How to choose the right digital marketing channels for success

In today’s digitally connected world, you have limitless avenues to market your brand and its offerings. Ideally, it should have made it easier for you to get your marketing message out to your audience. But, there is a downside to this abundance of channels. You might be tempted to be omnipresent to market your products and services. You are perhaps running the same campaigns on every channel. Simply hope that your customers follow, support, and engage with the brand. All this despite the digital marketing channels that you choose to run your campaign.

But this violates a cardinal rule for customer-centricity and channel selection:

MEET YOUR CUSTOMERS WHERE THEY CHOOSE!

Apply this to every possible situation where channel selection is apparent. It could be only your website, or an e-commerce affiliate. Right now social media channels are multiplying faster than we can join them. Even listing your business on web directories like Google My Business can add convenience to your customers!

What are the benefits of the right digital marketing channels?

The evolution of marketing funnels and customer journeys means that different customers with unique characteristics exhibit their own preferences. That’s why we create customer personas. Choosing the right channels can assist your marketing efforts. But let’s look at a few of the top reasons for right channel selections:

• You can reach customers effectively
  
• Generate more sales with a focused approach
  
• Lower costs with custom strategy
  
• Higher return on investment
  
• Collect useful information about the consumer journey
  

Why you need to choose the right digital marketing channels?

• If you are setting up your brand’s digital marketing channels, you must be wondering which channels would be the most beneficial. Start with the top 3-5 channels where your target segment spends their time, by using industry and regional data!
  
  As you accumulate analytics data and related insights, you can dedicate the right balance of resources. This will develop your channel presence and developing the right content for each channel.
  
  
• If you are trying to run a limited time discount promotion. And are going for maximum reach. You can use past campaign data and traffic. Or utilize reach metrics to gauge which channel is best suited for your ads to be noticed.
  
  You are trying to get your ad in front of as many people as possible. But it has to be on a channel where YOUR customers are active. All this for a higher chance of success.
  
  
• If you’re trying to sign up customers for a brand-led activity. Then you are best suited to selecting your digital marketing channels based on engagement metrics. This will show you where the customers most likely to sign up will be!

The sweet spot for marketing success lies in setting SMARTER goals. Then you attain those by choosing the RIGHT digital marketing channels. But let’s dig a little deeper into how you can actually choose the right digital marketing channels keeping the cardinal rule in mind throughout the next steps:

4 steps to choosing the right digital marketing channels

1. Set SMART goals/objectives

Before beginning the process of channel selection, you need to know what you are trying to achieve, i.e. your desired result. You have to make your goals S.M.A.R.T:

For eg. You are running a social media campaign to maximize event sign-ups. It’s for a new product launch event on December 1st.

A SMART goal would be: Achieve 3,000 event sign-ups on teaser-video ad campaign by November 1st. With the SMART goal, it is clear you need channels with video ad capabilities which is a wide net to cast, but it does still rule out quite a few channels like e-mail or Google search/display ads.

You can find a more detailed breakdown of SMART(ER) goal setting in this blog post. Alternatively, you can look to use OKRs as an option to dig deeper into your goals. You can enhance what you’re aiming to achieve by doing so.

2. Understand your audience

Undertaking market research for your audience and key segments is critical to the success of your overall marketing strategy. This applies to channel selection as well. There is an obvious disconnect if you are trying to run an entire video marketing campaign on TikTok but your target segment and best customers are in the 35-44 age range and are probably more comfortable on YouTube and Facebook.

Beyond demographics, the audience’s likes, interests, behaviors, and preferences factor in creating customer personas. That’s why customer personas are so vital! Check out this blog post about how to create effective customer personas. There’s also a host of statistics lauding the benefits of creating personas, summed up really well in this Rock Content article.

Using analytics data and generating insights about your audiences is essential for selecting channels, especially when you have a clearly defined SMART goal already set. Bringing these 2 steps together will immensely clarify your channel options for your given goal.

For eg., you are trying to promote a limited-edition sneaker launch, and your chosen goal is to have 500 pre-booked sales 1 month before launch, your best bet would be using e-mail marketing. You will have customized content sent, using CRM data to identify the customers who are “sneaker-heads” or have previously shown immense interest in limited editions.

3. Outline channel strengths and weaknesses

After Step 1 and 2, your channel options should wither down to a top 3 or top 5. The next step is to analyze the strengths and weaknesses of those top channel options. The extensive and best way to do this is a good old SWOT analysis. Although SWOT analysis is usually intended for larger strategic planning. If you have the right objective (your SMART goal) and context (your audience), the SWOT analysis will show you the benefits and risks of each channel.

If you’re looking for a template or deeper information on how to conduct a SWOT analysis, or use the more organized TOWS matrix method, check this blog post out!

As an alternative, you can just have the channel’s strengths and weaknesses listed on a spreadsheet for a straight-up comparison. Selecting parameters carefully will ease your assessment for channel selection. The parameters, within which you are comparing the channels have to align with your goals and audience. This way you will have a clear winner or at least understand the risks and benefits. In turn, this will manage your expectations, if you go for a multi-channel campaign.

4. Know your own limitations and budget

Available resources will be the final factor for channel selection. Setting SMART goals, knowing your audience, and analyzing channel strengths/weaknesses, can help find which channel is best suited. But organizational resources, budget, and limitations will ultimately decide if the channel(s) is a viable selection or not.

Google, Facebook, and most digital ad platforms have made digital advertising “anyone’s game” as far as affordability and ease-of-use, but it is never ideal to just select channels based on a budget allotment. Instead, you can get estimates on results based on your budget restrictions to understand how your ads can perform or look at the past performance to judge the viability of your campaign on each channel.

For eg, For a 1,000 USD budget for a digital image ad campaign focused on getting maximum reach in a local area. Facebook + Instagram estimates give you more value for your money (higher reach) than Google Display Ads. The obvious case would be to stick to FB+IG. But if the results of Google are still good, your audience insights tilt towards Google Display Ads being the better bet. So, you might want to give a fair split of the budget towards Google Ads as well!

You can review the performance of channels and the content you publish on them by running periodic content audits. This will keep you honest and help you put your best foot forward with your content efforts!

Conclusion

The 4 step process holds steady whether you are hoping to run single or multi-channel campaigns. The selection process can also be used for all stages of your customer journey. Going through these steps will definitely help you choose the best possible channels to run and manage expectations of the outcome of your marketing campaigns. 

Whether you’re a solopreneur, work for an agency, or own and operate a small business, proper channel selection could mean higher chances of success for your marketing efforts as you focus your resources to meet your defined goals by adding value and serving your target audience!