Facebook and Twitter is two biggest social networks in the world. As a result, they may be one of the best way for company to approach to their customer. The question is: which one performs better in the game of advertising and is it worth the money to put ads on facebook and twitter?

Facebook vs Twitter

1. History:

Facebook was launched by Mark Zuckerberg, along with his college roommates, in February 2004. The company went IPO on Friday, May 18, 2012. The IPO was the biggest in technology and one of the biggest in the history, with a peak market capitalisation of over $104bn (Matt, 2012). At the moment, Facebook is the biggest social network in the world with more than 1.2 billion users and keeps growing rapidly.

On the other side, Twitter was founded on March, 2006 by Jack Dorsey. And after 6 years of operating, Twitter becomes one of the biggest rivals of Facebook with 140+ million active users, creating over one billion Tweets every three days (Ochman, 2012).

Facebook vs Twitter: Users comparison

2. Facebook vs Twitter: Network reach

Although Twitter grows rapidly, Facebook is still the winner when comes to network reach, with 1.32 billion active users compared to 232 active users of Twitter. While each day, users on Twitter share 500m tweets each day, it is nothing in comparison to 4.75bn items posted daily on Facebook. As a result, Facebook accounts for 57% of social media advertising budget when Twitter only has 13% (Long, 2013).

Conclusion: Facebook wins.

3. Facebook vs Twitter: Ad Performances

It is difficult to measure ad performance because the limitation in data. However, companies have to pay more if they want to appear on Facebook ads. Revenue per visitors for Facebook is also higher than that of Twitter, $0.93 and $0.44 respectively. It is also found that Facebook has lost ground in share of social referred visits, with a 20% decrease YOY, bringing it to 62%. However, that still beats out Twitter’s paltry 6.8% share of social visits, though it’s increased 258% this year (Kim, 2013).

Revenue comparison

However, when asked for satisfaction with the return on advertisement on Facebook, only 14.8% marketers answer very satisfied, while a huge number of marketers only somewhat satisfied with the results (64.8%) and more than 20% of marketers dissatisfied with the results (Learmonth, 2013). On the other hand, Twitter touts its Promoted Trends product, reporting a 22% lift in brand conversion and 32% lift in retweets.Furthermore, Twitter generates more clicks on its ads (Shields, 2014). However, it is too pricey for small business at up to $200,000 per day (Kim, 2013).

Conclusion: Twitter has potential but needs to prove more. Facebook is still the winner.

4. Facebook vs Twitter: Mobile Ad Performance

Twitter has an inherent mobile advantage, because Promoted Tweets are in-stream and therefore look and feel natural for mobile users (Kim, 2013). While Facebook is way behind in mobile, 55% of users access Twitter on mobile, with 40% growth quarter over quarter. Promoted Tweets fit perfectly into the mobile app (Ochman, 2012).

However, mobile advertisements are growing strong on Facebook. With mobile drive their revenue at the time of 2015, about 87% of Facebook ‘s monthly active users visited from mobile devices, up 24% from a year ago. That translates into 1.25 billion people out of its total monthly active users of 1.44 billion (King, 2015).

Conclusion: It is a draw between Facebook and Twitter. Although Twitter has more advantages on mobile ads, Facebook is growing strong and improving.

5. Facebook vs Twitter: Ad Formats

Facebook has had to work hard at simplifying its ad offerings for marketers, and it announced big changes in 2013, when it promised to cut the number of ad formats by more than half by the end of the year. On the other hand, Twitter’s ad format have always been simple, with just 3 products: Promoted Tweets, Promoted Accounts and Promoted Trends.

Conclusion: No winner here, both are simple and easy to follow!!!

6. Conclusion:

All in all, Facebook still the winner in advertisement world. However, Twitter has a lot of potential to develop in the future. Although Twitter has a lot to catch up with Facebook, it is still a young company with a lot of space  to grow.

References:

Bultman, M. (2015). Facebook IPO to Make Dobbs Ferry’s Mark Zuckerberg a $24 Billion Man | The Greenburgh Daily Voice. [online] The Greenburgh Daily Voice. Available at: http://greenburgh.dailyvoice.com/news/facebook-ipo-make-dobbs-ferrys-mark-zuckerberg [Accessed 29 Apr. 2015].

