Whether you already have a private project, or you are about to start it, or even aspire to learn e-marketing and get an electronic job, you must know the e-marketing channels through which you can reach your audience, and then achieve the spread that will give you success and profits.
In this article, we will talk about the most famous and most important e-marketing channels, and we will explain each channel in detail, so that you have sufficient understanding and knowledge about each channel and how to use and exploit it to your advantage.
What is meant by e-marketing channels: They are the ways or paths through which you can use e-marketing to market your products or services, and we can also call them e-marketing branches, or e-marketing sub-domains.
Now, let's get acquainted with the most famous and important ones:
1. Content Marketing
As marketing experts say, “ Content is the king. ” Content marketing is one of the most important e-marketing channels.
First of all, you should know the difference between two important terms related to content marketing:
Copy Writing
Content Creation
Here is an explanation of each:
1. Copywriting
It is writing that targets direct selling, that is, that invites the customer or consumers directly to buy or subscribe to a specific service through content in its various forms.
The concept of Copy Writing is mostly related to paid advertisements, and promotional content on sale pages.
2. Content Creation
It is content that offers free value to the public, for example; Useful information, tips, experiences, or education in certain aspects, which is what we mean by content marketing here.
Some experts call this type of content indirect content, as it does not directly sell the product or service to the public, but rather diverts attention from the service or product and direct selling to the value that the audience needs itself, i.e. the value that helps the audience.
This type of content is characterized by building the relationship with the target audience, and then linking with the brand and gaining customer loyalty , here you are looking for what can fill part of the customer's need and what matters to the customer and not just what matters to you.
Valuable and useful content can be presented to the public through many forms of content delivery for example; Blogs, videos, posts, social media platforms, e-books and brochures, infographics, infographics , podcasts, and presenting case studies, stories, and articles on websites.
Tips when using a content marketing channel
1. Know who you are addressing well, so you cannot influence an audience you do not know; So study well the characteristics of your audience and imagine them as a person in front of you whose name, life expectancy, job, qualities, needs, interests, and reasons that will make them care about you more than others.
2. Make the content related to your services or products so that the audience is not distracted.
3. Ensure the credibility of what you provide to the public of valuable information, as we mentioned; The goal of content creation is to influence the purchasing decisions of customers in the future, you establish yourself as a reference in your field, and customers are more likely to share your content which will enhance your reputation, and bring you more audience and followers.
Also Read: What is the difference between B2B and B2C in marketing (very important for every marketer)
4. Constantly learn in the field of content that you provide so that you can come up with ideas more easily, and so that you can present content of real value to the audience.
5. Pay attention to all types of content that you provide, whether educational or direct selling. Content marketing, whether it is of value to the customer or its goal is direct sales, the base of good content must be the basis of your digital marketing strategy.
6. Follow the competitors well so that you can know what the audience likes, what they need, as well as what they hate, and so that you can compete with them as well.
Also Read : How to Write an Article for a Website (A Comprehensive Guide for Beginners)
2. SEO
More than 63,000 searches are performed every second through search engines such as Google and Bing!, and this is a huge number whose importance we cannot ignore; Search engine optimization has been the trending word in the world of e-marketing and e-marketing channels over the past decade, and the search engine optimization channel still has its great weight and importance.
With search engines, you can appear in the first search results by working on your keywords that are most relevant to your services or what you offer the audience.
You can also combine the aforementioned content marketing with search engine optimization so that you can reach a large number of potential customers, this is an effective form of Inbound Marketing .
An effective SEO strategy consists of several techniques that all agree to attract customers through search engines in order to bring in high traffic, increase conversions and thus increase sales.
There are three important areas that you should work on in order to improve your site for search engines, which are:
Technical improvement of the site
Content Optimization
Link optimization
Here is an explanation of each of them:
a) Technical improvement of the site
The search engine first needs to find your site page, after that it needs to understand your topics and select your keywords, and finally it is added to its index by a database of all the special content on the site.
It seems simple, but there is a problem in which a lot is located, which is the difference of the page of your site that you see for yourself from the page that appears to the researcher, for example graphics, text, formatting and colors may seem to Google just one text! He cannot access your site.
