People quite often misunderstand the digital marketing platforms/channels with the tools used in digital marketing and this will lead to a disaster in startegizsing and building the right markting channels for the business.

This discussion should help you all to understand better and make wise decisions accordingly, its going to be super useful and imparts the right knowledge if you are getting started with the digital marketing implementations for your business.

The internet has various number of popular websites/platforms and a lot of them are highly effective for promotion and marketing of products/services. However majority of these platforms can be categorized into the following categories and business strive to make thrive presence on these platforms by making use of the both the unpaid and paid options available on each of these platforms.

1. Search engines- Such as Google, Bing, Yahoo, Yandex, Baidu, Duckduckgo and many more

1. Search engines are the platforms or websites which has the huge repository of information that is collected proactively by ther bots and is made accessible to the public on simple queries and provides everything that the user is looking for or the information for the respective niche related questions.

2. Social Media platforms- FaceBook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, Pintrest, Quora, Youtube, Snapchat, telegram and many more

1. Any platform or website that connects or brings people together, allows them to engage with the content/information, allows to share their ideas, opinions and information. Allows them to form the groups and browse the content or information.

3. Directories- Sulekha, Justdial, Indiamart, tradeindia and many more

1. Are the platforms or websites that registers the information related to the domain/niche/industry about the businesses or websites pertaining to the specific region or topic and servers as a repository when people are looking for the information from near by places.

4. The news/content mediums/Apps- Any portal/website that publishes the content regularly and has a large set of audiences/readers/subscribers and allows businesses to promote their ads.

5. Market Places- E.G: Amazon, Flipkart, Meesho, Urbanclap, BlinkIt, and many more

1. Are the platforms which meant to sell the products/services and already has large audiences/customers visiting those platforms to make a purchase or find the products or services they are interested in or looking for.

These platforms allow you to register and sell your products or services.

6. Email Applications: with the availability of the emails of the target audiences, Sending direct emails to them will the effective communication will be the most effective marketing activity online. 

1. Sending emails includes the identification of the audience, creation/collection of email addresses, planning the communication or the ad content, and knowledge of the software to send the emails to them in bulk.

Conclusion:

Each of these platforms could have various kinds of activities involved, and there are job roles and responsibilities, and the designations accordingly. Which platform is most suitable for the business depends on the type of business category/products/service, the business goals/objectives, the target audience, the budgets and many more factors. 

A right digital marketer can strategize properly based on the above factors get started accordingly, prioritizing the channels/platforms is super important in order to achieve quick ROI and business success.

Manjunath Chowdary

Digital Marketing Consultant