Best Marketing Platforms For Any Business To Start

So, you have decided to start your business in 2021 but need to know which marketing platforms to use for the sustained growth of your business. Don’t worry – you’re not alone.

Studies indicate that over 30% of businesses express dissatisfaction with their content creation workflow, attributing it to the need for more suitable marketing platforms. However, there is good news: numerous robust online marketing platforms are available to help businesses enhance their effectiveness and achieve remarkable success. By leveraging these platforms, you can elevate your business to new heights.

What Are Marketing Platforms?

Simply put, a platform is a ‘place’ for marketing. It could be physical or virtual. As we live in the digital world and are surrounded by technologies, virtual platforms are preferred over old-school marketing platforms.

The best marketing platforms include Facebook Business, Twitter for Business, Instagram, MailChimp, etc.

Now let’s understand Why Choosing Marketing Platforms Important?

Choosing the right marketing platform is essential for businesses as it enables them to streamline their content creation and distribution procedures. They can successfully connect with their intended demographic by doing this, boosting their marketing endeavors and attaining improved outcomes.

Now, let’s discuss the actual benefits of Old-school marketing platforms;

What Are The Benefits Of Marketing Platforms?

Old-school marketing platforms still offer several benefits that make them relevant and effective in specific contexts. Here are some of the key benefits:

1. Tangibility: Print media, television, and radio provide tangible formats that people can physically interact with, such as newspapers, magazines, brochures, or broadcast content. Establishing a tangible existence can leave a lasting impact and a sense of credibility.
2. Broad Reach: Traditional marketing platforms often have a wide reach, allowing businesses to target a large audience. Television and radio can simultaneously engage with a wide-ranging audience, while print media can effectively reach specific geographic areas or niche markets.
3. Local Targeting: Traditional marketing platforms allow for precise geographic targeting. Businesses can place ads in local newspapers or run radio spots on regional stations, ensuring their message reaches the desired audience within a specific location.
4. Established Audience: Traditional media platforms have built-in audiences. Newspapers have loyal readerships, magazines have dedicated subscribers, and specific television or radio shows have dedicated viewers or listeners. By advertising through these channels, businesses can tap into existing audiences.

Now, let’s explore examples of Old-school marketing platforms showcasing the diverse options available.

Examples Of Old-School Marketing Platforms

Print Media

Print media is the traditional method of communicating information or content through physical printed materials. It has been a primary vehicle for mass communication for centuries, allowing individuals and businesses to distribute news, information, advertisements, and other content to a targeted audience.

Despite the ascendancy of digital media, print media remains influential in advertising, marketing, and reaching specific demographics or geographic regions. Its tangible nature and wide distribution make it an enduring and valuable communication platform.

Television

Television (TV) is a popular medium that allows businesses to reach a large audience through audiovisual advertisements. It involves creating and broadcasting commercials on television networks or cable channels. TV marketing will enable businesses to showcase their products, demonstrate their features, and engage viewers through compelling visuals and audio. It allows companies to target specific TV programs or channels that align with their target audience, maximizing the impact of their advertising campaigns.

Radio

Radio is a marketing platform where businesses promote their offerings through audio advertisements. Radio marketing involves creating persuasive audio messages and broadcasting them on various radio stations. By leveraging the power of sound and voice, businesses can captivate listeners, convey their brand message, and drive engagement. Radio marketing allows for geographic targeting by selecting specific radio stations that cater to the desired audience demographic or location.

Telemarketing

Telemarketing, as a marketing platform, Utilizes telephone communication To advertise products or services, generate leads, and conduct sales activities. It represents a direct marketing technique that involves businesses making outbound calls to potential customers or clients.

Telemarketing typically includes the following activities:

• Outbound Calls: Businesses initiate calls to individuals or businesses to introduce their products or services.
• Lead Generation: Telemarketers aim to identify and qualify potential leads for sales or follow-up activities.
• Sales and Conversion: Telemarketers sell products or services directly over the phone, leveraging persuasive techniques to encourage purchases or conversions.
• Market Research: Telemarketing can also involve gathering customer feedback, conducting surveys, or collecting data for market research purposes.

