With the rising technological advances available to marketers, it’s easier to connect with your audiences than it was ten years ago. The Internet, for example, has made the world smaller in terms of reaching out to markets. But not all business owners know how to maximize this power.
Marketers need to realize that the whole Internet is their playing field, and the more they know about how it works, the deeper they can sync with their audiences. There are various channels in which they can promote their brand and even exchange ideas with their consumers to make the business-consumer relationship personal and lasting. Here are 10 important channels marketers can use to boost audience awareness, which in turn can lead to big profits.
1. Your own website
Whether a small or big business, it’s very important that you have your own website. This marketing channel boosts brand visibility and awareness; people who might know your brand would probably need to search for you on the web before engaging your product. That means your site should be optimized to keep the audience's attention steady enough to reap conversions.
Your site should not only be filled with information about your brand. You can publish valuable content such as innovations and trends in the industry that your audience may be interested in. For example, Simplyrest.com, a site advertising mattresses, has multiple blogs about sleep health and hygiene. Informational content relevant to your target market can drive traffic to your site.
2. Social media marketing
We Are Social reported that out of 4.54 billion Internet users, 3.8 billion are active on social media. If you want to get in touch with your audience, whoever they may be, you’ll likely find them there. That reach makes social media a very powerful marketing channel for small and big businesses alike.
Aside from being fertile ground for advertisements, social media platforms are now improving their eCommerce features. Social media giant Instagram rolled out changes on its site and app to make it easier for consumers to transact with businesses. Instagram users can now buy items directly from their apps via an in-app checkout system. Updates like these are expected to manifest in other social media platforms in an effort to reap more profits.
3. Influencer marketing
Social media influencers also have the power to sway audiences to choose particular products or services. Users put great trust in influencers they follow, and they consider these personas to be experts in their fields.
In recent years, consumer trust in businesses has declined and users now prefer influencers to base their decisions on. Business owners should keep this in mind when brainstorming for ad campaigns aimed to boost consumer trust and awareness. Influencer marketing is a very helpful way to get your audience to connect more with your brand because they’re connecting with a person and not with a company.
4. Pay-per-click advertising
PPC is one of the most reliable and profitable marketing schemes out there. It gives you the power to create content and only pays for ad clicks. There are two main types of PPC; Google Adwords and Social media ads--- both are robust marketing channels for you to reach your audiences.
Because you’re only paying each time your ad is clicked, you won’t be wasting money showing your ad to those who aren’t interested. By targeting the audience based on their interests and demographics, you can predict who is likely to be interested in your ads and are likely to be converted into direct sales.
5. Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
SEO is driving quality traffic to your site via search engine results. When it comes to content marketing, SEO is a vital tool to get search engines to primarily link to you when answering user concerns.
Quality and reliable content is crawler fodder for search engines that in turn rank your page. If its crawlers see that you have good material, it may place you at the top of search engine results, boosting your page’s visibility. You can achieve quality content via unique and original text with well-placed keywords and photos. Be sure that your content is relevant to your audience, and that you are linking to reliable sources to maximize SEO as a marketing channel.
6. Email marketing
Despite the boom in other marketing channels, the good ol’ email marketing is still a powerful way to reach your audience. According to a study by The Radicati Group, roughly 3.5 billion people use emails that can reach up to 4.2 billion by the end of 2022. That’s a huge market you’re missing out if you don’t avail of email marketing.
To avoid being sent to the spam or the trash, your emails should look as if you’re offering users something they can’t refuse like daily updates, free guides or ebooks, or information on new releases.
7. Video marketing
Video marketing is another mighty marketing channel that reaches millions of people a day. One prime example of this is YouTube advertising.
According to a 2019 report by Statista, YouTube has 2 billion active users; the second most popular social media site. You can choose to place your ads in videos you think your target audience is likely to watch but you only have a limited amount of time. Most ads are skippable five-second videos. It’s up to your creativity on how to develop a YouTube ad campaign that hooks your market’s attention and keeps it.
8. Display advertising
Another common marketing channel proven to reach your audience is display advertising. Display advertising is characterized by imagery or typography in banner ads that are commonplace in all types of websites.
It’s a simple way to promote your business and drive traffic to your site. You just need to make sure that you know where to place your ads; pages you know your audience regularly visit.
9. Guest posts
One other effective marketing channel for you to connect with your audience is through writing guest posts for prominent and reliable sites or blogs in the industry. In this way, you’re introducing yourself to a set of loyal consumers that visit said prominent site.
You can add links to your own website to drive quality traffic from the host site to yours. This boosts your website’s domain authority, something that search engines look for when ranking pages in the search engine results.
10. Forum marketing
An unlikely marketing channel business owners can use our online forums or discussions; this is called forum marketing. Basically, you look for online threads that are relevant to your brand and participate in these discussions.
Examples of these threads are conversations that center around questions regarding your products and services. You can build audience trust and loyalty through conversing with your consumers regularly about their concerns. You can also include links to your site to drive the users in the said threads to relevant and valuable content on your website.
There are a lot of ways you can connect with your audience. With all the new innovations available for the business owners’ perusal, you will virtually never run out of ways to market your brand. It all comes down to getting to know your audience; their interests and tendencies; what’s important and mundane to them. With this information, you can develop an online marketing campaign that your consumers can relate to.