Choosing the best digital marketing channel for your business is pretty crucial. That is because if a certain platform doesn’t suit your business then you’ll mostly be spending a lot of time expecting results that won’t come.
As a business, you need to know when and what to prioritize and what needs the most resources. You see, there’s not a set rule that you should only choose a certain digital marketing channel. At the same time, the right one should be prioritized in order to acquire the maximum results for your effort.
Every business is different and just because the most popular companies use a certain platform doesn’t mean it will work the same. It’s not that hard to choose the right one or choosing a combination of a few.
Let’s go over the list of digital marketing channels available and then we will discuss how to choose the right one for your business.
Table of Contents
List of Effective Digital Marketing Channel
Social Platforms
Social media is no more for connecting just with friends, almost every brand uses them to connect with their customers and to advertise. These social media platforms are very popular and we now have a variety of different ones to choose from. The reason social media is been a very effective method is because of the volume of users and also these platforms give you a wide variety of tools to advertise and help your business.
Some businesses get away with just using social media as their primary marketing platform. Let’s see the differences between a few of the most popular platforms as of 2020.
Pinterest with over 320 million active users and with seven out of ten are female users. The pin sharing social media is a great way to grab those traffic if that suits your business. If you can come up with attention-grabbing pins and build a community around your brand then success is guaranteed.
Paid advertisements are also available with Pinterest. Their business and ads manager is packed with wonderful tools that will help with running your marketing.
Facebook is one of the largest social media networks in the world. There’s not one person that I know of who doesn’t use it. I personally drove a lot of sales and traffic from Facebook to my business. Facebook can be used even as an organic way to build trust and traffic to your business. There is a drawback with using Facebook as organic as Facebook doesn’t want its users to leave their platform.
In most cases, their paid ads do so much better than organic ones. You can reach a wide variety of users with Facebook ads and they have so many options for your business.
The business manager from Facebook has so many advanced features to use and their targeting and retargeting are on point.
Instagram is also owned by Facebook and that gives you an advantage. Businesses can run ads simultaneously on Facebook and Instagram which makes paid ads on social media pretty easy. Since it’s combined businesses get amazing tools to work with. At Facebook and there’s no need to have an Instagram account to run sponsored posts.
If you are going completely organic it is very necessary to be regular with your posting. The algorithm favors the accounts that have the most engagement and people react positively to it.
There’s nothing to lose in having an Instagram account as well, it will come in handy in many different ways. If your business needs visual advertising Instagram is the best for it.
Snapchat
Snapchat is really popular among the younger crowd mainly. They too have paid ads which is the only thing I’ve seen it to be very effective for my business. Even the consistency here plays a crucial rule.
If you think Snapchat would be the perfect fit as your digital marketing channel for your business then, by all means, give it a go.
Twitter is been longer than most platforms and it’s still doing really well. Many politicians even use this as a digital marketing channel for their campaigns and awareness. Twitter has over 145 million active users and in that 20 million approximately are Americans.
Twitter isn’t just a text platform anymore and you can also share images, videos, and just text if you’d like.
LinkedIn is a perfect platform if the company you are marketing is in the B2B industry. Filled with business professionals of all kinds, it is a perfect way to professionally or even directly connect with them. The company’s brand image is very important in LinkedIn and it is worth spending time to customize your profile.
Read: Social Marketing for Nightclubs
SEO (Search Engine Optimization)
Search engine traffic is priceless as it is organic and will last long. The traffic will be coming straight from trusted sources like those big search engines and that helps with customer’s trust. SEO can be tricky if you don’t know how to do it the right way.
Your business obviously needs a website for SEO and this would come under the organic traffic category. Some businesses survive just with SEO traffic. Personally, I think every business needs to have a website and work on their Search Engine Optimization.
Email Marketing
Email marketing still works wonderfully to this day. From the giants to small businesses, all of them invest their time heavily in email marketing. Collecting your customer’s emails (with permission of course) and sending them hard to say no offers is a great way to make them convert.
Consider doing this if you haven’t done this already. Following are some of the best email marketing tools:
Pay Per Click (PPC)
Pay Per Click is a great and effective way to drive traffic to your website or your product page. It’s a form of paid ads and that would mean you need to set aside a budget for you to spend and expect results. Google Adwords is a great example of this and it can drive traffic either to your store, website, or even get direct calls to your business.
Video Platforms
Video is a newer form of marketing when it comes to the digital marketing era. One of the best ways to advertise your products and business as people love to see visual ads more than text comparatively. YouTube, Vimeo is amazing to create visual content that grabs people’s attention.
Affiliate Marketing
You can reach also opt for Affiliate Marketing that you pay a commission in return for a sale of a product. It is pretty effective because of the companies or even influencers who are sending you affiliates. The small commission you pay is a very big motivator.
There are also platforms that help you track these affiliates and create easy sharable links.
Read: Social Marketing for Restaurants
Choosing the Right Digital Marketing Channel
When it comes to picking one, it is a matter of analyzing the business and customers to pick the right digital marketing channel. There is no rule or anything and don’t limit yourself. Below are a few factors to consider while choosing it:
Customer Analysis
The most important thing while choosing your digital marketing channel is to make sure you know your customers and potential audience. Check if your audiences are limited or wide.
If your customers seem to be spread across every age group and country then you can pick almost any of the above platforms or a combination of few.
Define your Budget
Your budget is important and when I say the budget, I also mean the time that you would be willing to invest in the marketing. The best part is you can also start with a minimal budget. There is no need, to begin with, a high budget into it when you are just starting out.
You can also start with a minimum of $10 to begin with.
Analyze your Team
Team’s strength varies from companies to companies and knowing it itself is a plus. Once you analyze your team’s weakness and strength, pick the one that your team can perform the best.
Don’t think of expanding your team until you have started and experimented well.
Goals & Milestones
Listing your goals and milestone will save you a lot of fo time and money. Make a document of your future micro and macro goals that defines every plan and your chosen platform.
If you have the right idea on where you want to be then it will be clearer to pick how you want to get there.
Analyze your Competition
This is the easiest way to choose as it is a shortcut method. Analyzing your competition will help you to find exactly what methods they are using and all you need to do is to follow what they do.
Experiment
Do not forget to experiment and fail fast. The faster you fail then easier it is to succeed. You can start with a minimum of $10 and utilize it to experiment. Pick a platform and try it out.
You don’t even need to spend anything, Try an organic method such as organic social media marketing or email marketing which doesn’t cost you anything.
Read: Viral Marketing – Making Contagious Content
Conclusion
The internet market moves really fast and even if you are available only through a few platforms, it’s never a bad idea to try out almost everything that is available. Keep in mind to fail fast and take a better decision.
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