3 Digital Marketing Channels That Work for Every Advertiser Online advertising channels are numerous but these three are must buys.
By Pratik Dholakiya Edited by Dan Bova
Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.
As an advertiser, your core objective is to prioritize investment in relevant communication channels that deliver maximum returns for your business. With plenty of studies proving digital marketing ROI, it makes perfect sense to leverage digital channels for promoting your brand and its products and services.
But with so many online advertising channels available, how do you go about picking the best channel for your business? You must do a fine balancing act between your advertising budget and the costs of using a particular channel. Here are three digital channels that will allow you to make the most of your advertising budget:
1. Google AdWords.
With a lion's share of PPC market (roughly 67%), the use of Google AdWords is a no brainer. There are plenty of businesses that have driven traffic to their site, marketed their products/services and ultimately increased sales by leveraging Google AdWords.
I know there are some business owners who stay away from PPC because they believe it eats into a large portion of their marketing spend. Unfortunately, they are making a big mistake. AdWords delivers measurable results and is worth the investment. Your ads get viewed right when your target audience is searching for the products/services you are selling. The results are faster than SEO, and you can also set a budget for your campaign, which allows you to control your advertising costs.
Add to that a collection of features like Ad Customizers, Call Out Extensions, Google AdWords Editor, HTML 5 Ads and you have a channel that helps deliver a marketing message the way your audience wants to hear it. What's more, you can even identify if and when an ad leads to an offline sale. That's a huge advantage.
The great thing is there are plenty of tools you can use to optimize your returns from Google AdWords. These range from Bidable, which offers quick automation and real-time bidding with no minimum spend for small businesses to Kenshoo, an enterprise-level tool that automates your AdWords workflow and allows you to make bulk changes to your campaigns.
Related: Conversion Rates for the Most Popular Marketing Channels
2. Email.
If you've been ignoring emails as an advertising channel because you think it's outdated, think again. Email marketing still has the lowest costs per lead and should be a digital channel you leverage to the hilt.
Accordingly to a survey by the Radicati Group, there will be more than 1.1 billion business email accounts by 2017, and 77percent of worldwide email accounts will be consumer email accounts. Now imagine the sheer "advertising opportunity" offered by emails. It's bigger than huge, it's positively ginormous.
Entrepreneurs who don't want to tap the power of email as a digital advertising channel are making the mistake of looking at emails in isolation. An email, in the contemporary digital marketing landscape, is a means of fostering brand engagement and strengthening your brand at multiple levels. You won't be doing justice to an email, if you are only using it to advertise your brand.
Here are three things you must do to increase email value:
- Relevant messaging that encourages recipients to act on the email.
- The email should create a timeframe within which recipients need to act (urgency).
- Use consumer intelligence for targeted and more personalized messaging.
A well-crafted email has tremendous potential to deliver the returns you are looking for. Don't ignore this channel at any cost.
Related: Letterman's Late Show Legacy for Email Marketers: The Subject Line
3. Social media.
It's estimated that social media advertising revenue in 2015 will be close to $8.5 billion, and its set to witness explosive growth in the next few years. Clearly, it's doing something right!
Social media is a top Internet activity and people across age groups are spending a large amount of time on social media. You've a better chance of catching their attention through social media advertising.
If you want to boost social media ads ROI, here are a few things you must keep in mind:
- Whether it's Facebook Ads, LinkedIn Ads or Promoted Tweets, you'll need to optimize the use of their targeted features. You can actually drill deep down in terms of customer profiling, so that your ads reach users who've better chances of converting into customers.
- Your ads will appear directly in the users' news feeds, so avoid repeat messaging. Rotate your ads.
- Many users access their social media accounts with their smartphones, so make sure your ads are mobile friendly.
Buffer's social media advertising guide is a must read on this subject.
These are three digital channels will definitely drive your marketing efforts in the right direction.
Related: 11 Unusual Social Media Tips to Drive Branding, Clicks and Conversions
