What are digital marketing channels?

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If you are already familiar with marketing terms, you may have heard of marketing channels. They are the paths or trails along which you take your product to your customer, in short. When we talk about digital marketing channels, the definition is a little broader.

In general, marketing and sales channels are closely linked to the availability of purchasing a product and how to get it to your customer (retailer, wholesaler, distributor, agents, digital, etc.). These channels can have their divisions and sublevels, depending on how the structure of each company is set up.

Digital marketing has become yet another channel for customer acquisition. And not only being part of the marketing and sales mix, but becoming the protagonist in many cases.

And he himself has his channels, with his own characteristics and specific metrics. In the digital world, channels are much more linked to a brand's interaction with the customer than the final delivery of the product.

Therefore, knowing these channels and mastering their use is essential to increase the ROI your marketing campaigns and also the sale of your products/services.

Find out everything you need to know about digital marketing channels in this article.

What are the main digital marketing channels?

Google has a classic definition of digital marketing channels, which has practically become a standard. This definition is actually linked to Google Analytics analysis. So, when we talk about digital marketing channels from Google's perspective, they are the ways in which the customer can interact with you, in order to be taken to your website.

Therefore, we then have 6 digital marketing channels. Are they:

• Direct/Organic/Referral Traffic
• Paid Media
• Email
• Social

Direct Traffic

Direct traffic, as the name suggests, is all traffic directed directly to your website, through your URL. Therefore, when the visitor types http://www.suaempresa.com.br, we consider it as direct traffic.

Here, we already have the first observation about the importance of your website's URL. Brand knowledge, that is, good branding work, will result in a good result in directly generated traffic. Therefore, having an easy-to-remember URL and good work around your brand will make direct traffic a promising result.

Organic

Organic traffic is a topic that we have covered a lot here on the blog. Being found by search engines is one of the most consistent ways of acquiring customers.

Therefore, you need to have a consistent keyword strategy. Furthermore, a good website optimized for SEO, in order to become the answer that the user seeks in searches. The idea here is to be among the top positions in SERP (Search Engine Results Page), thus obtaining the majority of clicks.

Google, for example, displays billions of searches every day. For appear on the first page To achieve great organic traffic, planning and consistency in your SEO strategy are necessary.

Of reference

Referral traffic is another important piece in the work of SEO. It happens when your website link is referenced on another blog or website. The user clicks on this link, being taken to your company or product website.

A good result in referral traffic is directly linked to a good result in content generation. If you have quality content, it will naturally be mentioned elsewhere, as well as shared by others.

Paid Media

There are several ways to buy media on the web. And it is very important to think about this possibility, as it is a great way to achieve immediate results.

You can firstly be present on social media not only with your regular posts but also with paid advertisements. Social media offers great advertising platforms, such as Facebook Ads. It is a very powerful segmentation and reach tool. There, you also advertise on Instagram.

Other major social networks, like LinkedIn, also offer great advertising tools. Therefore, the most important point to consider is whether your audience is present on these social networks. Therefore, the decision to be there with your product or service will depend on where your customers are.

With the explosion of online videos, consider having a YouTube video strategy. It brings important results and currently has an astronomical audience, surpassing many TV channels.

Another important paid media are sponsored links. As we already know, the Google Adwords It is the most used search tool and brings very important results for the advertiser.

In addition to sponsored links, Google Adwords and other search tools allow ads to be included not only on search pages. Thus, you advertise on Display Networks. In other words, you can have your ads served on other websites that are part of the Display Networks.

Email

The e-mail marketing didn't die. It is, in fact, more present than ever and is one of the most important channels in digital marketing. I say this because email is a direct channel. It communicates within your computer (or mobile device) prospect or customer and allows you to start a dialogue with your audience.

Some internet sales strategies use email marketing as the basis of their marketing campaigns, such as digital product launches.

Social

We already mentioned social media when we talked about paid media. But it is very important that you are present on social media, even without advertising on it.

They allow you to be in direct and constant contact with your audience, creating lasting relationships and obtaining important information about what your customers think about your brand/service/product.

In Brazil, according to We Are Social report, there are more than 122 million social media users in Brazil. In other words, you can’t not be present on social media.

The main point in social media is to provide quality content that generates engagement and can be shared. Therefore, carefully evaluate your audience on social media, find out what their preferences and behaviors are and how your product/service can help them solve their problem.

How do digital marketing channel analytics work?

As we already said, Google Analytics has all these related channels on its platform. But it is very important that you relate the Analytics data to the social media data itself. Facebook, for example, has a very complete panel with interaction data, both in ads and organic posts.

A very cool and little-known tool is Facebook Analytics. It brings a lot of valuable information from your channels and can be used if you have the Facebook pixel installed on your website. Furthermore, another good tip is to use digital marketing tools that complement information from both Google and Facebook.

Here at Vero Contents, we use Hubspot, an inbound marketing software that uses Google Analytics data integrated into its platform. The software, which also has an email trigger tool, contributes greatly to data analysis, allowing you to cross-reference information with your lead generation strategy, for example.

With the crossed data, you will be able to make precise and very assertive analyzes of the acquisitions and results of each channel and how each one is performing within its strategy.

And speaking of strategies, one of the most important ones for working on all digital marketing channels is inbound marketing. It takes into account all channels, in an integrated way, optimizing and maximizing your campaigns, with a total focus on results.

Did you like this post and want to know more about digital marketing channels? How about downloading our free e-Book, How to Measure and Optimize Digital Marketing Channels?