How to Settle On the Right Digital Marketing Mix for your Business

Digital marketing is all about finding & reaching the right target market on various digital platforms, communicating the marketing message to them and generating revenue through it. These days marketers across the world are using a variety of digital marketing tactics to take their businesses to the next level that include social media marketing, email marketing, search engine optimization (SEO), search engine marketing, affiliate marketing, online advertising & so on.

The digital marketing mix!

What do you mean by the digital marketing mix? As obvious like any other marketing mix, digital marketing mix is the marketing strategy that talks about which component of digital marketing should be used and to which extent. For instance if you are using social media marketing, email marketing & PPC marketing for your business then what amount of time, budget & effort are you going to devote to each component. Most of the times you cannot achieve your marketing objectives very soon with just one marketing tactic and so you require a marketing mix with each component targeted for a particular objective to be achieved.

Settling on right marketing mix!

Though it isn’t a big deal but it isn’t that easy as well! I mean deciding the digital marketing mix for your business! You need to focus on a lot of things, a lot of factors need to be considered and that it requires a lot of research as well expertise before you finalize your marketing mix. However, there are mainly 5 factors that need to be analyzed well before you choose your digital marketing mix and they are:

• The type of business
• Marketing goals
• The type of goals – Long term/ short term
• Marketing budget
• Previous experience

The type of business:

It all depends on the type of business you are running as to whether you need to include any given digital marketing tactic in your marketing mix or not! For example, on the one hand where social media can do wonders for a B2C business it’s not of much use for a B2B business. As you need to target a niche segment than the masses in general in a B2B business, your marketing mix may include SEO along with online advertising on some select websites in your niche.

Marketing Goals:

Your marketing goals decide about the components you should use in your marketing mix as to whether you want to achieve instant sales or your main focus is towards generating awareness. Let’s say your main objective is genarting awareness for your business then social media can yield you awesome results even in limited resources however if you are aiming to achieve conversions instantly PPC & email marketing can be better options.

The type of goals – Long term/ short term:

This is again something that needs a very meticulous approach. You first need to look at the type of goals as to whether they are long term like increasing the turnover or the short term like increasing the instant sales. For long term goals you might need to cover all the components of digital marketing while targeting the masses in general however at the same time if you want instant results you can’t achieve it without segmenting your audience and targeting each segment specifically.

Marketing budget:

You have a variety of tactics at your disposal for every budget in digital marketing that can yield you good results. For example, SEO & email marketing can help you achieve your goals if you have a limited budget however if your budget is mediate then you can also include PPC in your overall marketing mix. At the same time if the budget is a constraint for you, you can work on all the components of digital marketing including the affiliate marketing as well in your marketing mix.

Previous Experiences:

Now this one is something which is not just meant for a new comer in digital marketing arena. In case you have already used digital marketing for your business before, then you might include the component that has already worked well or working well for you. But then, it all depends on the business or the individual who is working on the marketing mix as to whether they should consider the previous experience or not. In most of the cases they do!

The Bottom-Line!

Whatever you pick as a part of your digital marketing mix, usually it all depends on the industry exposure and the level of knowledge & understanding you posses as to what results it will yield. End of the day, knowledge & experience always matter! However, at times if concepts are clear even a fresher in the field outrivals the industry Gurus! So, get your concepts clear! 🙂