How to find out the best marketing channels for your online business?

What is marketing? A straightforward answer would be a way to reach out to your target customers using the mediums that deliver your words to the maximum populace.

The steps of marketing are simple, prepare a communiqué, invest some money to leverage a medium, perform some actions and deliver your statement through the medium, and get the results.
There is nothing like traditional marketing or modern marketing. Anything that works best according to your goals is a good marketing channel for your brand. It doesn’t matter if you are throwing pamphlets from a helicopter, asking a Hollywood actor to endorse, or sponsoring a FIFA event. If it works for you, and you can afford it, it is the perfect way of marketing for your case.
The big question here is –“how to know if your chosen medium is actually a suitable one?”
You can just use every other marketing channel in the world and get assured results. So why would you want to choose any one or a few out of them?
It’s the budget constraint!
Not every business can afford to just jump in and leverage every other channel that is available. A wise businessman knows that marketing is all about making maximum returns out of minimum investments. Spending all your revenue and petty cash in marketing is not a good idea.
Again, the big question –“How to know if you have reached the minimum budget constraint? ”.
That we will talk about in this article. We are going to inspect popular marketing channels being used by every kind of business these days. We will also understand how you should choose the best-suited one considering different aspects and constraints of a business operation.
Note: We are going to talk only about Digital Marketing channels as they are suitable for every kind and every scale of business.

Popular Digital Marketing channels in 2019

Before we jump in the discussion for choosing the best digital marketing channels, let's identify the options we have in 2019 for it. Understanding the nature of marketing on these channels will let you filter out the suitable ones as per the nature of your business, target audience, products, and services.

Email Marketing

The oldest form of digital marketing-email has been around since the time when Digital Marketing was not even a formally introduced method. Marketers term it as one of the most effective channels and it is used by the business of all categories and scales.

• Email generates an ROI of 3,800%. That is, for every $1 spent on email marketing, it can give you$38 back.
• There are over 5.6 million active email accounts in 2019.
• 93% of B2B marketers prefer email to share content.
• Forecasts predict that US businesses will spend over $350 million on email marketing this year.
• 99% of users check their emails daily

Information source: hubspot.com
Email is a compulsory marketing channel in 2019. No matter what’s your business is or what’s the budget, just go for it.

PPC Advertisement

Pay-Per-Click advertisement is preferred by marketers expecting quick returns from a highly targeted populace in a short span of time. It is best suited for new businesses which can spare a paid promotion budget till the time other channels become usable for them. It’s best for achieving short term goals. You can control how much you want to spend per Ad per week or a day.

• As indicated by SocialMediaToday, 7 million marketers put an aggregate of $10.1 billion in PPC advertisements simply during 2017.
• Retail, Travel, education, and publishing industry were the highest users of PPC Adverts during 2017-2018.
• Top search engine PPC Adverts services in order are Google Ads, Yahoo ADs, and Bing Ads.
• Facebook is the largest provider of PPC Ads services After Google with Facebook’s share 19.6% and Google’s 37.2%.
• Instagram, Pinterest, and LinkedIn are considered the easiest platforms to win PPC conversions and increase online presence.

Display Advertisements

Display Ads are a mix of multiple marketing channels. These Ads can be placed anywhere getting some attention from the internet users; blogs, forums, video streaming sites, eCommerce sites, anywhere. The kind of Display Ads though varies from site to site and touchpoint to touchpoint. For example, Banner Ads, interactive Ads, Interstitial Ads, Overlays, etc.

• Display Ads can be monetized with both PPC and PPM methods.
• 70% of advertisers admit using display Ads on the desktop, while it is 61% for the mobile.
• Advertisers avoid Mobile display Ads after Google’s announced it will penalize the sites for using mobile interstitials.

Content Marketing

If email marketing is a must for everyone, content marketing is a must+1 for everyone. Content marketing has been around for a long time here. However, with the significant changes the Google’s algorithms, it is way different in 2019 than what it used to be a few years ago. From Keyword stuffing to useful and relevant content, we have come across a long way. Today, you can rule the market by providing high-quality, relevant, and SEO optimized content to the search engines.

• 615 million users used AdBlockers in 2017, leaving Ads ineffective to such users. That means, content marketing is the only way to reach such users.
• Video is a growing form of content for marketing. Over 80% of internet traffic will look for video content in the coming era.
• According to PointVisible, 60% of B2C marketers have a content marketing plan, while this is also a fact that 63% of companies do not have a documented plan for content marketing.
• 72% of marketers admit that content can boost engagement, while an additional 72% admit they have increased the number of leads as well.

Push Marketing

If email is the oldest form of digital marketing, push notifications are the newest ones. Push notification services and push notifications tools have proven to be a perfect way to fill the gap that emails fail to do. Unlike email, you don’t need your lead’s email address to deliver your words. Where, emails get trapped in the spam filters, Push notifications can by-pass them and reach directly the subscribers.

• Push notifications guarantee a 100% message delivery rate by by-passing spam filters.
• You do not necessarily need a mobile app to use push marketing. Push notifications can be also be sent from the websites using web push notifications.
• A self-hosted push notification server which uses Google’s FCM can let you send unlimited free push notifications to unlimited subscribers.
• Push notifications get 7 times higher click-through than email marketing
• 55% - 60% of mobile app users keep push notifications active on their mobile phones.
• 40% e-commerce, media, publishing & blogging websites use web push notifications.

How to select a suitable marketing channel(s) for your brand?

Choosing a suitable marketing channel is a crucial decision. You must identify certain aspects to understand if a particular channel gives you proper exposure as your marketing goals. So here is how you should proceed:

Define your goals

Identify your marketing goals. What do you want to achieve with your marketing campaigns? Decide if you want to increase brand awareness, generate leads, boost sales, educate customers, and just get some quality traffic for your website.

Define your target audience

Based on your marketing goals, identify the places where your target audience is likely to go. For example, if your goal is to boost traffic, you can go for Search engine Ads, content marketing, and even push notifications. Be advised that certain marketing channels have multilateral utilities. They might offer the best ROI for multiple goals as well.

Define your budget

Of course, the budget is the biggest constraint. You can minimize the investments by working on the above two factors and choosing only the relevant channels as per your goals. However, you might also reconsider some of your goals based on the marketing budget as well. Some goals are just too expensive.

To conclude

When preparing a digital marketing plan, it’s wise to include multiple channels. However, considering the budget constraints, it’s wise to use more organic channels for long term goals. Channels like email marketing, SEO, content marketing, and self-hosted push notifications, are best for long term goals. With little upfront investments, you can actually get the tools that work for an extended period without demanding much. Expensive channels like PPC Ads and display advertisements make some good options for short-term goals as a supplement until SEO kicks-in. So choose wisely.