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Don’t Put All Your Eggs in One Basket …
… Cross Channel Digital Marketing is the Way Forward
Whatever products and services your business offers, putting all your eggs in one basket and focusing time and energy on marketing on only one channel is going to limit your reach and the return on your investment. It’s time to spread your wings!
You will generate far greater reach, brand awareness and domain authority through cross channel digital marketing and doing so will also present greater opportunities to help you win a bigger slice of the market.
So what are the options and how do you decide which are likely to be the best digital channels for your business?
The main 4 digital channels are Organic Search, Paid Search, Social and Email. Of course, to gain maximum reach, you will also need to be assessing how effective off-line marketing channels are for your business too. For some sectors, print media and traditional marketing through direct mail, trade shows, sponsorship and supporting of local community events is still a very effective way to generate business, but for the purpose of this blog, we will focus on the digital channels and the opportunities they present.
Organic Search – ‘Google it’ – it’s what we all do. Google is the biggest search engine and is often the starting point of the buying cycle. This is where your potential customers will conduct their research. They will check prices, ask for directions, ask advice, window shop, gather intelligence and make impulsive decisions. If you want your business to get found online, investing in Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) will help to increase the rank of your domain and increase it’s search visibility.
Google isn’t, however, the only search engine, and it pays to do your research to see if there are opportunities for increasing reach and revenue via other mediums.
YouTube is the second largest search engine. As a Google product, YouTube search algorithms work in a similar way to Google Search, and ranking factors include content quality and relevance, along with YouTube channel ratings, brand authority and social engagement.
Did you know?
On mobile alone, in an average week, YouTube reaches more adults 18+ during prime time than any cable network.
Source: Neilsen April 2016
Other search engines include Bing, which is certainly worth considering as Android phones and Microsoft laptops default to the Bing search engine. Vimeo, AOL and Ask are also popular platforms and could be worthy of consideration for gaining greater organic search visibility.
Paid Search – ‘PPC’, pay per click advertising is available on Google, Bing, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Instagram and will give your brand increased reach and visibility on these platforms. PPC advertising is a great way to drive highly targeted traffic to your website but it can also be used for very specific promotions such as for app launches, video releases, event promotion, product launches, click to call promos, and many many more.
Many businesses use PPC alongside search marketing and social marketing because it can be really effective in capturing traffic for search terms and keywords that your site doesn’t rank well for organically. This means that you have the potential to gain Page 1 visibility on Google for search terms that may be impossible for your site to rank for because of tough competition in your sector. Really competitive keywords may be expensive, but the beauty of PPC is that it is measurable, so you can set a budget cap, and optimise your campaigns to work to that budget ensuring you don’t overspend and so helping you generate a positive return on your investment.
Social – Organic social marketing is an incredibly powerful, free marketing tool that has completely revolutionised the way businesses market themselves online. A powerful arena, social media provides you with a direct and targeted way of communicating with the right audiences. Organic posting means it doesn’t cost you a penny if you manage it in-house, but there are also options on many social platforms for enhancing your reach with paid advertising. Advertising on social channels costs less than print marketing, and can be implemented quickly and effectively, often with fewer resources. In fact studies show that 78% of businesses are effectively utilising social media to outsell their competitors.
The big 4 are Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and Instagram, but there are many others which could offer low hanging fruit, particularly if they are platforms not yet explored and exploited by your competitors.
Email – Email marketing is the most widely used form of digital marketing. It has lower costs than most other marketing activities and has been proven to generate higher and quicker response rates than direct mail.
More than 70& of customers who abandon your website are not likely to return unless they buy something or sign up to your mailing list. This is your chance to remarket your brand and re-engage with users who don’t commit at first visit. Email is also a great way of staying in touch with existing customers and this will increase repeat purchases and referrals.
The best mailer format is a branded HTML template. We use Mailchimp as it makes creating templates, uploading content and images and importing data lists a breeze. There are many other email clients so it pays to do your research and check the pricing on data limits and also check for compatible integrations, particularly if you have an ecommerce site.
How to decide which are the best channels for your business
1. Research your target audience & your traffic – find out which channels your audience use, which channels show higher levels of engagement and which channels already drive the best quality traffic to your site.
2. Check out your competitors – if they have a strong presence on certain channels, it is likely they are generating some good business out of it but this may not always be the case, so although it’s great to gain insight on how your competition is marketing to their audience, use it as a tool to help you make the right decisions for YOUR business.
3. Analyse and Adapt – the great thing about digital marketing is that you can monitor, measure, analyse and adapt your marketing strategies and over time, this process will help you to achieve greater success.
If you would like some guidance and advice on how to market your business online, please get in touch with Whizz Marketing, an established Google Partner Agency who provides remote marketing and SEO consultancy and support to SME’s. For further information, please visit www.whizzmarketing.co.uk
Telephone No.01252 622129