When the first web-based ad banner was born, courtesy of an AT&T ad campaign.
50% of Internet users had clicked on it, giving the company a ton of advertising mileage.
Publishing an ad, which is known as a display ad, has been referred to as the earliest form of digital marketing.
Almost three decades after the iconic banner or display ad was launched, the industry has evolved beyond just ads.
A wide range of internet-based strategies that use digital marketing channels to deliver promotional content and offers.
Understanding of digital marketing channels:
Digital marketing channels are platforms that can be used to reach the target audience with information about the brand, the product or the service.
Utilizing these channels enables to help customers with any questions or challenges they may have while positioning the business well so that it can be one step closer to marketing goals.
However, not all digital marketing channels are designed for each and every business objective.
Effective digital marketing channels:
Websites (content marketing)
A website is a must-have tool for the business as it provides a dedicated platform where the public can be educated about the brand, products and services.
This requires a solid understanding of the target audience and an effective content marketing strategy.
Regardless of the size of the business, a website can give the business the online presence it needs to communicate and/or sell to potential customers.
In fact, another study showed that 69% of Americans have purchased an item online.
Whether the business is interested in e-commerce or something more service-oriented, be it B2C or B2B, should definitely invest in a website.
The website is an ideal channel for content marketing campaigns.
Through blog posts and announcements, provide current and potential customers with valuable and relevant content to help them resolve their pain points.
Websites have multimedia capabilities, different types of content can be easily distributed, from articles to infographics and even videos.
People consume content, having the right mix of these high-performing content types can exponentially increase site traffic and engagement.
Ultimately, this can result in better brand recognition, authority building, and new sales opportunities for the business.
The website (content) can help to increase organic traffic.
Naturally, people will lean towards the website in search of high-quality, relevant and insightful content that shows thought leadership.
Leading generation.
When people visit the site, it means that they are interested in learning more about the product or service, which makes them potential customers for the company.
To use websites: Best practices and main strategies:
- Create content assets in various formats.
- Certain types of content are most effective for a particular stage of the buying cycle.
- Promote content through social media and email marketing.
- Promoting the content makes it easier for the audience to find it and possibly share it with others on the network.
Email:
There are several reasons why it is so difficult to get rid of email as a channel that offers a medium to high ROI for the business, but the one thing that cannot be taken away from email is its versatility.
Although email may not be the newest technology available,
it allows applying the latest trends in content marketing,
such as personalization and automation, without hurting the marketing budget.
Email also has the ability to support other marketing goals, so it is not surprising that 73% and 63% of B2B marketers say that email is their primary tool for generating leads and generating income, respectively.
Beyond lead generation and revenue, email helps in many more ways as follows:
- An email has become so widespread that it reached 3.9 billion users in 2020, and the number is expected to rise to 4.3 billion users by 2023 – more than half of the world’s population!
- Email offers the best returns, with 73% of survey respondents rating the channel as excellent, compared to SEO and paid search at 72% and 67%, respectively.
- For every $ 1 spent on email marketing, expect an average return on investment of $ 42.
- Up to 62% of openings are made on a mobile device, compared to 10% on a desktop computer.
Email can help brand awareness and conversion.
- Emails are delivered directly to users’ inboxes, allowing them to deliver branded content and for marketing purposes.
- This makes email ideal for driving conversions and ultimately business growth and success.
- Lead breeding.
- A series of emails sent to customers is helpful in establishing rapport and building trust with them.
- ROI. Statistical data shows that email remains undefeated as the channel that generates the highest ROI among any other marketing tactic.
Use email: Best practices and main strategies.
- Create time-sensitive headlines.
- This method encourages those on the contact list to take advantage of promotional offers before they end.
- Customize email marketing campaigns.
- A specific action, such as visiting product pages or signing up for a free trial, sending triggered emails that contain the correct message based on where they are in the purchase cycle.
- Reserve email for customer feedback and assistance.
- Good customer service is always a good way to increase sales.
- From surveys to reviews to troubleshooting, the uses for email are virtually endless!
