Digital Marketing Channels that Bring the Best Results
Companies today understand the power of using the best digital marketing channels to promote their brand. Since most consumers these days look to their smartphones for all they need, it’s impossible to disregard the significance of online marketing. Using digital marketing channels is not only a consideration for E-commerce sites and online retailers but a necessary evil for all businesses and required for survival.
Digital Marketing Channels
It’s very important to utilize the best digital marketing channels over traditional marketing because they produce better ROI. You are encouraged to use them strategically to get your company, business or service the widest audience it can generate. From there it is a matter of creating compelling offers and value, to increase sales. Some digital marketing channels are debated to be more effective than others. However, the best digital marketing strategy is to consider each channel objectively to find out which ones align best with your brand’s messaging.
Email Marketing Channel
Email marketing is usually seen to be very effective amongst most business owners and especially online retail websites. Specialized emails with offers and discounts seem to lure repeat customers and regular users. According to a survey carried out by the website Search Engine Journal, 14% of those polled said that emails are the best digital marketing channel option for businesses, bringing companies real ROI and sales.
Email Marketing ROI
According to Statista, Email marketing and marketing automation have the highest ROI, based on 30% of the people surveyed. For 43% it generated medium ROIs, and for 17% it generated low ROIs.
B2B email marketing is said to be an effective way to build relationships and maintain continuous rapport with customers and potential clients. There is always a chance that if a customer sees the right offer or the right sale at the right time, it triggers a purchase.
Automating your communications with a triggered and drip emails is a cost-effective way to not only run a campaign but to also engage audiences constantly. Segmenting your lists cab help to tailor the emails to the customer’s specific needs and wants. Email segmentation options can help pinpoint the nature of the customer and target consumer types, which helps the buyer’s journey reach completion.
The cons associated with this approach are obvious, but necessary to shine a light on. Email marketing can alienate consumers and irritate them. Constant emails can put them off and lead them to unsubscribe from your email database. Active spam filters will kill off the emails altogether so that the customer’s main inbox isn’t flooded with email newsletters.
Email marketing can be very effective at creating loyal customers, but it needs to be done right. This can be done by finding the right balance so emails can work as a legitimate digital marketing channel. Offering extreme value, investing in email automation services and professionally made templates that can all boost deliverability.
Social Media Marketing Channel
Social media marketing is now undeniably an effective digital marketing tool. Any business that doesn’t have a presence on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, or Pinterest is losing out on potential customers. Social media pages are among the most visited pages on the Internet with millions of users. Reddit and Facebook generate billions of visitors every month, while Instagram and Snapchat and Twitter rack up hundreds of millions of visitors each month.
Social Media Marketing ROI
According to Statista, 39% of those surveyed said that social media can organically generate medium ROIs and 20% said the same for high ROIs. For paid ads, both percentages fell to 36% and 17% respectively.
In order to take advantage of this natural traffic, many companies have set up pages and groups on these social networks to market their products online. These range from mobile games to make up to clothes to cars, etc.
Advantages & Disadvantages of Social Media Marketing
Your presence on social media channels has a great effect on your business. It allows you to be more accessible to customers with the chance to interact on a more personal level. You can respond to relevant news and conversations and allows you to fix issues that may arise, in real-time. These interactions are received positively by people and translate into loyalty and sales.
If managed well, social media marketing strategies can also be a very affordable marketing tool. It can allow your user and customer base to grow without the need for old school flyer ads or a listing in the YellowPages phone book. You can simply post things, and people can share and like them. Plus, the Facebook Ad Network allows you to purchase cheap Facebook ads that allow you to target and reach a great number of people on a shoestring budget. This is all done through the Facebook Ads Manager. As Instagram is now owned by Facebook, your Facebook ads can be included in Instagram as well.
Some disadvantage of social media marketing is that it may be difficult to reach your customers with so much noise on social media. As well, social media attracts spammers and hate comments which can fuel negativity within the comment section or worse on your business reviews. It’s also hard to measure the overall ROI and success for your social media efforts.
Hence it’s good to follow these 4 tips when it comes to marketing on social media.
