Digital marketing has grown a lot where content marketing, search engine optimization, social media marketing, paid marketing, affiliate marketing, email marketing etc. are some of the prominent marketing channels adopted by marketers today. Some of these channels require more money and less effort; whereas some require minimal investment with a hefty workload.
Before knowing what’s right for your business, let’s discuss the most popular marketing channels you have to choose from.
Marketing channels are divided into groups according to your business objectives. Below are some of our favorite online marketing channels and the business objectives they can achieve.
Brand Awareness
- Email Marketing
- Social Media Advertising
- Visual Content
- Display Advertising
Lead Generation
- SEO
- Search Engine Marketing
- Content Marketing
Direct Sales
- Ecommerce Platforms
- Display Ads
- Remarketing
- Shopping Ads
Let’s dive into some of the most common and effective channels below:
Search Engine Optimization: Search Engine Optimization, a.k.a. SEO, is the tactic of improving business visibility on Search Engine Result Pages (SERP). Keywords play an integral role in SEO. It might be complicated for newbie marketers as it includes On-Page SEO, Technical SEO, Off-Page SEO, Content Generation, Link Acquisition, and a tonne of other considerations.
SEO takes time, so proper planning & strategy are required to achieve the best results in a specific timeline. Organic search is the most often the primary source of website traffic. Therefore, SEO is important for greater searchability and visibility in the organic results of search engines.
Pay-Per-Click (PPC): PPC is a paid marketing strategy that involves paying for traffic to your website. PPC is a passive battle with your competition for highly competitive keywords. A major benefit of PPC advertising is that a main channel is Google Ads, which makes it easy to track your results.
Moreover, PPC is also recommended to get ‘hot’ leads from Search Results. For the best results, you need to be on top of things with daily optimization checks that help you generate high ROI.
Social Media Marketing: Leverage social media to amplify your brand reach and connect more customers with your products/services. Build the demand yourself! Social Media is a powerful marketing strategy to build a new customer base and reconnect with existing customers for enhanced sales/services count. Numerous social media platforms are available nowadays, including Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn, Instagram, etc., each with their own niche.
Email Marketing: Email Marketing is a reliable and robust marketing channel recommended for brand awareness and increased conversions. Collecting a user’s email data and sending them emails with new products, special offers, etc. is a smart marketing strategy that often results in high ROI.
Display Marketing: Showcasing your products/services on third party websites is better known as display advertising or display marketing. You can take advantage of display advertising to boost your leads or remarket existing customers, targeting specific demographics.
Now that the groundwork is in place, a common question business owners have is: “How do I choose the best, results-driven digital marketing channel for my business?”
Let’s find out.
How to Find the Right Digital Marketing Channel for Your Business
1. Know Your Goals & Business Objectives:
Regardless of your strategy, you should first focus on the business objective and goals for the future. Your goals can define which medium best fulfills your requirements and serve you the best results in the shortest time frame. Below are the common goals that you might have for your business.
- Raising brand awareness
- Generating new leads
- Improving your online search rankings
- Increasing website traffic
- Improving conversion rates
Finalizing your goal upfront allows you to choose the most effective channel. It will also help you measure your final results accurately.
2. Know Your Audience:
Running a fool-proof marketing strategy means targeting the right audience through the right channel. You cannot entirely rely on automatic targeting. Instead, you should find out the targeting options available through each of these channels, and figure out if you will be able to isolate your audience on a particular channel or not. Google Ads, Ahrefs, and Facebook Ads come with enormous data filtration systems that help you sort from the massive chunk of customers and shortlist the targeted ones.
Many other tools are also available to gather user’s data and market your product accordingly.
3. Finalize Your Budget
Digital marketing is both expensive and cheap, depending on which channel you include in the marketing strategy. Where some marketing channels are absolutely free, some require significant investment to start promoting your business. Above all, monetary backup plays a significant role in running the paid campaigns smoothly.
4. Expand Your Team
Selecting one marketing channel isn’t always effective for every business. Instead, you should focus on more than one channel and find specialists to take maximum advantage of your efforts. Alongside selecting the right marketing channel, a skilled team is also essential. So, ensure your entire team is talented, supervised by a specialist.
5. Analyze and Evaluate Your Results
Working die-hard is essential but evaluating your efforts is also important. Climbing ahead without overcoming your pitfalls isn’t possible in any niche. Moreover, putting 100% effort without knowing its outcome is also worthless. Your 100% input may not deliver you expected results in a specific marketing channel. Tracking your efforts periodically and switching to another channel if the current strategy isn’t working for your business is vital.
Over to You!
The options are endless, but what suits you best matters the most. Based on the above pointers, you can choose the ideal marketing channel for your business and experience a hike in sales, traffic, or organic visibility.
In the entire strategy making and planning process, never follow your competitors blindly. What works for your competitor might not work for you. Hence you should consider all the roadblocks in your marketing and remove all such hacks to experience effective outcomes.
If you are still confused, then get in touch with us for a free consultation.
We are a Canadian digital marketing agency local to Toronto, helping countless businesses to grow online. We understand what strategies and marketing channels can give you the most efficient growth. So, connect with us, and grow your business digitally.