Many business owners and marketers wonder where they should begin their digital marketing journey. Should they focus on SEO, paid social, or content curation? Should they implement multiple channels (such as SEO and PPC) or should they specialize in one?
The answer, at least at first blush, seems simple: Start with SEO. You may be familiar with the term, but for those of you reading this blog post who aren’t, SEO is the process of optimizing your website’s content to improve its ranking in the search engines. With the growth of content marketing and social media, making the SEO change shouldn’t be such a big deal, right?
However, while SEO is a great place to begin your digital marketing journey, it’s not the only channel you need to consider. In fact, depending on your resources and the nature of your business, you may want to tackle paid social, content curation, or a combination of the two.
Why Should You Specialize In One Channel?
If you’re new to digital marketing, it’s natural to wonder which channel is the best fit for your business. After all, not all businesses are created equal, and some are more suited to certain channels than others. For instance, an eCommerce business might perform great on online stores like Shopify and BigCommerce, but struggle mightily on social media channels.
If you do a lot of business internationally, paid social might be the channel for you. However, if your main audience and customer base reside locally, SEO might be the better fit. Similarly, if you’re an educational institution, you might want to focus on content curation because this is the channel where people are looking for information.
By specializing in one channel, you free up time and resources to focus on other parts of your business. For instance, if you’re already doing great on social media and are wondering why your SEO isn’t moving the needle, maybe it’s time to shift gears and concentrate on social media. You can always go back to SEO at a later date if you’re not feeling confident in your social media marketing strategy.
The Benefits Of Multi-Channel Marketing
With the proliferation of digital marketing channels, particularly social media platforms, the line between advertising and marketing becomes blurred. For a long time, digital marketing was seen as a way to advertise your product or service and get people to ‘like’ or ‘follow’ your page so that you can have more exposure in their feed.
However, with the rise of content marketing and content curation, marketing has become a bit more complex. Today, digital marketing channels are used to market a business: products, services, and events. Building a blog to complement your website is a great way to attract potential customers to your brand, and then keep them coming back for more by providing them with content that is both interesting and useful to them.
If you’re wondering how to get started with content marketing, you can’t simply publish a piece of content and expect people to flock to your blog. You need to establish a pattern of consistently good content. When people visit your blog, they should come back for more frequently than they go away. To build a solid foundation for your content marketing strategy, you need to publish a variety of content that is both interesting and useful to your target audience. Once you do, you will be able to push out more content consistently.
Marketing Channels You Should Avoid
If you’re looking to specialize in one particular channel, you want to make sure that you avoid any others that might be detrimental to your company. Sometimes, understanding the reasons behind a certain channel’s popularity can help you develop a better campaign strategy. Here are some of the more common channels that you might want to avoid.