Types Of Digital Marketing Channels & Why Do You Need An Agency?

In the early days of marketing, hope was the solace for most businesses. They placed ads on billboards or magazines, hoping that the right person would spot them. First, forward and let us welcome a digital marketing company into the picture. This makes sense considering the amount of time people spend online.

Businesses have enormous opportunities to reach customers via digital marketing. Since the internet is vast, it presents a plethora of marketing options, and various types of digital marketing channels have come up. The digital marketing channels need to configure which form of digital marketing channel will reach the intended agency. So how does a digital marketing company become aware of which is the perfect digital marketing channel to use? Let us understand in detail about the same.

The popular forms of digital marketing channels

Before making a decision, it is essential to understand the various types of digital marketing channels first so that you know which one best suits your business purpose. To make things simpler, we have listed some of the most popular ones below:

Event marketing 

One of the main objectives of digital advertising channels is to offer a memorable experience throughout the customer journey. With event marketing, that becomes possible. This promotional strategy is all brands leveraging virtual or live events to interact, engage and promote services with their customers. The direct interactions and memorable experiences it provides are unlike other channels of digital marketing. 

Trade shows, product launches, networking events, webinars, etc, are all different event marketing forms. This strategy is not just about advertising, it’s beyond that. As such, events offer a direct way to interact with brands, the experience is memorable, resonates with users and influences their purchasing decision.

Content marketing

If you have learned what are digital marketing channels, then you must know that content marketing is an important part of it. The process involves creating and sharing content such as blogs, infographics, ebooks, and social media posts to build an online web presence. The ultimate goal of this strategy is to generate engagement, educate users and lead them to a specific course of action.

Before you start, you must know who your audience is and what type of content suits them best. You can research content ideas, check what your competitors are doing, and create a unique version of what your users are looking for on the web. Creating content is only half the job, the other half involves optimizing it for SEO.

Word-of-mouth marketing

Word-of-mouth marketing, while seemingly organic, can be amplified through various channels in digital marketing. Utilising various digital marketing channels, such as forums, review sites, to share your first-hand experience. This helps potential users to make a decision and increases the trust factor. 

As word-of-mouth marketing is free and cost-effective, brands can capitalise on this strategy by allowing users who have already used the product to encourage other users to try out a specific product. Let’s explain with an example: if a higher number of users recommend your brand website for doing business, this results in higher user enquiries, engagement and conversions.

Traditional marketing

While we have the answers to what are the different digital marketing channels, we shouldn’t forget about traditional marketing. This mainly relies on offline marketing and physical stores to interact with a broader audience. Print ads, TV ads, billboards, telephone marketing, etc, are some traditional marketing strategies. This strategy is more oriented towards profit generation only.

Some of its advantages include an opportunity for creative efforts, easier reach to localized audiences and more. Despite the perks, traditional marketing is comparatively more expensive to execute. Compared to online marketing, which can be leveraged to target and interact with a massive audience group across multiple platforms, there’s little room for interaction, and the targeted customer base is minimal.

Referral Marketing

This advertising strategy involves brands encouraging existing customers to refer their products or services online, and upon successful referral, both parties get rewards. This might be confused with word-of-mouth marketing, which involves people sharing their experience and recommending a product or service. However, word-of-mouth marketing is done free of cost and doesn’t involve rewards. 

Whereas referral marketing is done purposefully, with incentives and rewards involved for customers. Also, through referral marketing, both the customer who makes the referral and the customer who gets referred receive incentives. Some of the benefits of this strategy include cost-effective customer acquisition, increased trust, improved customer loyalty, etc.

Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing is one of the digital marketing mediums that involves promoting a brand’s products/services and earning a small affiliate commission after each sale is made. The process involves users becoming affiliates for a brand by signing up on a participating platform. After that, the user receives a unique affiliate link, which is embedded on their social media profile or other online channels in digital marketing. Whenever a potential customer clicks the link and either buys the product or service, the affiliate gets a percentage of the sale. Thus, affiliate marketing is a win-win situation for both parties.

