Making the right choice regarding digital marketing strategies can be crucial for your company, especially if you are a small business with a limited budget. Selecting the most appropriate channels to reach the right audience requires extensive research and in-depth marketing, digital communication, and business management skills.

Considering the multitude of choices available, even the most experienced businessperson may have difficulties finding the path toward business success. Every small business owner has probably dealt with these dilemmas: Is it really worth investing in SEO? Should I opt for Google Ads and Bing Ads campaigns? Which social media channel delivers the biggest impact on ROI? 

This is why we have gathered a few ideas and some preliminary steps for small business owners and marketers to follow when choosing the digital marketing channel that truly matters for their business.

Define your Audience

To present your products or services to the right audience, first, you need to define your buying persona (the portrait of your potential/ideal client). Luckily, Facebook offers us the right tools for that.  Using Audience Insights, we can start building the profile of the type of person interested in our products/services. To use Facebook Audience Insights, you don’t need an advertising account; you only need a Facebook profile. We can start with broad options and then narrow down the audiences based on the following information: age, gender, lifestyle, career, relationship status,  education level, household, estimated income, interests, online activity, device usage, and spending habits. 

After creating a relevant portrait of the buyer, this person should be remembered whenever you create content or conduct marketing activities. However, the data offered by Facebook Audience Insights is just one of multiple research methods you should consider using to build audience personas. Many other sources exist, such as Twitter profiles, Google Analytics, or published research previously carried out in your industry or niche. 

Define Your Business Goals 

After clearly defining your buying persona, it’s time to define your business goals. Ask yourself, ” How many leads or actual clients would I like to acquire every month? What’s the value of a lead? What sort of budget am I prepared to spend over a specific timeframe? Then, go on defining your business and marketing assets and your goals. After a complete picture of your business and your targeted audience, it should be easier to define the best marketing/advertising channels to use. 

Now that everything is much more straightforward, it’s time to consider your options:

Infographic: choosing the best marketing channels.

SEO & Content Marketing

The process of optimizing your website’s technical and editorial aspects so that it can be organically discovered by the users when searching for specific keywords is called SEO. Unlike paid advertising, SEO takes time to work. Depending on various aspects, like domain authority (versus the competition), available assets, web design, link-building opportunities, etc., results may vary, but they rarely happen before 6-12 months, especially if the website is new, big and has errors, or has been penalized by Panda or Penguin. 

As SEO and content marketing are tightly connected, you may also need to hire professional copywriters to continuously create fresh content to help your website rank for a wider variety of keywords. Whether it’s blog posts, white papers, webinars, videos, or e-books, content must be created according to a well-thought strategy. If you’re prepared to make this effort, invest in quality content and wait until results appear, content marketing is the right choice for your business. But, if you need fast results, you should look into PPC and display ads options.

One of the easiest ways to determine whether it’s worth investing in an SEO campaign is to check your website’s ranking with tools like SEMrush, Ahrefs, or Google Search Console. If the website is already ranking for appropriate keywords, then it probably has the potential for further SEO development.

Do it if Your website is already ranking for useful keywords and you are willing to invest time and effort into an SEO/content management campaign.
Don’t do it if you want fast results without putting in much time and effort. 

Email Marketing & Automation

If you have a pool of customers who have already allowed you to email them your newsletters, promotions or offers, this can become an absolute gold mine. Some studies claim that email marketing can provide a 4,300% ROI. E-commerce companies heavily rely on e-mail marketing strategies, but SMEs may also use email marketing to sell more to existing clients.

Do it if You have a decent database of clients you can address.
Don’t it if you don’t have a pool of existing customers who will allow you to send them your information, promotions, and offers. 

Pay Per Click advertising

Whether it’s PPC or Bing ads, paid advertising should quickly provide highly targeted traffic. Both B2B and B2C companies rely on Google and Bing ads to get new clients quickly. PPC campaigns are ideal for businesses that do not take time to create awareness through social media or email marketing campaigns and want to promote their new products/services with paid ads quickly. 

Do it if the costs per click are affordable and your product service is searched in Google/Bing.
Doesn’t it matter if you don’t have a sufficient budget or your audience is not using Google or Bing to search for your products/services?

Social Media Organic Campaigns and Social Ads

Social media marketing (SMM) is one of the most powerful tools for achieving marketing and branding goals. It includes posting regular text, image, or video updates on social channels (Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, Twitter, etc.) and creating social media ads.

To improve your business’s social presence and increase audience engagement, organic posting and paid ads should go hand in hand. An excellent social media marketing plan includes a consistent posting schedule and running social ads for remarketing purposes. The choice of social media channel also depends on your business type: a highly visual business can rely on Instagram and Pinterest. At the same time, a B2B company might find Twitter and LinkedIn more valuable for its marketing goals.

Do it if You get a lot of value from a strong social media presence.
Don’t it if: Your audience uses other channels to search for your products/services (Google, Bing)

Conclusion:

This conclusion comes from the book ”How Brands Grow” by the renowned authors Byron Sharp and Jenni Romaniuk from the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute

We suggest asking the following questions when choosing new channels:

1:How big is this channel right now? This shows how much money can be made in a short amount of time.

2: How fast is the channel growing regarding the absolute number of new shoppers? (Percentage growth can be deceiving.) This gives a number to the channel’s possible future.

3: Is how people buy in the new channel different from how they buy in other channels where our brands are? This checks to see if the company can use the skills and knowledge it has gained through other channels on this new one or if it needs to learn new skills.

4 What growth levers can we get from this new channel that might make it more appealing for its low penetration (that is, unique shoppers and the chance to charge higher prices)? This checks to see if any other benefits might not have been apparent from the other questions.
A few previous questions show that this new channel could be good, so ask the best way to start with a portfolio on that channel. Do we already sell that, and/or how ready are we to do so (on a large scale, if necessary)?

I recommend listening to this great podcast with Adrian Ferrier and Byron Sharp to learn how the latest research is changing the way many marketing and truths are becoming obsolete.