How to Choose the Right Online Marketing Channels [Infographic]

Online marketing is something you can’t ignore because potential customers use search, social, and mobile to research products and prices before making final purchase decisions. You can build and personalize your relationships with prospects and customers at a lower cost than traditional marketing. But how do you choose the right online marketing channels to market your product?

Recently through RippleWorks, I helped social venture Mela Artisans think through a strategy to promote their e-commerce site. We started with an outline of the pros and cons of top online marketing channels. Given the infographic below, there are a few key decision-making factors that bubble up:

• Business Goals. What are you trying to drive — awareness, education, leads, traffic, sales?
• Budget. How much do you have to spend?
• Talent. What resources do you have? You may need to enlist creative, technical, and specialized marketing people (such as search or social).

With online marketing, the ability to track your campaigns is critical to see what is working to move your customers down the funnel. More so, if you’re a startup and want quick results, I recommend Facebook advertising and paid search as good places to start. If you see success with those platforms, you can optimize and scale your efforts. In any case, take a look at the infographic to review the pros and cons of each channel. Then you can evaluate what’s best for your business.