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AI adoption is no longer the challenge—trusted context is. Most organizations have AI tools, but many still rely on disconnected, stale, or unverified data, limiting the quality and trustworthiness of AI-generated outputs. Meltwater MCP brings trusted, real-time intelligence into AI assistants.

Your Best Context is Already in the Room

Today, PR teams aren’t just tracking media coverage and share of voice. They’re also measuring how their brand shows up in AI-generated answers, search summaries, and large language models (LLMs). This new LLM visibility layer is quickly becoming a critical part of PR performance.

15 Must-Have PR KPIs and How to Track Them

See how one platform can power every decision across PR, communications, and marketing.

The Meltwater Blog

Blog Topics: Generative Engine Optimization, Media Intelligence, Media Relations, Social Listening, Consumer Intelligence, Influencer Marketing

Find out how you can leverage Facebook to boost your brand's online presence and gain a competitive edge. Explore the Meltwater category page today!

Facebook Blog | Meltwater

Find out how you can leverage Instagram to boost your brand's visual appeal and gain a competitive edge. Explore our category page today!

Instagram Blog | Meltwater

Find out how you can leverage LinkedIN to grow your professional network and gain a competitive edge. Explore the Meltwater category page today!

LinkedIn Blog | Meltwater

Find out how you can leverage TikTok to elevate your brand with creative content and gain a competitive edge. Explore the Meltwater category page today!

TikTok Blog | Meltwater

Find out how you can leverage X / Twitter to engage your audience effectively and gain a competitive edge. Explore the Meltwater category page today!

X / Twitter Blog | Meltwater

Find out how you can leverage YouTube to create engaging video content and gain a competitive edge. Explore the Meltwater category page today!

YouTube Blog | Meltwater

Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) is transforming how brands show up in AI-powered search. Explore insights, strategies, and best practices to help your content rank and resonate across conversational engines like ChatGPT, Gemini, and Copilot.

Explore insights and strategies for Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) to help your brand stay visible and discoverable in AI-powered search.

Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) Blog Collection | Meltwater

Every day billions of conversations take place on social media: tweets, posts, comments, blogs, reviews, podcasts, and much more.
Learn how to use social listening to make sense of all of that data.

On our social listening category page, you find all our blogs covering topics around social listening and social media monitoring. Read more.

Social Listening Blogs | Category

Business Reputation Management: What does it take to add reputation management to your marketing strategy? More importantly, how do you keep your reputation sparkly and shiny? Here’s your all-access guide to online reputation management for the long term.

On our reputation management category page, you find all our blogs covering topics around business reputation management. Read more.

Reputation Management Blogs | Category

From your brand's logo to your website, your social media presence to your customer support—these elements combined are what constitutes a brand in the minds of customers. But, there are thousands of other businesses that have a logo, website, social media presence, and website. So, how can you position your business on the market and make it stand out from the competition?
The key to success is branding & brand management!

On our brand management category page, you find all our blogs covering topics around brand management. Build your strategy and reach your goals!

Brand Management Blogs | Category

Competitive intelligence and the act of collecting competitive data can be seen as growth drivers for a company. Our guide will help you understand the concept of competitive intelligence (CI) by answering questions such as: What is the definition of competitive intelligence? How is competitive intelligence useful to organizations? What is the goal of competitive intelligence? And more.

On our competitive intelligence category page, you find all our blogs covering topics around competitive intelligence. Learn how to stay ahead.

Competitive Intelligence Blogs | Category

Let’s dive into the customer journey framework and how to optimize the process by creating a customer journey map and using metrics that matter when analyzing the customer journey.

On our customer journey category page, you find all our blogs covering topics around mapping and understanding the customer journey.

Customer Journey Blogs | Category

What Is Data Analytics?
How can I grow my business? 
How do customers interact with my newly launched product?
How do I increase the productivity of my employees?
How do I know if my marketing efforts are working?
We have just two words for you...Data analytics!

On our data analytics category page, you find all our blogs covering topics around AI and data analytics. Technical and still easy to understand.

