The power that consumers hold over businesses has increased over the years. In the past, they had no choice but to view advertisements by random businesses. Those advertisements may or may not be useful to them.
They were bombarded with TV, radio, and newspaper advertisements they had little power over. What they used to see, hear, and interact with in the past was up to the ones publishing the marketing content.
What Are Today’s Marketing Channels?
Today, consumers can customize their interaction with businesses and the marketing content by expressing what they want and what they need to see. This then pushes businesses into strategizing how they can stay relevant at a time when consumers can choose which businesses they want to engage with. ;
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Social Media
As of 2020, there are 3.81 billion people actively using social media. That is approximately half of the world’s total population. This fact alone makes social media a big player in the world of marketing.
Modern consumers actively reach out to brands they like or are interested in. They actively research about the businesses and their products. The interaction afforded by social media users both with each other and businesses makes social platforms valuable channels in marketing.
The community-building opportunities offered by social media through user-to-user interactions are essential to the increase of a business’ visibility. As today’s consumers are fueled by authenticity, a way to leverage the power of social media in marketing is to build trust with consumers by establishing relationships and transparency. Modern customers like being informed about businesses they engage with. ;
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Email Marketing
Businesses provide consumers with the option to subscribe to newsletters. Consumers can opt for daily, weekly, and even monthly email updates from their favorite brands. This marketing channel is considered the best method of direct response marketing because it shows willingness from customers.
They subscribed, voluntarily, to receive updates. Fun fact? Over half of the world population are email users. That makes this channel just as big as social media. ; A way to take advantage of the benefits of email marketing is to cease from sending generic bulk emails and make each one personalized.
Creating email marketing content based on subscriber segments is a way to personalize emails that come into their mailboxes. ; Another tip is to make conciseness a priority. Subscribers will not take the time to read a marketing email that will take them on zigzag rides before getting to the main point. Creating emails that are easy to skim through with a call-to-action statement at the bottom is a good way to go.
A click-worthy subject line also decreases the chances of an email immediately going into the subscriber’s trash bin. Write a subject line based on what you know about the subscribers through segmentation. Keep it short, offer value, and create a feeling of urgency. That is click-worthy. ;
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Websites
A business website is a place curated for what they have to offer. To consumers, it is where they gather the granulated information about a brand that piqued their interest. Making a website that can be navigated easily by computer and mobile phone users is a good way to start the flow of website optimization. ;
To ensure how easy—or not—it is to navigate their website, a business should test it before launching it for public access. Important parts of the website, such as the About Us or Contact Us pages should be easy to find. ;
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Content Marketing and SEO
Providing content for a business website indicates business authority and expertise. This will make consumers trust brands because they imply their expertise to provide quality products and services. Creating content that contains doable call-to-actions makes it valuable. The content should be clear-cut, concise, and easy to visualize.
Strategizing content for search engine optimization or SEO is best when coupled with your quality content. Creating blog posts and articles that are naturally in-line with a business selected keywords can be done in-house, but reaching out to a company that provides SEO services is an excellent choice especially if the business is just starting out and needs online visibility immediately.
A good way to extend the reach of published content is including share buttons for different social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, etc.
Is that all?
Marketing channels vary in terms of what a business can afford. Other types of marketing such as the use of social media influencers, cold calling, billboards, TV commercials, etc. are marketing channels that often work for big and established brands with more to spend on marketing.
Businesses with less to spend can utilize the above-mentioned channels for they are inclusive and easily accessible.
The control consumers gained over businesses in the past few years has pushed companies to innovate and turn to digital marketing. A business without enough understanding of how consumers of today interact with brands will not be yielding very fruitful results from traditional methods of marketing.