Video Marketing

This is a popular digital marketing trend in this present era and will continue for the next 10 to 15 years. Video marketing enhances brand awareness and peps up your traffic and conversions. Based on the blog content, you can develop video blogs. That video can be embedded smartly into your blogs that can be part of your content marketing strategy. This will attract readership and conversion, and from your content, better mileage will be obtained.

To increase social sharing, you can promote the video on social media platforms. Presentation of key information will hook and draw in the user. Another effective way to use video and increase conversions is to make it part of your website. The reason why video is valuable on your website is that it showcases your personality.

Email marketing

Email marketing is rated to be one of the effective forms of digital marketing as the ROI is high in comparison to any marketing tactic. Relevant content is presented to the inbox of a user in a non-abrasive manner. Email campaigns are an effective way to increase your customer base and increase your sales. In addition, it empowers you and allows you to stay in touch with your customers.

A better way to engage a prospective or a routine customer and increase website traffic is via an email newsletter. Engagement can be maintained via ongoing email communications, either weekly or monthly. Valuable information is presented to your customer base, and the latest updates are provided via newsletters.

Social media marketing

A majority of the masses are known to use at least one social media platform. You may feel that the world is at your fingertips with the power of social media. Hence this makes social media one of the popular types of digital marketing channels to leverage. The advantage of social media marketing is that it makes your brand relatable. In most cases, these platforms are free to use.

Starting off, you can create profiles of your business on various social media channels. You need to make posts on these social media platforms and enhance your online presence. What you post depends upon you, but you can put customer testimonies in the form of short videos.

SEO and PPC

There are a couple of them, as both of them streamline your campaigns and produce optimum results. SEO is all about traffic and conversion. The conversion of SEO-induced traffic is at a higher rate in comparison to ad-generated traffic. The reason is that the person is searching for something related to their wants. SEO ranks your website higher, and traffic will increase, leading to more conversions. A benefit of SEO is through different keywords; you are able to reach every channel of the sales funnel.

Influencer marketing

When someone has a large following on social media platforms, they can advertise certain products or services for a fee. This is a form of digital marketing channel that is expected to grow manifold in the coming years. The benefit of this form of marketing is that it develops trust in your brand among your unique audience and long-term partnerships are possible with influencers.

Influencer marketing can be done in a couple of ways. The first is to touch base with an influencer themselves, or you can avail the expertise of a digital marketing agency. The latter route can be expensive but can be a fast-track route to success.

Search advertising or PPC will put you on top of the search results. An advantage is that you are charged only if the user clicks on the ad. In addition, you can target people based on their demographic behavior, demographics, and pain points.

How to choose the best marketing channel for your Business

Now comes the obvious question: What are the best types of digital marketing channels for my business? Well, the answer to that depends on the marketing purpose. You don’t need to leverage all digital advertising channels, but instead choose the one that perfectly aligns with your goals. 

You can start with testing different channels and see what works and what doesn’t. A general rule of thumb is to consider the following factors when you decide to choose the right digital marketing channel:

Budget

How much money can you spend on your digital marketing campaigns? This should be the first and most important thing to consider before making a choice: budget. If you are looking for quicker, trackable results, PPC & social ads help, but they are expensive. In contrast, SEO and content marketing cost less, but they take time to implement and generate results.

Business Type

Once you have set the budget, choose your business type: physical store or online. This is because both business types require different channels of digital marketing. The former suits well for local SEO, whereas the latter achieves higher success with SEO, Ad campaigns, etc.

Target Audience

You have a budget and a business type, but what good is your business if you have the wrong audience? This is why you must target the right users on appropriate digital marketing mediums. Therefore, it is crucial to learn what are the different digital marketing channels.

Few Tips for selecting a type of digital marketing channel

So, now you know the factors to consider before choosing the best types of digital marketing channels. But even with those, choosing a type of digital marketing channel can still be difficult. But here are some effective tips that will help you.

Define Your Objectives

You must have a clear objective in mind before you even consider any other processes. Some examples of objectives include:

• Want to build authority and trust?
• Enhance brand recognition?
• Generate high-quality leads? 

As different channels of digital marketing are best suited for specific objectives, identifying your core business goals helps choose the right marketing channel with ease.

