Digital Marketing Channels You Can Use To Drive Growth.

I wrote about "What's the Fuss About Growth Marketing? Here's What You Need to Know", last week. You should read it if you haven't already. I've had a handful of remarks on how insightful it is. Because I carefully chose my words, even a five-year-old will understand the concept.

Having said that, today's piece is more of a continuation. What good is it to have a good overview of growth marketing but be unaware of the primary digital channels that drive it?

There are numerous channels that can be used to help a start-up, business, or brand grow, ranging from traditional media (such as radio) to digital media (such as social media). Today, however, I'll be concentrating on digital channels.

In actuality, there are several digital channels, including emerging ones such as augmented reality and virtual reality technologies, but I will concentrate on my top five. Oh, I'd like to tell you about an article I wrote about the Metaverse and its potential impact on Digital Marketing. It can be found here.

1. SEO (Search Engine Optimization):

According to statistics, Google receives about 2 trillion searches each year, with roughly 5.6 billion searches per day, 228 million searches per hour, and 3.8 million searches every minute. We can all agree that no matter what you're selling, someone is looking for information about your brand offering on the internet. What better place to be than where your target audience is?

SEO is the practice of enhancing your website's ranking on a search engine's results page (such as Google) in order to attract more visitors. It's worth noting that Google isn't the only search engine available; others include Bing, Yahoo, and Ask.com. The majority of searches, however, are done on Google.

People rarely view the second page of a search engine result page (SERP), so SEO is crucial. When was the last time you went to the second page of a Google search result? I'm sure it's been a while, and the last time you did, it was probably because you were doing some kind of academic research (I get it, right? Makes me feel like a Prophet. #smiles). As a result, you must optimize your website.

In a bit to optimize your content and website, keep in mind that you're writing for humans, not Google spiders or crawlers, so make it a quality one. The difference is that you're writing to an audience with a search engine in mind. Also, know that a high search volume does not always imply a good keyword. Always double-check that the keywords you're aiming to rank for are relevant to your business. In fact, I am a fan of long-tail keywords.

Finally, on SEO, let me discuss the various aspects of SEO. On-page SEO refers to both the content and the HTML source code of a page that can be optimized. The page title, meta description, URL keyword optimization, header tags (H1, H2, etc.) and image alt-text are all examples of this. SEO Yoast is my go-to WordPress plugin for on-page optimization.

Off-page SEO, often known as link building, is a type of search engine optimization. Getting links and references from other blogs or websites is what this is all about. It demonstrates the value of your content as well as your thought leadership. Getting quality links from a website with a high domain authority is always every SEO manager's delight.

There's also technical SEO, which involves looking for broken link and pages such as 404 pages and reactivating them and other issues.

2. SEM (Search Engine Marketing):

The term "search engine marketing" (SEM) is the polar opposite of "search engine optimization." SEM is a paid traffic source, whereas SEO is free (organic) traffic. PPC stands for pay per click, which implies you only pay when someone clicks on your ad. To produce quality traffic, SEM entails bidding on keywords that are relevant to their business.

With the tag "ad," they appear above organic search results. Because it is intent-based, SEM is a great channel. Keyword research, like SEO, is necessary in order to choose the best keywords to target for a higher return on investment.

I also advise businesses to bid on their branded keywords because their competitors may be bidding on them and "stealing" traffic that should be going to them. You may read more about my reasons in my article "Branded Keywords: Is Bidding on Them A Waste of Ads Spend in SEM? here.

When using PPC, make sure your text ads are relevant to the keywords you're targeting as well as the landing page. This raises the quality score of the ads during ad auction, allowing them to outperform other advertisers.

Because SEO is a long-term approach with gradual results, I recommend combining the two efforts such that SEM complements SEO efforts.

3. Display and social ads:

Display advertisements are banner ads that appear when you visit various websites, whereas social media ads appear when you go through your social media feedback and stories. At the very least, the average person has a social network account. You can choose and try different social networks, such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, or LinkedIn, depending on the type of business you run.

For example, a B2B company could wish to try LinkedIn Ads. Although LinkedIn advertising is slightly more expensive than others, if targeting is done correctly, the platform can provide quality leads. 

Allow me to offer you a lead generation tip (no loud ham sha #smiles). Because lead generation advertisements on LinkedIn are quite expensive, I instead run traffic ads on LinkedIn and create a custom audience of persons who visited the website on Facebook and then retarget them with a lead generation objective campaign (on Facebook). This allows me to reach the same audience and obtain their information at a lower cost.

I sometimes also use display advertising to retarget SEM audiences (because they are intent-based users; quality traffic, who didn't convert (maybe because they didn't land on my "Thank You" page). The social media and display channels are undoubtedly worthwhile to explore.

4. Email Marketing:

Some people believe email marketing is dead; however, it is not, and we have the data to prove it. True, it's one of the oldest growth channels, but it still performs well, especially when it comes to nurturing leads (prospects) as well as retaining, engaging, upselling, and cross-selling to current audiences.

5. Content Marketing:

This is a way of marketing to a target audience using platforms like blogs, YouTube, and forums (such as Reddit) to deliver valuable, instructive, educative, and engaging content. People want to know that you understand their problems and that you have a solution. According to studies, businesses that blog receives five times more visitors than their competitors. LinkedIn, Medium, and YouTube, among other channels, are worthwhile to explore.

I liked how one of the CXL facilitators, said in one of the academy's lectures that, "content marketing isn't only about producing blog posts, but about all the content a brand or company puts out there on the internet". So, in your content marketing strategy, don't limit yourself to blog posts.

Following our discussion of the top five channels, you may be asking which one to utilize first or how to get started. There isn't a single answer to this. Ensure that you are aware of the business goal at all times, as well as who and where your target audiences are, and then test. Unless you test, you may never know which channel is the best at any given time.

Although I believe that as a brand expands, all of these channels may be used at the same time, however, based on the company's current goals (per time), more emphasis will be given to one over the other. Continue to test and follow your insights data, always make data-driven decisions. That's how you become a successful growth marketer!