Social media:
Social media users hit the 3.81 billion mark.
From being a channel that people use to make personal connections, social media has become bigger, bigger and better than originally imagined.
Communicate with potential buyers involving them in a more personal and authentic way.
It’s easier to direct efforts toward organic social media marketing, as the platform was initially designed to encourage engagement rather than sell to potential customers.
Spend time cultivating relationships with the target market to try to understand buyers’ needs and interests.
Help generate highly qualified leads on LinkedIn, Twitter, or Facebook, who represent 80%, 13%, and 7% of qualified B2B leads, respectively.
Boost Sales – Remember that social selling is not really about selling, so prioritize building a strong, positive relationship.
Social media can help customer engagement.
Engagement with the client
Social networks allow establishing a good relationship with the followers of the brand.
With social media, one can reinforce the image of the company by putting names to the faces and adding that human touch, which makes the brand more identifiable to the public.
Wider audience range.
Social media posts are easy to share, opening up word of mouth opportunities that can help increase the audience or customer base.
To use social networks: the best practices and the main strategies are to Be original.
- This applies to the approach and approach to be employed in creating the content.
- Creativity is an important factor in social commitment.
- Include hashtags in posts.
- The word spreads quickly when the # tag is used, allowing people to see and participate in the conversation.
Organic Search (SEO):
More than 75,000 Google search queries are made per second.
Imagine how many people are searching the internet! People use search engines to research, shop and entertain themselves – the opportunities for businesses are huge!
When potential customers or customers search for products or services, they tend to go with whoever is ranked higher.
Standing out from the competition at this stage means will be capturing new opportunities organically, driving a steady stream of leads down the sales funnel.
As long as modern SEO best practices (keyword research, blog post optimization, and linkable content creation) are adopted, improving search engine rankings will be much easier.
Organic search (SEO) can help to find rankings.
Since people primarily use search engines to search for information when purchasing products or services, producing quality and optimized content on a regular basis can boost search results.
Link building.
As to start to rank on search engine results pages (SERPs), expect backlinks from high-quality sites to follow.
Use the organic search: best practices and top strategies.
- Optimize the website with on-page and off-page optimization.
- On-page SEO includes choosing the right keywords and providing meta descriptions for the content, while off-page SEO involves link building techniques like guest posting.
- Together, on-page and off-page SEO create signals that Google can use to rank the site.
- Implement local SEO to market the business within the community and nearby areas.
- One of the ways to do local SEO is to constantly list the name, address and telephone number (NAP) of the company on the website, business directories and social media profile as they work like keywords that help Google and users to locate the business.
Payment search (SEM):
On the surface, it may seem inconceivable that paid search (also called SEM) has the potential to generate ROI.
The advantage of using paid search is that the ads are displayed on top of organic search results, making them more visible to users.
Even if have to pay each time a user clicks on the ad, there is still a lot of value, monetary and otherwise, to be gained from paid search.
Staying above the organic results means continuing to capture that compromised search engine before they have a chance to see the other options (the competitors).
For every $ 1 spent on Google Ads, get an average of $ 2 in return.
That’s 100% ROI directly on the exchange.
PPC results have also been found to get 150% more conversions than organic visitors.
Clearly, the paid search could represent a win-win situation for marketing campaigns.
Paid Search (SEM) can help brand awareness.
Ads that appear at the top of SERPs mean instant brand exposure and memory for target users.
Lead generation and conversions.
As with SEO, potential customers are looking for solutions to their problems, but the difference is that SEM involves less work.
With SEM, one can target ads to appear in front of motivated buyers based on demographics or location without the nitty-gritty of on-page or off-page SEO.
Use the paid search: best practices and top strategies.
- Use audience remarketing on Facebook.
- As the world’s largest social network, Facebook’s remarketing tools can be used to return people who have expressed interest in the ad but are not ready to buy yet.
- Direct users who click on the ads to the correct places on the website, such as landing pages that contain a contact form.
- Collect personal information from visitors and use it to engage them in marketing campaigns.
