Channel strategy

Deciding which channels and advertising media to focus on can be the difference between success and a lot of wasted money.

CHOOSING THE RIGHT

Channels & Strategy

When contemplating new approaches to promoting the businesses with Digital Marketing, an at-time dizzying array of options exist (and recommendations from collegues / friends) making selection of appropriate channels a daunting task. We have provided the following information to attempt to support and guide you towards good choices in this regard.

understanding

User Intent

The following are some of the common digital marketing promotional channels and their function and suitability for businesses of certain types.   ‘Search advertising’ where users type something like ‘sunglasses brisbane’ into Google provides an opportunity to reach people at the moment they are service-seeking where showing banner ads or social ads to people is to some extent a ‘distraction advertising’ mechanism as their primary online activity at the moment when they see ads is not necessarily service-seeking in nature.

A user’s goal at the moment of engaging is referred to as ‘user intent’ – understanding their primary goal is crucial to using the right method to attract their interest.

The nature of

Advertising channels

Channel
Type of Ads
Description
Suited to
Display advertising
Banner ads
Ads shown on third party websites (often image banners) based on topic or interest profile.
Brand awareness / reaching lots of eyeballs. Less suited to driving strong transactional sales. Often a ‘distraction advertising’ medium as you are showing ads to people across the full breadth of their buying cycle (not necessarily ready to buy), or when they are busy reading or doing other things online.
Pay Per Click
Keyword search ads
Text ads shown at the top of the google search results
Very focused, often reaches people at the moment they are product or service-seeking. Strong transactional results from this medium but competitive online and cost per click is high (needs careful measurement of ROI)
Organic / SEO
Ranking highly on google (non-ad listings)
The process of boosting your site trust & authority to get Google to show you pages at the top of the results.
Very focused, often reaches people at the moment they are product or service-seeking. Strong transactional results from this medium but process takes time, and investment is often loaded into the front end of the process (not cheap) to build trust and authority but returns are ongoing, long-lasting and at low incremental cost once strong ranks achieved. Needs a strong content-strategy / webstie to support good results. Good SEO + a poor website delivers poor results overall.
Facebook/ Instagram / LinkedIn
Ads of varying formats shown on these social networks
Showing ads to social users based on interests, profiles, or job roles.
Can work effectively for some businesses – we recommend a ‘suck it and see’ approach (trial) to assess effectiveness. Often delivers strong lead volume, but also quality typically not as strong as keyword based advertising. Facebook in particular have very strong demographic and interest profile data on users helping advertisers reach the right prospects with ads.
Email marketing
Emails sent to customers
Regular newsletter or promotional emails promoting offers or company services.
Aside from general customer care and building a positive impression of your brand and business with customers, this form of advertising works particularly well in eCommerce at driving people back to the site to purchase, as long as sensible offers are sent regularly (requires internal resourcing of planning / preparation of this on a regular basis to be effective).
Marketing Automation
Automated follow up emails / sms / messages.
Smart email and multi-channel messages sent to clients in response to some action.
Designing intelligent email follow up sequences for people who enquire tends to work quite effectively for many businesses. Quite some time investment and thinking required however to design a sensible process to complement your offline sales process.
Remarketing
Showing ads to people who have visited your website.
Banner ads (Google) or Social Ads shown to people tracked via them visiting your website previously.
Tends to work quite effectively as you are ‘preaching to the converted’ i.e. advertising to people who have had a previous interest in your brand or who have visited your website before. Tends to be low volume however and so a complementary adjunct to other strategies rather than a singular promotional focus on its own.
Private Marketplaces
Listing in eBay / Gumtree and similar classified ad media.
Often creating product or service sale listings offering an item or a service.
Can work very for certain specific products and services – most often offers targeted and end consumers (rather than business to business) but requires testing. Typically some overhead in managing listings and responding to (sometimes random!) enquiries.

SELECTING

Channels that may suit you

Disclaimer: the follow is a generalisation and may not be true of all businesses in these categories but if you’re staring to the abyss of options and don’t know where to start, this table will help.  A conversation with us can also provide additional guidance.  Contact us.