Facebook, YouTube, Google Search, Your Website, SEO, Paid Search, Funnels – the amount of digital channels you have the option of marketing your business on can get overwhelming, fast.
Digital marketing consists of marketing that takes place on any type of technology device. But how on earth does it apply to your business?
What channels should we consider for digital marketing?
Before answering this question, it is essential to understand who your audience is, what problem they have and how to best communicate your solution to your audience. Depending on your target persona, depends on where you should focus your digital marketing efforts. Let’s take a deep dive into several different digital channels:
Search Engine Optimization – SEO
Optimizing your website on a consistent basis generates warm, high quality traffic which converts into leads or sales for your business. SEO is a long-term digital marketing channel, meaning your results won’t happen overnight – but when you do see them, they are typically the best out of several digital marketing channels.
Social Media Marketing
As your business focuses on identifying which digital marketing channels are important for your target persona, understanding which social media marketing platforms will generate the best results for your business is essential. For example, if you are a B2B business, it is highly unlikely that your target audience will be hanging out on Pinterest.
Social media marketing is a digital channel that allows your brand to tell a story, build a community and humanize your brand across your audience. Most social media platforms also have paid advertising that you can utilize to hyper target your audience in order to generate revenue for your business.
Email Marketing
Sixty-one percent of SMBs report that more than half of their revenue comes from repeat customers, rather than new business. (Fivestars)
Building an email list is the first step to monetizing email marketing for your business. You might be thinking “what would I write about in the email campaigns?” Always provide value, educate, offer insight, show proof using testimonials and create promotions for your email campaigns.
Email marketing is also a cost effective way to jump into digital marketing. Without needing to make large investments on ads – email marketing consistently drives results while also being budget friendly for SMBs.
Search Engine Marketing
Looking for quick leads or business? Search Engine Marketing, or SEM is a great way to generate paid traffic. By bidding on keyword phrases that people type into search engines you can increase your website’s exposure using paid search. Don’t have time to wait several months to start ranking in Google search results, consider this channel to jump to the top of the rankings.
SEM also targets warm traffic, much like SEO because you are targeting keywords that are relevant to your business.
Is Digital Marketing the Same for Every Business?
Ab-so-lute-ly not! Every business is different. Goals are different. Audience is different. And digital marketing capacity and budget is different.
Therefore, take a step back and look at your business’s short term and long term goals. Then craft a digital marketing strategy that aligns with your business.
Digital marketing sounds great, but what are the benefits?
Tracking – What if you could tie a purchase to a specific marketing campaign, channel or ad dollar? Because you are marketing your business online, you can.
Cost – Typically running digital marketing campaigns you can make your total budget go much farther than traditional marketing methods like radio, billboards and print.
Faster Results – With some digital marketing channels, like SEM and paid ad campaigns, you can get faster results for your business and see a quicker ROI
Which Channels Should I Focus On?
When it comes to your business, it depends on several factors. Your audience, budget and long-term business goals impact which channels to focus on. The great thing about digital marketing is that you can start small and expand to other channels as your business continues to grow.