- Post regularly and stick to a schedule so that people expect when you will be posting.
- Post new content and refrain from posting old stuff repeatedly.
- Observe the pain points that users often talk about.
- Fix the problems that people point out and focus on things that they love as well.
- Respond to your customers quickly and with care.
Google Organic Search Traffic
Billions of people use website search engines every day to answer their questions and solve their problems. Organic Search Traffic is still one of the best digital marketing channels for the simple reason that it’s a way to build up traffic to your website. You can also rank on Search Engines for many keyword search phrases, to help answer questions in your industry.
Advantages & Disadvantages of Organic Search Marketing
The biggest advantage of organic search marketing is that it opens you up to nearly every user in the world, barring a few countries where search engines are exclusive and controlled. It also provides the advantage of blogging and posting optimized content.
The traffic that a search engine generates is instrumental in converting customers because the links that appear on the first page of the search engine are considered to be very authoritative.
Organic Search ROI
Disadvantages of the search marketing channel are that it can be a hit or a miss. It can’t guarantee you ROI as a coordinated ad campaign can. It is an inexpensive method of advertising but promises you very small returns. According to a survey by Ascend2, while 31% of people said that it was an effective marketing tool, 39% said that it was also very difficult to execute.
Mobile Marketing Channel
Mobile marketing is becoming more and more effective as a digital marketing channel. This is due to the presence of more smartphones. It is creating great opportunities for marketers to push their products on to consumers via text messaging.
Advantages & Disadvantages of Mobile Marketing
The advantages of mobile marketing are the way that it speeds up sales. It increases revenue while reducing costs and a positive mobile experience and increases loyalty. There’s also a “treasure trove” of data from smartphones that companies can use to market items to their customers effectively.
The disadvantages of this method include a lack of evidence of the mobile’s impact. It only has a few ways of measuring performance and conversion rates and is very difficult to track its impact across channels and devices.
According to a survey by Ascend2, 28% of people said mobile marketing is effective, but 34% said that it was difficult to implement. However, that is still more effective than the website, social media, and email marketing.
Mobile marketing puts you in direct contact with the user. Since more and more people are buying smartphones each day, it is logical that the best way to market products to them would be through the devices that they’re on most of the day.
Mobile Marketing ROI
According to statista, the number of smartphone users will grow from 2.1 billion in 2016 to 2.5 billion in 2019. Hence it’s important to focus on the devices that they’re all using repeatedly and increasingly.
Blogging and Website Marketing Channel
Blogs and personal websites are platforms which you can express yourself and give your readers something to chew on. Not only are they effective marketing tools for small and medium businesses but are very inexpensive ways of creating an audience without having to invest in ad campaigns and installing complicated software.
Blogging & Website Marketing ROI
According to Statista, 18% of people thought that website personalization and blogging generated low ROIs, while 26% and 16% thought that they generated medium and high ROIs. While that may not seem spectacular, it’s a small investment that can go a long way.
Advantages & Disadvantages of Blogging and Website Marketing
The advantages of blogging and website marketing are that they can help you reach your customers and readers with an informal tone. It sounds less like you’re trying to sell them something and more that you’re talking to them. The personal touch allows you to reach a lot more people that can become loyal customers than an ad ever could.
Blogging can even boost your SEO. You can and track the performance of your posts to see how many people are interested in you or your business. It won’t take you long to become a professional blogger which will increase brand awareness simply through good writing. Even if you hire a service to write your blogs, it will cost much less than a brand campaign or an advertisement.
One disadvantage of blogging is that it requires knowledge and implementation of SEO methods in order to get blogs to trend. It also requires clever writing and in-depth knowledge of keywords and categories. Consider hiring a marketing agency that specializes in blogging for that purpose.
Which Digital Marketing Channel is Best for Your Business?
It’s hard to say which digital marketing channel is best for your business. Consider the options presented in this article for a clear idea of what might work for businesses in general. If you participate in these digital marketing channels fully and correctly, they can generate great ROI for you! If you need some assistance with your digital marketing strategy and SEO optimization, contact Chris at SEOBANK (your local digital marketing agency) at 519-712-9340 for a free SEO consultation!
