Continuing our series of posts on the steps to integrated digital marketing, today we’re discussing step two: identify prime channels. We’ll offer some way to help you pick out the right channels for your target audience.
If you’ve completed step one, you know who your target audience is. That’s key toward evaluating channel performance and channel interaction, two crucial components for pinpointing prime channels for your business.
Channel Performance
On the most basic level, the right channels are where your audience is. Where do you customers hang out online? Are they addicted to apps? Glued to social media? Are they email junkies? All these questions are important, but if you’re only looking at where you audience spends their time, you’re not getting the complete picture of which channels drives business impact. Instead, you’ll want to dig deeper with what we call The Four R’s of Channel Performance:
- Relevance: Is the channel relevant to your audience and the types of content they’re interested in?
- Reach: How many potential customers can you reach via the channel?
- Resources: What’s the cost in human and capital resources for using it?
- Return: What return can you expect from the channel?
Evaluate each of these factors based on meaningful data from previous marketing efforts in order to determine which channels perform.
Channel Interaction
A recent Think with Google piece analyzed millions of customer interactions using Google Analytics to illustrate at which points in the customer journey specific channels play key roles. (It also shows the importance of marketing integration since different channels are more or less effective at different places in the customer journey.) You can analyze your customers’ interactions using your analytics to find out the same thing.
What drives your visitors and when? Is it organic search? Paid search? Social? Email? How does a given channel influence your customers to make a purchase? Or, more specifically, at what stage in the decision-making process will that channel have its greatest impact? Understand channel interaction across the customer journey and adapt your channel mix accordingly.
Conclusion
Channel performance and channel interaction are key determinants for identifying which channels can help us reach our business objectives and where, when, and how different channels impact each other. As you move forward in the process of integrating your digital marketing, you’ll learn more about channel performance and channel interaction for your target audience, allowing you to further optimize your strategy.
Feeling unsure about your next step? Let Filament light the way.
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