However, it’s important to note that telemarketing practices may be regulated by laws and guidelines to protect consumer privacy and prevent unsolicited or intrusive calls.

Now that we have covered old-school or traditional marketing techniques let’s delve into digital marketing platforms.

What Advantages Do Digital Marketing Platforms Offer?

Despite the type of digital marketing you use, Connecting with your intended audience is easily achievable at the right place and time.

Here are some of the benefits of digital marketing platforms:

Engage With Targeted Audience At Every Buying Stage

With the help of the digital marketing platforms we mentioned above, you can easily track every step of your customer, often from when they are triggered to find a product or service.

Mobile apps provide buyers with special offers and discounts, customer support, and comparison tools, enhancing the understanding of the buying process.

Target The Right Audience

Targeting your audience with promotions is also possible based on their stage within the purchasing journey. For example, if you leverage several social media platforms, tracking which platform your audience is more active on becomes easy.

Optimize & Improve Conversion Rates

Your conversion rate can be improved with digital marketing much better than traditional marketing. Digital marketing platforms make it easy since every interaction is tracked. You can get a deep insight into how many users view your ad and what actions they take.

Accurately Measure All Results

In digital marketing, it is possible to quantify every significant metric, ranging from when a user clicks on an ad to their departure from the webpage. Achieving this is possible through data analytics tools like Google Analytics and social media marketing platform metrics to make this monitoring or measurement possible and easily understandable.

There are several KPIs that you can track, but here are the most valuable ones:

Cost-Per-Click (CPC)

It is a way to measure online advertising campaigns’ effectiveness and cost efficiency. Marketers participate in auctions for particular keywords or ad spaces, and the cost per click is determined by competition, ad relevance, and quality score.

It is frequently employed on platforms such as Google Ads and Facebook Ads, allowing advertisers to set budgets and control their ad spending, which is determined by the number of clicks their advertisements garner.

Return On Investment (ROI)

Return on Investment (ROI) serves as a financial metric utilized to assess the profitability of an investment relative to its cost. It calculates the net profit or return generated from an investment as a percentage of the initial investment.

However, Evaluating the success and efficiency of business initiatives, marketing campaigns, or investment decisions is critical. A higher ROI indicates a more favorable return than an investment, while a lower ROI suggests lower profitability or inefficiency.

Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC)

Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) is a metric that measures the average cost a business incurs to acquire a new customer. It considers various expenses associated with marketing and sales efforts, such as advertising, promotions, lead generation, and sales team salaries.

CAC assists businesses in assessing the efficiency and effectiveness of their customer acquisition strategies and determining the profitability of acquiring new customers.

Increase Customer Loyalty With Frequent Communications

How can it be done? It is always better to boost sales in any manner, but retaining those customers after a successful purchase is even better. You can send them personalized emails such as offering discounts, seasonal codes for related products, or access to new product releases. Not only will it make customers feel respected, but it will also increase sales.

Now, let’s explore examples of digital marketing platforms showcasing the diverse options available.

Examples Of Digital Marketing Platforms

We will explore some top digital marketing strategies, tools, and platforms. They can make starting a business easier.

1. Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
2. Social Media Marketing Platforms
3. Influencer Marketing
4. Content Marketing
5. Email Marketing
6. Pay-per-click marketing
7. Affiliate Marketing
8. Mobile Marketing

Now that you know what digital marketing platforms are all about, let’s discuss the eight best platforms for any business to start:

Search Engine Optimization

The first on the list is SEO (Search Engine Optimization). It uses the best SEO strategies to increase a website’s search visibility on search engines. The higher the traffic is, the more the conversion rate will be.

For example, you own a t-shirt business in India, and when someone types ‘best t-shirts in India,’ you want to ensure that your article appears at the top of the search result. It can be done by optimizing the content with best SEO practices and ensuring the technical elements are in place to help Google easily crawl and index your content.

