Marketing Channels to Help You Drive Your Digital Strategy

Building a digital strategy is a tricky thing with all the marketing channels there are.

You have to choose the ones your target audience is on, use the right keywords, write the right content, and make sure your website meets the expectations of picky Internet users.

To help you out, we have gathered a list of marketing channels that will drive your business online and help you communicate with the right people at the right time and place.

What Is a Marketing Channel?

A marketing channel is a platform, source, event, etc., offline or online, that connects you to your target audience and gives a chance to market your business. 

Such channels help companies communicate their offers to potential buyers and sell their products and services.

So, how to find the best marketing channels for your business?

Your choice depends mostly on the favorite location of your target audience. Speaking of social media choices, for example, if they are 35+ readers, maybe Facebook is the first pick for you. If they are 18-30 years old and consume visual content more, Instagram is a great choice. 

It’s a very top-of-the-head explanation, of course, because each TA is unique, and there are more factors than just a person’s age.

Your campaign goals, type of business, and other aspects also influence the final choice.

The most effective marketing channels for your business will help you:

• Raise awareness
• Connect and communicate with TA
• Increase the number and improve the quality of leads
• Take your niche in the industry

Especially if you’ve never marketed your business online, you require several suitable channels. When you promote through them, you will find out a lot about your target audience, which may open your eyes to a lot of potential issues.

But first, you need to choose a set of channels suitable for your company, your goals, and your audience. It’s crucial for your success.

8 Marketing Channels for an Amped Up Digital Strategy

Here are the 8 top marketing channels you can choose from to make friends with your TA and increase sales.

1. Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

When it comes to information research, entertainment, and shopping, Google is definitely one of the first places people go. For them to easily find your business on the search list, it has to be at least in TOP-5. The closer to the first place, the better.

To achieve this goal and use search engines as one of the most effective marketing channels, you need to optimize your website. 

The basics of SEO or search engine optimization is to use relevant keywords and understand the search intent of your target audience. 

Instead of guessing on your own, you can use digital tools to suggest keywords and find out the best queries that match the search intent of your potential customers. 

One great option is to use SE Ranking that offers the Keyword Suggestion Tool that will show you the most relevant keywords to the seed term you specify, as well as long-tail options.

You can research each keyword and see it:

• CPC (cost per click)
• Difficulty score
• Google Ads competition
• SERP Features, and more.

Img: SE Ranking

By researching keywords and using the most relevant ones, matching search intent, using queries in metadata, headlines, throughout the content, media content file names and alt-text, you’re going to get closer to that first place in Google rankings.

– 12 practical SEO tips for beginners

2. Email Marketing

Img: https://www.statista.com/

Email marketing has to be on the list of top marketing channels. Unfortunately, some people think emailing is in the past. However, there are over 4 billion email users, and the number is only rising. 

Many users don’t mind receiving letters from brands they love where they can find out the news and special offers. 

Besides, $1 invested in email marketing drives an ROI of $36 on average. So, email marketing platforms are going strong, but you need to adopt a different approach to email marketing now, including:

• Proper letter optimization: the use of calls-to-action, attention-hooking subject lines, relevant, interesting content, branded and other keywords, email design, shareable links, a chance to unsubscribe if needed, etc.
• Proper prospects: no email marketing campaign is successful if the people you’re sending emails to aren’t your target audience interested in the information and offers you provide. So, you should research your TA beforehand.

– How to Use Email Automation to Sell More 

3. Social Media Marketing

Social media is one of the most powerful top marketing channels if used properly.

Over 58% of the world’s population uses social media, with over 400 million of them getting onboard in 2021.

SNS, or social networking services, can help you achieve the following marketing goals:

• Raise brand awareness among your target audience
• Find your TA and target ads to them
• Generate or increase your following
• Communicate with your potential and existing customers directly
• Resolve any issues and potential conflicts through official claims and explanations
• Distribute and promote content
• Find influencers to collaborate with and start your partnerships

All of this will help you not only build a reputation and engage with your potential and existing buyers but find opportunities to open other marketing channels such as influencer collaboration.

The most important things are to find the platforms your TA is the most active on and create engaging profiles.

If it’s Instagram, you should not only write posts from time to time and leave links to the new products.

It is also important to diversify your IG content, and the best way to do this is to repost on Instagram. Whether it is a motivational quote or a funny meme, make sure it meets your audience’s needs and interests.

You should create Stories and Reels, reply to people’s comments and DMs, create a consistent tone, etc.

