Which marketing channel is right for you? Today, we go over the five channels of online marketing so you can decide which are right for you.

Welcome back to another Wednesday Workshop from Happy Hao Car.

Modern businesses need an online marketing strategy. Deciding which channels to use is critical. Today, we’re going to go over the pros and cons of the five major channels.

Organic search is the first and most obvious.

Organic search is exactly what it sounds like. A customer Googles something along the lines of “dealership near me,” and your website comes up. They found you entirely organically.

The principal advantage of organic search is that it is free, but that is only partly true. The actual cost is somewhat hidden, and involves optimizing your site, creating valuable content, and accruing backlinks. All of this takes time, but you do end up with a better website.

Paid search is also exactly what it sounds like.

If you Google something and you see a result marked as an Ad, this is paid search. Companies bid on certain keywords and pay per click.

Paid searches will get you on search results fast, but they’re also potentially expensive. Additionally, other dealerships will be using some of the same keywords, and so you will be bidding against them.

Email marketing has been around for a long time, but it still has its uses.

If you want a personal touch that you can measure, it’s hard to beat directly emailing your customers.

It’s fairly cheap, as these options go. Email lists are a great way to keep existing customers, but hardly ideal for new business. Additionally, there’s the very real chance of getting marked as spam – intentionally or unintentionally.

One step removed from email is the very modern arena of social media.

Any dealership should have an account on every social media platform they can conceivably manage. It’s a vital tool for engaging today’s customer.

Social media is free, though there are ways you can pay for a wider reach. It’s a wonderful way to communicate the personality of your store and give your customers a sense of belonging. The problem with social media is that it’s not always easy to turn engaged followers into customers.

Referral traffic comes from mentions and links from other sites.

There’s nothing more organic than referral traffic. A link from another blog, a news article, anything that isn’t from your site is part of referral traffic.

Referral traffic is, of course entirely free. It’s also difficult to get, requiring good relationships, networking, PR, and some luck.

Now that you have a good idea of the five channels of online marketing, you can decide which of them will work for you.

That’s all the time we have for today’s workshop. As always, if you have any questions or comments, leave them below and we’ll get back to you as soon as we can. Thanks for watching. We’ll see you next week for another Wednesday Workshop from Happy Hao Car.

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