Although you have prepared the web page well, Google can only recognize text and links, and therefore cannot access and index your site until you are shown to the searcher in the search lists.
Here are the most important points you need to follow to make sure that Google finds, indexes, and shows your site:
Put a short URL.
Measure your site's page load speed and make sure you work on improving it. You can use Google's web page speed measurement service , which tells you what you need to do to improve your site's speed.
Make sure that your site is free of destructive links that do not work.
Put a text description of the images to have your site fully analyzed and indexed.
Make sure to create a sitemap file that contains your site's page and category titles.
Make sure that you do not repeat identical content on the site so as not to confuse search engines about you, and so that you do not get penalized.
b) content optimization
Remember that the searcher through search engines often searches to find content of all kinds, so you need to attract the audience who needs what you publish or sell, as they say content is everything.
Content optimization begins with searching for the keywords or keywords that a potential audience is searching for in search engines, you need to identify topics that are relevant to your business, and then convert them into keywords after doing extensive research for the terms the audience is searching for.
Content optimization comes under the heading of On Page SEO , which includes titles, description, intro, images, etc.
c) Optimizing links or so-called backlinks
They are the links that direct the reader on the website page to another page in the same website or direct him to a page on another website, which makes the reader navigate between the pages of your website.
It is also good for another site to put a link to your site in one of its articles, and the importance of backlinks is to build your value to search engines, the higher their quality, the more valuable your site will be to Google.
Optimizing search engines and getting the first results can take a lot of time and effort, especially in light of the competition today, but the good thing is that you can learn how to improve search engines on your own or refer to a specialized search engine marketer.
3. Search Engine Marketing
Some may confuse search engine marketing (SEM) with search engine optimization (SEO) in the use of e-marketing channels, because both have very similar names, and also because each deals with search engines; But they are actually different from each other.
While SEO helps you rank almost for free for your targeted keywords or keywords, as we explained above, SEM is about increasing traffic from search engines, and appearing in the first results through paid means and not free as it is with search engine optimization.
Also Read: Top 10 Free Traffic Sources (Targeted and Engaged Traffic)
Search engine marketing is like an advertising method that shows your ad in the first search results for certain keywords, and the form of paid advertising is almost identical to the organic search results on Google, and the researcher or customer may not realize during the search that this is an ad unless he has marketing experience.
Just as on a platform like Facebook you pay for one of your ads to appear to the public, search engine marketing pays for your ad to appear in the first search results so that it appears to your potential customers who are searching for your keywords.
The most popular platforms used for search engine marketing ads are Google Ads and Bing Ads.
Some believe in the SEO strategy that search engine marketing can target the desired audience without SEO first, and this is a big mistake in fact; So if you intend to pay search engines, do not lose your work on search engine optimization, because paying without value does not work alone.
Some may ask why is it important for me to pay to appear on search engines if I can use a free method for that which is search engine optimization?
The answer to this question is that you are not alone on search engines. It is possible that after you improve search engines, you will find a competitor who used search engine optimization and increased it by paying money to appear in the first results and here you lose your chance. Of course, if you do not pay like him, you will not appear in the first search results.
Therefore, your choice of payment strategy through search engines depends on important points, including:
The nature of your competitors. How will you compete with them? Is it primarily important to compete on search engines at the current stage of your business, or can you postpone it for a more extended time from now?
Your audience’s behavior, where are they most located, and how can you reach them?
The quality of your products or services. Is it commensurate with paying search engines and working on search engine optimization, or are there better ways to get you more profit?
Now let's move on to the fourth marketing channel in our topic about the most popular e-marketing channels.
4. Email Marketing
Email marketing is one of the oldest and most popular methods of email marketing channels. The number of email users reached 3.9 billion users in 2020, and the number is expected to rise to 4.3 billion users in 2023, more than half of the world's population!
Some may think that email marketing is no longer as effective as before, but marketing reports show the opposite at all; For example, in a report by Hubspot, one of the leading digital marketing companies, it stated that the average return on investment in email marketing is $38 for every dollar spent.
This is a great return of 3800%, which shows its importance. E-marketing is one of the marketing channels to promote your products/services, build relationships with your customers and connect them with your brand, and thus increase sales.