AI & Data Analytics Blogs | Category

Public relations and media relations can add impact to any marketing strategy. It’s an opportunity for brands to grow their reach beyond traditional sales messages. PR helps to shape the image you want people to have of your brand.
So, what is PR and how do you use it? This guide shows you everything you need to know to build a strong public relations foundation.

On our public relations (PR) category page, you find all our blogs covering public relations and communications topics. Step up your PR game.

Public Relations (PR) Blogs | Category

We all know exactly what the roles of sales or accounting are in a company, right? We might even have a slight idea of what the IT guys are doing.
But there is another business discipline, that plays a crucial role in organizations, even more so during the pandemic – internal communications!
But what exactly do we mean by that, what purpose does it serve and what steps can you take to ensure you and your employees will communicate effectively?

On our internal communications category page, you find all our blogs about internal comms topics. Learn about the intranet, internal newsletters, and more.

Internal Communications Blogs | Category

As the internet has taken root in more areas of our lives — everything from entertainment to shopping to paying bills and more — traditional marketing is becoming less impactful. As any marketer knows, you need to focus on where your audience is if you want to reach them. Since the average person spends about seven hours a day online, it’s no surprise that content has maintained its hold on marketers.
Here's a closer look at what content marketing is and why it matters more than ever in our digital-first economy.

On our content marketing category page, you find blogs about content marketing topics. Learn about strategies, KPIs, tips, and more. Make your content king!

Content Marketing Blogs | Category

The rise of the influencer marketing space – today a $10 billion industry, growing 50% per year – is one of the clearest examples of how social media is transforming traditional marketing. These days having a business website, presence on social, PR coverage, and your own content isn’t enough to compete.
We'll dive into the intricacies of influencer marketing to help ensure that you're equipped with the insights needed to be successful in this space.

On our influencer marketing category page, you find blogs about influencer marketing topics. Build your strategy, find influencers, and measure results.

Influencer Marketing Blogs | Category

Have you just launched a new product or service that you want to get the word out about? Maybe you want to share with consumers why it is awesome and how it is so much better than the one your competitors offer.
Well, then, there is one thing you can't do without...Marketing!

On our marketing category page, you find blogs about marketing topics. Learn about all the different angles and types of marketing and improve your results.

Marketing Blogs | Category

In this guide, we want to give you a peek into the definition of social media management, the daily schedule of a social media manager, social media platforms to promote your business, and the do’s & don’ts of social media management.
Are you ready to begin the journey of becoming a social media superstar?

On our social media management category page, you find blogs about social media management topics. Build and manage your online community.

Social Media Management Blogs | Category

Building a following and using social media platforms to reach a wider audience requires a well-planned social media marketing strategy. In this guide, we’ll be looking at why social media marketing is so essential and how you can make it work for your business.

On our social media marketing category page, you find blogs about social media marketing topics. Learn how to get the highest paid social ROI!

Social Media Marketing Blogs | Category

In the fast-evolving realm of digital marketing and public relations, utilizing the right tools is crucial for success. Our interdisciplinary category showcases all the pertinent tools for digital marketing & PR. These tools help in enhancing your online presence and effectively reaching target groups, whether through reputation management, influencer marketing, or social media management.

On our digital marketing and PR tools category page, you find all our blogs covering topics around mapping and understanding the customer journey.

Digital Marketing & PR Tools Blogs | Category

Marketing teams are central to business success. They are tasked with everything from building awareness of your brand, promoting products or services, and providing customer service and engagement in public forums. But with the changing face of marketing, today’s team looks very different from the teams of 20, 10 or even 5 years ago. As you build your team, make sure to read our ebook on implementing consistent KPIs—so you can justify the budget spent on your hires and campaigns.

With the fast-paced evolution of modern marketing, your team needs the talent and knowledge to keep up. Could your current team members be lacking in must-have modern marketing skills?

For the purposes of this article, let’s focus on the marketing needs of mid-market companies (those with annual revenue anywhere between $10 million and $1 billion). 

