Digital Marketing - Study Notes:
Channel planning
It’s important to choose the right channels for your digital marketing strategy. If, for example, you’re using paid media channels, it can be costly, so it's important to get your channel planning right from the start. Otherwise, you run the risk of wasting your budget, time, and resources.
The purpose of channel planning as part of a digital marketing strategy is firstly to identify the channels that your audience uses. It’s important to include channel preferences when developing your audience personas to help you decide on the best channels to include in your plan. Then, you can refine your channel list by choosing channels that are also likely to help you achieve your marketing goals and objectives. Bear in mind, the channels you choose also help determine the type of content you’ll need to create. You need to make videos for YouTube, write content for SEO, use images for social media, and so on.
Be mindful that it’s not necessary to include all the channels that your audience personas use in your digital strategy. For example, suppose your audience uses channels like Twitter, Google, Email, and Instagram. If your objective is to increase sales of a high-cost TV, then Google and email could be the most effective channels to use as they are best suited to conversion-based objectives. However, if your objective is to drive awareness of your high-cost TV, then Twitter and Instagram are the best choices as they’re more suited to awareness-based objectives. So, it's important to identify and list all the channels your audience uses and then narrow your list based on your marketing objective. This ensures you concentrate your effort, focus, and resources on channels that both appeal to your audience and are most likely to deliver on your objectives.
Channel types and objectives
There are many different channel types you can use in a digital marketing strategy to achieve your goals and objectives. Here are some of the most common channel types and the main objectives they can help you achieve. Knowing this helps you refine your channel list from your personas to focus on the channels that help you reach your marketing objective
- Social media networks: Drive awareness, conversion, and direct sales, depending on price-point
- Forums and web communities: Drive awareness and consideration
- Email: Drive awareness and conversion
- Search engines: Drive consideration and conversion
- Website content and blogs: Drive awareness and consideration
- Banner ads: Drive awareness
- Videos: Drive awareness and consideration
- Live chat: Drive consideration and conversion
- Webinars: Drive awareness and consideration
- Messaging apps and other mobile apps: Drive consideration and conversion
Without doubt, video pre-rolls and banners are ideal for awareness campaigns and for getting the message out there about your products and services, while search engines and affiliates are better for ecommerce campaigns with a revenue focus. Likewise, paid search, SEO, email, and social media are great choices for lead generation.
However, these objective guidelines are not set in stone. There is a level of overlap in these channels between the three main digital marketing objectives of awareness, consideration, and conversion. For example, in some situations social media can drive high-value sales, banners can drive conversions, and search engines can drive awareness. But for the most part, the various channels tend to be most impactful when aligned to certain objectives. So, it's important to prioritize the channels your personas use in relation to how they are likely to help you achieve your marketing goals.
Clark Boyd
Clark Boyd is CEO and founder of marketing simulations company Novela. He is also a digital strategy consultant, author, and trainer. Over the last 12 years, he has devised and implemented international marketing strategies for brands including American Express, Adidas, and General Motors.
Today, Clark works with business schools at the University of Cambridge, Imperial College London, and Columbia University to design and deliver their executive-education courses on data analytics and digital marketing.
Clark is a certified Google trainer and runs Google workshops across Europe and the Middle East. This year, he has delivered keynote speeches at leadership events in Latin America, Europe, and the US. You can find him on X (formerly Twitter), LinkedIn, and Slideshare. He writes regularly on Medium and you can subscribe to his email newsletter, hi, tech.
Bill Phillips
Bill is an international facilitator, trainer, and team coach. He has successfully coached CEOs, board members, directors, executive teams, and team leaders in public and private companies, NGOs, and UN organizations in 15 countries across four continents. He is also the creator of Future-basing®, a highly potent process for building strategy, vision, and cooperation.
Will Francis
Will Francis is a recognized authority in digital and social media, who has worked with some of the world’s most loved brands. He is the host and technical producer of the DMI podcast, Ahead of the Game and a lecturer and subject matter expert with the DMI. He appears in the media and at conferences whilst offering his own expert-led digital marketing courses where he shares his experience gained working within a social network, a global ad agency, and more recently his own digital agency.
Cathal Melinn
Cathal Melinn is a well-known Digital Marketing Director, commercial analyst, and eommerce specialist with over 15 years’ experience.
Cathal is a respected international conference speaker, course lecturer, and digital trainer. He specializes in driving complete understanding from students across a number of digital marketing disciplines including: paid and organic search (PPC and SEO), analytics, strategy and planning, social media, reporting, and optimization. Cathal works with digital professionals in over 80 countries and teaches at all levels of experience from beginner to advanced.
Alongside his training and course work, Cathal runs his own digital marketing agency and is considered an analytics and revenue-generating guru - at enterprise level. He has extensive local and international experience working with top B2B and B2C brands across multiple industries.
Over his career, Cathal has worked client-side too, with digital marketing agencies and media owners, for brands including HSBC, Amazon, Apple, Red Bull, Dell, Vodafone, Compare the Market, Aer Lingus, and Expedia.
He can be reached on LinkedIn here.
By the end of this topic, you should be able to:
- Discuss the impact of customer journey stages in a marketing strategy
- Identify the key touchpoints, channels, and tactics in an omnichannel strategy
- Assess the impact of customer experience (CX) on business performance
