Last Edited:
Feb 9, 2024

In this article, I aim to discuss and clarify the marketing channels available to you in 2024, so you can make a suitable decision for your type of business.
In short, the digital marketing channels are:
Website
Search Engines (Google)
Email
Social Media (Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, YouTube, TikTok, etc.)
Direct Messages (Messenger, WhatsApp, SMS, Telegram)
Affiliate Marketing
Influencer Marketing
Why is it important to have a website in 2024?
I see many small businesses with a good local footprint missing the opportunity to digitalize/virtualize their product or service presentations, or choosing to depend only on social media like Facebook.
Considering the increased availability of the internet and mobile devices, consumers have developed the habit of looking for inns, organic producers, handmade clothing catalogs, service reviews, and so on.
Your website is a virtual address, a tool that recommends you as a legitimate business, a business card, but also an opportunity to create valuable discussions with your customers.
A joke says that the best place to hide a body is on the second page of Google search results.
Once your brand, even a local one, starts gaining traction, people will search for you on Google. First of all, you need that virtual address – your website.
The main tool you have here is called SEO, which means optimizing your site to appear in the top (free) positions on Google, at least for branded searches. The goal here is to ensure that those already interested in you can find and contact you.
When you are satisfied with your site's organic performance, you can turn to Google's paid offer, which for a few hundred lei a month can help you appear in the top (paid this time) results even for keywords not directly associated with your brand. For example: “Service in [Location]” or “Inn in [Location]”.
Ask your customers if they would like to hear from you by email.
This channel is very powerful with very good results if used responsibly. Try to talk to your customers and understand what would make them open an email from you, and here I am not talking about clickbait titles with false promotions, but about what would truly be valuable for them to read. For example, my barber sends me an email every 3 weeks from my last visit, which means I don’t have to think about scheduling my next haircut.
In other words, imagine the letters you throw straight from the mailbox. Avoid putting yourself in this situation at all costs.
Social Media are many, but the approach is one.
No one goes on Facebook thinking they want to buy a microwave, so it is important to use these media as bilateral communication channels. The purpose of using Social Media is to create conversations, to discuss interesting topics for your followers, to socialize.
Over time you will learn (and so will Facebook) what your customers look like on social media, what they like and dislike, what their interests are, etc. so you can start targeting them with ads. Obviously, you can buy ads from the first day of your business, but in this context, do not count on a direct sales impact, but perhaps on an increase in brand visibility.
Facebook and Instagram also offer you the possibility to create a virtual store directly on the platform. If you have the opportunity to create such a store, do it (even if you have a dedicated e-commerce site), because in the long term you never know where your audience/customer will move, and you want to have a good presence already on a certain platform.
Similarly, start establishing a presence on Social Media which currently (2021) have a content deficit, meaning they have managed to attract more "consumer" users than "content creator" users. This will help you reach more people for free than on a saturated platform.
Direct Messages (Messenger, WhatsApp, SMS, Telegram)
For me as a marketer, the appearance of tools that allow me to mass contact users of messaging apps or SMS using phone numbers gives me hope that this time marketing will do the right thing. I mean regaining the trust of the masses after businesses harassed people by calling them at any time, about any subject, repeatedly, and ignoring their requests not to be contacted.
With your customer’s permission, send them relevant information via SMS about stocks and new products, or about recurring services. What’s the last SMS you didn’t open? Like me, you probably can't think of one.
Communicate with them through WhatsApp or Messenger if they ask you a question or request advice. Customers have access to information about most existing products or services, so when they write to you they are testing you, they want to see if you are trustworthy, if you know what you are talking about, if you respond in a timely and nice manner. Meet their expectations and you will create a loyal customer.
Affiliate Marketing
This way of doing marketing can be very lucrative if you already have a business that is no longer small and fits perfectly for e-commerce platforms. In short, you pay commissions to those who generate a sale for you. For example, if you have an accessories store, you can use (in Romania) a platform like 2performant.ro or profitshare.ro to find digital content creators to promote your store on their channels. I see this type of marketing as a symbiosis between brands and content creators.
Influencer Marketing
I avoid getting into a complicated discussion about how we define what an influencer is, but in short, I would conclude that any digital content creator is an influencer to some extent.
What is important is that this area of digital marketing is starting to mature in Romania, which means that more and more brands trust these creators with their brand image, and on the other hand, creators show maturity in managing this responsibility.
The key here is defined by the relationship between what your brand projects in terms of values, image, and mood, and what kind of content the influencer creates. The latter is not an affiliate who effectively advertises but is a storyteller for his audience, so treat him accordingly.
Action Plan:
In conclusion, the tactics you can use online are many and can seem overwhelming, but the trick here is not to decide which two to use, but to test them all and do more of what works and less of what doesn’t. The ultimate goal is to be everywhere your customer’s attention is focused, or where you think it will be in the future.
The growth base of all these marketing channels is authentic content. Be brave, write, record, or film yourself, and post as much as you can about what your business is and what it does to improve, even a little, the society we live in.