3 Highest ROI Marketing Channels
Most businesses care about ROI. If you are just getting started, here are the top 3 channels that work best for most small businesses.
Business owners who are not in the digital marketing space day-in and day-out might find it daunting to think through which channels to focus on for the best return on investment (ROI).
Most of my clients approach me for SEO and social media, however, sometimes after some investigation, we realize that the focus should be on other channels — or that other channels should at least be tested.
Today, I’m going to break down what I think are the universally highest ROI channels. It is important to keep in mind that depending on your business and audience, the channels that are best for you might differ from these.
1. Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
You thought I wasn’t going to say SEO… After that introduction, I thought I wasn’t going to say SEO 😂
Search Engine Optimization, or SEO, is the how to get users to your website.
SEO is a long-game play. You aren’t going to see instant results from SEO, but the SEO of your website is the bones of the digital side of your business. SEO is the process of ensuring that your website has the right keywords in the right places, is readable, and uses appropriate schema for website crawlers from search engines to crawl your website. This sums up some of the main factors of SEO, however, there are many factors that influence a website's rank, including backlinks from relevant and trustworthy sources.
Today SEO is more than just your URL, meta titles, meta descriptions, headlines, H1 tags, and body copy. These days you also need good UX, a mobile friendly website, an accessibility friendly website, backlinks, and content content content. Content can come in the form of a blog or press page, or simply copy on your website. Google now even takes other forms of media — like photos, video, and podcasts — into account for how high your website ranks.
Backlink strategies need to be from relevant and trustworthy sources. This is where PR and affiliate marketing strategies can come in handy. Having a presence on relevant forums and outreach to relevant bloggers can be another good way to get backlinks to boost your backlink profile and thus your ranking.
A lot of experts are also saying that the SEO on your social media posts can help with your business rankings — this means making sure your social media captions and bio are SEO optimized. You can also use in-app features for adding copy to mobile optimized video for SEO. Some people use tools like TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, and Pinterest as search engines, so don’t downplay your social media “SEO.”
SEO, like much of marketing, is part art and part science. There are guidelines and ranking factors that will help your website rank; however, if your competition is doing a better job of these things than you are, you still won’t rank. It’s important to do a thorough audit of your website and competition to determine strengths and areas for improvement to ensure that you are ranking above the fold in Google, Bing, and even in new voice search tools, LLMs like ChatGPT, and AI overview.
2. Google Ads
Google Ads used to mean Google Search Ads, formerly known as Google AdWords. However, Google now has quite a comprehensive suite of advertising tools, including Google Display Network, Google Search Ads, Google Shopping Ads, Performance Max, YouTube Ads, Google Display & Video 360, and Google Search Ads 360.
As far as search engine advertising goes, Google Search Ads sometimes go hand-in-hand with SEO. Even if your business ranks #1 in organic search listings, your business will not be the first thing that a user sees on the search engine results page (SERP).
Nowadays, a lot of queries will result in an AI Overview at the top of your SERP (search engine results page), followed by paid ads, followed by organic search results.
That’s right, most businesses won’t even get above the fold with organic search results, even if they are in the top 10 spots of the search engine results. Paying for Google Search Ads with a solid bid strategy and keyword strategy can help you get in front of users before they scroll.
The unique thing about Google is that if you have a Google Merchant Center Account, you can link your Google Account with other of Google’s advertising tools like Performance Max and Google Display Network. If you’re in the market for display ads and you have a sizable ad budget, other DSPs, like Criteo, will be a better use of your ad budget as they may offer more ad placements than Google, but Google is a good place to start. The Google Merchant Center and all of its ad tools do require a bit of leg work to set up, and it takes some time to get the hang of each platform within the ad suite, but within that suite could be tools that are great for your business.
3. Meta
You don’t have to like Mark Zuckerberg to admit that Meta is a great advertising tool.
Even though Meta sunsetted Facebook Audience Insights a few years ago, Meta still has access to troves of data on its users across its platforms. And its current targeting features are just as robust as the old ones. While the algorithm may have changed, advertisers still have access to interest, geographic, and demographic targeting. The ability to create lookalike audiences based on your existing customer, and the opportunity to retarget users that have visited your website or that previously engaged with your ads gives advertisers an array of ways to reach your target audience and grow your business.
Meta is limited in that you will only see these ads on Meta’s platforms: Facebook and Instagram; however, especially for D2C brands, advertising on the biggest social media channels can offer big ROI.
For most businesses, these three channels are going to have a solid ROI; however, it is important to consider your specific product and the audience that you are selling to. If most of your business is coming from Amazon, you may want to consider advertising on Amazon. If most of your sales are coming from Walmart, you should consider advertising on Walmart. If you sell a B2B SaaS, you should throw most of this article away and focus on LinkedIn Ads (and possibly events and corporate gifting, again depending on what you are selling and to who).
Remember, while there are channels that are (to some degree) universally good marketing channels, there is no one size fits all approach to good marketing. The best marketing finds your target audience where they are and gets their attention through messaging that is appropriate and appealing to them.
And that’s where your creativity comes in!