Kim, L. (2015). Twitter vs. Facebook Ad Showdown: Which Offers the Best Social Media Ad Platform?. [online] MarketingProfs. Available at: http://www.marketingprofs.com/articles/2013/12350/twitter-vs-facebook-ad-showdown-which-offers-the-best-social-media-ad-platform [Accessed 29 Apr. 2015].

King, H. (2015). Facebook’s mobile ad revenue jumps. [online] CNNMoney. Available at: http://money.cnn.com/2015/04/22/technology/social/facebook-earnings-first-quarter-2015/ [Accessed 29 Apr. 2015].

Learmonth, M. (2013). Exclusive Survey: What Advertisers Really Think About Facebook. [online] Adage.com. Available at: http://adage.com/article/special-report-digital-alist-2013/exclusive-survey-advertisers-facebook/239996/ [Accessed 29 Apr. 2015].

Long, M. (2013). Social Media Advertising Statistics And Trends To Get Your Company Off Its Duff And Online [INFOGRAPHIC]. [online] Adweek.com. Available at: http://www.adweek.com/socialtimes/social-media-advertising-statistics/480833?red=at [Accessed 29 Apr. 2015].

Ochman, B. (2012). Why Twitter Is a Better Brand Platform Than Facebook. [online] Adage.com. Available at: http://adage.com/article/digitalnext/twitter-a-brand-platform-facebook/235115/ [Accessed 29 Apr. 2015].

Shields, M. (2015). Advertisers Spend Much More With Facebook But Twitter Performs Better. [online] WSJ. Available at: http://blogs.wsj.com/cmo/2014/04/04/advertisers-spend-much-more-with-facebook-but-twitter-performs-better/ [Accessed 29 Apr. 2015].

Marketers know that consumers shift devices throughout the day, engaging with their brands by visiting a website, watching a video, downloading an app, making a purchase or completing any other conversion event (Ferrario, 2015). Most of that activities could be completed on a mobile phone. The world is now evaded by the smart phones, then why not using mobile advertising?

1. Mobile advertising’s trend:

According to a recent report from IAB and Ovum (2015), most marketers now consider their firm as either very experienced (21%) or somewhat experienced (45%) in mobile advertising. However, the number of marketers are in early phase of their mobile advertising, with 22% still inexperienced and 14% just starting out.

On the other hand, mobile advertising spending in the US jumped 76% to $12.5bn last year, overtaking display ads to become second-largest online ad format (IAB, 2015). What makes mobile advertising becomes so popular is because of the number of phone users and the hour people spend on mobile increasing every day. US adults spent more time on mobile phone than they did on the PCs for the first time last year, with the gap of 30 minutes each day (Bond, 2015), which proves the power of mobile phones in modern life. As a result, marketers who are ignoring mobile advertising or hesitating to use mobile marketing should start thinking about using it.

2. Effectiveness of mobile advertising:

Although mobile advertising is growing everyday, its effectiveness is sometimes may not as good as what marketers expect. According to Ovum (2015), 5% of marketers said they were satisfied with their mobile advertising activities why 37% said they were only “fairly satified” with the result of their mobile advertising.

The reason of mobile advertising may not be as good as what marketers expected may be because of different factors such as no one sees your advertising, mobile advetising having different outlook compared to advertising on PCs or simply mobile users does not click on the advertisement. Of course, getting an ad in front of a target doesn’t guarantee interaction, and the majority of mobile device users had not clicked on an advertisement in the month leading up to polling.

Then, what marketers should do to make sure their mobile advertisement is effective?

3. Mobile Advertsing – Do’s and Don’ts

Do’s:

• Do know your customer and plan mobile accordingly: Knowing customer target and having the right tools to reach them will save company’s money and time while increase overall effectiveness. As a result, it is important for marketers to know who their target audience is, to figure out who they are trying to reach and how to reach them (Kats, 2012)
• Do keep it simple: Mobile provides less space to advertise the products so that it is important to make sure the mobile advertisement is as simple as possible. However, simple does not means plain. Marketers should draw consumer attention by simple but succinct message (Bash, 2014)
• Do make sure that your advertisement repeat appearing in a limited time: Repetiton and time pressure influenced effectiveness of mobile advertisement (Rau et al., 2014). It is better to send mobile advertisement in a low pressure context and send less than 3 mobile advertisement to a consumer each day to have the best effect (ibid).

