A brief overview of the main digital marketing channels, along with their key features, benefits, and metrics.

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The Key Digital Marketing Channels – A “Cheat-Sheet” Approach
By Deepak Pershad
Have you ever wondered if there was a “cheat-sheet” or quick reference guide for the major digital marketing channels? Well,
thanks to myriad contributors on the web (all referenced at the end of this post), provided in this post are tables that attempt to do
just that. The general approach can be summarized in the diagram below:
Multi-channel mix and weighting strategies will be driven by a number of considerations, such as:
 Target group demographics, psychographics, and channel consumption habits
 Product or service type
 Business and Campaign objectives
 Individual channel strengths in delivering the campaign objectives
 Cross-channel synergies

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Here are the tables for each major channel:
Website
Key Benefits When/How to Use Performance Tracking
• Gain a larger client base
• Educate consumers about your
business
• Increase customer confidence
• Cost effective promotion and
marketing
• 24 hour global presence
• Keep your clients updated
• Improve communication with
customers
• Keep the edge on competitors
• Provide convenient support for your
customers
• Improve business to customer
relationships
• 24/7
• As a comprehensive client resource
for:
• Updates
• Company information
• Relevant news
• Offers
• Free information,
downloads, and other
relevant content
• Customer support and FAQs
• To provide a forum for
dialogue
• Google Analytics
• Average page-views per session
• Conversion Rate
• Bounce Rate
• Cost per Lead
• Stickiness (Staying top of mind and up
to date)
• Percentage of New Visitors
Blog
Key Benefits When/How to Use Performance Tracking
• Low cost
• Ability to position one’s company as
an expert
• Relational marketing
• Community building
• Media and Public Relations
• Direct communications /RSS feed
• Competitive differentiation
• SEO enhancement
• Brand building
• To frequently provide relevant
updated content to readers
• To provide content that is integrated
with your content in other online
channels
• To provide a forum for dialogue
• To build or expand a client community
• Google Analytics
• Social Metrics (WordPress)
• Common metrics:
• Visitors and Unique Visitors
• Page Views
• Referrers
• Keywords
• Top Content (i.e. the content
most popular with visitors)
Social Media
Key Benefits When/How to Use Performance Tracking
• Direct conversation
• Connecting to Peers
• Low cost
• Relational marketing
• Community building
• Media and Public Relations
• Ability to demonstrate thought
leadership
• Direct communications /RSS feed
• SEO enhancement
• Brand building
• When direct, ongoing dialogue and
feedback is needed
• To provide a forum for dialogue and
feedback
• To build or expand a client community
• To synergistically build upon
integrated product/service marketing
and branding efforts
• To frequently provide relevant
updated content to readers
• To provide content that is integrated
with your content in other online
channels
• Google Analytics 5
• Free tools (e.g. Social Mention, Klout,
How Sociable, and others)
• Social Media Metrics from social media
channels (e.g. Facebook, Twitter and
LinkedIn)
• Third-party solutions, e.g.
• Syncapse
• Radian6
• NM Incite
• SAS
• Sequentia Environics

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E-Mail Marketing
Key Benefits When/How to Use Performance Tracking
• Global reach
• Lower cost (vs. paper-based)
• Interactive
• Highly personalized/targeted
• Round the clock marketing
• Measurable results
• Opt-in or unsubscribe options (focus
only on interested prospects)
• Faster response
• Increase Sales Conversion
• Generate Repeat Sales
• Up-sell and Cross-sell Products and
Services
• Gain Valuable Feedback from Visitors
• Drive Web Users to Make Offline
Purchases
• When a high and qualified response
rate is needed
• When the offer is time-sensitive
• For new product announcements
• For knowledge-based offers, e.g. white
papers and webinars
• For subscriptions to ongoing
communications (e.g. RSS feeds;
newsletters)
• To continue to build a
subscriber/prospect list
• Client direct response rates (can be
compared to other online activities,
historical data, competitive data where
available, or alternate test campaigns)
• Conversion rate
• Cost Per Click
• Bounce Rate
• Open Rate
• Click Rate
• Open to Click Ratio
• Cost Per Sale
Search Marketing
Key Benefits When/How to Use Performance Tracking
• The #1 way people find websites
• People use search engines
ubiquitously
• Qualified traffic ready to buy
• More effective than banners
• Critical for driving website traffic
• Paid search can be leveraged with
major search engines (e.g. Google and
Yahoo)
• As an integral part of building website
traffic
• Paid Search as part of an overall
integrated campaign (e.g. AdWords
from Google)
• Google Analytics
• Yahoo web analytics
• Hosted services such as WebTrends
Common Metrics:
• Visits, time spent on page, and bounce
rate by top entry page, segmented by
Natural/Organic Search)
• Reverse goal funnel, segmented by
Natural/Organic Search
• Top internal search queries segmented
by Natural/Organic search
• Visits by non-paid keywords, but
filtered for branding, trademarked, or
copyrighted terms
• Number of keywords triggering results
for your site
• Position of your site in the search
results for specific keywords
• Number of clicks to your site from
keywords
• Position of your site in the search
results for specific keywords clicked
• Diagnostic crawl stats
• Back-link discovery trending
• External backlinks and referring
domains

