Organic and paid search are still the main pillars of any digital marketing plan, however, they’re not the only game in town. In fact, there are a number of other marketing channels that merit attention, all of which are quite active. Before we discuss the various marketing opportunities that exist, it’s important to understand the main differences between the various channels.

Pay-Per-Click Vs Affiliate Marketing

Pay-Per-Click (PPC) marketing is fairly straightforward. You’ll want to attract organic traffic to your site and once this happens, you can consider the job done. Getting visitors to your site, however, is only the first step in the PPC process because you have to make sure that these visitors are actually engaged with your content. To do this, you’ll want to promote relevant products to your audience, ensuring that each individual interaction with your content is maximized. A common misconception regarding PPC is that you only need to worry about attracting organic traffic to your site. Many people think that in order to earn money from PPC, you have to get tons of visitors to your site. While getting a lot of traffic is certainly important, it’s not the only factor you need to consider. The key is in making sure that each individual interaction with your content is maximized.

Email Marketing

Email marketing presents quite the unique challenge to marketers because you have to consider your target audience’s behaviour when designing your campaigns. Most marketers start with a segmented list of potential customers, based on their interests and demographic traits. Having a clear idea of your target audience’s interests allows you to craft subject lines and CTAs to draw them in, and boost conversion. You can also experiment with different CTAs to see which ones work best for your particular audience. With email marketing, you are only as good as your last email marketing campaign. This is because you have to consider that your audience has moved on to the next thing and your open rates and click-through rates have plummeted. So, it’s essential that you constantly evaluate your efforts with A/B testing and always strive to improve your open rates and click-throughs.

Display Advertising

Display advertising falls under the umbrella of digital marketing and a lot of businesses provide this service without charge, as a way to get the word out about their services. Essentially, you’ll want to display ads on your site, social media platforms and mobile apps. There are a few different types of display advertisements that you can choose from including banner ads, social media ads, real-time bidding and video pre-roll ads. With banner ads, you’ll want to choose a popular website that your audience visits regularly. Then, on that website, you can choose to place either a horizontal or vertical banner ad. For some businesses, this type of advertising can be incredibly effective because it allows them to show up in a user’s natural environment. This, in turn, can lead to a higher click-through rate.

Content Marketing

Content marketing is, essentially, the practice of creating and distributing content, such as articles, white papers, ebooks and guides, to attract, engage and persuade potential customers. To put it simply, content marketing is one of the most effective ways of attracting, engaging and converting your audience into profitable, paying customers. When done well, content marketing can boost your bottom line.

Choosing relevant and high-quality content for your audience is an essential part of the process. You’ll want to produce content that is valuable to your target audience and provides them with some sort of benefit. Ideally, you’ll want to create content that is highly targeted and specific to the interests and requirements of your potential customers.

As a marketer, you’ll want to be creating and distributing content, at least, once a week. Although, for some businesses, this may mean creating and distributing several pieces of content each month. It’s a long process but, in the end, it’s quite rewarding.

Social Media Marketing

Just like with email marketing, you need to consider your target audience’s behaviour when designing your campaigns on social media platforms. The biggest difference is that you have to focus more on building and engaging with communities, rather than single individuals. On social media, your job is to grow your audience and to make sure that your reach is as wide as possible. The more individual accounts you have, the more you can grow your audience. However, to make sure that your content is being distributed to the correct audience, you’ll want to use the relevant hashtags, depending on the type of content you’re posting.

Mobile Marketing

Mobile marketing is, essentially, marketing on mobile phones. You’ll want to target individuals based on their interests and demographics, and you can use location-based targeting to send your campaigns to the right audience, even when they’re in the middle of a busy city. It’s quite surprising how many consumers are in the middle of a purchase, on their phone, when you send them an offer to call you back. So, if you want to engage with these individuals, you’ll want to make sure that you’re offering something valuable in that moment.

Video Marketing

Last but not least, we have video marketing. As the name suggests, video marketing is mostly about marketing via video content. This can include, podcasts, webinars, YouTube videos, etc. Essentially, you’ll want to create short-form videos (between three and five minutes) that can be used to promote your business, attract leads and showcase your product or service.

You have to keep in mind that video content goes through a different lens when viewed on a mobile phone, as compared to when viewed on a computer. This is why, whenever you’re posting videos on social media, you need to make sure that you’re using the appropriate sizes for each platform. For example, on Twitter, you’re restricted to 280 characters, so you have to keep your videos short. Likewise, on Facebook, you’re limited to four minutes of video content.

The growth of video content on social media has enabled businesses to engage with customers, provide them with valuable information and educate them on the benefits of the product or service.

Overall, the landscape of digital marketing and its various specializations is changing constantly, as new technologies emerge and existing platforms evolve, all of which can make your life as a marketer a whole lot easier (or, at the very least, more interesting). With each new year that passes, new opportunities emerge, making it essential for marketers to constantly educate themselves on the latest trends and technologies.