How to Identify the Right Digital Marketing Channels for Your Business 

Have a clear understanding of your business

It is a known fact that you are more likely to succeed as a marketer if you have your goals set out before actually creating the campaign. You must know where your business is going in order to be successful. Start by setting strong marketing goals that are specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and timely. Some things you may want to consider when thinking about this are:

• Do you want to become a thought leader in your industry? 
• Build authority and trust with consumers online? 
• Build brand recognition?
• Drive traffic to your website? 
• Or make sales?

Make sure you know your target audience

Another factor to help you figure out where to begin your marketing campaign is finding out who your target audience is. If you are not sure who your target audience is then you should do some market research to learn more. Some things to consider when researching are; where do they spend their time? What type of content and topics are they interested in? How do they watch/see the content? And who do they follow closely on social media? 

Set a budget

Having a marketing budget set out before you decide which platforms to use is always a good idea. This will play a big role within which digital platform you choose to use. Some options are more costly than others, but if you are putting money into your ads then you are more likely to get more out of them. You don’t always need to have massive budgets in order to make posts successful. If you choose the correct audiences to target and also spread your budget over a long period of time the ad will continue to run behind the scenes, resulting in more traffic being driven to your website. 

Research your competitors

It is important to identify which platforms your competitors are using. This could be the best place to start. If their marketing strategies are more successful than yours then you know where you need to step up your game. You can also use your competitors to find gaps and act on this. Take advantage to grow your audience here by creating new and different posts and strategies. 

Marketing channels to consider

Different channels will always give you different results, therefore understanding your options and how each channel works will enable you to make better business decisions. Based on the data you collected from the headings in this blog, you can choose which channels you might want to use. Your strategies can always change if they need to if you’re not seeing the results you desire. Here are a few examples of effective platforms to use:

• Content marketing: creating blogs, ebooks, case studies, guides, PDF downloads, reviews etc.
• Email marketing
• Social media marketing
• SEO
• PPC
• Video marketing