Don’ts:

• Don’t follow the mobile trend that have nothing to do with your campaign: Trends aren’t always a good guideposts. Company should not follow the trends but to focus on what works best for them (Kats, 2012)
• Don’t use the same ads on different devices: Mobile, tablet and PCs does not have the same outlook. If you put you tablet ads on your mobile phones, chances are the ads will look to big and not visually appealing to consumers (Bash, 2014)
• Don’t give the customers too many choices: Again, marketers must keeps their campaign as simple as possible. It is fundamental that marketers know what their objectives are and go from there (Kat, 2012)

In conclusion, mobile advertising is a trend at the moment. Everyone is hyped about it but marketers should keep in mind that although it is a trend, a trend may not always be effective without putting time and effort to perfect it.

References:

Bash, T. (2014). Mobile Marketing Dos and Don’ts. [online] eMarketing & Commerce (eM+C). Available at: http://www.emarketingandcommerce.com/article/mobile-marketing-dos-donts/2 [Accessed 29 Apr. 2015].

Bond, S. (2015). Digital is reshaping the world of advertising. Financial Times. [online] Available at: http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/60b8747e-bc1f-11e4-a6d7-00144feab7de.html#axzz3YcW1BVwF [Accessed 29 Apr. 2015].

Emarketer.com, (2015). Ever Wonder Why Consumers Don’t Click on Mobile Ads? – eMarketer. [online] Available at: http://www.emarketer.com/Article/Ever-Wonder-Why-Consumers-Dont-Click-on-Mobile-Ads/1011110 [Accessed 29 Apr. 2015].

Ferrario, B. (2015). Brands Celebrate Cross-Device Choice Beyond Facebook, Google. [online] Adage.com. Available at: http://adage.com/article/drawbridge/cross-device-expands-facebook-google/298273/ [Accessed 29 Apr. 2015].

IAB, and PWC, (2015). IAB internet advertising revenue report. [online] Available at: http://www.iab.net/media/file/IAB_Internet_Advertising_Revenue_FY_2014.pdf [Accessed 29 Apr. 2015].

Kats, R. (2014). Top do’s and don’ts of mobile marketing – Mobile Marketer – Strategy. [online] Mobilemarketer.com. Available at: http://www.mobilemarketer.com/cms/news/strategy/13367.html [Accessed 29 Apr. 2015].

Marketer perceptions of mobile advertising. (2015). 3rd ed. [ebook] Ovum. Available at: http://www.iab.net/media/file/IAB_Marketer_Perceptions_2015_Final.pdf [Accessed 29 Apr. 2015].

Rau, P., Zhou, J., Chen, D. and Lu, T. (2014). The influence of repetition and time pressure on effectiveness of mobile advertising messages. Telematics and Informatics, [online] 31(3), pp.463-476. Available at: http://www.sciencedirect.com.ezproxy.brighton.ac.uk/science/article/pii/S0736585313000634 [Accessed 29 Apr. 2015].

As one of the most famous and earliest YouTube adopter in sharing beauty tips for makeup, styling, and nourishing skin. Michelle Phan was very wise for choosing YouTube, as same as the SNS to develop her empire.

Then, what did she do to earn that throne? Her pure talent? Luck? Interacting is the key word.

1. YouTube

YouTube is now, still remaining one of the most powerful digital marketing for those who need to be popular as quick as a flash of a supernova.

Michelle started uploading makeup tutorial in May 2007 and the tenth video named “Seductive Smokey eyes tutorial” was the turning point, the first one that hit 100,000 views. Her channel was averaging 600,000 views per month by the fall of 2008 and keep going on with her promise for new uploading weekly.

In 2009, Michelle has marked this year by reaching 1.5 million views in Jan for 8 videos, and more for her dedication to the platform.

On the way of gaining victories, again in 2009, Michelle saw her lucky chance of using the SNS and sharing on some social media sites where she was building a community of fans for her tutorials, and the video titled “Romantic Valentine Look” became a phenomenon. Brought to her channel on YouTube reached 4.5 million views that month.

