The strategy of digital marketing has led online businesses to a new level. Over the passing years, this method has brought a drastic change in the execution of business standards and helped the corporate sectors gain a large number of audience. The traditional marketing methods were also effective, but sadly, they no more make an influence on the current businesses. So to maintain a strong presence in your online business, you need to choose the right digital marketing channel.
From the hundreds of methods and marketing strategies, not all businesses can achieve results with the same technique. It also depends on your current business scenario and the category of customers you are targeting. The result also depends on your business type and the way you are implementing the plan. The marketing arena is open to new opportunities and tools that bring you close to your business goals. So today I am going to discuss the most popular and top digital marketing channels for promoting any business online.
Email Marketing
Email Marketing is the process of collecting contact information like email addresses and phone numbers of your potential customers, along with their permission to send them updates, newsletters, and other company information via email. Email marketing is one of the oldest yet effective procedure of digital marketing channels that gives an ROI to businesses of up to 4,300%. Most companies those use the email marketing technique has rated this method as exceptional for delivering ROI. It is not just a way of marketing but is a huge obligation. Since most people do not tend to share their contact details with anyone, you need to implement it in a smarter way. Make sure that subscribers can easily sign up from the homepage after clicking the subscription link from the email. Tell them what to expect from your business and the milestones you’re going to fulfil within a certain period. After the entire subscription process is over, send them an eye-catching welcome email to assure them the good things, along with sending them offers and exclusive content. The newsletter can be stunningly designed that can be done with tools and programs available on the web. Make sure it fits your brand, including your company logo and colours. One mistake that most companies commit is sending spam emails that can put your company into trouble. So send the bulk email only to those contacts who are on your email list. Not to forget the unsubscribe link, that should be offered to your subscribers along with reminding them how they got to your email list in the first place.
Social Media Marketing (SMM)
Social Media Marketing or SMM is a marketing process that implements a wide number of social networks to target audience and marketing communications. SMM mainly includes a number of actions like video sharing, media content sharing, sharing company news and updates, deals and offers for marketing purpose. Each and every content is related to the business products or services, and for positive results, the content should be highly engaging. For Social Media Marketing, the content should be well planned with a strategy so that your business can obtain the goals. It will lead to an increasing website traffic, developing conversations, raising brand awareness, building your brand identity, and improving interaction and communication with your audience. SMM involves a number of factors like content creation, blogging, using links, tracking competitors, and evaluating the success with analytics. For each factor, there are a number of tools and software available on the web those are specifically built to improve your business standards. Social Media Marketing is one of the modern forms of marketing strategies which is implemented by most of the online business to the current date. This form of marketing requires more listening than blabbering so that your audiences are more interested towards joining a discussion and interact with you via the posts. You’d need to focus on the quality of the content too rather paying heed to the quantity. It’s better to have ten genuine audiences than having 1000 followers who overlook your updates. Meanwhile, you’d need enough patience to wait for the increasing number of an audience since you cannot obtain them overnight. So halt for a long time to see brighter results rather quitting at once. The shared content should carry the ability to make an influence on the public, and this is why you’d need to plan the right way.
Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)
Search Engine Optimisation or SEO is the process of ranking your business website on the first pages of search engines to gain maximum leads and traffic from search engines. It means you have to properly optimise your page by detailing your hours of operation, uploading maximum media content, and categorising your business for local search. A number of local search engines allow you to place your business in multiple categories to help people understand what your business does. You need to fill up your complete contact information like name, address, and contact details across all listings so that audience can reach you instantly. SEO can be categorised with on-site SEO and off-site SEO. On-site SEO makes your website appear to both the search engine and the users. It improves the appearance of your website with background coding and technical setup that is viewable only by the search engines. Off-site SEO is promoting your website across the web to build brand awareness and improve rankings in search engines so that visitors can be pulled from third-party websites. Because unless you optimise your site with SEO, you won’t get any visitors. SEO results might not be instantly viewable, and it might take you weeks, or even months depending on your experience with it. For implementing the right SEO technique, you should get adapted to the algorithm updates to gain good rankings as search engines change over time. For this, you don’t need to submit your website to search engines because they instantly get notified when a website is created. With the right SEO, there are higher chances for your online business to get visible to the public.