Certain businesses may choose to combine or rearrange some of the following positions. But to best prepare your company’s marketing team for success you’ll need staff who can fulfill the following roles. 

Think of this person as part of the core of your marketing strategy. They’re tasked with data gathering and analysis, and they provide insights on current marketing strategy performance, vital for the modern marketing team.

Check out the ultimate guide to data management.

“Historically, marketing has always been a mix of art and science, and the 2020 marketing team has a more modern way of leveraging the ‘science,’ says Fortune 500 Product Marketing Executive Anndrea Moore.

Data scientists also play the important role of using data to identify strategies to improve marketing effectiveness, communicating with the entire team for maximized impact. 

Learn more about how data driven marketing works.

SEO (search engine optimization) is an essential component in marketing, and it's incredibly multi-faceted.  

An SEO strategist does more than just SEO analysis. They also develop inbound and digital marketing strategies as they relate to SEO.In the era of AI, they are also responsible to leverage AI for SEO and make things easier and faster. The person in this role works closely with the data analyst, content marketer, and PR pros on your team. They may also work in tandem with UX designers and web developers to ensure your site content remains SEO optimized during redesigns or other website changes. 

This person needs to be versatile and comfortable working across multiple channels, like blog writing, video marketing, social media, and podcasts. They facilitate, manage, and create the content that represents your brand both on your site and posted elsewhere — such as in guest posts or on social media. 

Your content marketer will collaborate with multiple other team-members, but likely their most consistent partners will be in SEO and design.

See top content marketing trends to watch this year.

Strong design and visual brand cohesion help bring your marketing messages to the next level. A talented visual designer will handle everything from creating ad layouts and social media graphics, to large scale projects such as expo banners, webinar slides, and ebooks.

If you're lucky you'll find a designer who is also adept at video editing, but given how important video is becoming in modern marketing, it might be a good idea to add a video marketer to your team as it's own separate role.   

Tech is the way of the modern business world! Don't get caught on your back foot without adding a savvy tech expert to you marketing team. This is someone who can write code, manage website hosting, and oversee website maintenance and marketing funnel optimization. 

Your PR person will handle brand management, as well as the public perception of your brand. This role works closely with all marketing team members to establish consistency in the brand image across all platforms. 

Learn more about using social media for PR.

Remember that these roles don’t all have to be in-house. Depending on your budget and needs, you may want to hire freelance or remote workers for some of these roles.

Rapid changes in marketing, and the technology now available to help make key marketing decisions, means you need a talented, cutting-edge team. Modern marketing brings countless opportunities for customer acquisition and retention. 

Chatbots, video marketing, and data-driven personalization are major marketing trends right now, and they give you the chance to strategically position your company. Equip your business with a team that can take advantage of new and evolving marketing trends. It’ll help your business stand out from all the noise and truly engage with your target audience. 

As you build or change up your team, keep in mind some top marketing areas that you should be focusing on: 

The focus of marketing is shifting, and there’s increased value placed on providing a quality customer experience. This means your team will need to have attentive awareness of what your customers and audience want in terms of brand engagement, the tone of your marketing copy, and the types of offers that hit their inbox. With improved customer experience through marketing, you can build brand awareness and loyalty in your audience. 

2. Numbers, patterns, and trends (aka data)

Our increased ability to gather detailed data on customers and audiences allows for greater marketing personalization. This may mean targeting specific ads to specific audiences, altering marketing messages and delivery forms according to past customers’ purchasing habits, and an increased awareness of pain points based on an audience’s spending habits. Data-driven marketing is closely linked to customer experience marketing. Data can be a powerful tool, but it’s only as good as your team’s efforts to ensure you’re collecting and using data to your advantage effectively. 

AI and automation are streamlining marketing while also making for more engaging interactions with audiences. For instance, chatbots can now provide prompt responses and even some customer service during times when a response from a team member isn’t possible. 

AI can also improve website performance. By monitoring customers’ actions in real time, AI can make personalized recommendations and even help to identify which customers may be more likely to purchase certain products or upper-level service packages. 

