Commerce, business, or trade in this day and age has long moved past the Silk Road and its network of routes. Today, it is the internet that allows for access to multiple countries, regions, spaces, and specific communities.
Just as how men of the trade knew routes best for commerce back then, businesses must also know how to traverse the digital highway that is the internet—not only to survive the ever-changing landscape but to succeed in their respective ventures, as well.
Like major trade routes throughout the world, the digital sphere can be accessed through different channels, as well, or to be more specific: marketing channels. The existence of various digital marketing channels and platforms continue to evolve. From the traditional B2B Email Marketing to the now prevalent B2C SMS.
In the age of interconnectivity, marketing channels such as social media, podcasts, websites, and search engines exist. For business leaders, it is essential to know these different channels like the back of their hand. The purpose for which are as follows:
- Leverage the channels that pose a promising lead in revenue generation.
- Look into which channel poses a high-risk yet low-reward engagement.
- Know whether the marketing plan should utilize a mix of different marketing channels or not.
To fully understand today’s marketing channels and how they can help your business, we have here listed the most prevalent ones and their unique advantages for marketing strategies.
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Email
Email marketing, despite its tenure, continues to be a reliable distribution channel to regularly deliver content, harness feedback, and offer high returns, which something it remains to be unbeaten at. To this day, email marketing can generate at least $43 for every dollar spent on it.
Some of its advantages include fostering a good relationship with customers & businesses, high potential for conversion of brand awareness, and naturally, exemplary lead generation.
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Websites
Websites are distribution channels that much like email continues to be a steady framework for different marketing campaigns. Through content assets, websites can generate leads, as the very act of a customer visiting a website poses great potential for conversion.
Through this phenomenon, websites naturally cause people to gravitate to a brand, therefore leading to an increase in organic traffic.
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Social Media
Being the younger cousin of the website, social media offers a fresher and more dynamic marketing engagement with your audience. By fostering authentic and genuine interactions in its early stages, it has now harnessed the same energy into the proliferation of those who use it on a daily basis.
The advantage of social media is that businesses need not to bring people to where they are but instead go to where the people are, thus promising a high reward for customer engagement through a diverse and wide audience range.
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Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
As for SEO, its main potency lies in its strategic position to play along with the human tendency of curiosity. By optimizing content assets to put a business website high and above everybody else, SEO practices ensure lead generation through reliable variables such as search rankings and link building.
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Search Engine Marketing (SEM)
SEM, on the other hand, takes it a step higher with paid searches. Although it causes caution for those aiming for an immediate ROI, SEM’s advantage of putting your website and ads above the SEO generated search results allows for better visibility and potency in brand awareness, lead generation, and conversions.
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Display Ads
Going back to the earlier, tried-and-tested email and website marketing channels, Display Ads continues to generate sales and conversion along with brand awareness due to its nature of engaging audiences through different forms of content marketing.
With a low cost per click yet high generation of conversions, businesses can allocate more of their resources into matching ads with host website audiences, therefore allowing a more targeted approach to lead generation.
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Mobile
Moving a step closer to targeted audiences, employing a marketing strategy revolving around mobile services enables businesses to be with their audiences wherever they are.
As a marketing channel, it leverages locational information and the 21st-century affinity of humans to their phones as motivations to ship content and eventually turn in a profit. The development of a mobile app or a collaboration with existing applications makes perfect sense for anyone choosing to engage in this marketing channel.
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SMS
Striking closer to home, SMS marketing dives deeper into the advantage built on by mobile marketing by taking it a step further. Through SMS marketing, audiences with or without internet connections or whether they are in geographical location analysis can now receive updates, status notifications, promos, and other notifications.
In a sense, SMS marketing is the culmination of all marketing channels, from email to mobile, as it leverages on the authentic person-to-person interaction while also targeting specific audiences through mobile.
Wrapping Up
In conclusion, it is important for business owners and marketing professionals that multiple marketing channels exist and a subscription to a singular channel is not a must.
Instead, casting a wide net through reliable and traditional marketing channels and new digital marketing channels enables businesses to reach their audiences and increase their chances for revenue generation.
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Alex Alabiso built Semaphore‘s tech backbone and keeps it running smoothly. In his spare time, he grows hydroponic tomatoes and plays video games.
