As a brand and business, you must make your presence online. To interact with your customers and to get more leads. From social media to content marketing to paid ads you have a wide variety of options to choose from. You can experiment with your options, choose what works best for you and negotiate the ones that are not working for you. But to save your time and to let you concentrate on the bigger picture. Here, we have mentioned the points you have to keep in mind while choosing your digital marketing channels. As well as the benefits of digital marketing channels and the risks and perils you will be facing if you choose the wrong digital marketing channels.
Now let’s give you an overview of things you have to make sure to check while choosing the best digital marketing channels.
Choosing the Right Digital Marketing Channels
At first make sure to know your customers, their likes and dislikes. Understand their preferences, the time most of your audience spend online and then prioritize the platform you want to be active in. Some of the best digital marketing channels include Social Media, Email, Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Pay Per Click (PPC).
1. Define Your Goals
Ask yourself as to what you want from the digital marketing channels. It might be brand awareness, more leads and sales, or to educate your visitors and customers and to generate traffic. So first you have to identify your business goal and choose the best channel that satisfies your expectation and helps you achieve your goal.
2. Revenue Model
The revenue model is basically where your company and brand plan for making a money profit which also includes identifying your target audience. Ways through which you are trying to sell your product to your customers and the challenges you will be facing in the process and all essential elements that you need. The two major approaches here include.
- Business to Business (B2B) It is where you as a brand sell your services and products to another business and they will resell your product to their audience.
- Business to consumers (B2C) It is the most common model where you as a business sell your service and product directly to your audience.
3. Digital Marketing Budget
The next step will be choosing your budget. It includes,
- Zero cost digital
- Average monthly budget
- In House/ Agency/Freelancer
4. Choosing the Channels
And the next important step is choosing your digital marketing channels. Which includes: Free channels and Paid channels. Free channels include search, social, content marketing, email messaging and ORM. Paid channels include online, influencer marketing and Marketplace.
If you are choosing B2C then your main business goal would be creating awareness among your audience. So for that, you can use –
- Business listing for search
- Facebook for social
- Glass for sending emails
- WhatsApp Business for chat and
- Google reviews for ORM.
If you are choosing B2B then your goal would be global lead generations. For that, you can use –
- Business listings for search
- LinkedIn for social
- MailChimp for email marketing
- WhatsApp Business for chat and
- LinkedIn recommendations for ORM
5. Track Your Results
The last and final step will be tracking your results. You can do this by web analytics, Social analytics and digital audit which covers enquiries, leads and conversions.
Risks and Perils of Choosing the Wrong Digital Marketing Channels
Every field and platform has its risks and perks. We have shared the common risks and problems that people face in digital marketing channels. So that you can make sure to not make the same mistakes while creating your brand.
- Investing in a website/ app without any research.
- Having a website/app without any optimization. Having an optimized profile allows more customer reach and also increases your customer’s satisfaction. So if you don’t optimize your profile and If they are not able to navigate the site easily and quickly without any complications. Then you will be a major risk and you will lose out on your customers.
- Spending too much money on paid ads without a proper strategy.
- Having a social media account without a content strategy. When you create a social media account for your brand you must make sure that you use the right set of hashtags and post content that is relevant to your niche. You should also post your content at the right time so that your content reaches your audience when they are more active on social media.
- Expecting results overnight. If you are not consistent and if you don’t interact with your audience regularly then you might not get the desired result.
Pros and Cons of Digital Marketing Channels
Pros
The pros of Digital Marketing channels is that –
- It is free. Yes, there are certain paid channels but most of them are free.
- It helps you in building authority.
- It acts as a medium through which you can reach your target audience easily and effectively.
- It helps in building trust with your audience and customers. Creating a great reputation for your brand and business.
- It leads to direct conversions.`
- More reach ultimately leads to more customers.
- You can check the results and how your website and other platforms have been performing through web analysis. And can also make changes to improve customer experience.
- It is customizable as per your needs and enables personalization.
Though digital marketing has fewer cons we thought of including it for better understanding.
Cons
- It takes some time for you to see the results. So patience is the key.
- Opportunity loss.
- You have to put in a lot of effort and be consistent to achieve the desired result.
- Since you are open to feedback you might also receive criticism and negative comments which will deteriorate your brand’s reputation.
- Too much competition. So you must make sure to provide unique content which is useful to your audience and also make you stand out from your competitors.
- No face-to-face interaction and no direct selling.
