By Cyndi Seidler

I find that many people don’t fully understand the full capacity in which they can market their business (or themselves) online. And, the methods to do this consist of various Internet channels, each one designed to produce results for your online marketing efforts.

For starters, let me define what a “marketing channel” is.

A channel is defined as: a course or pathway through which information is transmitted. If you think of a specialized channel on a television set, it has certain related programming on it, like the SyFi Channel contains mostly science fiction type movies and series.

The same principle applies with various channels for Internet connectivity (“online”) and non-computer related connectivity (“offline”) where you do or perform certain marketing activities.

Here are some of those marketing channels:

• PR (Offline and online)
• Paid advertising (Offline and online)
• Internet link or keyword advertising (pay per click, pay per view, pay per performance, etc.)
• Website and Email promotions
• Offline media (radio, TV, direct mail, etc.)
• Mobile applications (“apps” used on “SmartPhones”, like merchant “Places”)
• Social media (blogs, forums, social networks, etc.)
• Media or content hubs (A “hub” is a center of activity or interest for articles, photos, video, audio uploads)
• Affiliate programs (rewarding affiliates for each visitor or customer brought about by the affiliate’s own marketing efforts)

Notice that I didn’t list “SEO” (Search Engine Optimization) or “SEM” (Search Engine Marketing). That is because these are not classified as a maketing “channel”, but rather a tool (and methodology) for Website promotion, which is listed above as a channel.

SEO is really just a means to get your website to rank higher than other websites in search results by optimizing your website (the process of improving ranking in search engine results).

When you’re “website ready” to utilize the Internet channels (meaning your site is optimized for search engines), you’re ready to play the Internet Marketing game to move your way further up the rankings to make more sales and/or get more leads!

SEM, on the other hand, encompasses many of the online channels, and is basically any kind of marketing that helps gain “link popularity” among the search engines. Among SEM strategies includes directory listings, which is a channel although not one to use for a particular marketing campaigns.

Get Lots of Mileage from Your Campaigns

I’m not going to dive into a whole thing about marketing in general, like knowing who your public is and targeting that public, or how to determine what your message should be.

What I do want to cover here is how you can reach your public with an approach that integrates your message along the various marketing channels.

So, “What’s a campaign?” some of you may ask. It is an operation or series of operations energetically pursued to accomplish a purpose.

Each campaign may have a different purpose, or combined purposes, such as:

• Building website traffic
• Getting leads
• Building relationships
• Generating sales
• Branding your name or company name

With a campaign, it is a good idea to establish your strategy first. This plan would incorporate the following three points:

1. Start with finding out what your message will be.
2. Decide the purpose of what you want to achieve with this campaign – what results do you want to get?
3. Determine which marketing channel will deliver that ONE message targeted to your public.

Most any of marketing channels can be utilized in delivering your particular campaign message to your specific public. For example, a campaign message that says “lose weight without dieting” could be incorporated into any channel, as long as that channel targets your public.

With “general” social networking sites, like Facebook, LinkedIn, and MySpace, that message would not necessarily go to your targeted public because these social networks consist of all types of people. It’s like placing an ad in the L.A. Times with this message … and not everyone who reads that publication is going to be interested in losing weight.

If you were to write an article about “losing weight without dieting” and post it on your blog and/or article hubs, a link to that article in your general social network might have a chance to get the attention of some of your network friends who are interested in that.

However, you would have a better chance if you consider paid advertising on those networks which gives you a way of reaching your targeted public. Or better yet, find specifc social networks that relate to dieters, healthy living, etc. and join those networks.

A list of social networks and their network category type can be found here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_social_networking_websites

You also wouldn’t go into a forum (message board) relating to hikers and post this campaign message either. However, there are many diet, health, and exercise forums where you could.

A directory of some of the larger forums by category can be seen here:
http://directory.big-boards.com

Your Message Getting Shared Along Channels

Most likely you’ve heard about this thing called “viral marketing“. Essentially, that is when your message is shared and passed on by others. They can pass your message on using any number of channels, so this is a powerful way to get your message across many platforms to many people you wouldn’t otherwise have reached yourself.

For example, your video about “losing weight without dieting” message is a humorous one and you put it out on various video sites. You inform your network friends about it and reach out to some of your other channels to get people to watch it. From that, several people share that with their networks or by email or in their blogs, etc., and their people share it, and so on and so forth.

Soon, the channels begin to play together. See?

Another example is if you wrote an article about “losing weight without dieting” and distributed that to some key article hubs and “how to” authority or expert sites. This article is also posted in your blog and you’ve announced the article from your blog or hub within your social networks, by email, and other channels. This is something others may share and pass on to people they know if they find it interesting or informative and helpful.

Integrating Your Message Is the Key

In summary, your campaign message should be integrated among as many of the various marketing channels as you can in order to achieve truly outstanding results from your campaign.

Just hammer your one particular campaign message in across as many channels as possible and test its results.

This isn’t to say you can’t run several campaigns at once, but I advise that you focus on one at a time and track results of that. If you find that one campaign isn’t producing good results, drop it and move to another campaign message and run and test that one.

If you’ve enjoyed reading this article and found it to be helpful, please leave me a comment! (at bottom of page). And if you want to reach me for a free consultation about your marketing goals, please contact me: