10 Types of Digital Marketing Channels

When just stepping into the world of product marketing, you might feel a little overwhelmed. You’ll see a myriad of new trends and technologies popping up all the time and find out that you need to keep up with them. But once you get the hang of promotion strategies and learn key types of digital marketing channels, you’ll become unstoppable. And we are glad to help you with that by sharing our knowledge on the matter.

Our 3D rendering company makes visual materials for furniture brands all over the world. Since the results of our work are used in different types of digital ad campaigns, we’ve learned a lot about the inner workings of product promotion. Based on our experience, we outlined 10 key types of digital product advertising every marketer should make use of. Check it out! 

#1. Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

SEO is the process aimed at getting higher ranks in search engine results (SERP). It is one of the most effective tools to increase organic traffic on Google and Bing, which is essential for successful product promo. In their work, SEO specialists do three main things: 

• study the target audience; 
• learn what keywords they use to find relevant information within a certain field; 
• use these keywords in a company’s website content. 

Search engines rank sites by three main criteria: trust, relevance, and authority. To improve these characteristics of a website, you should use: 

• quality content (creating web copy and visuals);
• link building (acquiring hyperlinks from other websites to your own);
• technical elements (using SERP keywords, LSI (Latent Semantic Indexing) keywords, references to authoritative publications, embedded links, etc). 

When done properly, SEO can bring organic, carefully targeted, and, most importantly, free web traffic.

#2. PR and Content Marketing

Digital marketing campaigns exist in many forms such as video, imagery, and text copy. They can be spread through numerous channels including websites, social media, blogs, streams, emails, and so on. The main purpose of such a kind of promo is to inform the target audience about the benefits and useful features of the product. Often, content comes in the form of tips or lifehacks and doesn’t appear as marketing material.

The top of the funnel — the first stage of a customer’s journey — is where PR and content marketing is the most effective. Here, catching attention and getting the audience interested is considered a success. The creation of content, specifically blogs and landing pages, is heavily intertwined with SEO. In conclusion,  all types of digital marketing channels rely on content one way or another.   

#3. Social Media Marketing (SMM)

Social media platforms are not merely for communication with friends anymore. They became business networking channels as well as e-commerce stores. For example, now, people can buy non-expensive products directly from Instagram. And with high-end products, social media accounts can serve as teasers guiding the audience to a brand’s website.

There are two main ways of doing SMM. The first one is stimulating organic growth — it implies creating quality content, engaging with the audience, and building a community step-by-step. The second way is paying for advertisements to make them appear in users’ newsfeeds more often. Even though producing organic content is cost-saving and more efficient in the long run, paid advertisement gives results faster. Ideally, a successful SMM strategy combines both approaches.   

#4. Email Marketing

This type of digital marketing channel is one of the most stable and affordable for any business. Emails can be used as a free tool to reach a specific audience that is interested in your goods and therefore likely to subscribe to your newsletter. After you get subscribers,  your marketers will send them letters with updates, bonuses, and special offers enhanced by eye-catching product visuals like catchy photos, 3D renders, and animations. You can also throw some tips and hacks related to your products and industry to make the content more diverse. The only thing you can’t do in email marketing is turn it into spam. So, it’s important to have a regular schedule for sending newsletters to avoid overwhelming your prospects with promo information.  

#5. Paid Search

Pay per click or paid search is the best solution when you don’t intend to invest in a long-term advertising strategy but rather in one that brings immediate results. PPC means that an advertiser pays only when someone clicks on their sponsored search listing. However, it’s not as easy as it seems since there is very high competition for the top positions in search engines. This means that the average cost per click constantly goes up. It can get to the point when the spendings on PPC product advertisement exceeds the revenue it brings. To keep the cost down, you need to make sure that you have enough SEO-optimized landing pages. It’s best to have one for every type of product you offer. Your landing pages should feature informative copy and lots of visuals like photos, videos, or more innovative solutions such as 3D product visualization.  

#6. Display Advertising

Display advertisement is any type of visual ad shown on a webpage. It can be in the form of images, videos, gifs, collages, and text blocks. The trick is to attract the attention of not just anybody but of your target audience (TA). For this, you should display your advertisement on relevant websites with the right context. For example, if your product is furniture, it will be reasonable to place your banners on interior design blogs and magazines, lifestyle pages on Instagram, Pinterest boards with home decor selections, etc. The more specific you will be with such ads, the better. For example, office furniture ads will catch the attention of the TA in business-related media, while the kitchen and dining furniture will find its buyers on networking websites and magazines for housewives. 

#7. Messenger Marketing

As SMS is slowly fading into the past, messengers are taking their place. The widespread usage of such apps as WhatsUp and WeChat made them ultra-effective channels to reach the masses in product promo and advertising. Chatbots now use personalized communication, which helps to build trust with the audience. With messenger marketing, brands can generate more leads and provide customer support 24/7. It also helps to keep their client base informed about new offers, sales, and other updates. 

#8. Influencer Marketing

The biggest benefit of this type of digital marketing channel is its trust-gaining power. Influencers have loyal audiences that follow them for a long time and value their opinions. That’s why cooperation with them works perfectly for brand awareness and social proof. The most common scheme for such type of promo is an influencer mentioning the product and posting a link to it in their blog or channel. Clicking this link is often followed by getting a discount or any other perk. Services of some influencers are paid based on how many leads they bring, while others have a fixed price for posting ads on their socials.

#9. Affiliate Marketing

Many beginners in digital marketing confuse affiliate marketing with influencer marketing. The difference is that with the former a brand pays content makers not for sharing a post itself but for conversion events it brings. The main point is to choose a platform that attracts the audience you want to reach — the bigger, the better. Let’s imagine a furniture brand asked an interior design magazine to publish an article about them with the link to a specific product. They could offer the media owners 15% earnings from the sales of the said item. This way, both sides would win. 

#10. Video and Audio Advertisement

Traditionally, video and audio ads were a part of content marketing. But since many VOD (Video on Demand) platforms and social media became extremely popular, they can be considered separate types of digital marketing channels. YouTube, Vimeo, TikTok, Twitch — these are the hotspots on the Internet that attract all kinds of audiences. 

As for podcasting, it can be called the modern radio. The difference is that podcasts are much easier to create than radio broadcasts. Promo podcasts are uploaded to VOD platforms like YouTube, audio streaming services like Spotify, Apple Music, or SoundCloud, or specialized websites like Buzzsprout. Such type of product advertising is highly engaging, entertaining, and informative.    

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Using the above-mentioned 10 types of digital marketing channels will help you ensure the most successful outcome of promo campaigns. Some of these tools might suit your business more, while others may not become a priority. But in any case, combining and interchanging them will ultimately bring the result you strive to achieve. 

Are you ready to try product visualization for promo imagery and video content? Order 3D rendering services at CGIFURNITURE to get innovative and interactive visuals for digital marketing campaigns. 

Megan Wright

Social Media Marketer at CGIFurniture

Megan is an information addict. She knows what’s trendy in advertising, whose ad campaigns received Lions in 2000-2022, and how to make a video go viral. In her free time, Megan enjoys photography.