1. Social Media Marketing Platforms
Todays’ consumers are highly reliant on social media platforms such as Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Snapchat. This is why it is essential that brands are active across accounts. Consider these stats:

On average users have about 8 social media accounts.
An average of 2 hours and 22 minutes are spent on social per person per day.
Out of the 5.11 billion people who have a phone, 3.26 billion access social media using it.
People spend about 1/7th of their waking time on social platforms.
Social media platforms allow marketers to reach their prospects in a myriad of ways. First, marketing teams can use these channels to distribute paid ads and sponsored content. Each platform has a way for marketing teams to create paid ad campaigns and segment users so these ads appear on the feeds of target audience members. While each platform is different, most have capabilities that allow marketing teams to place ads based on location, job title, interests, age, etc.

Social media is also a great way to promote products or resources organically to your followers, and engage with consumers. Chances are, people that follow your brand on social media have likely purchased from you in the past. Interacting with them on social media or answering customer service-oriented questions is a great way to ensure continued engagement with the brand and cultivate positive experiences and customer loyalty.

Finally, marketing teams can use social media to build their brand and establish a voice that can make them popular to follow and share. For example, Wendy’s flippant and funny tone has made them exceptionally popular on Twitter, commonly earning likes, retweets, and responses.

2. Influencer Marketing
Another effective way to harness digital channels to reach target audiences is with influencer marketing. Brands can partner with celebrities, sites, or others that are considered experts in their field, that share similar values. Brand can then reach these influencers’ followers with branded content and offers. Many marketers have found success with influencer marketing, with 9 out 10 noting that it was the same or better than other channels they use. Additionally, 1 out of 2 women based a purchase decision on a recommendation from an influencer.

3. Email Marketing
Email marketing campaigns allow organizations to stay connected with prospects and customers, sending them customized newsletters or offers based on past shopping history or brand engagements. If an individual has interacted with a few of your branded touchpoints – like an email offer for 10 percent off the items they have been considering, or free shipping - that may be what ultimately brings about a conversion. Nearly 60% of consumers say that email plays a role in their purchase decisions. Furthermore, transactional emails are more likely to be opened by subscribers.

4. Content Marketing
Content marketing allows marketing teams to be proactive in answering their users’ questions. Marketing teams create content, videos, and other assets to answer questions or provide context to consumers throughout the three stages of the buyer’s journey:

The awareness stage: Buyer realizes they have a need
The consideration stage: Buyer determines a course of action to meet this need
The decision stage: Buyer decides on a product / service to purchase to meet the need

5. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Marketing
Search engine optimization often goes hand in hand with content marketing. When the customer from the above example is conducting research for which gym shoes to buy, they will probably click on one of the first three results that appear on Google. With this in mind, the athletic shoes’ marketing team wants to ensure their article appears in those top results. This is done by optimizing content for user experience and ensuring the technical elements are in place to enable search engine crawlers to easily find and index this content.

6. Pay-per-click (PPC)
Pay-per-click is a form of paid advertising that allows marketing teams to essentially purchase traffic to their website. Marketers place ads on websites or search engines such as Google and Microsoft Bing, and pay a fee each time the ad is clicked on. These ads often appear at the top of the search results page, andare typically determined by bids on specific keywords, while banner ads on websites usually have set prices.

7. Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate marketing is similar to referral programs, it involves working with outside individuals or companies under the agreement that they promote your product in exchange for a commission from each sale that can be attributed to their efforts. This is a way to cut down on costs and outsource some of the heavy lifting of promotion, however, you’re putting your brand's reputation in someone else’s hands, so this type of marketing often requires more extensive monitoring and tracking.

8. Mobile Marketing
Mobile marketing initiatives can include many of the digital marketing strategies mentioned above, and typically leverages a combination of text messages, social media, email, push notifications, and mobile applications. The importance of mobile marketing is rising, as it is expected that by 2024, the number of mobile shoppers will rise to approximately 187.5 million users. With the clear move to mobile, marketers need to think about how they can optimize their current marketing efforts for mobile to be able to deliver a seamless and user-friendly experience.