Choosing the right digital marketing channels for your business

digital marketing

One of the biggest challenges in digital marketing is trying to decide where to invest your time and money.

There are dozens of digital marketing channels out there, from social media marketing to display advertising, and figuring out which of those channels is the best fit for your business isn’t easy. Here’s how you can go about figuring out which digital marketing channels will work best for your company.

Read up on the available options

The best place to start is by becoming familiar with the most popular digital marketing channels in the market. There are big differences in cost, target demographic, difficulty levels, and long-term benefits between all the major digital marketing venues.

Placing banner ads on popular sites, for example, can lead to an increase in traffic, but it won’t necessarily start a long-term relationship between your brand and its customers. Building a popular social media profile, on the other hand, can help keep customers engaged for years, but it requires long-term planning and dedication.

Looking into the different venues early on will also make your job easier down the line. Most digital marketing agencies specialize in only one or a few channels.

Zone in on a budget

The biggest factor in deciding which channels are available to you is budget. There are many options for digital marketing that require little to no financial investment, but the tradeoff is that these methods may take months or even years to start generating leads consistency. Content marketing and social media marketing fit this category.

Meanwhile, pay-per-click campaigns can lead to an immediate boost in traffic and generate leads right away, but they require a bigger marketing budget.

Understand your audience

Your target audience will also help determine which digital channels you should use. Instagram will let you reach a younger audience, while Facebook is a good place to find customers over the age of 30. Some channels are better to reach hobbyists, some attract the fashion crowd, and others are favored by business people. This means that understanding your target demographic will be key to help you figure out how to best reach them.

Here’s where the expertise of a digital marketing company can be a huge help. Look for a company that offers analytics agency services on top of handling your marketing campaign. A marketing agency with an in-house analytics team can help you analyze your customer base and fine-tune your marketing campaign accordingly.

Be ready to troubleshoot

Just because your first attempt at a pay-per-click campaign didn’t yield the returns you expected, that doesn’t mean the entire channel is no good for your company. There is a lot that can impact the success of a campaign, so trial and error are often needed to boost a campaign’s chance of success.

You will need to be ready to try different approaches and troubleshoot for a bit before you give up on a marketing approach.  Otherwise, you may end up going in circles for months before you realize that your first idea was the right one all along.