Pay-Per-Click Advertising (PPC)
Pay-Per-Click (PPC) Advertising is the method of using search engine advertising to generate maximum clicks to your website. You must have seen the sponsored ads on the front page of Google search engines, tagged with an ‘Ad’ icon or shown under the ‘Sponsored’ label; those are the PPC, specifically known as Google Adwords PPC. When your ad is clicked by a visitor, the page redirects the visitor to your website, for which in return you’d need to pay a minimal fee to the search engine. When your PPC campaign runs smoothly, the fee will be the slightest because your visitors will be increasing over time compared to what you pay for it. PPC is helpful to search engine visitors because they can instantly find what they are actually seeking. If your ad or business is properly optimised in the right category, then the visitor will instantly find it and click on it. PPC is also helpful to advertisers who get a medium to put their message to the audience who are actively seeking their product. With an effective PPC campaign, Google rewards greater performance and results because the better your ads are, the greater your click-through rates lower your costs.
Display Advertising
Display ads include text, audio, and video banner ads those are displayed on a website. These ads help businesses monetize their website traffic, and advertisers pay to have their banners promoted alongside the page content. Earlier, the implementation of display advertising lacked the proper strategy and value, and hence, the online businesses couldn’t do well. But with the advancement of technology, display advertising threw a new light and today, it is considered as one of the best channels of digital marketing. In this mobile phone oriented world, display advertising has taken over the apps and started in-app advertising to gain benefit in local businesses. It helps businesses target the geographic audience and deliver a better user experience, allowing users to take actions like click to call, save coupons, get directions, etc. Secondly, with Facebook advertising, thousands of businesses have obtained customer engagement and new leads with leveraged display ads which are viewable in user’s feed. And since most Facebook users are using mobile devices, the ads displayed on the site has become an effective way to reach consumers along with, creating awareness about your business online. It helps businesses get direct responses like in-person visits and calls from Facebook display ads.
Content Marketing
Content Marketing is the process of creating and distributing content consistently which is relevant to people who are within a business’s target audience. The goal of content marketing is to convince a prospect to engage with your business even when you are not a pro writer. So what, writers can be easily hired for content marketing jobs and hence, this can be beneficial to your business. A good content marketing helps boost brand awareness if it is consistently done. Therefore you need to publish fresh and unique content regularly to gain more opportunities from the targeted market. With maximum postings, your brand will become more familiar with the audience so that they are bound to do business with you. Content marketing helps build a brand identity and a trusted expert to educate the public about your services and products. With this strategy, you can present your business and help customers learn the Whats and Hows of your business. It makes an influence on the public and clarifies the doubt of the consumer so that he/she can relate their story to your services and find a solution in it. The content works as a guide and helps the consumer through their purchases and evaluations and results in maximum sales. With the banner ads, PPC ads, SEO, you’d require a space where you can explain people about your business. When a lead clicks on a banner ad, the link should redirect him/her to a certain page that explains the displayed ad. In such a scenario, the content would be the perfect guide that would lead to sales. The content also boosts search engine rankings of your business and keeps your business website fresh and updated.
Mobile Advertising
Mobile Advertising has become a significant form of business advertising in the recent years. Since Google and Facebook have moved more of their revenues to mobile, the trend has been growing and has become a preference for online businesses. A native mobile ad has the power to generate more leads and is viewable on any responsive website which would be relevant to the topic and audience. Unlike the Google Ads which may or may not be relevant to the page content, the native ads that appear on blogs and websites encourage the user to click on them. And in case this process fails to work, there’s an alternative option to partner with a mobile display advertising agency. These agencies will help you create a catalogue of products for a minimum cost, and the ads are handled by the partner. If you have a local business, then the geolocation apps will help others easily find your business. For example, if you are running a local coffee shop, then placing your location in Google Maps with the correct area and pin code will help coffee lovers easily find your place. It can lead to maximum customers and sales to your business, and you will potentially gain more profit. Another form of mobile advertising is the use of QR codes those are mostly used in retail shops and grocery items. The code is scanned during the checkout, and it proves to be beneficial to your business if used correctly.
