Can we hold your attention by building a strategy for choosing different types of marketing? It’s certainly a complicated subject and has a lot of “if this”, and “then that” scenarios.  While we can’t list all of those scenarios because they are too many and they change daily we will give a strategy that will get you to digital marketing bliss. This is the nature of overall digital marketing strategies and what makes it difficult.  

We have covered the fundamentals of a digital marketing strategy before in another blog post, chat, and podcast. This is however a subset of the overall strategy that is purely on what different types of marketing you should do.  A large subset thought at that because without carefully strategizing the types of digital marketing, you have no plan. Let’s stay with that though and understand only looking at it from that lens. 

We will break down the subsets in this choosing of marketing types and break it down in multiple formats so this is the long version which is strategy it’s a complex set of steps you take based on previous steps. 

Any good marketing strategy starts with an analysis of what you have and what you don’t have.  After all, how do you know where to go if you don’t know where you are at? This is the same with this subset of the marketing strategy of the types of marketing.  

You could start to break down each type of marketing and how it helps different parts of the funnel, which we have already done.  But when you do that you are starting with tactics and not which type of marketing you should use AND WHY. It’s different though in not recognizing that you need different types of marketing for different parts of the funnel. 

ChatGPT gets this wrong as well, they list tactics first, which is why we need to write this. 

Also starting with tactics gets you into the rat race of new tactics. Different marketing tactics are always trending and it’s easy to jump on one type of tactic or another.  Don’t get us wrong you should be using strategy to test new types of marketing but it’s not your whole game of jumping to the new shiny object. 

It’s certainly an element but there is a lot that happens before you get to that. Let’s talk about a few things we need to talk about before we begin the marketing strategy.

Wait why are we starting with KPIs, we are talking about the strategy for different types of marketing, right? First, your data can tell you if certain types of marketing are already working. So reviewing your KPIs of different marketing types can assist,  It’s important to judge different marketing types for where they are assisting you in the marketing funnel and not just did they provide the end goal of leads.

You also shouldn’t start any new marketing until you can properly measure the results.  Otherwise, you are throwing darts. 

What kind of data do you have right now? You should be asking questions such as are you able to tell where traffic is coming from to your website or online audience? (Ps building an audience online refers to what you can do with a social media following, podcast listeners, and short-form video viewers). Why differentiate between these two, not all traffic leads to clicks. There is a large volume of zero-click marketing. 

Don’t overindulge here, there is a lot you can measure, but do you at least know if someone is completing the desired action of the website, a conversion? That’s a hard statement to say for us not overindulging because we always say every data point has a story to tell.  Take a look at the most basic G4 metric you should be looking at and why is a good start. 

Looking at your marketing data is going to assist with the marketing analysis of where you are at and understand the strategy of different marketing channels. Let’s start with some more questions you should start to ask yourself.

Not all types of marketing “require” a website but it is a central area to find all content related to your business that you own.  This seems like a no-brainer question but not everyone does.  

If you have chosen a type of marketing that you do not need a website, you are hostage to where you have built your audience, and ownership of that audience is not yours. Having social media or other platforms own all content is a dangerous game to play with algorithms and platform shifts.  

When you have no traffic or no built audience online at all then you are unsure if your website or content online performs at all.  You can’t choose the strategy of the different types of marketing without some traffic from your target audience to see what you have is working. The quickest way to understand that is to run ads to your website or online audience. 

You need to understand how your website performs so that you can make adjustments.  Since we started with the KPIs and data we can identify where in the marketing funnel you are breaking down and fix it.  

Should we start with ads or organic types of marketing to get some traffic? The simple answer is ads. It’s quicker to get traffic in and see whether your website performs.  We are not saying you shouldn’t be doing organic driving marketing activities because they are important but they take longer.  

If you only do organic traffic driving traffic you could waste a lot of time getting your audience built or traffic to your website without knowing you have problems with your website or content on or off the website. In turn, it drives traffic that doesn’t convert. 

There are all kinds of types of organic too, search engine optimization and building audiences in social media platforms are both organic means of marketing. 

Even in social media platforms with zero-click marketing, running ads allows you to have a call to action. So you can identify if you can get them to the next step. 

Knowing if the platforms are working or organically building your audience is broken down into all types of social media metrics that we have discussed before. 

What platforms should you start with first for ads? We can’t quite solve that yet because we don’t know who your audience is.  Plus there is a whole strategy that goes into choosing ad platforms.  Once we know your audience then we can investigate the platforms to create an ads strategy for audience and budgeting purposes.

It might feel like we skipped a step here but we didn’t. After you solve the above, the marketing strategy of the type of marketing needs to solve for who you are trying to target. This sometimes gets overlooked but a lot depends on it.  

Who you are trying to target will determine where you target, the types of content marketing you will need how often you need to market to them, and what types of content you need. All of these questions tell you where you can market.  

For instance, if your consumer is younger, then leaning more into social media marketing might make more sense. 

But then again different platforms go across the board on age ranges.  It’s important you know this though. This is where it gets tricky and not being on one platform or another might come down to the type of content you have and what you can produce that particular platforms need to be successful. 

