How to pick the best marketing channel to grow your business ?
Every modern business in this new decade realizes the importance of having an online presence. Even if in some cases this is not directly related to selling. You might agree with this, or may have even had instances where you’ve discussed this with you team but most brands have a hard time figuring out what works for them. Have you ever wondered how to pick your digital marketing channel? Here’s how!
It is important that you take the time and figure out which marketing channel will be the best fit for your business before you start pouring time and money into them.
The truth is you never know 100% — but there is a way of narrowing down your options. A simple solution that I’ve put together is to try and see where your business fits in the following chart.
Once You’ve Found Your Place
Note which part of the chart your business fits into and focus only on those channels. The size of impact of the channels across businesses is a rough scale based on public data. It’s best to start with the channel of biggest influence since they have a higher potential to scale.
Top Left Quadrant
If your customer is actively looking for a product you offer + the most random audience that could buy your product. The channels with an asterisk are in multiple quadrants.
Google SEM means that you place your ad on the results page of the search engine. Google works for almost any audience and demographic as long as your product category is one that people are likely to search for.
Bing is a search engine that is roughly 15% of Google’s entire search volume.
With SEO you rank or appear on search engine results on Google, Bing, and Yahoo organically, i.e. without paying for ads. This achieved by creating content and optimizing it with relevant keywords your customer may search for online. SEO offers less control over customer action when compared to SEM.
This is a quickly growing advertising channel, which works for most e-commerce products that are sold thorough Amazon and otherwise. These can be used to target people pretty well.
Placing ads on Pinterest. This platform is ideal if you are targeting young people and women.
Top Right Quadrant
Your customer is actively looking for a product similar to yours + your target customer is very specific
Integrated Partnerships
Start an arrangement with a company that has an audience for free ad spaces to offer your product. So if members of a social club are often looking for good deals on luxury vacations, then you appear on their list of luxury travel packages.
Tradeshows
Get a booth at a tradeshow. Tradeshows and conventions get a large number of targeted audiences in one place where everyone is looking for new products to use in the same ballpark.
Review Sites
Review sites and independent reviewers can be a great source of leads in specific verticals. For example food and travel bloggers or influencers can promote your restaurant business.
Review sites and independent reviewers can be a great source of leads in specific verticals. For example food and travel bloggers or influencers can promote your restaurant business.
Bing is a search engine that is roughly 15% of Google’s entire search volume.
With SEO you rank or appear on search engine results on Google, Bing, and Yahoo organically, i.e. without paying for ads. This achieved by creating content and optimizing it with relevant keywords your customer may search for online. SEO offers less control over customer action when compared to SEM.
Bottom Right Quadrant
Your customer are not actively looking for a product like yours + your target customer is pretty specific
Creating ads on Facebook and Instagram. Facebook being a primary social media platform it can work for almost any audience, broad or targeted, as long as you know who you are marketing too. Also this requires some basic knowledge in how social media works. The same is true for Instagram.
Placing ads on LinkedIn. This is good for some categories of B2B sellers where the target customer also uses LinkedIn a lot, like HR recruiters and business managers the scale is low for products and services. .
Direct Mail
One of the most direct and precise marketing methods is to get a database of people you know would be good customers, and email them. You can also use this incentivize and encourage repeat sales.
Outbound (Calling & Email)
Outbound calling is also a very precise method of marketing for products and services. To execute this you will need a database of people you know would be good customers and call or email them.
Podcasts *
This is a fast growing channel, you can market well with by choosing podcasts that cater to difference audiences in different instances.
Affiliate *
You can pay partners a commission to driving clicks to your website. Theoretically this could be quite targeted visitors but my experience is that most affiliates can only drive generic visits at a certain scale.
Bottom Left Quadrant
Your customer is not actively looking for a similar product + the most random people who could buy your product
Pinterest *
Placing ads on Pinterest. This platform is ideal if you are targeting young people and women.
This lets you place banner ads on various display networks. For example by going through Google Display Network (GDN), you can place your banner ad on thousands of sites. The targeting on this is not great because of the scale.
Placing ads on news sites where you pay to show people your content. The click rates are cheap and you can reach a big audience if you pick the right news sight but the targeting is not great due to the scale.
Creating ads on Facebook and Instagram. Facebook being a primary social media platform it can work for almost any audience, broad or targeted, as long as you know who you are marketing too. Also this requires some basic knowledge in how social media works. The same is true for Instagram.
Affiliate *
You can pay partners a commission to driving clicks to your website. Theoretically this could be quite targeted visitors but my experience is that most affiliates can only drive generic visits at a certain scale.
This has great reach and the targeting is the second strongest major online channel after Facebook. But it also requires time and tools to create content consistently to grow your audience. You can also use affiliate channels on YouTube to promote your product.
Advertise on TV and Radio. It is a tried and true medium of marketing but you will have to test big on this channel. TV and Radio can both drive new customers at acceptable prices, even compared to every other channel. But the targeting in this channel of marketing is very broad.
Podcasts *
This is a fast growing channel, you can market well with by choosing podcasts that cater to difference audiences in different instances.
