Business and digital marketing go together like milk and cookies. If you want to build product value and generate maximum sales, there is no alternative to using different digital marketing modes. But for a newbie starting a business, the questions that can pop up in your mind are, Which is the most effective mode? How to find that & How do you measure the effectiveness? Well, to answer all your questions and put your doubts to rest, here is A Definitive Guide on the Most Effective Mode of Digital Marketing.
Not everyone gets engaged in the same business with the same strategies. Everyone chalks out different strategies and goals to stand out within the marketplace. So, we will break down some most effective modes of digital marketing based on your needs and purpose.
What is Digital Marketing?
Digital marketing is the use of electronic devices that may or may not require internet access to promote particular brands, services, and products. Marketers come up with different ways to stay relevant and competitive within the industry. Hence, digital marketing has evolved.
In recent times, you can hardly find a group or community that does not use social media, watch TV, or carry mobile phones. So, any business needs to have a digital presence. Otherwise, they will miss out on many opportunities to engage diverse customers in their services and build maximum brand value.
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What Are the Most Effective Modes of Digital Marketing?
With the growth in technology and innovation, modes to promote your services to the targeted audience are also increasing. So, there are different ways to reach out to your audience and build product value. And considering the present time and needs, here are a few most effective modes of digital marketing.
1. Social Media Marketing
According to the Kepios analysis, almost 59.3% of the total global population uses social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter (to name a very few), etc. So, using social media is a powerful way to showcase your business.
Nowadays, people are more connected via online platforms than through in-person communication. So, if you want to grow your business following, you need to invest in social media marketing. Depending on the type of your products, services, and customers, you need to choose different social networks.
For example, if your business requires detailed visual representation, using Pinterest and Instagram should be your preference. And if you want to reach the news junkies, Twitter is the savior.
If you are trying to create a pool of young customers, you should promote your services or products through Instagram and Twitch. However, for reaching out to the older population, invest in Facebook marketing. So, you get the idea that if you are not on social media, it is time to build your pages and market value there.
Also, you can collaborate with different social media influencers or creators who are famous. They often come up with interesting ideas to promote your business on their affiliate sites or platforms. Even companies like Apple and Samsung depend on word-of-mouth of influencers or social media artists to gain loyal customers.
2. Content Marketing
Not everyone likes to scroll social media platforms. Some of your customers may prefer reading articles, blogs, and descriptions regarding your services or product. In such cases, Content marketing can be the game changer to promote your business.
If you want your customers to come to you first to gather information on services or industry trends, you must publish informational and trendy content on your websites or marketing platforms. Also, regularly publishing blog posts, how-to-videos, and instructional materials helps to enhance users’ experiences and engagement.
Note that, content marketing is not a direct way to promote sales. Rather it helps to connect with your audience through informative and fun content. This mode of marketing creates a loyal audience pool that keeps coming back to you to know more about relevant products or services. So, to convey your message to the mass, it is competitive yet effective marketing.
3. Mobile Marketing
Mobiles or smartphones are smaller in size but have a bigger impact when it comes to reaching out to a large audience. Because most customers are on their phones more than any other devices. What makes this marketing most effective is its versatility. Marketers can transfer almost every form of marketing to mobile.
You can create mobile push notifications, in-app messages, and call-only ads to promote your services through mobile phones or tablets. If you want to focus on customers within a specific region or location, using geo-fencing and specific audience segments of mobile advertising is a big-time help.
4. Search Engine Marketing
If you are a mainly website-based business, you need to rank your website to connect to your audience. And for that, Search Engine Marketing or SEM works like magic. SEM mainly includes PPC and SEO tactics to promote your services or products.
While PPC is paid tactics or advertisements to bring in traffic or audience to your sites, SEO can be both paid or non-paid. Most newbie marketers tend to stick to non-paid SEO marketing mainly through keyword optimization to promote their business. The more time and effort you invest in SEM, the better results it produces.
5. Video Marketing
More and more marketers are publishing video content as they get more reach and engagement. No matter what type of business you are into, creating informational or fun video clips to convey your message is a must.
It should not necessarily be prerecorded videos. You can live stream your products as well. And live-streaming helps to answer customers’ queries in real time. For video advertisements, you can choose either social media or Television, depending on your business goals.
6. Audio Marketing
Many people prefer listening to internet radio podcasts, music, audio stories, or documents while driving or working out. And keeping that in mind, you can invest in Spotify marketing or other digital channels to increase your brand recognition and sale.
7. Email Marketing
It might seem that more and more people are turning away from using Email. But using Email marketing has been effective in recent times to reach and connect to more audiences.
Email helps to push seasonal promotions more effectively. Especially, if you are an e-commerce or retail business. It is likely more strategic to stay in touch with your customers and followers.
How to Find the Most Effective Digital Marketing Mode for Your Business?
There is no one-size-fits-all answer when it comes to choosing the best mode of digital marketing. Because depending on your target audience, business type, objectives, and goals different ways of marketing can be effective on different occasions. However, if you want to stand out in the marketing sector, consider noting down these tips to choose the best modes of digital marketing.