Michelle Phan Youtube Channel in July, 2014

In addition to programming her videos for the holidays, Michelle began producing makeup tutorials that related to trending topics such as new music videos or other search trends. Such as: “Lady Gaga Poker Face Tutorial” (1.6 million views in its first two weeks, still second–most–watched video of all time for the channel)

In late summer 2011, started to become a creator. She began writing and directing story-driven narratives that feature her tutorials as plot points woven into the story. “Catch My Heart,” was the first reached 1.2 million views (first week). Since then it has become her fan’s favorites.

And by using her advantage, talent in drawing. She has made her videos much more creative and easier for people to watch and remember with specific keywords.

Moreover, goes alongside with follow world’s new trend in makeup field, she releases vlogs in which she answers hers fan’s questions, provides updates on her makeup lines, skin care routine and her personal life.

Michelle Phan Monthly Views: May 2009-February 2014

She knows when is the best time to upload new posts as in October for the Halloween themed videos and committing consistent uploads help her fans to never get enough of her.

Sum up, the key factor in her success is three things: cool colorful graphic design videos/vlogs (with meaningful storyline), short concise information which are easily to remember, interacting with her fans by answer their questions/ via giveaway and sharing emotions altogether on social sites.

2. Instagram. (IG)

It is such waste for not using Instagram as one of your channel for your business. Instagram is new, lots of fun with the most wanted customers: the youth.

Realized it soon and quick. She started using IG as a channel to share her daily activities, beauty tips, introduce newest products, call out/upon for humanism campaign, and support group, fundraisers, foundations.

Her IG is always full of colors which is related to the audience that she wants to get. One of her things must be successful in using the hashtag (#) to impress and make her own new trend. That is why her IG is now followed by 1.8 million people, such a nice dream for any beauty gurus else to catch.

Michelle Phan Instagram Channel

She has built up her IG with her own style, easily to recognize and concisely with her key points. Moreover, she connects all her channels together, and sets up Giveaways which are people have to follow all hers channels, like or thumb up, comment, subscribe, to play/join the game as the silent rules.

3. Among other channels

Michelle has 7.5 million YouTube subscribers at the moment and 3 million likes on Facebook (Greiff, 2015). She traveled to Asia with Michelle Obama to promote the Let Girls Learn initiative this month. Last year she teamed up with Pinterest for a Halloween campaign promoting its Pin Picks feature.

Together with Endemol Beyond, she created Icon, a lifestyle network that aims to help you “be your best self,” according to a promotional video on Youtube. The network debuts in the U.S. and U.K. today and will roll out in Asia and Western Europe later this year.

This is not the first time Michelle, who achieved fame among many young people via YouTube, has set her sights on her own video platform. ICON will cover topics including beauty, wellness, fashion and food, and the content will be distributed on YouTube, Dailymotion and Roku, as well as the Icon app and website. The network’s content creators include social-media influencers such as Sonya Esman, Jkissa, Jamie Greenberg and Kassie Isabelle.

Moreover, she has noticed desktop and mobile patterns change: “Last year, 60 percent of traffic came from desktop. Today, 70 percent comes from mobile” (Bowles, 2014). From her lawsuit with EDM Music for using their music for her video’s background; she took it as an opportunity to declare herself a defender of “Team Internet,” which seemed to indicate a stance about more progressive copyright laws.  She launched her own label with Cutting Edge Music.

“It’s very easy to make a viral video, but longevity and consistency, that’s hard.”_ she said.

References

Bowles, N. (2014). Michelle Phan: From YouTube Star to $84 Million Startup Founder. [online] Re/code. Available at: http://recode.net/2014/10/27/michelle-phan-youtube-star-to-startup-founder/ [Accessed 28 Apr. 2015].

Greiff, F. (2015). Michelle Phan Launches Premium Video Network ‘Icon’. [online] AdAge. Available at: http://adage.com/article/digital/michelle-phan-launches-premium-video-network-icon/297842/ [Accessed 28 Apr. 2015].

ICON, (2015). Introducing ICON ∞. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=54&v=vhcXlNA-jII [Accessed 28 Apr. 2015].