Know About Your Audience

When targeting customers, you must learn more about them, such as which digital advertising channels they spend online, and what they are looking for. What types of content do they find engaging? Understand what your audience is doing and implement appropriate marketing strategies.

Allocate the required budget and resources

Budget plays an important role in your digital marketing campaign. Digital marketing channels such as SEO, content marketing, etc, require consistent effort over time to generate results, but they cost less than PPC advertising, which costs more but generates faster results. It’s all about evaluating what works for your brand and allocating resources and budget appropriately.

Check your competition

When planning your campaign, it is worth checking out your competitors’ actions. What digital marketing mediums do they use to generate results? How do they engage with customers? Knowing the answers to these questions is essential so that you can create better marketing campaigns that connect with your target audiences.

Why do you require the services of a digital marketing agency?

Unless you are a big company with a massive marketing budget, it seems impossible that you will be able to invest in all types of digital marketing channels at once. So how do you choose?

Below are a few strategies that you may adopt to help in the process of decision-making

• A review of the analytics data to figure out your core audience. Then research the best digital channels on how to reach the targeted audience. Are most of them available on social media, or is email marketing an option to reach them.
• Check out the online marketing channels that your competitors are using. If you witness a particular trend among your competitors, then a good reason exists for you to engage in the same.
• A significant portion of the marketing budget is to be devoted to a single channel and figure out which one performs the best.

To sum up, the success of a digital marketing channel is dependent upon the channel itself and the nature of your business. For SEO, you may opt to measure organic traffic. Social media marketing is about measuring the number of posts reaching the intended audience. Eventually, the long-term success of a digital marketing channel is dependent upon the revenue it brings to the business. 

FAQs: Digital marketing channels

What’s the Difference Between Marketing Platforms, Channels, Mediums, and How Do They Relate?

A marketing platform is an official tool utilised by brands to publish and manage their marketing activities. A channel is the communication link that brands use to connect with and deliver messages or campaigns to consumers. Several channels in digital marketing exist within these platforms. If you are wondering what are the different digital marketing channels, social media, email, search engines, and websites are some of the most common digital advertising channels. 

So, what is a medium? It is the specific format or form of content used within a channel to deliver your intended message. For example, within the social media channel, mediums could be organic posts, paid advertisements, stories, or live videos. Within the email channel, mediums are newsletters, promotional emails, or automated sequences. Understanding these digital marketing mediums helps refine your communication.

What Are the Benefits of Using Digital Marketing Channels, and How Can Brands Choose the Right Ones?

When it comes to digital marketing channels, they offer several long-term benefits. These include precise targeting capabilities that help you reach out to a wider target audience, generate data-driven results, cost-effectiveness and a lot more. When deciding to choose the channels of digital marketing, it is essential to consider four important factors. The first one is knowing your audience, which involves determining the following:

• Who is your target audience?
• Where do they spend time online?
• What are their preferences?

Once you figure that out, the second step is identifying your marketing goals. The third step is evaluating your budget and resources. The final step is analysing your competitors. By aligning all these factors, you can strategically select the most effective types of digital marketing channels.

What Is a Cross-Channel Digital Marketing Platform, and Why Is It Important?

If you have learned what is online marketing channels, knowing a cross-channel digital marketing platform is also important. This is essentially an online platform that allows brands to seamlessly manage their marketing efforts across multiple digital channels. It offers a unified dashboard view of customer interactions happening over multiple touchpoints. 

But why is it important? It is because it helps provide a consistent, cohesive customer journey. A cross-platform marketing platform ensures that all the interactions made by users across multiple platforms are connected and relevant. This results in better customer engagement, increased conversion rates and loyalty.

How Do You Measure the ROI and Success of Digital Marketing Channels?

Learning what are digital marketing channels helps with establishing brand success. However, it is also important to measure the return on investment (ROI) of these marketing channels to determine if the efforts are successful or not. When it comes to measuring ROI and the success of digital marketing channels, the following formula is applied 

ROI=Cost(Revenue−Cost)​×100%

Before you launch a campaign, it is important to establish clear goals, utilise analytics tools and consider various key performance indicators that are specific to each channel.