There are many ways to market to your online business, but knowing which one you should consider can be a bit challenging if you don’t have any idea what are these various channels and its respective features.
As an entrepreneur, you must be curious enough to know how you could create a strong online business presence and be competitive enough to gain your potential customers’ favor. Yes, there are traditional ways of marketing, which was used dated back, and they could still be effective ways to reach out to your targeted customers.
What are the marketing channels?
Marketing channels are straightforward, efficient, and clear-cut, effective in presenting your business model. You may be required to put in some money and perform a set of actions before you can proceed to get your desired results- but hey, that’s what entrepreneurs do!
They make use of their money in such a way that could potentially help them earn a whole lot more in return.
However, although traditional marketing channels were quite effective, the style and ways of business marketing landscape have changed over the years. Nowadays, there’s what we call the “Internet,” which is one of the most powerful media when it comes to reaching out to more people.
That’s why as time and business industries evolve, it’s also important that you improve with it along with your marketing ideas and business strategies. “HOW” you do business is important, and “HOW” you reach out to your target customers is more important.
Customers are said to be the bloodline of businesses, so gear up your marketing ideas with these different channels that we’re about to discuss in this article.
Before you can proceed to filter the most applicable marketing tools for you, you just need to familiarize yourself with the different available channels. Here are some of the digital marketing channels every new entrepreneur must know about.
1. Email Marketing
According to recent research, email marketing gets more sales conversion compared to the use of social network ads. The results are pretty desirable, but there are certain steps that you need to do right when it comes to successful email marketing.
Did you know that for every dollar spent in email marketing could get them $40 in revenue? It’s pretty promising, and this is one of the major reasons why email marketing has always been considered one of the most powerful marketing strategy in history.
When a business makes use of the “email” marketing strategy, they’re aiming to provide an offer, and in return, they will ask for the potential customer’s email address. The accumulated email addresses will be added to the so-called “email list.” The people in your email list will eventually become your leads.
Email continues to become one of the most effective digital marketing strategies in history and could potentially give businesses an ROI of up to 4,300%. It’s not such a huge surprise why many marketers make use of email-related marketing activities, since it’s proven to build trust, brand building, and a way to stay connected with your previous, current, and new potential customers.
2. Pay-Per-Click Advertising (PPC)
When someone clicks, there’s a big chance that you will earn a new customer. PPC is one of the paid advertising channels that allows you to present your ad to highly targeted traffic and potential customers in just a short period.
However, keep in mind that PPC requires you to bid for you to take an ad placement. How much you’re willing to invest matters in PPC. But still, the advertising budget will be within your control.
There will be a “feature” there where you will be given a chance to set how much you are willing to spend for a day or a month running your PPC ads. Just do note that the effectiveness of this marketing strategy will highly rely on the choice of your keywords and how well you can optimize both visual and the textual information in your ads.
3. Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
SEO is one of the most popular digital marketing tools; we’re quite sure that this isn’t the first time that you’ve heard of it. This aims to categorize your website’s pages, so it can present it to the right people who are looking for it.
Did you know that billions of internet users are looking for informative data on giants Search Engines every day? Just imagine getting a tiny piece of this huge pie, you can potentially live off just by acquiring customers, and by providing them great service.
You want to get SEO on your side, knowing that there are billions of people who use Search Engines to begin their research. Don’t let the words whelm you; it involves some technical activities that you are all pretty much learnable.
SEO involves activities like on-page and off-page optimization, outbound and inbound links, organic link building, guest posting, and keyword research. But Everything is learnable, so you don’t have to stress out thinking that you need a coding degree.
Here’s how Search Engines Work:
Step 1: Crawling. This refers to the net of bots every search engine has. Its main task is to scan every page of your website. At this pace, you have to realize that the bots will check the quality of your content (spelling, grammar structure), the outbound and inbound links present, keywords, meta tags, and meta titles.
Step 2: Indexing. After the scanning process, search engines will then categorize your website’s page based on the most reoccurring keywords and the technicalities present on your website. Just know that there are millions of websites on the web today, so you can’t expect to see your website being ranked overnight. It’s going to take 1-10 days before you can check your site’s stand on search engines.