1. Know Your Target Audience
The most important step to stand out in a crowd of hundreds is to know your target audience as specifically as possible. Before choosing the modes to promote your business, identify and know your audience, only then you will be able to create campaigns that align with your audience and their needs.
While identifying the audience, you must explore their interests, age group, gender, location, and educational background. It will help you to choose a digital marketing channel that fits your goals. For example, if you want to reach elderly customers, you must create Television, radio, video, and audio advertisements. Due to their short attention span and fewer social media engagements, these ways are the most effective to reach them.
However, if you are targeting a younger generation, social media marketing, especially collaborating with their most liked content creators is the easiest and most persuasive way to bring in traffic. So, knowing your audience and creating their profiles is the first step in finding the best mode or ways of digital marketing.
2. Understand the Needs and Interests of the Audience
Once you know your target audience, it is time to know and understand their needs and interest. And you should identify how they express their needs or interests while searching for specific services or products. To know their interests and search intent, you can use Google Analytics.
Some audiences might like podcasts while others might prefer blogs or other forms of pastime or entertainment. Keeping those factors in mind, you need to consider creating marketing content or strategies for different platforms or modes your audience prefers.
If most of the audience is on Facebook or Instagram, then creating Television advertisements will be a waste of money and time. So, you need to be very thoughtful and careful of your audience’s interests and needs.
Try to understand whether your audience like emotional content or not. If they do, try making content that the audience can relate to themselves. Such emotional connection helps to gain a loyal fanbase or supporters.
3. Set Your Goals
You need to determine what digital marketing campaign goals you want to achieve. Without setting goals it gets difficult to invest effectively in digital marketing.
If your goal is to raise brand awareness then promoting content through SEM or content marketing is more than enough. Because blog posts, articles, and PPC help to make the audience familiar with your business. However, if you want to generate more views for revenue or sales, social media, and mobile marketing are vital.
For increasing traffic for your business, you should not use paid SEM or SEO tools. Rather you can bring in an organic audience via Do It Yourself SEO efforts and works. While setting your goals, do include a to-do and not-to-do list as well.
4. Explore New Traffic Sources
Do not limit yourself to the conventional digital channels that most people are familiar with. You should explore new and different sources or media so that you understand the recent trends and marketplace more.
Try to analyze what new social media apps or channels are at their peak now. And if you find your target audience there, you need to represent your brand on those media as well.
How to Measure the Effectiveness of Different Digital Marketing Modes?
Whether you are an experienced or newbie marketer, you do not want your digital marketing efforts to go to waste, right? Therefore, it is important to measure the digital marketing campaigns’ performance so that you can know which mode or campaign is most fruitful for your business. And here are the ways to measure marketing KPIs to monitor the effectiveness.
1. Content Traffics Tools
If you want to invest in content marketing to achieve your future goals, measure the content traffics of your published blogs or content to date. If the traffics are increasing, it means that this marketing is working for you. Also, you should know what type of blogs your audience engages in and at what time.
To measure the content marketing ROIs you can use Google Analytics. It shows you the overall user experience and traffic rates of your site. Google Search Console and Semrush are two of the tools to monitor and optimize the performance of content marketing.
2. Social Media Engagement Tools
Some social media channels show the statistics of the business you are running and promoting through their channels. So, you can have a look into those in-app data to measure whether this marketing is working for you or not.
Also, you can use Cyfe to monitor and analyze the social media reach, growth, and engagement rates your audio and visual content are getting. And to compare which social channel is giving you the best result, you can rely on Google Analytics and Hootsuite.
3. SEM or SEO Tools
If you are using SEO, SEM, and PPC marketing, you can rely on Google Analytics or HubSpot to know which keywords are bringing more traffic and how the PPC ads are performing.
Also, HubSpot’s additional SEO tools will help you measure your website’s ranking in comparison to your competitors so that know whether to improve your SEM tactics or not. On top of that, HubSpot provides feedback on your marketing as well.
4. Mobile Marketing Performance Tool
Mobile advertisements are different in layout and engagement. And not all tools have the feature or capability to measure mobile metrics mainly from in-app data. So, if you are solely dependent on mobile marketing, there are not many tools other than Mixpanel to help you monitor the marketing performance.
Mixpanel will let you know how your customers are using your app or site. And it also analyzes what mobile marketing features make you gain or lose your customers.
5. Email Marketing Tools
To understand the reach and performance of your email marketing, you need to measure the unsubscribe rate, click-through rate, delivery, and conversion rate. For that, use MailChimp and Convertkit tools. These tools let you know whether you are losing or gaining subscribers to your email list.
There is no single mode of digital marketing that can take the crown of “most effective.” Because any sort of business needs to use several modes or mediums to analyze what works and what does not work for them. So, before sticking to one strategy or medium, specify your business goals and audience first. It will help you to choose the tools or marketing types that work in your best favor.