Why Balancing Your Marketing Channels Matters
One of the fundamental keys to success in marketing is not “how many platforms” but “which platforms and why.” When evaluating platforms, it’s important to remember your marketing efforts will have different audiences, success rates and objectives. Similar to a financial portfolio, the key is balance.
So what does that mean practically? Here’s a breakdown of the major marketing channels, their penetration/success rate, as well as how Armada Digital approaches balancing your marketing channels properly to build a flourishing lead generation ecosystem.
Your Website
It all starts with your website. If your website doesn’t convert, or is invisible in online search, the first step is to rebuild and optimize properly.
I always remind brands that driving leads and paying for leads is futile if you can’t actually convert those leads once they’re on your platform.
So before we even jump into the remaining marketing channels, if your website isn’t performing, reach out to us today and let’s get that fixed first.
Ongoing SEO/AEO/GEO/Acronyms
Why is Ongoing SEO important? Because visibility is key in the new marketing order. You cannot be visible within LLMs if your website is not visible first within search.
SEO (which includes AEO and GEO) is often one of the more overlooked parts of marketing because it has one of the longer timelines for ROI when compared to paid advertising, but it’s critical because your SEO is now the foundation of your marketing efforts. This isn’t hypothetical—AI Overviews now show up in roughly half of all Google searches, which means the old assumption that ranking on page one is enough no longer holds.
Where your brand will be seen online will inevitably change over time, but the importance of being seen will always be the first step to a successful lead generation campaign. Having a strong SEO presence will also help curb and manage costs for the next marketing channel.
Paid Advertising
While not publicized, Google is inherently a pay to play game. As similarly are social media channels, and soon LLMs will follow. It’s how these businesses make their revenue.
However, it’s also an amazing source for targeted lead generation. Google PPC is extremely effective for geographic based leads, specific service lines, as well as expanding your visibility beyond terms you currently rank.
PPC has one of the more immediate ROI timelines for businesses, and can offset the timeline investment in ongoing SEO or other marketing channels.
Word to the weary though, PPC can also be a source of enormous marketing waste and diminished returns if not managed properly.
Social Media Marketing/Advertising
As a pure lead generation source, Social Media and Social Media advertising has lagged recently for most trades businesses compared to Google—but that’s about to change.
Google Search is embracing more and more social media presences as a way for users to confirm authority and legitimacy. Because of that, you’re now seeing short videos in Google Search results, a higher presence of social media in the AI overviews, as well as social media profiles directly linked to your Google My Business account.
The trend is clear: Social media is not a marketing platform to be ignored.
While it might not be the most dynamic or highest volume lead source, it’s critical for both your brand’s visibility as well as your ability to rank within the confines of “Search Everywhere Optimization.” The cross platform nature of social media advertising also provides a source of lead generation opportunities, but similar to PPC can run into diminishing returns and also requires a specific advertising user flow/campaign flow.
The most underutilized case for social media for trades businesses is in the hiring process. You can save significantly more running a social media ad campaign for hiring than you would if you were to use a service like Indeed.
Email Marketing
The lowest on the totem pole of lead generation, but also an extremely important way to leverage your current customer base into either a) referrals or b) continuing to use your services.
The reason most businesses have trepidation about email marketing is because they don’t have a coherent content strategy for the emails.
Because email marketing has the lowest conversion rate currently of any marketing channel, your content, subject line and audience maintenance need to be even more deliberate.
Similar to a financial portfolio, businesses can see huge benefits by letting the professionals handle the distribution channels. When businesses see their leads dry up, it’s often because their marketing efforts are unbalanced and targeting the wrong audiences.
If that sounds like your business, reach out to us today and we can help!
