Branching Out:Finding A New Marketing Channel

It’s easy to get caught up with one or two marketing channels, especially if those channels are getting you a pretty good ROI. But there’s beauty in reaching beyond your comfort zone and trying out different channels that might grow your business far beyond what you thought possible.

First Steps

Before you run wild and start investing in every channel available, there are some things that you must do. You want to be aware of your companies’ goal,,your target market,and your message. If you’ve got those down, then it will be easier to figure out the channel that would make the best impact on your client. You’ll also want to consider your budget and the staff you have available to handle the different types of mediums. Think about a car dealership. Since they market to a range of customers, they are probably best to continue with traditional marketing platforms like radio and television where they will get the most bang for their buck. However, if that same car dealership wanted to launch a campaign directed at millennials, they would need to research the best channel for reaching the mobile-friendly audience. Just because your traditional channels are still working, it doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be thinking about others ways to get even MORE viewers on your product. Let’s take a closer look at why it’s important to advertise across mediums and some of the channels you may want to try this year.

Email Marketing

In almost every research avenue available,email marketing is still the best way to reach your clients and it’s a technique that most business owners promise to continue in the coming year. To make it profitable, you’ll get your clients to sign-up for emails from your business and then you’ll send them information, products, discounts and more through their email address. If you haven’t tried this channel, you won’t believe the difference it will make for your business.

Social Media Marketing

The power of social media continues to rise as one of the top marketing platforms, yet so many businesses don’t harness the ability to reach their target audience directly. You can choose from the following social media platforms that make the most sense for your business. Keep in mind that you should choose a channel based on your target market. Do you need to define your target market?

• Facebook-The social media giant is always evolving with businesses in mind. You can connect with followers, answer questions, post blogs, make contests, stream live video and more!
• Twitter-Getting tweets about your business out in the world is a great way to spread your brand’s message and get your clients to share you with their friends.
• Pinterest-Many businesses forget about the pinning site that allows clients (mostly women) to pin everything from the newest fashions to what to cook for dinner. It’s really advertising gold and the pins are instantly shared with millions of followers. You can give clients a backstage look at your production as well as insight into your message.
• Instagram-The newest kid on the block, you take images of your business, products and company life and share it with followers. It’s great for building your message and brand awareness.
• LinkedIn-Allows you to connect with other professionals and businesses and create a lifeline that helps get your name out. If you’re not yet on LinkedIn, get ye to the internet!

The New Way to Advertise

Traditional advertising platforms like print, radio and television are still the top way to churn a profit but they do still usually cost the most. Some other forms of advertising that you maybe haven’t thought of are Pay-Per-Click Advertising which helps drive traffic to your site and counts the number of clicks you’re actually receiving. Affiliate Marketing is another way to boost your traffic. It works by allowing another source to help get traffic to your site. You then pay the source that helped bring in the revenue. Product placement is another huge form of advertising that brings in bucks.

Content and SEO

As I’ve mentioned before, content is still king so having real, viable information that’s important to your audience can keep them coming back to your site. Today, you’ll also hear a lot of talk about Search Engine Optimization (SEO) which helps search engines, like Google, weed out good content from bad. Though it’s a pain for your bloggers, it doesn’t look like it’s going anywhere so you might want to look into having an SEO training for your staff or yourself.

Online Video

Channels like YouTube are taking marketing to a whole new level. There are now specific channels that just stream products directly to their target audience. Have you ever seen those videos where children will open a toy and then play with it on the YouTube channel. It’s marketing gold for that target age group.

As you’re planning your marketing strategy for the year, remember to reach outside of the norm and try something new. You never know, it might just change the way you do business.