The traditional methods of marketing are not much effective and applicable in the present scenario. There are n number of new markets and opportunities that are only attainable through the digital marketing channels. It is quite important for a brand or business to create a strong online presence so that you can become very competitive and reach out to the targeted audiences. But because of a large number of tools available in the market, the marketers suffer from various marketing channel challenges.
The most complicated challenge that every entrepreneur faces is finding an optimum marketing channel. Your this decision will either lead you to the breakdown or to the success.
It is a totally normal question that from where should I start marketing? How to pick the perfect channel?
Well, I can tell you exactly where and how to start!
For answering this question, you need to answer two other questions first. Don’t worry, the answers are quite obvious but we have to reach there by following a process.
Here are the questions:
- Who are your customers?
- Where do they hang out?
When you will answer these questions, you will easily get the answer of our major question.
Let me help you in answering them. Start.
Who are your customers?
You need to figure out who are the ones that are going to buy your products and services.
Pick one fellow who is likely to purchase your product. Assume you are having your pet care service center in San Diego. To be more specific, you are providing cat sitting services in South Bay.
Okay. Your customer is Isabella Fox, a 31 year old lady who is having a Persian cat, a software engineer in a renowned company and you are going to take care of her cat whenever she is at work.
Believe me, these facts are super helpful for answering the marketing channel question.
Where do they hang out?
By answering the first question, we have answered this question also.
Isabella hangs physically in her company and her home, obviously.
She must be hanging somewhere online too.
She hangs out here:
It’s facebook page of persian cats having 4,576 likes. Here, people add lovely pictures of their cats.
It’s a happening place!
So, according to the above answers, what should be the perfect digital marketing channel for your cat sitting services in South Bay?
It’s quite obvious. Facebook!
Bravo.
You have selected the marketing channel for your business!
But facebook may not be an ideal platform for every business. You need to answer the two above mentioned questions every time you wish to find the marketing channel.
Remember, your platforms can be different from my business. Try to initiate market your business either in the form of internet marketing or a word of mouth.
For choosing the marketing channel, it’s also important to understand each channel in detail. Let’s get started:
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Contents
EMAIL MARKETING
It is one of the most cost effective solutions for the business that gives the power of reaching to the audience at the place where they visit every day i.e. their inbox. It has the most wider reach than any other service on the web. When you have the audience of people who are interested in hearing from you, it’s worth it to send updates to them. With email marketing, you will get to know the immediate results and you will be able to know how individual campaigns are performing.
- GOOGLE ADWORDS/PPC
Advertising channels that are paid like Pay-Per-Click advertising provide highly desired traffic of your potential customers that too in a short period of time. Its results depend upon the investment in bidding and placements of ads. The advertising budget will be in your control that how much money you want to spend for a day, week or a month to run your PPC ads. The effectiveness depends on how perfectly you choose the keywords, visual and contextual information for customers.
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SEO
It is the most capable marketing outlet that can attract more qualified customers and leads to your business. When people search for your services and products, you obviously want to come first in the search results. There is more value for appearing in search results for your keywords. It rewards your business at much higher rate than any other traditional marketing channel.
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SMM
Using Social Media for your marketing business will enhance your brand recognition as you will be engaging with a large number of audience. Simply attracting the audience to your content will increase brand awareness and build a reputation of your business. As every time there will be a new network of individuals, there are more chances to get potential customers. And if you are doing right, you will end up in building a real relationship with the customers.
- Facebook – Facebook is a good platform for any kind of Business. You just need to find out that on which pages and groups do your customers stay frequently.
- LinkedIn – If you want to reach to the largest number of professionals, business owners and highly skilled targeted customers then Linkedin is perfect for you.
- Twitter – If you are just a startup and want to reach to larger audience, then twitter is for you and specifically for building fast brand awareness.
- Google+ – This is also good to reach B2B and business users. For this, you should learn that how to create a good presence on Google+ as it will affect the SEO in coming future.
- Pinterest – This social networking channel is perfect if you want to focus on visuals for the promotion of your brands and business. Most of the users here are women so if this is your market then SMM on Pinterest is the best thing for you.
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CONTENT MARKETING
Content marketing increases domain authority and inbound links, prepares material for social media marketing campaign, and encourage more email sign ups. It is present everywhere you look and listen. This is the way of creating a free and shareable content with the audience to convert them into customers and finally into repeat buyers.
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AFFILIATE MARKETING
It is very cost effective sales strategy in which they are giving commission to the person or “affiliate” who is generating leads and sales. If you want to get more global, you don’t need to hire someone from all locations. You will just need some affiliate marketers who will promote your business for some percentage of commission when they sell your product. However, not all products and services are suitable for this.
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ONLINE PUBLIC RELATIONS
Its main purpose is to develop promotional content so we can consider it as a part of content marketing. It is used for enhancing branding and traffic by exposure in PR networks. Some of the channels are free while the other requires subscription fees before publication as a press release.
Elucidate Your Company Goal To Select The Marketing Channel
The digital marketing channels listed above are independently available for business owners. You can choose one or a combination of them as an overall digital marketing campaign. The main aspect is understanding your business before the selection process of your platforms.
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BRAND AWARENESS
If your goal is to make your audience familiar with your brand, business, services or products then you should use digital marketing channels to build brand awareness. Following channels are helpful for you:
- Social Media Channels like Facebook, Twitter, and Google+.
- Video promotional channels like YouTube and Vimeo.
- Visual promotional channels like Instagram and Pinterest.
- Engaging with targeted audience
- Event participation
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LEAD GENERATION
Some of the businesses use digital marketing specifically to generate leads and connect with the targeted audience. They just want to generate leads and will do the follow-up and engagement by directly communicating with them. The marketing channels that are good for lead generation are:
- Pay-Per-Click Advertising
- Search Engine Optimization
- Blogging
- Email Marketing
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SALES GENERATION
The majority of businesses are generating sales of their products and services through online channels. This is because people are more comfortable with the e-commerce websites and are open to the idea of purchasing all the products online. If you are having online store or products to sell on online, then following channels can help you:
- Facebook Storefront
- Affiliate Marketing
- Amazon Resellers
- Google Shopping Feeds
- Search Engine Optimization
- others.
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TRAFFIC GENERATION
There are websites that actually to not sell and provide any information. They monetize their sites by online contextual and display advertising. To generate traffic, they will need a large amount of traffic that can click on these ads. The perfect channels for this are SEO and content marketing.
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TEACH YOUR TARGETED AUDIENCE
A business that involves new products and services that are very promising but still fails. This is because you are not having an established environment as people are less familiar with the products. For this, you should first acknowledge your customers so that they can understand the importance of products/services and the problems can be solved. Content Marketing, blogging and press release are ideal for this.
For generating the results, one cannot rely on a single marketing channel while establishing a digital marketing campaign. These channels have their own respective strengths and weaknesses like inappropriate niche or audiences. The perfect way would be relying on the combination. The only need is to match the correct channel with your business requirements.