Digital marketing is one of those powerful instruments that is taking companies beyond imagination and establishing a stronghold by reaching out to the desired customers. Digital marketing works with a combination of tools and channels that inspire great marketing solutions for the B2B and the B2C segments. The channels through which digital marketing reaches out to its desired clientele is websites, social media, emails, search engines, paid search, mobile display ads and various other channels. Before you plan your digital marketing, strategy and reach out to a digital marketing agency you should understand the advantages and the disadvantages of how a channel will influence your business and who your clients are.
So, what are the important channels of digital marketing?
In 2021 digital marketing analysts feel that 6 channels can be attributed as having a major influence on lead generation.
- Social media has been hailed as the strongest in pandemic times.
- This is followed by content marketing.
- Email marketing is a traditional marketing model that is never outdated.
- Paid social media marketing.
- Search engine optimization SEO
- Pay-Per-Click (PPC)
So, when it comes to the question of what is the most important channel for digital marketing, we begin with the most powerful one as predicted in 2021, that is social media marketing.
With the pandemic affecting the world, people are confined to their homes for the last two years and are heavily relying on their mobile and other devices. The time spent on social media has grown from what it used to be at the beginning of 2019. Social media is the easiest way to reach your customers today as the interaction on channels like Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, serves both B2B and B2C businesses. The popularity of LinkedIn too has increased, and people have participated in engaging discussions over this platform. Though limited to a very close business community, the engagement in LinkedIn has an inclusive approach. Marketing initiatives on social media are less expensive, keeps your client aware of your latest offerings, discounts etc. Through social media, you receive immediate reactions to ads giving you a quick idea of their acceptability. With a consistent and relevant presence, you can add value to your brand and interact with your customers to understand their views of your brand. The process of reaching your customers may take long, but with patience and dedication, the door is bound to open. The engagement needs to be continuous despite no feedback or response from customers. Negative responses can badly affect your morale, an interest that holds on and promotes over social media has its rewards. You may also attract spammers and trollers who have little to do with your brand but will malign your product and presence. Despite all these challenges the ROI from organic social media efforts may be hard to measure at first but with the correct approach in digital marketing, you can find yourself advancing and reaching out to a wider audience.
How can you reach out to your potential customers on social media?
Set brand goals, once that has been determined choose the right platform, maintain regularity through various posts and articles. Events workshops or even going live is the best way to keep your customers in the loop. Identify your customers and know their pain points. The content posted is crucial and should address the pain point of the customers.
The next important digital marketing channel is content marketing.
This is one of the most effective and integral parts of digital marketing. Content includes the website, blogs, images, social media pose, infographic, white page, webinars etc. Posting relevant content that creates a buzz and attracts your followers on social media and elsewhere is the most important lookout. The website content plays a significant role as all your digital marketing initiatives fall back on your website. The website content should be knowledgeable and informative creating interest for customers who reach your website. Blogs posted on the website are further promoted on social media.
Blogs that add and enrich customers go a long way in building a strong relationship with them. Well written informative, knowledgeable, and thoughtful blogs can add value and loyal customer following. Create and promote blogs especially for B2B clients with case studies. Your unique case and success stories are the best testimony to your promotional skills. Letting your clients know about how you positioned a product that added unique value to customer experience resonates with your customers. The entire purpose of blogging is to grab customer attention. Interspersing your text with meaningful images also gravitate customer attention to your blog. Create a CTA call-to-action in your writing that drives customers to the next step. As you create value through your content keep hyperlinking with other blogs written earlier that strengthen the content essence of the present blog.
Adding value to your in-depth research and keeping readers engaged on the pages for a longer time will make them explore other products on offer. Do not allow readers to finish with your blog. Keep them going from one source to the other. Create unique and attractive newsletter templates. Guest blog posts add value to your brand. It offers a third-party view of how people look at your brand and establishes greater confidence in the brand. Spur your blog with graphic designs, keep adding blogs to your website depending on the hosting platform.
Videos are another interesting way of attracting your audience. Motion pictures have always been more appealing to people and can make an impact in the shortest span. Content marketing build potential for storytelling and passive sales messaging. The most expansive form of marketing today is video marketing. You no longer require high-end cameras, but the involvement is cumbersome with scriptwriting, shooting, characters, editing. If animated, an animation studio production support etc. If the goal is to visualize you can create slide shares instead for that would cost less. The purpose of content marketing is to reach out to your customers effectively and significantly.
