Digital channels brands can use to develop relationships with consumers

Every channel whether it is search, display, video and social is important in building relationships with new as well as existing consumers. However, each one has some kind of unique attributes which trigger the stimulus or offer a gateway to a particular brand. It would be very generic if we simply state that one channel is most effective over the other unless every channel is explained in detailed manner.

1. Search: This is basically a gateway which guides a user to a particular destination. However, this channel is something which guides only when a person has triggered a response. Although it has been always a very powerful channel, it connects the advertiser and the customer who is looking for the product, there’s more than 100 billion searches a month [1] on Google but the search spending growing at slower rate than those of other digital channels[2]. The main reason behind this is that the retention of brand only via this channel is significantly lower in mind of a consumer than those of other channels. This basically acts as the first guiding step of a customer query.

2. Display: As it is a well known fact that visuals are processed 60,000 times faster than text, the display channel offers a convincing way to persuade existing customer behavior and can help to guide to desired destination if placed smartly. It helps targeting qualified customers by utilizing demographics which makes the targeting process more specific.However, the spending in this channel is the least among all other channels due to various factors like: 

a. no-one wants to be bombarded with the information, the user thinks is irrelevant and therefore many software like adblockers tend to nullify these pop ups.

b. this channel is mostly used by fashion brands, Tour & travel brands, e-commerce brands but due to large amount of spams from unauthentic sources, this channel is often ignored by users using many other tools.

c. Their placement across various platforms are often not considered as subtle but enforcing, thus creating a sense of in-authenticity. 

3. Video: Video is nowadays one of the most powerful channel for communicating with customers, and not only new customers but also existing customers. This channel has the maximum potential if paired by social to generate authenticity and generosity among audience which can make a long-lasting impression. As a reference, I would like to talk about a company called ‘MindValley’. Even though there are many other companies who are exploiting the potential of this channel to full extent but MindValley being a small and new company has developed a huge fan base and brand awareness globally through these channels.  The video content they create are focused to showcase their working culture, business practice, creative thinking process, employer branding which grabbed the attention of many people wanting to work for mindvalley. It spread out to the extent where the company started asking for video resumes from people applying to the company from all over the globe. This channel enabled the company to generate huge amount of content which was authentic, cost effective and required very less placement strategy as it was automatically shared by people across the globe[3].

4. Social: is considered to be the most effective channel and is producing way better results than that of traditional marketing channels with similar spending if placed correctly. When it comes to Spreading the word and no other channel can even compete with Social. Through easy segmentation, and large data available on social regarding consumer behavior, it is the most effective one when devising a new campaign as every variable is easily managed by marketers via social. That’s why social media advertising is expected to surpass 14 billion dollars by 2018. For e.g. Oreo is successful in engaging the audience and creating original new content on social channels and maximizing the potential of it. [4]

Thus for developing a successful relation with consumers a combination of all these channels is necessary but the only challenge is to find the right amount of priority for each of them and placing social on top. 

References:

[1]: Mashable, 2015: https://www.hubspot.com/marketing-statistics

[2] Spending on Search trend:https://www.bloomberg.com/gadfly/articles/2015-12-08/digital-ads-on-track-to-overtake-tv-ads-by-2017…

[3] Mindvalley Case Study: http://www.ipedr.com/vol19/2-ICAMS2011-A00006.pdf

[4]Oreo involvement in social media, http://www.adweek.com/digital/real-time-marketing-lessons-audi-oreo/