” in a bit, though). When potential customers click on your brand ads, you pay Google.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
Michael Hyatt talks about how your social media pages on Facebook or Twitter are embassies where you have temporary land on someone else’s property, while your website is your home where you have ultimate control.
The natural way to optimize your website using elements such as keywords and meta tags is the best way to move your website up the search engine results pages (SERPs). The general user behavior is to trust a written news article a little more than an advertisement.
So more than paying and positioning your brand with a keyword, honing your SEO strategy to get your site to #1 or #2 for your target audience is a great sales conversion method.
Social Media Marketing (SMM)
Social media has opened consumers to a constant dialogue with their favorite brands. Hardly any other media can guarantee as much engagement as social media.
Almost all organizations, like SEOs, have an SMM strategy to promote their offerings.
But getting the right media platform is crucial. While Twitter may be a good product for branding, it may not be good for lead generation or targeting, which a more targeted platform like Facebook could offer.
Display and affiliate advertising
The images, videos or pop-ups you see on the websites you visit are part of the display advertising offering. The Display Network usually consists of websites that are open and can present your ads to their audience.
Today’s main business model is based on display advertising, as free websites like a blog usually make money by sharing revenue with the display network.
The most popular networks are the Google Display Network or the Facebook Audience Network. The advertiser pays the network and the publisher a commission when potential customers click and engage with the ad. Affiliate marketing, on the other hand, is performance-based, where the advertiser usually shares a portion of their revenue or pays only when a sale is made, not when a click occurs.
There are many other channels, including those based on new technologies such as podcasts, advertising through smart home speakers such as the Echo dot.
In fact, around 50 Echo devices ship every minute, so this is the next new platform where the best will compete.
By using the mentioned channels according to your business goals, be it email marketing or public relations, according to your business goals, there is no barrier to such opportunities that you can try and take advantage of.
Figure out the best combination of channels or sub-channels that can deliver the goods by enabling your business, and you’d be on the path to great digital marketing for your business.