Let’s unpack that,  and say it slowly, different channels work better with different types of content that we have and can produce. 

We have written quite a bit about different types of marketing solutions for different parts of the funnel so we don’t want to go into great detail here.  Rather just state that your buyers go through a funnel whether you believe it or not.  Choosing the marketing strategy of the types of marketing that you do affects where you are having issues in your funnel.

You have to have the marketing to support all parts of the marketing funnel. No matter how “not clean” and all over the place the consumer can be in making their decisions. 

So you might not be able to go super deep into one type of marketing than another because you need to support the funnel and you lack the resources. 

Often we want all the digital marketing types and channels because we just never know where our consumers might be.  While this might be true, it’s a failed approach in that you can do anything, just not everything.  

Starting with the type of marketing that aligns with everything above AND is the easiest most natural type of marketing for those creating it is the path of least resistance.  

That’s part of it, the other part is the type of content needed in different marketing channels.  It might seem like a tough call on which one of those is more important.  It can be the cart before the horse. 

Let us in another scenario, sometimes it’s more important to create a piece of content in another format before you think about another channel.  These two might be intertwined in that a certain format of content marketing (image, written, audio, or video) is more popular on a certain channel. 

Consumers in general thought like to learn in different ways so having images, text, videos and audio formats of the core topics is important.  It will as we are saying above allow you to layer marketing channels because you then have the assets to do so on those channels.

It’s also very important to recognize that you need an omnichannel approach and multiple forms of marketing.  You do not own channels online, they do.  You do own your own website so everything needs to make it back to your website in a concise way.

If you try and take on more than what you can do well, your marketing will show this.  Many want the budget questions first, which is fine but show what it will take to dominate the space and add it all in and the time and resources it takes to do all of this.  

This is not an opportunity to NOT push yourself but rather think about what resources you have with the staff you have and the marketing budget you have to work with.  

You should always be building your marketing, but you have to be realistic about what can physically be done. Marketing done well is better than doing marketing that looks sloppy. 

Often though we get too comfortable with the strategy of doing a certain type of marketing and then something completely different hits us, AI in marketing. 

The answer is a resounding yes, there is so much AI marketing out there that can speed up adding more types of marketing.  The curve is lower now and there is an opportunity to jump on and create things quicker if you stay super curious and carve out time to be able to adjust to AI.  

Many new marketing AI tools are now incorporated into the marketing tools you are always using. If you wait to adjust, then you will be playing catch up and have fewer resources for doing different types of marketing. 

We know we have to address this question and we have also written on the topic of getting digital marketing results quicker.  Here are just a couple of down-and-dirty things to consider in determining which channel will get you quicker results. 

Do you have a good website? If you don’t know that answer, then see above how you can choose a type of marketing to get that answer quickly. Your industry matters in getting results quicker with types of marketing. Your actual product or service matters in its buying cycle.  A good offer to do business.

What won’t get you marketing results quicker is building a marketing strategy that revolves around that you can do only one type of marketing.  We have said this over and over, you have to have marketing for all parts of the funnel. 

We put this at the end, that’s weird! You want leads or sales right? We get it everyone does, but there is a funnel to the process and this can’t be the only goal.  You build a wall brick by brick so you need to break down what the bricks are to get to the wall and that is what a marketing agency does for you.  

Often businesses want to be good at everything and want leads for all products and services that they offer.  They are essentially not focused on what drives the best ROI. To get results quicker and fund further marketing efforts it’s important to start with “What product or service is the highest ROI and or shortest sales cycle?”.  This question allows you to know what services or products to start with first to create content. The layered with the above of all the questions we have already answered will help you get to the business objectives that are given to you. The answer can’t be though that they are all important. 

Alright now let’s somewhat get back to channels and tactics.  There will always be new marketing strategies for various types of marketing, channels, and tactics.  You never know when one might be worth your time and effort so determine how much 10% of your efforts you can push aside so that when something new comes out you can think about how it plays into what you are already doing and can layer on top of it.  

You just need to make sure you have that layer, test it, see the results with the right type of KPIs for that type of marketing, and determine if it should be part of the larger types of marketing.  Do you have resources or do you need to drop another type of marketing to make this fit? 

That’s wrong but you can’t not do marketing.  If you do that then the market of who you are trying to attract talks for you or doesn’t talk about you at all.  So it’s about layering as we have discussed above. Choosing different types of marketing can seem very overwhelming but there isn’t any “seem” to it.  It’s complicated so breaking it down into steps like we have here and not going down the marketing rabbit hole helps you stay where you need to be, the high level of marketing strategy. If you are confused and need help this is what we do, we can help break it down into actionable steps and execute.  

Jennifer Denney has been in digital marketing since 2006 and has seen a wealth of changing landscape in digital marketing. She has seen the rise and fall of many marketing tactics.  She is deeply rooted in understanding the metrics that showcase the value of certain types of digital marketing. She produces weekly live shows with Lorraine Ball, solocast with Elevated Marketing Chats, and conducts a weekly podcast called Elevated Marketing Dot Podcast.