Let’s first take a quick look at the criteria you’re employing digital marketing for, which are necessary to narrow down the list of channels you need to put your marketing strategy into action:

1. Company objectives
Get the word out: If your current offline efforts don’t match how your competitors are growing in popularity, this is a good goal to assess how digital channels can be leveraged to bridge that gap.

Your USP: Your target audience needs to know about your products or services, and the differentiators that separate you from another ‘me too’ player in the market. the goal is to solve the customer problems for which they are seeking solutions

Traffic & Sales – Probably the biggest reason, placed last to flow as a reason after brand building and USP promotion, driving traffic and creating a sustainable sales funnel.

2. Client objectives
After the analysis of the cadence of your client, that is, their browsing habits or the channels in which they are most present, begin to identify the channels that would serve the most to target your audience.

3. Budget estimates
Since marketing is a cost-intensive segment, it’s great to have a ballpark figure of the budget you’ll be spending on your final digital channel strategy.

4. Talent Competencies
Having a mix of developers, designers, and domain-specific resources for search or social channel marketing should be considered before choosing your channel mix.

With the previous goals that are central to your business idea now firm, the darkness over which channel to adopt has been cleared up a bit.

Doing your preliminary research through expert articles like these gives you a good head start before becoming the leader of one of the best digital marketing channels, which will try to hook you on their services, often even though it’s not the best option.
The most popular channels are listed below, taking into account the generic marketing direction and typical goals that organizations have.

This rule of thumb according to most companies adopted should give you reason enough to find the best suite, but also explore channels specific to your industry, such as classifieds for real estate aggregators or a search engine for hospitality that caters to its target audience.

Search engine marketing (SEM)
This is the term that governs the dominance of having your brand present on relevant search results pages through a paid exchange with big-name search engines like Google or Bing. However, if you have heard of Pay Per Click and not SEM, it is because it is one of the main features of SEM that has gained popularity.

For relevant keywords or search phrases that your target audience might enter into their search for solutions that you can perfectly match, search engines like Google offer a SEM tool like AdWords to bid and position your brand link or product thumbnail about ‘organic’ search results (more on ‘organic’ in a bit). When prospects click on your brand ads, you pay Google.

Search engine optimization (SEO)
Michael Hyatt talks about how his Facebook or Twitter social media pages are embassies, where he has temporary land on someone else’s property, while his website is a base of operations, where he has ultimate control.

Using a natural way when optimizing your website through things like keywords and meta tags is the best way to get your website higher in the search engine results pages (SERPs). A common user behavior is to generally trust a written news article a little more than they would trust an advertisement.

So, rather than paying and placing your brand on a keyword, refine your SEO strategy to get your site to position n. 1 or n. #2 for your target audience is a great sales conversion method.

Social Media Marketing (SMM)
Social media has opened up consumers to have ongoing dialogues with their favorite brands. There is almost no other medium that can guarantee as much engagement as social media does.

Almost every organization, like SEO, has an SMM strategy to promote their offerings.

But getting the media platform right is critical. While Twitter may be great for branding, it may not be great with lead generation or targeting, which a more goal-oriented platform like Facebook might offer.

Display and affiliate advertising
The images, videos or pop-up windows that you see on the websites you visit are part of the display advertising offer. A display network typically consists of websites that are open to show their ads to their audience.

The main business model today runs on display advertising, as free websites like a blog usually make money through revenue sharing with the display network.

The most popular networks include Google Display Network or Facebook Audience Network. The advertiser pays a commission to the network and the publisher when prospects click and interact with the ad. Affiliate marketing, on the other hand, is performance based where an advertiser typically shares a portion of the revenue or country only when a sale is made, not when a click occurs.

There are a host of other channels, including those that rely on emerging technologies like podcasts, advertising through smart home speakers like the Echo dot.

In fact, around 50 Echo devices are shipped every minute, making it the next new platform for the best to compete on.

Using the channels mentioned in line with your business goals, whether it’s email marketing or PR, in line with your business goals, there’s no stopping the kind of possibilities you can experience and incorporate.

Discover the best mix of channels or sub-channels that can deliver the takeaway products for your places of business, and you’ll be on the road to great digital marketing for your business.