Thinkwithgoogle, (2014). YouTube Creator Stories: How Michelle Phan Became Everyone’s Beauty Bestie – Think with Google. [online] Available at: https://www.thinkwithgoogle.com/case-studies/michelle-phan.html [Accessed 28 Apr. 2015].

We’re living in a digital world – with more and more people using mobile phones, tablets, laptops and computers to consume the sorts of things they used to get from print newspapers and magazines and their TV and radio sets. Businesses need to go where their audiences are and so that means digital marketing if you’re going to keep up. Although it’s nothing new, digital marketing has become a major game changer for both brands and consumers.

Digital marketing is a huge win for global brands. Campaigns based on digital technologies provide quantifiable results like none before, and the multi-channel world opens up endless possibilities for executing complex marketing strategies.

The pace of change in digital marketing can be quite overwhelming. To keep up, digital marketers need to look at their strategies and find ways to mimic this pace. In many cases, that means we need to adopt a more short-term perspective.

1. Identify the right metrics – Stop presenting, start engaging

This will depend on what you want to achieve but there are some common things you’ll probably want. Most basically you’ll want to see how many people are coming to your site. Beyond that you also want to look at where that traffic comes from, your ‘bounce rate’ of how many people immediately leave your site, the demographics of your audience and your all-important search engine ranking.

According to Arianna Huffington, Huffington Post’s successful disruption of the media landscape was based on the recognition that it’s no longer enough to just ‘present’ information to its audience. Huffington Post will be 10 years old on May 9 2015 and today maintains 850 journalists and editors, along with thousands of bloggers, writing up to 2000 stories a day. Under a new joint venture with Fairfax, the site will also launch in Australia later this year, bringing its total country tally up to 14 (Cameron, 2015).

The key to be success is you need to move increasingly into engaged marketing. Presentations are not enough anymore, we need to engage customers.

2. Combining old and new method

Friedlein (2015) has run an experiment according to “Mail Man” campaign which conceived by Publicis Chemistry, ran across digital, print, outdoor, and direct mail; whereas he decides to combine direct mail with digital and social media. The idea was simply to use what we digerati call a GOL (Good Old-fashioned Letter) to prompt a tracked visit to my LinkedIn profile with the desired action being a request to connect with him.

With 2000 letters sent and total cost of £1,500, up to date there have been 188 uses of the custom URL so a 9.4% response rate with 56% of those views coming within the first two days of the letters landing. He had received 156 new LinkedIn connections from those he sent the letter to, so a 7.8% conversion rate and an average cost per new connection of £9.60.

What he has learnt is due to data protection and marketing, you cannot legally cold email people. In B2B it is a little greyer but even if you get away with it you get so little response and risk such reputational damage that it is not worth it.

BUT YOU CAN MAIL PEOPLE! Using direct mail to win a digital connection and permission to contact in the future seems to me a clever way to join up traditional and digital.  Here are some most interesting personal replies and comments, particularly from digital professionals extolling the virtues of a letter:

“Great to receive your LETTER, what a breath of fresh air” Senior Ecommerce Manager;

“You sent me a letter – old skool. I liked it.” Marketing Director.

Of my new connections 18 are Marketing Directors at major brands and 33 are Ecommerce/Digital Directors so the quality is very high too.

3. Money

Money plays the most vital part for your business but is it the right measurement for your successful digital marketing campaign? The one that makes you money?

Once you’ve got all the data you need you should focus on at two figures. Firstly what is the ‘cost per lead’ from your campaign? How much have you spent and how many leads have you generated?

Green (2015) explains by looking at the “lead to close ratio” or conversion rate. So if you have spent £50 and generated 10 leads that means you  have spent £5 on each lead. However, if half of those leads actually become customers spending money on your products and services then that will be five customers at £10 each. If each customer has spent above that you’re in profit. If it is below there could be two problems:

• your marketing campaign has failed to generate enough interest.
• you have not managed to get those who showed an interest to part with their cash.

If it is the second one, your campaign might actually a success and you may need to reconsider what you once do that draw their interest. Number of customers do not reflect your real success.

Oh! And also do not forget to ask your audience what they think. Their useful feedback might help to decide your future efforts.

