Whether you have a monthly budget of $ 100 for advertising or a monthly budget of $ 100,000, you want to get the best return on your investment. Just as important, you want to make the most of the time you are investing in your marketing campaigns. After all, maximized ROI is always the goal of any campaign.
Picking the right marketing channels will help you achieve that ROI. But how do you know which marketing channels are right to get the most out of your advertising spend and your time? There are so many changes happening in marketing and it’s difficult to know which platforms will work best for you.
If you’re not sure where to start, we can help. We’ll cover the 6 best marketing channels you should focus on in 2020 and some best practices to get the most out of them.
1. Pay-Per-Click Marketing
Table of Contents
With regard to marketing channels, pay-per-click (PPC) advertising is still an unbeatable steamroller, especially with the various options now available to brands.
There is a learning curve for each platform, so if you can hire an agency to take care of your campaigns, we recommend this.
There are two dominant forces in the PPC world these days: Google Ads and Facebook / Instagram Ads. Google search ads will help you connect with users looking for products or services like yours.
Meanwhile, display ads from Google and social paid ads Facebook allow you to create demand and present their services to clients who may not be looking or even know you exist.
2. Social media
Social media is a big player in the marketing world today. Customers are actively looking for brands they like or are interested in, and an increasing number of users are accessing social media to research or make purchase decisions.
Social media also offers valuable community-building opportunities that you won’t find anywhere else. Whether you are just sharing content behind the scenes on your page or creating a group involving your business, you should take advantage of social media to be worthwhile.
There is a lot to cover when it comes to seeing a social media ROI, but here are the most important things to keep in mind:
Focus on relationships, not sales
If people wanted to be sold, they would go to your website. Instead, this is where customers come to meet you.
Interact with your followers with enthusiasm and don’t treat them as if they are nothing more than an open wallet.
Think transparency
You still want to be professional, but you can be professional without falling into the standard mold at the same time.
Show behind the scenes content and face negative comments with elegance. People will realize this and trust you more.
Choose the right platforms for
posting consistently is a big thing on social media and it’s harder to do if you’re across all platforms.
Choose the platforms that will most benefit your specific business and start there. You can always climb later.
3. Email Marketing
Email marketing is the best direct response marketing method that exists. Users have chosen to listen to you, so they are more willing to open these messages to learn about the latest products, sales, and how to benefit from them.
Email marketing can be complex, so we cover it in detail here.
Best email marketing practices include:
Make it as personalized as possible
Use a combination of automatic segmentation responses to make emails as immediately relevant to recipients as possible. This will not only increase the chance of immediate conversion but also long-term opening rates.
Keep text short
It is your best friend for any type of writing, and this is also true for email marketing.
The email should be easy to read and scan, with a large CTA at the bottom.
Don’t neglect the subject line
You need to give users a purpose to click. Again, be brief here, but try to offer value, urge urgency, or both to increase clicks.
4. Your website
Any companies don’t think of their website as a marketing course, but in reality, it may be the most important. This is where users will arrive when they are interested in learning more about your company, and if they can’t find answers to their questions quickly, they won’t be around long enough to find out.
Your website should make a good first impression and represent your company, brand, products, and services the way you want.
There are several things you must do to increase your effectiveness immediately:
Perform an audit on the site
Use tools like SEMrush to check your site’s SEO performance.
They will flag errors that can be corrected, including traceability issues.
Test your interface
For that, the manual way is the best. Ask some people you trust to check your site and see if they can find the main information and pages (About me and Contact included) quickly and easily. If not, it’s time for an upgrade.
Use your analysis
Are you noticing falls somewhere in the local funnel? See where the drops are happening in Google Analytics to assess why the funnel isn’t working and how you can improve it.
5. Content marketing and SEO
Content marketing is like a savings account. As time goes on, you get compound interest, making it even more valuable. Your perennial posts can offer SEO goods for a great time as people continue to look for them, and all of your content can provide valuable relationship building and lead generation resources.
Content marketing demonstrates authority and experience while helping you reach customers at different stages of the funnel and reach as many keywords as possible.
Content marketing must be of high quality to achieve these results.
Offer value
Make sure your content is actionable, which makes it valuable. If you’re writing about how to repair an AC unit, for example, you don’t just want to say “open it and look for something out of the ordinary” (if you want an example of what it would be like, take a look at the blog post below ).
You can also provide a visual and text tutorial on how to open the unit, specific problems to look for, and what they indicate. List how to solve problems with other step-by-step instructions and let people know when it’s time to call a technician.
Be strategic
Use your content to accomplish something, instead of just writing posts that you want to write. Use keyword research and public knowledge to shape the subjects you write about. Include CTAs in the text to get in touch, try your product, or learn more about your services.
Use multiple distribution channels
You need to actively distribute them across multiple channels. Use social media, add share buttons to your post and do what you can to get links back to your content through guest posting on other sites.
6. Marketing
word of mouth marketing has always been one of the most effective marketing channels and will continue on an ongoing basis. You will ignore it if a salesperson says you need that watch, but when your friend shows how much he loves to wear it every day because of all the smart features, you will pay more attention.
There are two main methods for encouraging word of mouth marketing. Motivating online referral and analysis programs for different online platforms, including Google, LinkedIn, and Yelp.
Here are some of the best ways to encourage word of mouth marketing:
Run affiliate programs or
referrals Offer customers an incentive such as a discount or credit purchase whenever one of your referrals hire or purchase from you. Make that incentive valuable.
Ask customers directly
After a purchase or service has been provided, talk to users and ask them what they thought and if they wouldn’t mind leaving a comment.
If you have a personal relationship with the customer, ask them directly.
Present the comments you have
Use tools to highlight your comments on your website, whether on product pages or a general testimonial page.
This will build trust quickly and add a little bit of #FOMO as well.
What about everything else?
Just because a marketing channel has not made it onto our list does not mean that it is not effective. Many brands have had big campaigns using influencer marketing or unsolicited calls or billboards or TV commercials, but all of these methods (and the others that didn’t make our list) generally work best for big brands with big budgets.
For those who are not a huge company – and sometimes even if you are – the money is usually better spent when allocated to the other marketing channels we are focusing on.