- Related Content: A Complete Guide to SEM (Paid Search), SEM Strategies for Business, Advantages and Disadvantages of Paid Search Advertising, and Paid Search Optimizations.
Mobile:
The number of mobile phone users is increasing day by day and this trend is expected to continue in the coming years.
It makes sense to offer promotional content to mobile device users.
For geotargeting strategies where location information is used to more conveniently recommend products or services, the customer experience can also be constantly improved.
Smartphone users also spend 90% of their mobile time using apps and games, making mobile apps a profitable marketing channel.
Last but not least, mobile devices can collect customer data, which can then be used to map out a mobile marketing strategy that produces results.
Mobile devices can help increase sales.
- Mobile shopping is all the rage, which makes mobile marketing a core strategy, especially if it is a retail business.
- Creating demand for the product/service while driving brand equity.
- Modern consumers prefer companies that can deliver the information they want or need in real-time, directly to their mobile devices.
Use mobile:
- Best practices and main strategies.
- Create a website or mobile app.
- A website or app optimized for mobile viewing is critical to creating a positive and engaging user experience.
- Must-have features include fast-loading pages, compressed images, top-to-bottom scrolling, large buttons and font sizes, and the like.
- Explore mobile technologies like QR (Quick Response) codes that customers can scan to go to the website, access or save company details, pay for their purchases, anything to make customer interaction more instantaneous.
Display ads:
Display ads allow using images, audio, and video to better communicate the advertising message.
These are displayed on websites, email platforms, social media, and many other digital channels that offer ad placements, usually in the form of a banner.
Compared to search ads, display ads generally have a lower cost per click as there is more ad space available on the web than on a search engine.
The main difference is that keywords should not be targeted. The success of display advertising depends on how well the ad can be matched to the host website’s audience to drive conversions.
One of the best things about display ads is their ability to track users for retargeting.
For example, if a user lands on the website and doesn’t convert, follow up with a cookie and redirect them with a relevant display ad later.
It should come as no surprise to learn that with such contextual relevance, many more conversions will result at a lower cost per click (CPC).
Display ads can help brand awareness.
Since the ads are distributed through the Google Display Network (GDN), one can get access to millions of sites on the web, each with its own audience group.
Sales and conversion.
Ads can force visitors to take any action that wants them to take, whether it’s buying the product or downloading the business app.
To use display ads: best practices and top strategies.
- Highlight the Unique Selling Proposition (USP).
- Let customers know how the company can help them, whether it’s quality, value for money, a brand of customer service, that they can’t get anywhere else.
- Avoid hard-sell call-to-action (CTA) phrases.
- This is the first time that visitors have encountered the brand, so choose CTAs that focus more on the needs of the customers than the company.
Goal:
The channel to choose should be guided by what the marketing campaign should achieve, be it brand awareness, conversion, thought leadership, lead generation / nurturing, or ROI.
Budget:
Advertising expenses differ from channel to channel. Some offer tools that can be used for free, while others can only be used for a fee.
Others, like paid search, fall somewhere in between with the benefits of performance marketing, where they only pay when someone clicks on the ad.
Target audiences:
One way to target specific people is to know which channels they are most active or engaged in.
With this information, it is also easier to create content that interests the audience.
Competitors:
If the competitor is selling to customers through a particular marketing channel,
one can either go the same route and take advantage of the existing market for that channel or look elsewhere where there is less competition, although will also need to consider whether there are enough opportunities. to sell on less popular channels.
Functionality:
Depending on the size or nature of the business, don’t need all of those nice features that a particular digital marketing channel offers.
Consider starting with basic features and then scaling things once to see that they are worth investing in.
Integration:
Even if multiple digital channels are used in business marketing, it should be able to provide a seamless experience for users, where they can switch from one channel or device to another without any difficulty.
The best channels with the best results.
Different digital marketing channels work differently from each other and will therefore give different results.
The ideal scenario is that to try different channels and strategies to see which combination works best.
Take the time to measure key metrics and analyze whether the results are getting are helping maximize the ROI. Otherwise, feel free to adjust the marketing strategy in the future.