Modern marketing advances offer nearly endless potential whether you’re building a brand, unrolling a new product, or looking to increase customer retention, but you need a team who understands how to use these tools to their full advantage. By taking the time to build a modern marketing team, you can keep up with evolving opportunities and fully use these new technologies and trends to your benefit.

Curious how Meltwater can help take your marketing team to the next level? Request a 15 minute demo to find out!

6 Essential Roles of the Modern Marketing Team

At Meltwater, no senior leader will turn down a call about sales training — that’s not always true across the SaaS industry. At some companies, it’s just a line item in the budget no one thinks much about. Here, we’re willing to invest in it because we want to see people develop, and that ties into the core of who we are as a company. 

Yes, we are a business serving a customer whom we want to help be successful. But we also subscribe to the belief that if you take care of your people, they’ll take care of your customers. Investment in sales training and personal development ensures a person can get as much as they can out of this opportunity, which in turn helps the company grow. I know because I’ve seen and experienced it first-hand.

I’m an old-schooler at Meltwater, having joined during the great financial crisis when it was much smaller than it is now. I looked at consulting firms and other organizations, but Meltwater was the place where I truly felt like I had the quickest path to leadership and where my voice would be heard. 

One convincing piece to it was that the then-Executive Director of the Americas actually took the time to do my interview; it wasn’t only with HR. He wanted to make sure that those who came on board truly had the investment and backing they needed to succeed. That really reinforced the company’s promise of focusing on making people our most important asset.

I started as an individual contributor and quickly moved into sales management roles. I found a lot of success thanks to the strong leadership team around me. And as the company continued to grow, I was always able to tap into an entrepreneurial side by raising my hand for the biggest challenges that the company had. After leading a traditional sales team across North America, my next role in sales management was to start our self-serve division, which scaled to a global division. 

It is very rewarding when you see things that you work on be adopted across the business. But it’s the people who I got to do it with — who put their heart and soul into it — that made it successful. That’s why a lot of them are running these functions now as the leaders. And to be fair, they’re probably doing a better job than I was! Today, I lead revenue operations and sales enablement globally for the organization. My teams cover many functions, one of which is sales training.

One great thing about Meltwater is that if you find problems and are willing to raise your hand to solve them, you get an opportunity to be entrepreneurial. People here are not so stuck in their ways; we’re more focused on how we as a group can do better. The advantage of that is if somebody comes up with an idea for improvement, people are very quick and willing to listen. 

That’s very true with our current sales training program. There are people in the business who have said, ‘Hey, this is something that we need’ and made very compelling cases as to why we should invest in it. What makes the Meltwater program stand out is that as you advance in your career and competence, we offer sales training that scales along with you. It’s also ever-evolving: As the company moves upmarket and the sale becomes more complex, we adapt our sales training program in order to make sure that we can meet the needs of the customer. 

One focus is around helping new hires ramp up by getting product knowledge, fundamental sales knowledge, and truly understanding how to best meet the customer’s needs. A lot of really amazing people — including Global Head of Education Kelly Bebenek, Education Senior Program Manager Marion Wallace, and Senior Manager of Education Cate Stratton and Sales Enablement Manager Robin Blampied — worked to develop a bespoke sales training for wherever people are in their career. As people complete each of the paths of the program, we graduate them on to the next level. It’s not just sales training for the new hire or a blanket sales training approach to the whole business. The program sets people up to be successful here, or in the future whenever they choose to pursue something new, as well. 

The sales training program really reflects the Meltwater value of enere — the Norwegian word for “number one” that is company shorthand for celebrating our wins while always striving to be a better version of ourselves. There are many teams working on training and personal development at Meltwater — including those led by VP of Leadership Development Keely Merritt and Global VP of Culture Zubair Timol. We’re always working collaboratively to figure out what each other is doing and how we can accelerate our sales and personal development training together. That also is indicative of the Meltwater culture of figuring out the best way to go together as a team and leaning on each others’ strengths.