Blog posts are repetitive writing on subjects, e-books, guides, templates, and white papers are research-based and created with detailed analysis of subjects. These downloadable contents are made for a particular purpose and create awareness on pain points that are promotional and targeted to resolve reflective circumspection of an impending crisis and offers resistance through various hypothetical methods that create value for the targeted audience.
Email marketing
Following your contact database, these are customers that you’ve been maintaining a relationship for a long time. They have been through your sales funnel and are regarded as your potential customers. But you cannot sit back and relax even when it comes to them. Pushing your sales to them is probably easier and keeping them updated with monthly newsletters over weekly is a good way of reminding them of your presence and giving them a briefing on your latest offerings. This is organic and cost-effective communication. It strengthens your relationship with your customers. You can add a personal touch to each email related to your target customer. You can analyze the performance of the email and the click-through rate. More email addresses will enrich your email database. You must be prudent in your email marketing endeavor to not irritate your customers by sending too many emails. The risk of unsubscribing is a consequence that looms behind every email sent or directing emails into spam. The discretion of the customer should be tested with caution. The tracking method is a huge benefit with a ready view into the customer response and how far can you go with your email marketing on the defined customer segments.
Create a social media marketing channel.
As mentioned above social media has been promoted to the most powerful driver in digital marketing not just for organic traffic but also for paid visits. Facebook is one of the largest influencers in the social media channels and captures the lion’s share when it comes to user engagement, closely followed by YouTube. People love the video content published daily on YouTube. Your audience is ready to receive you in these channels so that decreases the effort of finding them. With PPC ads you can confirm that a section of the population will be interested in whatever you have posted. Creating better engagement, you can initiate interaction with your desired audience. Complete analytics of the performance of your paid advertisement will offer greater insight. Facebook is an affordable digital marketing channel and advertising through paid ads is cheaper here. However, there can be some impediments to your success as the channel that you choose for advertising may not be the best platform to maximize your reach. Therefore, knowing the right channel where you should post your paid ads is essential and for that, a professional opinion from a digital marketing agency will prove to be helpful.
When searching for the most powerful digital marketing channel some would say that Search Engine Optimization SEO has no competition.
Millions of people are searching every minute on the search engine and the hunt is endless on various information they are seeking. Solving their queries, the search engine navigates the page indexes of various websites and content available on the Internet to help searchers find appropriate answers.
Have you wondered how the search engine works?
SEO is the lifeline of digital marketing as this is the most agile tool that helps to boost ranking, with the inclusion of keywords that are derived after intensive market research. Both on page and off page optimization, creating linkable assets, link building through organic means, optimizing content across all content related uploads on the Internet can dramatically augment your search rank and bridge the gap between the customer and the brand. Posting original content powered by strategic keywords within the content and title tags can make a significant impact on search engines. This is one of the most cost-effective marketing strategies. However, this is not an instant marketing initiative and takes years to establish its strength. It requires a continuous investment which may not be as big as an offline advertisement but taking time to bring the returns may seem a bit frustrating for companies. A continued hard work that goes through constant upgrades owing to the volatile nature of digital marketing is necessary. With professional help that keeps its keen eye on the market situation with advanced analytical tools, you can make a big difference to your brand through SEO.
Pay-Per-Click PPC
PPC is similar to SEO, except that SEO is organic and companies pay for PPC. The paid ads get a position at the top of the page above the organically listed links. The traffic from the organic listing is free while for paid ads there is a cost involved at each click. The paid search ad is placed in such a way that customers are directed towards the targeted keywords. The ads maintain various considerations such as the time of the day, a particular weekday, targeting locations, language, based on previous experiences. Using bullet points that find a ready response from the searcher, they become readily visible. They are highly trackable, have unrestricted use of keywords and are easily AB tested. Landing pages are mostly used for PPC, with a call-to-action button that tracks suitable customers. However, these are expensive ads and poor management will not deliver the desired results. The ads should be optimized before posting. Competitive keywords can prove to be expensive also competitors learn about your strategies which makes your marketing initiative transparent. You can learn about your audience better and pick up on quality keywords. This can set up future conversion tracking.
Conclusion.
When it comes to listing the most important channels in digital marketing you cannot do without the above mentioned. Many other digital marketing initiatives prove extremely powerful and working with them build a strong digital marketing strategy. Define the most effective digital marketing road map with Carney Technologies. Visit https://www.carneytechnologies.com/ for a successful digital marketing journey.