Email marketing also helps you to create a database of customers and make sure it is updated, but you have to pay attention and know well when you can use this marketing channel and whether it suits your services or products as well as customers or not? You can find out by researching your competitors and audience.
5. Pay-per-click ads
It is one of the ways in which most types of e-marketing channel ads work, but it is more popular in the advertiser's use of it to drive traffic to websites via search engines (SEM).
The advertiser pays the publisher only when the ad is clicked, the number of clicks made on the ad is counted, and a certain amount is paid for each click, and PPC is usually associated with top-tier search engines such as ads:
Amazon Advertising
Microsoft Advertising, formerly known as Bing Ads
Pay-per-click ads can be divided into two main types:
a) SEM search engine ads
These are the ones already explained at the top of the article. Advertisers typically bid on keyword phrases relevant to their target market, and pay when a user clicks on the ad, and these ads are often text based.
The benefit of this ad is that it only appears to users who search for the keywords you specified previously, which match your keyword list, and also that you only pay when the user clicks on the ad.
b) Pay-per-click in social media ads
When you make an advertisement on social media such as Facebook, Linkedin and Instagram, you are allowed to choose how you will be charged for most types of ads; For example there is pay-per-views to customers, and there is pay-per-click, meaning you only pay when the user first clicks on the ad.
Pay-per-click advertising in social media has proven to be effective in achieving high results if the right platform is chosen for the target audience, as well as the right speech and content is directed to the customers.
For example, LinkedIn ads are characterized by their high prices compared to paid Facebook ads , but they are very appropriate in the speech of business owners and so on.
There are many other articles about marketing through social media, which you can access through the search feature on the site, for example, type “Instagram marketing” to access the Instagram marketing guide, and you can do this through Google directly by putting the word “winners” first, for example: Twitter Marketing Winners.
6. Marketing through the electronic advertising banner
If you are a pioneer of websites or applications and social media, you will certainly encounter a large number of banners and advertisements while navigating between the pages of websites or applications for example.
The electronic banner forms vary among themselves in terms of design, theme, graphics, images or written content, and are often in rectangular or horizontal or vertical bars.
This type of advertisement is intended to encourage a visitor to click on the advertisement to go to the website of the seller or advertiser who is marketing their products or services or their site through another website that has content related to the products or services offered by the advertiser.
For example an e-commerce site , on it you are expected to find banners for website builders, e-stores, hosting, etc.
That is, every website with good traffic opens the door for advertisers to advertise on their website pages with their own banners.
There are many ways to calculate and pay in banner ads. Some sites charge you for a click, meaning that there is a fixed cost per click from the user, and at other times there is a specific price for every thousand people who see the banner on the page on which it is located, and other times it is similar to rent, i.e. a certain amount that is paid monthly.
7. Marketing through pop-ups
Pop-ups have become an important part of designing e-stores and websites for services or products, and they are one of the most important e-marketing channels to attract new customers. They help convert visitors into potential customers or actual buyers, improve customer experience and increase sales conversion rate.
They are windows that suddenly appear to visitors to a website or electronic application, and they have many types and shapes as they display a new and more attractive message to the site visitor or customer at certain moments of browsing the site and before leaving the site.
They often have a new special offer, discount, gift, reward, or even free information by subscribing to a mailing list.
In the end, it prompts the visitor to make a decision; For example, buying or subscribing to a mailing list, and it may aim to divert the visitor to see other offers before leaving the site and they have more than one type.
The most important of these types are:
a) Pop-ups with exit intent
It appears at the moment when the visitor is about to leave the site or close the page and clicks the exit button; It helps the customer to feel that there is more that he did not see, and that there are other special things that he should think about before leaving the site, all of this helps him to make a purchase decision.
b) Interaction based popups
It depends on the visitor’s interaction on the site in general or a specific element of the site, or after passing a certain percentage of pages or a certain percentage of one particular page, and of course the site owner chooses what suits his display and site and what succeeds in increasing the conversion rate after trying more than one type of pop-ups .
c) Email pop-ups
It aims to collect mailing lists in exchange for an offer or reward that encourages visitors to become subscribers to the mailing list, and the site owner can collect data and mailing lists to send offers and services to subscribers, and content marketing can also be used that we mentioned at the top of the article with the use of mailing lists.