Social Media Marketing Platforms

After the pandemic, the world has become digital, and more and more people have started using Platforms on the internet and social media channels like Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, etc. For new business owners, establishing an online presence across all social media platforms is a must to get more reach. However, here are a few reasons that will ensure why social media marketing is essential.

• Facebook is the leading social network, with over 2.9 billion monthly active users.
• The average time a person spends on social media platforms is 2 hours and 25 minutes.
• More than 70% of users use social media to research a product before buying.

With these stats, now you have a glimpse of why having an online presence on social media is essential, especially for new businesses. Each platform works differently and has its algorithms. As a newbie business owner, you need to experiment on all these platforms to get a deep insight into which platform is right for your business and which platform you must be consistent with.

Influencer Marketing

Influencer marketing is a strategic method wherein businesses collaborate with influential individuals, known as influencers, to promote their products or services. These influencers have a significant following and credibility within a specific niche or industry.

Brands can capitalize on their influence and reach to tap into the trust and engagement of their audience to enhance brand awareness and credibility and ultimately drive sales.

Content Marketing

We all know that superb content is the key to success in digital marketing. Content marketing comes in different types, allowing marketers to proactively fulfill their audience’s needs. Content marketing includes creating blogs, videos, podcasts, and online content. However, Here are some of the stats which show why content marketing is essential:

• Blogs are the primary forms of media used in content marketing.
• More than 80% of marketers invest actively in content marketing.
• According to 90% of video marketers, the use of video has led to increased website traffic.

Email Marketing

Email marketing is one of the most overlooked digital marketing platforms, as a digital marketing strategy involves sending targeted emails to individuals or subscribers. It is a powerful tool for businesses to communicate with their audience, promote products or services, build brand loyalty, and drive conversions. However, It can do wonders for your business when implemented correctly.

Pay-Per-Click Marketing

If you have a decent budget and want quick results – look nowhere – go for pay-per-click marketing. Simply, it works by running your ad on search engines, and you have to pay only if a user clicks. Frequently, these advertisements display prominently at the top of search results, while banner ads appear on websites and have set prices.

Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing is a performance-oriented marketing approach where businesses compensate affiliates for each customer or sale generated through their promotional efforts. Affiliates, also known as publishers or partners, promote the products or services of a business across diverse channels like websites, blogs, and social media or email marketing. Four different parties are involved in affiliate marketing: The retailer, the network, the publisher, and the customer.

Mobile Marketing

Mobile marketing is standard these days as more and more people access websites through their smartphones. Mobile marketing combines sending personal text messages, leveraging social media, sending emails, push notifications, etc.

As a new business owner, it is the right time to leverage the power of mobile marketing and revamp your current marketing efforts to deliver a seamless and user-friendly experience. Research says that by 2024, mobile users are expected to rise to approx. 188.9 million users.

What To Look For In A Digital Marketing Measurement Platform?

There are several considerations, but it’s essential to keep in mind the following points:

The Ability To Look At Campaigns Holistically

You can rely on more than just online marketing when running a business. You should always pay attention to the importance of offline marketing. When selecting a platform, it’s crucial to consider that it can provide you with a deep insight into your sales and user intent.

Relationship With Third Parties

The platform you choose must have a relationship with third-party software to provide additional context to your media plans. If you’re using a digital marketing platform for a media plan, these third-party tools can help you give a more complete view of your targeted audience.

The Marketing Attribution Model

As a business marketer, it can be challenging to monitor multiple platforms and determine which mix of PPC keywords, display ads, landing pages, and SEO generates more sales.

However, it becomes more accessible when the attribution model comes into play. With an attribution model, you can monitor the customer’s journey from start to end.

Wrapping Up

The list doesn’t end here – many more tools can help a new business proliferate.

Starting and growing a business is easy with the right tools and technologies. Before you choose the best marketing platform, you must craft a robust traditional or digital marketing strategy that connects to your targeted audience, including utilizing social media for marketing, optimizing search engines, employing email marketing, etc.

However, If you find yourself stuck at any place on the blog, feel free to contact us. We will be happy to answer you.

Thanks for reading 🙂