Affiliate Marketing
Last but not the least, affiliate Marketing has been one of the oldest forms of business marketing where the site owner links to a merchant’s product and receive a commission upon the product sale. However, this process does not always work, and you might need to apply some SEO strategies to implement it correctly. Affiliate marketing helps boost your brand exposure, and this field is highly competitive. You’ll need some banners and links to the merchant’s product and set your commission rates. Initially, the payout might be lower depending on the merchant, but this will certainly help you gain some idea and strategy. When a visitor clicks on those banners and purchases the merchant’s product with that specific link, you’ll be paid a certain amount as commission. Mostly, smaller businesses use the affiliate banners to spread a word about their services and to find targeted audience. However, some of them also offer higher commission rates, and this motivates affiliate marketers to join the program and promote their business.
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Hi Reji,
Thanks for this wonderful post. I am beginning to see social media engagement in a new perspective. There are some of this rules I have not been applying in growing my community, but my observations of some online influencers show that they are really working. I will do my best to see how I can improve.This article is worth a webinar. Thanks for sharing.
Thanks
Taiwo Emayosan
Hi Taiwo,
Thanks for the visit and the comment. Glad that you find the post very useful. Looking forward to see you again.
Best regards
Reji Stephenson
Hello Reji, such great ways to promote business online. No matter, what type of business you run as a business owner, marketing is very crucial to achieve success. There are plenty of ways to promote business online successfully.
Hi Ema,
Glad to see you for the first time in this blog and thank you so much for the same. Hoping to hear your insights again in future too!
Cheers
Reji Stephenson
Hey Reji,
These are really effective marketing channels to increase our business branding.
I think the most important thing is knowing our audience and which medium they prefer. For example – Women love Pinterest and any business who wants to target women can get more engagement on Pinterest. You have listed marketing channels which are really helpful for business. With targeting, segmenting and testing we can get get best results out of each marketing medium.
Thanks for this informative post Reji.
Yogesh Shinde recently posted…Sumome WordPress plugin review – Suite of free essential website tools
Hi Yogesh,
Thanks for your valuable presence. I totally agree with your point that knowing the audience plays an important role when we select any method for promoting the business through different digital marketing channels.
Have a great time blogging.
Keep sharing your insights.
Best regards
Reji Stephenson
Hello Reji,
Thank you for sharing your valuable and informative article, your article is very helpful as I am new to this field and hope to have more worthy articles like this ahead..
Thanks
Sonali
Hi Sonali,
Thanks for the visit and glad that you liked the article. Looking forward to see you again with your insights.
Reji Stephenson
Hi Reji,
Great article you almost covered all the marketing channels. Above all Social Media Marketing channel and content Marketing channels are the ones that I preferred most. With Social media marketing is quite amazing that this channel allows us to reach out to out target audience (Groups/ communities) and leverage the best out of it. SMM is also used for influencer marketing, We can reach out to industry experts and asks then to give us a quote or review our product. It is one place where we can interact without target audience and provide real-time solution to their pain points
Thanks
Siddharth Rajsekhar
Hi Siddharth,
Glad to see you for the first time in this blog. I know you are an expert when it comes to social media marketing. Looking forward to your value added insights in future too. Have a great time blogging
Best regards
Reji Stephenson
Dear Sir,
Thank you so much for sharing this important points about the promotion of online business with us.
Thanks for the visit and the encouraging words.
Thanks for sharing such a wonderful post with us.
More than 3.2 billion Email Accounts are active up to today’s date, and email marketing is one of most effective and profitable way of turning prospects into business. With the use of email marketing tools like “Inbox Blueprint 2.0”, we can manage the email marketing campaign in more effective manner.
But we can not ignore the social media, because more peoples are now using the social media.
Hi Nisha,
Thanks for the visit and the comment. Looking forward to see your insights again in this blog.
Cheers
Reji Stephenson
Thanks for sharing this great post.
You are most welcome.