References

Cameron, N. (2015). 3 lessons to inspire digital marketing success from Arianna Huffington. [online] CMO. Available at: http://www.cmo.com.au/article/572977/3-lessons-inspire-digital-marketing-success-from-arianna-huffington/ [Accessed 28 Apr. 2015].

Friedlein, A. (2015). My experiment in combining direct mail with digital/social. [online] Econsultancy. Available at: https://econsultancy.com/blog/66375-my-experiment-in-combining-direct-mail-with-digital-social/ [Accessed 28 Apr. 2015].

Green, C. (2015). How to measure the success of your digital marketing campaign | Information Age. [online] InformationAge. Available at: http://www.information-age.com/technology/mobile-and-networking/123459266/how-measure-success-your-digital-marketing-campaign [Accessed 28 Apr. 2015].

Royal Mail MarketReach, (2015). Mailmen. Available at: https://youtu.be/eoigzO5tXdc [Accessed 28 Apr. 2015].

This blog is based on Appelo (2015) who is an entrepreneur, CEO of Happy Melly on how not to chase customers away through using digital marketing. He explains how he pick his vendors (but not beggars) by sharing stories about his own experience when choosing a product/service. By emailing someone and introducing/broadcasting about what you are doing may not be a smart way to draw their attention, yet more likely to be treated as spam.

1. Pull, don’t push.

Make sure that people can find you using Google, social networks and/or market places. Attract them with great content.

How many of you have heard of a story like this?

Boy meets girl.

They fall in love.

Boy loses girl.

Girl finds out his real secret (being a vampire).

They finally get back together.

They get married.

How and why they break up and what they do to get back together are what make the story interesting. It would surely be better than something like this:

Boy meets girl.

They fall in love.

They get married.

Blogs, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter and other online platforms are giving organizations an enormous opportunity to engage directly with your customers or would-be customers. So instead of bugging and annoying them with advertising and direct mail, you can create online content – blog posts, videos, webinars and websites –  that will attract customers to you, not the other way around (Handley and Chapman, 2012).

2. Show, don’t tell.

Make sure people can see with their own eyes that you are awesome. Those who are cool and remarkable do not need to say it. This is considered one of the most valuable secrets of writing (for both creative fiction and marketing) because it relies on the imagination of the audience.

Much like in the movie Inception, your goal is to plant an idea in the mind of your prospect without them being fully aware of it. A person is more likely to perform an action when it’s inspired by their own idea, not someone else telling them to (Print Marketing Blog – Printwand™, n.d.).

This strategy can be applied to any sort of advertising, whether it’s online or print collateral. If you’re still at a loss for how to get started, try answering these three questions.

1. What do you want your prospect to do?
2. How do they need to feel about your product/service in order to do it?
3. What specific features about your product/service might make them feel this way?

Show, don’t tell: Visual content is a brand’s digital best friend (AMA TV, 2014)

3. Share, don’t beg.

Do not annoy everyone with 20th-century marketing tactics. Thanks to transparency, when you behave like a beggar, everyone will know.

This will involve inbound marketing – things you can do on the web that earn traffic and attention but don’t directly cost money (Fishkin and Høgenhaven, 2013). Don’t buy. Don’t beg. Don’t bludgeon. It is all about earning attention and love. The channels with the highest ROI are often those do not invest in it – so much potential there! The inbound marketing is not free, it takes time and money to create and distribute phenomenal content yet it is often a more-effective marketing strategy than paid marketing.

People that broadcast to complete strangers — “Hello? Can I please tell you about my awesome services?” — violate all three rules. Smart businesses don’t need this approach anymore!!!!

References

Appelo, J. (2015). Your Marketing Is Chasing Customers Away! Here’s Why.. [online] Entrepreneur. Available at: http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/244960 [Accessed 28 Apr. 2015].

AMA TV, (2014). Show, don’t tell: Visual content is a brand’s digital best friend. [online] Available at: http://amatv.ama.org/show-dont-tell-visual-content-is-a-brands-digital-best-friend [Accessed 28 Apr. 2015].

Fishkin, R. and Høgenhaven, T. (2013). Inbound marketing and SEO: Insights from the Moz Blog. John Wiley & Sons.