4. Influencer Marketing

Next on our marketing channels list is influencer marketing. It works perfectly nowadays because it builds social proof. 

When people see that a blogger they look up to uses a certain product and vouches for it, they’re sure they need this product.

Of course, this only works if you collaborate with influencers relevant to your niche who have an active following consisting majorly of your target audience. For example, PicsArt and Kim Kardashian are quite on the same page, and her multi-million follower base is definitely into editing pictures.

Of course, you don’t have to collaborate with Kim K unless you want to spend over $800,00 on a post. You can use micro- and nano-influencers like Daniel Wellington does. The brand works with smaller influencers and gets:

• More diverse coverage
• More aesthetic content
• More money to spend on other marketing channels

Influencer marketing was valued at $13.8 billion in 2021, so it’s definitely worth a try. Even influencers with 1,000 followers can bring you a lot of high-quality leads because the audiences are often very active.

Check the number of likes and the context of comments before considering a collaboration to evaluate the level of activity.

– How to use social media to sell courses 

5. Podcasting

Podcasting is one of the less appreciated promotional channels. However, the time people spend listening to digital audio has increased by 8.3% in 2020, when the pandemic was raging.

So, choosing some informational and promotional topics and starting a podcast can become a wonderful marketing channel for your business. 

This way can help you build a unique, close relationship with your listeners a.k.a. target audience. Thus, you show that you care enough to record or stream expert content to make their lives easier in a way.

Besides, you can show the expertise of your company by providing information on niche-specific topics. 

Throw in a couple of marketing mentions of your brand as native ads, and you’re going to create new neural pathways in people’s heads that your business, products, and services are high-quality and worth buying.

6. Video Marketing

Img: https://www.oberlo.com/

One of the top marketing channels is, of course, video marketing. In fact, 86% of businesses choose this channel as of the data by Wyzowl for 2021 and 2022.

People enjoy video content, often even more than other types. It’s engaging, visually appealing, and provides information in 3 ways: the actual video, audio, and subtitles for reading. Quite universal!

A lot of brands promote like this on Instagram and TikTok. They create short videos (Reels and TikToks) to visually appeal to the audience and promote their products and services. 

Reels by Dolce&Gabbana, for example, garner quite a lot of views and support from fashion enthusiasts.

Some of the older reels have gathered over 500K views.

– 5 Tips to Make Editing Your Video Easier

7. Online Marketplaces

Online marketplaces are promotional channels people don’t always think about. When we talk about marketing, we think of email, social media, a great website, influencers, etc. But what about the actual shops in these online shopping malls?

Giants like Amazon and Facebook Marketplace can show your products to millions of potential buyers. 

Choose a platform that suits the best to your brand and set up an account. You can later promote the shop on your social media and through email, or by creating videos on how to order your products from this platform.

Think about it as another website of yours. You’ll have to optimize it using suitable keywords, just like you do with your main site. Every platform that has a Search button also has its own small search engine algorithm.

8. Events

Online and offline events will help you build both a network and a community. 

You can host, co-host, participate, and simply attend events to gain benefit. It can be an online event like a webinar where you can represent your company, an offline event like a conference, or a hybrid event where you can attend online or be there as an invited expert offline.

All three kinds of events will help you with:

• Networking
• Brand awareness boost
• Lead generation
• Engaging audience
• Increasing following, etc.

Hosting webinars is one of the easiest ways to garner leads through events. 

It’s all online, and you can engage with the audience, tease them with a bonus for those who stay till the end, answer questions, etc. All of that while providing expert information and promoting your products and services.

Building the Ideal Digital Marketing Strategy

A perfect marketing strategy requires the aforementioned marketing channels list. There’s everything you may need, from SEO and influencers to podcasts and marketplaces.

Analyze your target audience, find out where they hang out most often and what content they like, and promote through those channels. 

Things like SEO and social media marketing are kind of mandatory for most businesses. Even if you’re looking for the most effective B2B marketing channels, there’s a social media platform those businesses are active on, looking for B2B opportunities.

Our last tip is, choose the marketing channels that best match your TA and test them.

Produce content regularly and see which ones bring the best results, that’s where your audience is. And don’t forget, consistency and planning are the key to any successful business.

Complete eLearning platform optimized for SEO, Coursify.me is the ideal solution for those who want to create, sell and advertise courses on the internet.

Serving businesses and professionals in more than 60 countries, the platform is a dynamic and customizable Learning Management System.

– Learning Management System: What is it?

To learn more, visit our website, test the platform and understand why we are the best option for your business.