You can activate the best windows to achieve your goal with the help of the programmer or website companies, which design these windows easily. You just design the image itself and the display or content it contains, and the programmer activates the required window.
Tip: Make sure you have attractive marketing writing and good design, and try not to bother customers with inappropriate or too many windows.
8. Marketing through alternative selling and cross selling
Alternative selling and cross selling are one of the electronic marketing channels that are used in strategies to increase profits and increase the conversion rate of sales. What do we mean by alternative selling and cross selling?
a) Up selling
It is one of the methods that are used to induce the customer to buy a similar or alternative product to the product that the customer is looking for, in exchange for greater advantages in the alternative product, with a higher price difference than the first product.
In another way, it is like comparing two products with the same goal, or doing the same satisfaction for the customer, but one of them has more advantages than the other, often for a higher price than the first, and here the task is to convince the customer of the product with the largest features and the highest price to obtain a profit greater than the client.
For example, when you enter a web hosting company to view the subscription packages, you will find that each package has higher features for a higher price, and so on.
b) cross selling
It is persuading the customer to buy a complementary product to another product he has already purchased, but it feeds another need, and this offer is often found in the Checkout pages when the customer comes to the payment stage in electronic stores; For example, when you buy a digital camera from an electronic store, you will be offered a proposal to buy a memory card for the camera.
Of course, cross-selling or alternative selling is planned while developing a product pricing plan and calculating the material return. Try as much as possible to benefit from this marketing method by offering services with greater features and higher benefit to you, as well as supplementing the products to the customer with what he may need from products complementary to the basic product.
9. Influencer Marketing
The term “influencer” may be relatively recent, but its concept and nature of work is not new in terms of its use as one of the e-marketing and general marketing channels.
It is a term that refers to a content creator in a particular niche or community content, possibly a social media model, who has a large number of engaged followers.
Influencer marketing is an improved version of word of mouth marketing. It is one of the marketing channels that you can plan by partnering with an influencer whose audience interacts well and trusts them, making their audience more likely to buy a product they recommend through their social media page or channel.
Dealing with the influencer is by sending him a gift of your products, but most influencers do not accept gifts only, but have a price plan for everything they post on their page; For example to wear your products and make a video at a certain price, to make a video by shooting the product only without wearing it at another price, to refer only to your page and download a lower price image and so on.
So you can choose the right package for your business with the influencer.
Tips when choosing influencer marketing
1. Before choosing the idea of marketing through influencers, pay close attention to the fact that the amount you will pay is not small, so you must choose the right stage in your work to work with influencers.
For example, if you are a beginner, you do not need to work with influencers now, you can use the money in paid ads, and it will bring you more profitable profits than influencers often.
So do your calculations well and do not pay an amount that you cannot compensate for another aspect of your marketing plan , or do not pay most of what you own as well. This is a greater risk than being correct marketing, and do not rely on only one marketing channel as possible.
2. Find the influencer’s history well through social media and ask the business owners themselves about it if you can. Do not choose an influencer who has a bad reputation in a situation or has a disagreement with the audience. Also, do not choose an influencer who does not resemble your customers because you will not find your customers who care about him on any case.
For example, you cannot choose an influencer who speaks in a popular way to advertise your product to high-ranking employees… Thus, be careful in choosing the right influencer for your audience, brand values, and product or service.
3. When contracting with an influencer, you must ensure that a clear paper contract is made between you that contains all the details at the hour the post will be published on the influencer’s page, how, how often, etc.; The delay in publishing your product on a particular occasion may miss you the opportunity on the day of the occasion itself, and you will find yourself losing in the end.
4. You do not have to choose an influencer that has millions of followers or what they call celebrities, you can choose a Micro influencer, which ranges from 10 thousand followers to above, for example.
Just make sure that his audience loves him and interacts with him, and most likely you will find him specialized in his field more, and therefore his audience is naturally interested in his small field of specialization and is waiting for his experiences and opinions.
At the end of the article, we would like to draw your attention that there are other e-marketing channels that we did not mention in the article, but we tried to mention the most important and most famous e-marketing channels, which we did not address much before in the winners.
We advise you to choose the e-marketing channel that suits your specific circumstances; Such as the nature of your business, the size of your available marketing budget…etc.
