Businesses used to publish advertisements in magazines or on billboards in the hopes that the proper individual would see them in the early days of marketing. Today, the majority of marketing is done digitally. Given how much time individuals spend online, it seems sensible.
This implies that there are countless options for firms to use digital marketing to connect with customers. Nonetheless, a variety of digital marketing channels have developed throughout time as a result of how big and varied the internet is in its uses. In order to reach their target audience, digital marketers must determine which digital marketing channels to use.
Digital marketing: What Is It?
Digital marketing assets are delivered through channels in digital marketing. If you need to spread the news about a new product, you can do so through one or more channels. Social media, video marketing, and influencer marketing are a few popular digital marketing channels.
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What Is the Importance of Digital Marketing Channels?
Discover various user groups.
A distinct audience is reached by each digital marketing channel.
Promote a variety of content types.
While social media can be a more efficient way to distribute films, SEO is a fantastic avenue for distributing blog entries. Different channels have varying intensities.
Leads are better nurtured.
Some people react differently to different channels. Therefore you can nurture more leads if you invest in the correct channels.
Boost awareness of your brand.
The more awareness you create for your business, the more exposure it receives through various digital marketing channels.
Seven well-liked and successful digital marketing channels
The following are some of the best business marketing avenues:
Social Media Marketing
72% of all American people, according to Pew Research Center data from the previous year, use at least one social media platform. Using social media networks like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, and LinkedIn, you may connect with a sizable portion of the global population. Social media becomes one of the most crucial internet marketing tools as a result.
Advantages of Using Social Media as a Marketing Channel: Increase the Relatable of Your Brand
robust analytics built in, allowing you to monitor and achieve your social media KPIs.
Nearly all uses are free.
How To Get Started With Social Media Marketing
To start, create profiles for your business on all relevant social media channels. All you have to do is make posts on those digital platforms and grow your online presence. What you post is up to you, but most social media marketers post a mix of the following:
- Links to blog posts published on your business website
- Links to other articles relevant to your ideal audience
- Short videos showcasing your products or services
- Customer or client testimonials
- Photos that demonstrate your offerings or other concepts relevant to your audience
Tips for Success
- Create a simple social media calendar that details when and what you will post. This provides accountability to keep you consistent and allows you to plan ahead.
- Be interactive. Social media is all about dialogue, so tag people and businesses in your posts, and respond to comments on your profiles.
If you’re not actively investing in SEO, you are likely missing a key part of your potential audience. That’s because 68% of experiences that occur online begin with a search engine, and SEO is all about getting your website to come up often and in top positions in search engines.
And don’t make the mistake of thinking that you’re done with SEO because you can find your website in Google results. You need to rank well for keywords relevant to your business. Keep in mind that less than 1% of Google users will click on websites on the second page of search engine results.
Benefits of SEO as a Marketing Channel:
- Helps users find your business organically, increasing trust
- Provides compounding returns over time as you gain more rankings
- Allows you to target every stage of the sales funnel with different keywords
- Building a social media persona helps customers connect with your brand
This Channel Is For:
Any business with a website can benefit from SEO because ranking well in search engines exposes your business to potentially hundreds of thousands or even millions of people who use search engines every day. However, you may have to do it DIY if you don’t have a budget to invest in an SEO provider.
How To Get Started With SEO
Getting started with SEO is relatively easy. You need to do a few basic things:
- Identify the keywords you would like your website to rank for.
- Publish content on your website that includes those keywords.
- Monitor your website’s performance for your chosen keywords using Google Search Console or a third-party SEO tool.
Tips for Success
- Start early. SEO is a long-term investment—it can take six months or more before your new keyword-optimized content ranks well in search engine results. So start sooner rather than later so you get the results when you need them.
- Choose reasonable keywords. You may want to rank first for a keyword like “used cars,” but you may not have the time or resources to rank quickly for such a broad and competitive keyword. Instead, modify your keyword to make it more specific and attainable by adding a location or other modifier. “Chicago used cars” is a lot easier to rank for than “used cars” in general.
3. Email Marketing
For every dollar invested into email marketing, the average ROI is $36. The returns are great, and the methods are surprisingly simple. Email marketing is simply the act of acquiring the email addresses of potential customers and emailing them. What you send them can vary widely, from direct sales pitches to useful information to coupons.
Benefits of Email Marketing:
- Provides a direct way to reach someone — all you need is an email address to reach the top of their inbox
- Can yield fast results (More than half of recipients who opened marketing emails opened them within six hours of receiving them)
- Can be automated with low-cost or even free software
This Channel Is For:
If you publish content on your website’s blog, offer periodic sales or giveaways, or want to promote a new product offering, then email marketing may be an effective online marketing channel for you.
How To Get Started With Email Marketing
The first step of email marketing is to build an email list. To gather emails in an ethical way, consider the following strategies:
- Add an email signup form in a prominent place on your website
- If you offer online purchases, ask users to enter their email to get product or service updates via email
- Publish high-value and gated content on your website and require readers to submit their email in order to view it
Once you have some email addresses, send regular emails to nurture them. You might choose to send an email newsletter or simply send out emails each time you are running a sale or when you publish a new blog post.
Tips for Success
- Consider your subject lines, as subject lines make or break the success of any email marketing campaign. Make sure they grab attention and encourage the reader to open the email. And don’t rely on clickbait because this will always disappoint the reader. Here’s a good example and bad example of an email subject line:
- Good example: 21 Ways to Grow Your Business in 2022. While this subject line doesn’t give away every detail of the email, it makes a promise that your email can actually deliver.
- Bad example: You’ll Never Believe How These Businesses Grew Their Sales Last Year. The reader very likely will believe how they grew their sales, so the subject line is already making false promises to the reader.
- Provide a clear and simple way for recipients to unsubscribe from your emails to avoid being labeled as spam.
4. Video Marketing
The average internet user spends 16 hours per week watching online videos. This means you have a ton of chances to reach those people if you engage in video marketing.
Benefits of Video Marketing:
- More leads (Around 86% of people who do video marketing say this channel is effective at generating leads for their business)
- Can be an engaging medium for many users
- Much more likely than many other types of content to result in purchases on social media
This Channel Is For:
Anyone who has a smartphone can record a shareable video to market products or services. However, to create branded videos that represent the image you want to project, you may need a small video marketing budget to invest in video editing software or a video production service.
How To Get Started With Video Marketing
You can easily dip your toes into video marketing without putting together a full video strategy. Record short and simple videos to use in and alongside your existing digital marketing channels. After you have posted the videos on your website, on social media, and in emails, track their performance.
Tips for Success
- Don’t just repackage your blog posts or written content as videos. Instead, create short videos that demonstrate visual concepts related to your brand, such as how-to content or product demonstrations.
- Make the first few seconds of your video as engaging as possible. Many platforms insert an ad after the first few seconds, and this is a critical point at which a user may choose to close your video. Give them reasons to keep watching.
5. PPC
Among nearly 1,000 surveyed businesses, 74% said that PPC was a major driver of business for them. There’s a good reason for that: PPC is designed to be fast and effective.
Here’s how it works: You bid on keywords for which you would like your ads to appear, and when a search engine user enters those keywords, your ad shows up. You only pay, however, when a user clicks on your ads on search engines.
Benefits of PPC Advertising:
- Can provide nearly immediate sales
- Doesn’t require you to fight to rank for competitive keywords
- Only pay for the clicks your ads get
This Channel Is For:
PPC isn’t for everyone. But for those who have a fairly sizable marketing budget, it can be an ideal way to generate quick leads, which hopefully lead to conversions.