What Digital Marketing Channels Should You Focus On?
Choosing the Right Channel
The best marketing channels for your business will depend on your audience, budget and the message you want to get across.
Once you have reviewed this, then you can define which platforms to use for marketing your business.
Most Effective Marketing Channels
Here are some of our recommendations for the best digital marketing channels. They are not firm requirements and may not work for every business, but they are our top picks for most companies.
Website
Some businesses don’t think of their website as a marketing channel, but in reality, it may be the most important one.
This is where users will come when they’re interested in learning more about your business, and if they can’t find answers to their questions quickly, they won’t stick around long enough to find out.
Your site should offer a good first impression, and it should clearly represent your business, brand, products and services in the way you want.
SEO & Content
- Keyword Research
- Onsite Factors (content, meta title, meta description)
- Offsite Factors (links back to the website e.g Google My Business)
- Updating Content Regularly (blogs, testimonials, images etc)
People use search engines to look for information about a brand, product or services, and up to 59% of search engine users each month find a local business to satisfy a particular need. SEO involves several activities like keyword research, making use of both on-page and off-page optimisation, blogs/articles (content), a Google My Business account, organic link building and other related activities.
Content marketing is a critical ongoing SEO technique you can use. It's kind of like a savings account. As time goes on, you get compounding interest, making it even more valuable. Your evergreen posts can offer SEO benefits for a very long time to come as people continue to search them out, and all of your content can provide valuable relationship building and lead generation capabilities.
Social Media
Customers are actively seeking out brands they like or are interested in, and increasing numbers of users are taking to social media to research or make buying decisions.
The social media you choose to go on depends on your target audience and your resources available. Selecting a small number of networks will produce better results than trying to maintain a presence on every platform.
- Google My Business
Email Marketing
Email marketing is one of the best methods of direct response marketing there is. Users have opted into hearing from you, so they're more willing to open those messages to learn about the latest products, sales and how to benefit from them. According to Campaign Monitor, email marketing typically drives ROI between 3,800 and 4,400%, when done effectively.
PPC (Pay Per Click)
Organic traffic is great for building an audience. However, paid advertising works well for driving highly targeted traffic of potential customers within a short period. The effectiveness of PPC ads relies on how well you choose your keywords for targeting potential customers as well as optimising the visual and contextual information in your ads.
Common PPC ads include:
- Google Search Ad
- Google Display Ad
- Google Remarketing
- Facebook/Instagram Image/Video Ads
- Facebook/Instagram Retargeting
YouTube
YouTube is considered the world's second-largest search engine.
Many people find it easier to watch a video to learn how to perform a task, then to read content on the same topic.
According to Google, "how-to" searches on YouTube have been increasing by 70% year on year. If you can create clear how-to content, it's important to add these to a branded YouTube account.
If you need any help with choosing what channels to go on, or you want to know how to fit in a new channel with your overall marketing strategy get in touch.
Studio Thoughts
This is one of the many amazing benefits of having one of these listings. You’re getting FREE ad on the first page of Google.
The example below shows a search for a cat sitter in Christchurch. The top results are Google Ads, and then in a box with the Google Map are the Google My Business listings showing reviews and key contact information in actionable formats (meaning you can click through to the website, or on a mobile click to call the business instantly).
But just like any other marketing channel, it might not be the perfect fit for your brand.
If you're wanting to target a younger demographic 25-35, Instagram has a better engagement rate for that age group than Facebook, which generally results in higher quality leads to a website. If you're a product based company, you can also create shoppable images which a person can purchase directly from on Instagram :- making it even easier for the end user.