It’s really special to see your colleagues and people on your teams do things that change the organization when they have conviction in their ideas and work to bring them to fruition. They pour their heart and soul into whatever the project is and get a return on it. That’s something that I think everybody wants: To know that their work matters and that someone is advocating for them behind closed doors. I feel lucky that a lot of people have advocated for my success. That’s something that I hope to always do as a leader for people from all kinds of backgrounds, because at Meltwater that’s exactly what many others gave to me. 

Why Sales Training Is a Winning Investment

Earlier this year, everyone at Meltwater got the same email in their inbox. 

The email promoted a new post on mLife, our internal blog, announcing the company was in the process of establishing a Global Green Council. 

This invitation to join the company’s new environmental policy group caught my attention. I thought, Hey, I’m passionate about this. If I can do something to make Meltwater a better custodian for the planet, then I definitely should.

Admittedly, it was something I've never thought about doing for the company because it's far removed from my role as the Director of Content Partnerships at Meltwater EMEA. But that same day, I recorded the application video explaining why I’m passionate about the environment and how I think I could add value to the Council. 

A few weeks after I submitted my application video, our CEO John Box invited me to co-head the Council with Pooja Farkade, Vice President of Information Technologies for Meltwater Americas.

Hear Pooja's advice for women in leadership roles in our blog from International Women’s Day 2022.

I’ve always been passionate about the environment, but my relocation from Amsterdam to South Africa with Meltwater in 2018 opened my eyes anew to the everyday impacts of climate change. When I first arrived, we were in the midst of a massive drought and were ticking down to “Day Zero”, the day when Cape Town wouldn’t have any more water out of the taps. Luckily it started raining just in time, the rain, however, did not wash away the water crisis. Being constantly confronted with the impact of climate change — as we all are in different ways — is a daily reminder that makes me extra conscious. 

In general, I think that it is everybody's responsibility to act to combat climate change. A few years ago, when my missus and I bought a house here in Cape Town — a run-down old place — we tried to do our part by redoing it completely to be as off-grid and self-sustaining as possible. We insulated the entire house and have a big battery pack hooked up to solar panels and a solar-heated geyser. This means that we consume very little energy from the grid. And when we get load shedding, South African power outages, which is a common occurrence, the lights stay on. 

Responsibility to the environment looks different for every individual, but companies have an even greater responsibility and can have a greater impact. In my eyes, companies are responsible for the environmental impact of their entire value chain. Put simply, companies should be responsible for all of the effects they have on the environment, from how they source their raw materials all the way to how their product is ultimately disposed of or recycled.

The Global Green Council started meeting just before the summer period, so we're very much still in the ideation phase. But everybody on the Council's excited to start doing rather than iterating.

We started off figuring out who we are and what Meltwater’s current environmental impact is, as well as looking at what other companies are doing right now. In the end, we’ve come up with a framework that looks at long-term and short-term goals and internal and external focuses. To guide our actions and solidify our purpose, we’ve come up with a vision and mission for the Council.

As an example for Meltwater, our most apparent environmental impact is the energy consumption of the servers we need to run our product. A lot of that energy is produced by sources that aren't always great for the environment. Partnering with environmental as well as technological leaders in the data storage field is, therefore, one of the focusses of the Global Green Council.

I think the people on the Council feel passionate about creating environmental strategies that are impactful, tangible, and measurable. There is a lot of window dressing in this field, which we want to avoid by being transparent and honest about the steps we take and humble about the impact we have. 

Ultimately, I hope that we are able to accelerate Meltwater’s sustainability efforts.

The most inspiring thing about being on the Council so far has been working with people from across Meltwater's diverse universe. There is enthusiasm and passion for this topic wherever you look in the company, across the world, and in different departments. I'm also learning something completely new, outside of the expertise that I've been building over the last seven years. For me, coming up with an environmental sustainability strategy for a SaaS company, truly contributing to our general ESG, is really exciting.

It is important to everybody on the Council that the entire company feels included in this project. That's why we recently launched a survey to get everybody’s opinion at Meltwater, and we got a great response. Many people at the company are passionate about what we're doing. Our colleagues gave us great input on topics they would like to see addressed. 

