Channels to reach Digital Natives

How to select the most appropriate channels to reach digital natives?

Choosing channels is always an important step in a digital marketing strategy and also in a traditional one. The channels are the medium through where we will promote the product, brand, etc. Since there is a broad quantity of channels you will want to narrow down the ones that are really useful and the ones that met your SMART objectives. Remember quality matters more than quantity.

In this case I will talk about the useful channels to reach a specific audience that is the digital natives, these audience enjoy and know everything about the digital era. They live and breathe digital.

Criteria for choosing:

-Audience: In this case we already know which audience we want to engage. And it is the digital natives.

-Budget: You really need to know how much money you are willing to spend in your digital marketing strategy, don’t be fooled by the fact that creating a web site or setting a twitter account is free, this tools need constant maintenance and you will probably have to pay for someone to do this.

-Reach: You will want to know the reach of your strategy in terms of audience and customer analysis.

-Measurability: You will need to measure how well is the strategy going, how much traffic is your web site receiving or how many tweets have you got. You will also take into account the participants insights by using the research tools available for this.

-Conversion: is about what your participant will find in your site, for example. If the participant goes to your web site and he doesn’t find what he is looking he will go away in a few seconds and might not come back.

Despite the fact that choosing channels for a digital Marketing strategy is extremely linked to what your objectives are I am going to give some examples of the channels that I think suit better for the digital natives.

Following the journey that the participants make when they get online makes it easier for you to know exactly what they want or what their online behavior is, facilitating your strategy so it can met their needs.

Channels for Acquisition:

-Acquisition is about building traffic to your site.

Useful channels:

-SEO (search engine optimization) Google

-SEM (Search engine marketing) Google, yahoo, bing

-Online Ads

-PR (public relations)

-Mobile

Engage:

-It is all about the experience the audience get. Make them feel like participants not viewers. You need to involve them with your site, let them share, vote, explore. It is everything about how you present your content to create value for your customers.

-Social networks

-Personalized e-mails

-Customer service and support

-E-newsletters and promotional e-mails

Remember! Is not only about building but also about maintaining, Optimizations always have to play an important role. You need to test, learn, adapt, update and monitor your channels.

http://www.cim.co.uk/mycim/Files/Digital%20Engagement.pdf

http://www.smartinsights.com/