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Online Advertising
Key Benefits When/How to Use Performance Tracking
• Affordable
• Wider reach/coverage
• Targeted audiences
• Easy to track and measure conversion
• Speed
• Informative (e.g. clickable links to
landing pages)
• Payment flexibility
• Better ROI
• Easy audience engagement
• Brand enhancement opportunity
• Rich media for creative messaging
• To complement brand building
communications
• To extend the impact of direct
response campaigns
• To build and maintain awareness of
brand benefits and offers
• Cost Per Click
• Click-Through Ratio
• Impressions
• Page Views
• Banner Views
Content Marketing
Key Benefits When/How to Use Performance Tracking
• Lead generation
• Shortening the sales cycle through list
subscriptions
• Demonstration of thought leadership
• Better search engine rankings
• Differentiated competitive advantage
• Ongoing
• As the basis for client engagement
• As a driver of brand loyalty
• Integrated with other online marketing
activities
• To build thought leadership
• To increase client retention
• To deliver unique, relevant content
• Tracking sales lift – content recipients
vs. non-recipients
• Tracking conversions (e.g.
subscriptions)
• Engagement measures (e.g. time
spent)
• Online readership studies
• Pre/Post-awareness studies
Mobile Marketing
Key Benefits When/How to Use Performance Tracking
• Location-based marketing
• Potential to go viral
• More personal and targeted
messaging
• Affordable and cost-effective
• Immediate delivery
• Wider reach
• Provide mobile coupons
• Provide QR codes for promotional
offers
• Leverage m-commerce activity by
target users
• Leverage check-in services such as
Foursquare
• Leverage social network and online
gaming use
• Leverage online app downloads
• Frequency of Visits– Ratio of the
number of visits to the number of
users over a period of time. This shows
how often your app is being used. It is
one gauge of user loyalty.
• Depth of Visit – Number of screens
viewed on average compared to the
number of visits (i.e. engagement)
• Duration – The average amount of
time spent in the application. Bounce
Rate – Ratio of the number of user
visits with a single view event to the
total number of visits.
• For Apps:
• Total Downloads – Number of times
your app is downloaded from an app
store.
• App Users – Number of unique
application users over a period of time.
• Active User Rate – Ratio of the
number of app users to the total
downloads.
• New Users – The number of users that
first used your app during a period of
time.
• Source: WebTrends
There are doubtlessly a number of elements that could be added to each table. Please feel free to suggest them.

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Sources
• http://www.bukisa.com/articles/58455_10-website-advantages#ixzz1YPgvRjva
• http://www.hosting-netexplorers.co.uk/blog/web-marketing/the-10-business-benefits-of-blogging/
• http://www.businesslogs.com/blogging-advice/5_statistics_to_track_for_better_business_blog_performance.php
• http://www.selfseo.com/story-14500.php
• http://www.webpronews.com/the-top-benefits-of-email-marketing-2006-04
• http://www.jackleblond.com/ten-must-know-email-marketing-metrics/
• http://www.analytics-advice.com/2010/02/19/meaningful-seo-metrics-and-where-to-find-them/
• http://copywritertoronto.com/5-ways-content-marketing-can-benefit-you/
• http://contentmarketingtoday.com/2008/04/03/the-best-way-to-measure-your-content-marketing-success/
• http://missionengage.com/the-top-10-ways-to-use-mobile-marketing/
• http://www.marketingprofessor.com/mobile/7-reasons-to-use-mobile-marketing-in-your-
business/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+marketingprofessor+(MarketingPr
ofessor.com+Real.+Profitable.+Advice.)
• http://www.marketingpower.com/ResourceLibrary/Documents/Whitepapers/Whitepaper-
Mobile_MMversion%20(2).pdf