Step 3: Picking up Results. Here comes the last step; search engines will pick the best results and place them on the first page. This should be one of your main goals for your website to be placed on the first top 1-5 websites.
4. Display Advertising
This is a “leverage” technique. In which you are doing business with other website owners to allow them to place your ad, banner, videos, overlays, and boxes on their websites. There’s a paying price, of course, whatever exchange you have settled with the third party.
Display advertising is one of the great ways in which you can generate highly targeted traffic and potentially convert them into sales and leads.
5. Social Media Marketing (SMM)
Social media isn’t new to us; it’s one of the most phenomenal things that ever happened in the digital area. It’s such a huge plus that you will be able to use these networks to your advantage. There are many digital marketers and business owners who have increased their business brand’s popularity with the use of it.
With you use it right, you will be able to reach out to potential targeted customers through direct or person-to-person engagement. There are already billions of users of social media, and in the industry continues to grow and develop.
According to recent research, the numbers of social media research there’s an expected increase of 26% every year. Could you imagine that? As a new entrepreneur, you should familiarize yourself with social media networks; this could promote the kind of business you have.
Here are some of the important insights you should know for every commonly used social media network:
Social Media Network Features
Facebook: This is considered to be the ideal place for you to start promoting your business. It’s a great platform that comes with a great built-in ad system and features perfect whenever you are looking to reaching out to more people. It’s great since you will be able to reach almost every kind of general consumer.
Google+ Another great social network channel when it comes to reaching out to new businesses or general social media users is Google+ itself. This is a great factor that will greatly be a good contributing factor to your website’s ranking.
LinkedIn: If ever you are looking forward to creating B2B (Business-to-Business) connections and other professionals, this will be a great place for you to start with. It’s an ideal social network when it comes to observing how other fellow business owners promote their business in a much creative way.
Twitter: Whenever you are developing new business, it pays forward if you take time to reach out to early adopters of Twitter. Eventually, you will notice that you’ll be able to generate fast brand awareness. There are millions of Twitter users, so putting your business out there would mean a lot.
Pinterest: Another great tool that’s great for focusing on visuals and in terms of promoting your services and products is Pinterest. The majority of Pinterest users are women, and this will be a great network if you are running a female clothing or jewelry business.
6. Content Marketing
The content of your article is the heart of every campaign. It’s one of the major elements that will help in generating a considerable amount of income. When you have an irresistible offer- written out in quality and relevant content, then you’ll have a huge chance of gaining potential customers.
Your textual content is extremely important and it could either break or make a deal. One marketer once said, “A great content sells itself”, this implies that if you pay close details to the things that you’re going to write to your campaign.
7. Affiliate Marketing
Are you familiar with Pay-Per-Performance (PPP)? It’s a great way to do affiliate marketing and hire people from different locations to do business with you. You can allow them to do the “selling” job for you in exchange for commissions.
Did you know that affiliate marketing is a $4.5 billion industry? It pays forward if you take time to study and do some research about “affiliate marketing” and see if you could apply it to your business model. It’s going to help you have a wider set of a global audience. It’s such a huge plus that you will be able to work with fellow entrepreneurs in the industry.
8. Online Public Relations
OPR (Online Public Relations) is a great marketing channel that would help you create a promotional content that will help you generate branding and be able to create traffic through massive exposure through the net of online PR networks.
What’s amazing is that some channels are free to join, but some require payment due to subscription before you could publish press releases.
Before publishing content, you must be definite your primary company goals and include strong points that will help in increasing brand awareness. As much as possible, keep on engaging people who follow and like your pages on social media.
These are the top 8 marketing channels that you should know about as an entrepreneur. Of course, you must promote your job both offline and online. It is for you to reach out to both local and global people.
Do anything to reach out to more and more people and present all your business ideas. Keep your marketing strategy relevant and up to date, and you will see results shortly. Keep your eyes on the prize!
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