What are digital marketing channels?

Before you start planning an effective digital marketing strategy, you need to have inside knowledge of the different channels in digital marketing. When Identified, you need to know what channels work best for your business idea and working on them will help you propel your idea forward.

(Interactive Cleveland, 2017)

Website Marketing

As you can see form this image there are various digital marketing channels that are available, however there success rates differ considerably. For example websites seem to have the highest success rate of 38.2%, This is probably due to it being the most cost effective method. Also, a website is the main  gateway to your brand. Many companies will start a website as their first tool for marketing their products/ services, for example UK based Transgressive records label have been able to develop their website into a easy and user friendly place, were it is easy to purchase copies of music and market all of their new artists.

Email Marketing

Email marketing seems to be a very popular choice for companies, as it is a very important tool when it comes to reaching current customers, and also is key in keeping relationships with those customers. “Tesco see emails as key to their strategy of online marketing as result of that about 60% of their online revenue come from emails,” (Parry,2005). However although this channel is seemed to be a very effective way to reach out to customers, it is unless if not done right. This is because millions of emails are sent each day, and many companies have abused this method. So it has to be a eye catching and exciting email for customers to engage with it. a recent article said that “Email marketing is the best way to get the word out and generate buzz in our post-CD society. In fact, it’s much quicker and less expensive than traditional marketing methods.” this is in relation to the music industry, as shows us how email is used by so many new up and coming artists.

Search engine Optimisation (SEO)

SEO is “the process of improving the position that your website appears at in the “organic” search results returned by sites such as Google.”  Lines, 2014)Again, as we can see by the table SEO seems to be a very effective way of marketing, however its current use of 57% seems to be rather low for a channel of marketing that is so successful.

Social Media

Although this is listed at number four on the table, it is probably one of the most used marketing channels in the music industry. As many music labels have been able to create relationships through the use of SM and social networking as (Gilliland, 2016) stated that, having a visible presence on Twitter and Facebook gives artists a direct link to fans. Also In a study conducted by (Venture Harbour, 2014) conducted with MIDEM, we found that our sample of 64 music industry executives collectively spent in the region of £1.9m on content marketing. This shows just how important content marketing is for music businesses/labels. Arrording to (Occhino, 2016) Facebook is the top social media outlet to promote your music on, this is probably mostly down to the fact that it is the SM site with the most active users (1.65 Billion), also people love discovering new artist and brands on this site as million of likes and follows are generated by uses each day in the music category alone.

For more information on other popular sights to promote music on please visit: http://blog.sonicbids.com/the-top-8-social-media-outlets-to-promote-your-music-and-how-to-best-use-them

How does Social Media fit into the Integrated marketing communication model of event companies and what’s its effects?

(Figure 5 Source: New Communication Paradigm Mangold and Faulds, 2009)

This model supports the view that customers engaged with events services are more likely to communicate through social media, being the reason why so many events companies are using social media to market all of there events, and why they use there support lines on sights such as twitter and Facebook messenger. Mangold and Faulds (2009) also believes that customers are much likely to talk to others about products that support their desired self imaged, hence why events company’s focus their promotional efforts are undertaken with peoples desired self-image in mind.

References

Brook, Stephen Brook, 2005. Tesco unleashes email marketing blitz. Tesco unleashes email marketing blitz, [Online]. 1, 1-5. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/media/2005/nov/11/supermarkets.marketingandpr [Accessed 9 April 2017].

Email Marketing Tips. 2017. Email Marketing for Musicians – Email Marketing Tips. [ONLINE] Available at: https://blog.aweber.com/guides/email-marketing-for-musicians. [Accessed 09 April 2017].

Gilliland, Nikki Gilliland, 2016. The impact of technology and social media on the music industry. The impact of technology and social media on the music industry, [Online]. 1, 1-4. Available at: https://econsultancy.com/blog/68522-the-impact-of-technology-and-social-media-on-the-music-industry/ [Accessed 13 April 2017].

Interactive Cleveland. 2017. Top 5 Digital Marketing Channels. [ONLINE] Available at: http://www.interactivecleveland.com/blog/email-marketing/top-5-digital-marketing-channels/. [Accessed 09 April 2017].

Lines, Natalie, 2014. What is SEO and how can it help my website’s Google visibility?. What is SEO and how can it help my website’s Google visibility?, [Online]. 1, 1-5. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/small-business-network/2014/jan/16/what-is-seo-how-website-google-visibility [Accessed 9 April 2017].

Taylor, Marcus, 2014. Digital marketing and the music industry: six key trends for 2014. Digital marketing and the music industry: six key trends for 2014, [Online]. 1, 1-4. Available at: https://econsultancy.com/blog/64051-digital-marketing-and-the-music-industry-six-key-trends-for-2014/ [Accessed 13 April 2017].

Mangold, W.G. and Faulds, D.J. (2009) Social Media: The New Hybrid Element of the Promotion Mix. Business Horizons, 52, 357-365. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.bushor.2009.03.002