Handley, A. and Chapman, C. (2012). Content rules. Hoboken, N.J.: Wiley.

Print Marketing Blog – Printwand™, (n.d.). Understanding the “Show, Don’t Tell” Marketing Strategy. [online] Available at: http://www.printwand.com/blog/understanding-the-show-dont-tell-marketing-strategy [Accessed 27 Apr. 2015].

Have you every thought about open your own business and yet still do not know how to start people to know about you? A marketing channel is a way to get your message to your target audience (Duncan, 2013).

However, with so many online advertising channels available, how do you go about picking the best channel for your business? Considering a fine balancing act between your advertising budget and the costs of using a particular channel is a must before you make any decision.

1. Email

For some reasons, emails have been neglected as an advertising channel because everyone assumes it is outdated yet it is quite opposite (Morphy, 2015). It is the lowest cost method and should be a digital channel you should take advantage of.

From the survey by Radicati Group (2013), by 2017 there will be more than 1.1 billion business email accounts and 77% of worldwide email accounts would be consumer’s. So this channel is not dead but very much alive!

A good example is Amazon knows their lead sources and does email follow-up well with “Hey, these other books are similar to what you just purchased” emails. It seems simple, but many companies have been doing that for years and be successful.

Entrepreneurs who do not want to tap the power of email as a digital advertising channel are surely making the mistake. It helps to foster your brand engagement as well as strengthen at multiple levels. In order to increase your email value:

• Relevant messaging that encourages recipients to act on the email.
• The email should create a timeframe within which recipients need to act (urgency).
• Use consumer intelligence for targeted and more personalized messaging.

A well designed email has a huge potential to deliver the returns you are looking for so DO NOT ignore this channel at any cost!

2. Social Media

This is a top Internet activity and people despite their age are spending a large amount of time on social media. You will have a better chance to catch their attention through this approach of advertising. It is estimated that social media advertising revenue in 2015 will be close to $8.5 billion and much more in the next few years.

Here are few things you should keep in mind to boost social media ads ROI:

• Whether it’s Facebook Ads, LinkedIn Ads or Promoted Tweets, you’ll need to optimize the use of their targeted features. You can actually drill deep down in terms of customer profiling, so that your ads reach users who’ve better chances of converting into customers.
• Your ads will appear directly in the users’ news feeds, so avoid repeat messaging. Rotate your ads.
• Many users access their social media accounts with their smartphones, so make sure your ads are mobile friendly.

3. Google AdWords

There are quite some business owners tend to stay away from PPC (Pay per click) by Google AdWords because it costs their marketing budget. Unfortunately, that is a very big mistake. AdWords delivers measurable results and is worth the investment. Your ads get viewed right when your target audience is searching for the products/services you are selling and the results are faster than SEO (Search Engine Optimization) that you can also set a budget for your campaign to control advertising costs.

PPC helps plenty of businesses to drive attention to their site, promote their products/services and increase sales. The great thing is there are plenty of tools you can use to optimize your returns from Google AdWords.

These are the three digital channels will definitely drive your marketing efforts in the right direction for your business.

References

Duncan, L. (2013). How to Double Your Business: How to unlock the potential of your business and achieve remarkable success. 1st ed. [ebook] Pearson UK. Available at: https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=nincpiovU9AC&pg=PT103&dq=how+to+be+successful+in+advertising+marketing+channel&hl=en&sa=X&ei=pZ0-Vb-zLYfvarX9gLgI&ved=0CCYQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q=how%20to%20be%20successful%20in%20advertising%20marketing%20channel&f=false [Accessed 27 Apr. 2015].

Morphy, E. (2015). Email Marketing Is Dead? Long Live Email Marketing?. [online] CMSWire.com. Available at: http://www.cmswire.com/cms/customer-experience/email-marketing-is-dead-long-live-email-marketing-028984.php [Accessed 27 Apr. 2015].

THE RADICATI GROUP, (2013). Email Statistics Report, 2013-2017. 1st ed. [ebook] Available at: http://www.radicati.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/Email-Statistics-Report-2013-2017-Executive-Summary.pdf [Accessed 27 Apr. 2015].