More than 3 billion people around the world are using the internet today. That volume of users means big-time opportunity for businesses and their digital marketing efforts.
Digital marketing embodies a wide array of advertising channels. Social media, pay per click, affiliate marketing, and everything between.
If you own a small business and are looking to find out which digital marketing channels will give you the most bang for your buck, where should you start?
To help you answer that question, we have created this list. Our hope is that we can turn you on to some of the best digital marketing channels available to you today that will move the needle for your company at a relatively low cost.
1) Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
The majority of users online find the products they’re looking for via search engines. To that end, Google alone fields over 3.5 billion searches per day.
In order to get recognized by search engines, your company’s web presence needs to be search engine optimized. What that means is that all your web pages, products, and services should have keyword rich meta-data that lets search engines know what they are. This will help search engines reliably connect what you’re offering to relevant consumers.
Search Engine Optimization for your web content can be free or paid if you employ an SEO expert to help out (which can be a very good investment). SEO can increase the traffic you get online dramatically and should be at the forefront of your digital marketing strategy.
2) Email Marketing
Email, while dated, is still a reliable marketing channel that is cost-effective for businesses to use.
Email can be used in a variety of ways to bolster your marketing efforts. For starters, your company can cold email potential clients and describe products and services to them. This can lead to new partnerships and additional revenue streams.
In regard to customers, you can leverage email to entice new buyers to make their first purchase. You can also reactivate past customers who have been dormant.
To do those things, be proactive about building your email list. You can add customers to your email list by requesting their emails when they land on your website. You can also have them opt into your mailing list when making a purchase. Or running lead generating promotions can help build a valuable new customer list.
3) Social Media
Social media is an excellent means of generating free, organic traffic which is a cost-effective way to market your business. Marketing organically through social media can take time though, so be prepared to put in work.
To be successful, consistently share authentic content on the platforms that feel like a fit for your business. Authenticity is important on social media. This is because users tend to not respond well to being blatantly marketed to.
Be creative and make sure that the voice you use on each platform is suited to that platform’s best practices and culture.
Social media is also a contender for the best channel to buy ads on and drive highly targeted paid traffic to your products and services. Given the amount of data social media platforms have on each of its users, you can target people not only by basic demographic information but by their interests, habits and more.
This highly targeted form of marketing can help lead to higher conversion rates and a better return on your marketing spend.
4) Content Marketing
Content marketing is when you publish information, usually in the form of blog posts, on your website regularly. Some other forms of content marketing can be podcasts, videos, or infographics. This content should be highly relevant to your target audience and implement excellent SEO standards.
The goal for your content marketing pieces is to rank high in search engine result pages. From there, customers should click through and, after consuming your content, move onto engaging with your paid products and services.
To make sure you’re maximizing your content’s conversion potential, be sure to add a call to action at the end of each of your pieces. These should work to drive readers deeper into your marketing funnel and eventually lead them to becoming customers.
5) Affiliate Marketing
One of the reasons why we love affiliate marketing so much is because it costs you virtually nothing out of pocket. It also makes it so other people handle your marketing for you!
Sound too good to be true? It’s not!
With affiliate marketing, you entice online influencers to promote your products to their audiences. If those influencers bring a customer to you that purchases your products, the influencer receives a small referral fee or commission.
The great news is that if the customer that was referred to you comes to do business with you again in the future, you typically won’t need to offer any further commissions to the influencer who initially referred them to you.
6) Pay Per Click (PPC)
A very popular marketing channel most businesses are using today is pay per click advertising via search engines. With pay per click, you pay an ad provider like Google to promote your products, services, landing pages, etc. in user’s search results.
When users are moved by your ad’s headline they’ll click on it and when they do you’ll get charged. With pay per click, you can set a pre-determined budget to ensure you’re never spending more than you’re comfortable with.
Furthermore, you only pay when users click on your add, not when they just see it. Because of that, your brand could be getting thousands of free visual impressions that won’t count against your marketing budget.
Wrapping up Marketing Channels That Offer an Excellent ROI
Digital marketing channels are a deeply personal way for your company to connect with customers. Given the diversity of digital marketing methods, however, it can be difficult to understand which ones will give you the most for your money.
Start leveraging the marketing methods mentioned above and see which ones you see the best results with. Remember, with any means of marketing it takes time to refine your approach and start maximizing conversions.
Do your best to analyze your efforts regularly and hyper-target your perfect customer. Taking the time to do so will lead to more conversions per dollars spent and a notable increase in your revenue.
Our team at ZGN Creative offer businesses turn-key, end-to-end digital marketing solutions to help them stay competitive in today’s impacted online marketplace.
Let us use our expertise to make you more money.
Whether you’re looking to improve your website to increase sales, need assistance sharpening your marketing funnels or need reliable security solutions, we can help!
Check out our full list of services here or contact our team for a free consultation today!
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