How To Market On Digital Platforms

With social media taking over the marketing space, it is now a very competitive game to gain awareness, retain attention, and convert people to your brand, product, or service. So how can your business stand out and smash your goals through digital marketing?

The key is having an effective digital marketing mix. Each platform is unique in its offering and its audience, requiring different marketing methods and tactics.

This does not mean you should only market on one platform and ignore the rest. It is important to understand each social network has a role to play in converting users. To get the best Return On Ad Spend (ROAS), you need to take advantage of all the different digital streams your customers are in, tailoring content to the platform.

Here is an example:

I am a marketing manager for an eCommerce company selling fun, sustainable swimwear. I am targeting women, aged between 18-30 who are highly motivated, live an active lifestyle, love fashion and share it on their socials. In my social media marketing mix, I’m using:

• YouTube ads for brand awareness,
• Pinterest ads to build product awareness with an audience ready to purchase,
• Google display ads to drive website clicks and traffic, and
• Facebook ads to build awareness on another touchpoint and retarget previous website visitors

To learn more about the different marketing platforms and how you use them, we have created the ultimate guide, which will aid in your digital marketing mix.

Facebook

With nearly 3 billion monthly users, Facebook is still a goliath in the social media and marketing space. This platform offers small to large businesses a chance to reach customers and gain organic engagement. If you are wanting to stay current in the digital marketing space, its user-friendly and highly scalable Ads Manager should be included in your social media marketing mix.

You can create Facebook ad campaigns in minutes, dedicated to targeting your chosen audience. You can specify age, gender, location, interests as well as audiences who have previously visited your website, purchased from you or are a similar demographic to your current customers (lookalike audiences).

Remember, it’s important to tailor your ads to the app and audience you are targeting. While you might use similar content for ads on Facebook and Instagram, Whatsapp and Messenger will need to reflect the one-on-one interaction you’ll have with your audience.

Google

With Google Ads, you can utilise the world’s largest search engine to launch your marketing campaigns and ads across the internet. The ads types available include:

• Search: text ads (with potential for an image extension) displayed on relevant search result pages
• Display: image or video ads that appear across a network of more than two million sites and apps
• Video: video ads displayed on YouTube and across Google’s network
• Shopping: image ads with detailed product information
• App: ads on Google’s largest properties, including Search, Play, and YouTube, as well as mobile sites and apps
• Local: appearing on Search, Maps, Display, and YouTube to help drive offline metrics, such as store visits or in-store sales
• Hotel: ads displaying hotel prices and availability on Search, Maps, and Assistant
• Discovery: one campaign that reaches users across the YouTube Home Feed, Gmail, and Google’s Discover Feed

Google’s marketing platform can promote your business, help sell products or services, raise awareness, and increase traffic to your website.

While you create video campaigns on Google, it’s important to remember YouTube is a significant social media marketing platform in its own right. YouTube is the world’s second-biggest search engine and offers marketers the opportunity to create longer videos that can help drive awareness, engagement, and conversions. Similar to Facebook campaigns, you can select your target demographic based on characteristics, including age, gender, and location. Ads on YouTube include:

• Skippable In-Stream Video Ads: appearing before or during the video. The viewer has to wait at least 5 seconds before they are allowed to skip the ad.
• Non-Skippable In-Stream Video Ads: appearing before or during the video with no skip option–ranging from 15 to 30 seconds
• Bumper Ads: six-second video ads that can’t be skipped and play right before an actual video.
• Discovery Ads: similar to Google search ads, appearing amongst related search results.
• Non-Video Ads: a pop-up banner while a video is playing

Pinterest

Pinterest is one of the fastest-growing social media marketing platforms and has the highest average order value for social media shoppers. It’s an image-based platform with users who have intent to purchase. As females make up the majority of users, eCommerce brands with products targeted to women will find more success on this social media app.

Pinterest ads use historical data to promote your content to users who are interested in similar products or those within your set demographics. The most successful and popular type of ad on this platform are Standard Pins, which allows users to save the pin onto their boards and organically grow awareness of your brand. Other ad types include carousel, Video Pins, Shopping Pins, and App Install Pins.

Twitter

For brands wanting to keep their ads short and sweet, Twitter’s marketing platform might be one to add to your social media marketing mix. It can also be a great option for smaller businesses with Twitter’s simple, easy-to-use format and no minimum budget.

Audiences on this platform are wanting content that can be catchy, informative, digested in a second or all the above! Your ads need to reflect this and you can include Facebook and Instagram in your mix for when you are wanting longer-form ads.

Ad types on Twitter include promoting your tweet, account, live stream or trend (a branded hashtag). With your ads, they can be in an image, text, video, moment (similar to a story), and carousel format.

Building your digital marketing mix

Now that you have a basic understanding of the most popular social media and search engine marketing platforms, it is time to think about your digital marketing mix. Which marketing channels best suit your brand, products, or services and goals? How will your choices create an overall strategy where each channel builds on the other? What audiences are on each platform and how will your content reflect that?

While it might seem overwhelming creating and running ads for multiple channels, a digital marketing mix is the best option for achieving and exceeding your digital marketing goals. If you are just starting out, we recommend building your confidence with one marketing platform before adding another.

Want a digital marketing mix to achieve kickass results?

Social media and search engine marketing are some of the best ways to reach customers and increase your conversions. If you are loving the idea of a digital marketing mix and don’t know where to start, that’s where we come in!

As part of our services, Arkhi offers digital strategy, optimisation, monitoring, and content creation. We can use our expert knowledge to bring your goals to fruition. Contact us today!