Having the Council now, and knowing through the survey that our employees care about these issues, I think there could be a cultural shift at Meltwater without having to change our values: moro (fun), enere (number one), and respekt (respect). In my eyes, having respect for the environment, and striving to be number one as far as mitigating our environmental impact as well as having fun whilst we do it fits the mold perfectly.

Staying within Meltwater values while shifting the conversation towards how we as a company think about the environment — that’s what the Green Global Council is working toward. Looking forward, if people consider the environment more in their business and personal decisions because of the culture that we instill at Meltwater, I think we will have been successful. 

Joining Meltwater’s Global Green Council

We are living in a digital-first world. So if your company wants to reach consumers today, it's important to have a solid digital marketing strategy using a variety of digital marketing channels, from email to social media. This blog will outline the advantages of different digital marketing approaches and showcase examples that you can use to inspire your own marketing strategy.  

How to Craft a Digital Marketing Strategy

What's the Difference Between Digital Marketing & Social Media Marketing?

Because digital marketing spans many different responsibilities, channels, and teams, it's difficult to define succinctly. The best way to think of it is as a broad umbrella term for how your business achieves its marketing goals using digital technologies. It informs all points of the customer journey, from discovery to purchase to retention.

Digital marketing includes elements like brand messaging and any form of online advertising you do. Goals for digital marketing could include conversions like purchases or downloads, or more top of funnel objectives like social followers, website visits, and email subscribes.

Gone are the days of old school marketing where print ads or billboards were the most effective means of promoting your brand. Today, these methods need to be heavily augmented by digital marketing efforts to stay competitive and build and maintain brand recognition. The good news is that with all the options afforded by digital marketing, brands can be creative and experiment with activities on many different channels, even within tough budget constraints.

And unlike traditional marketing tactics, you can measure and prove your ROI in real-time. Here are some examples: 

How to Craft a Digital Marketing Strategy 

Your digital marketing strategy breaks down and defines how you plan to achieve your digital marketing goals. It should clearly identify which channels you'll use, and why. This will also include which teams and individuals are responsible for which areas and the metrics and KPIs that will be used to measure digital campaign success.

Here are some steps to take when creating a digital marketing strategy:

Your strategy will be stronger if you have a solid understanding of the sales funnel as it applies to your business. The funnel describes the buyer’s journey — the different steps buyers go through to get to the point of purchase. Digital marketing plays an essential role in targeting and moving potential customers through each stage of the marketing funnel. Then, once they complete a purchase, your digital marketing strategy works to strengthen customer retention — keeping them engaged and ideally primed to make many repeat purchases.

Mastering and understanding how to reach your audience at each step will help you implement a tactical strategy. The steps of the funnel include:

Discovery: Top of funnel. This stage determines where or how consumers hear about your brand. 

Consideration: Middle of funnel. After brand recognition has been established, the consumer begins vetting you. 

Purchase: Bottom of funnel. The moment when potential buyers become paying customers.

Loyalty: Middle and bottom of funnel. You need to continue nurturing customers to encourage repeat purchases and inspire people to become brand advocates.

Who is your audience? What are their demographics? Where do they shop? What motivates them? What brands do they trust? Answer these questions by creating buyer personas that will help you determine what marketing channels you need to be active on and what type of content or brand messaging they may be more receptive to. 

Tip: Make sure the details of your personas are specific. Here is a good example, “A female between the age of 18-25, who is most active online on Wednesdays from a desktop device, who is social and is interested in business topics.” 

To gain these insights, you can use a solution like Meltwater for a full audience audit. 

Once you've identified the specific parameters to each funnel stage for your business, you can apply specific digital marketing goals and KPIs to each one. Once you have your goals mapped out you can start prioritizing them, determining deliverables, and developing timelines. Whatever your goals are, make sure they are specific and measurable.

For example at the top of funnel stage you may want to focus on building up community and brand awareness through social media. You could set specific follower and engagement goals to track success, and also work on encouraging your growing audience to enter the middle of the funnel by sharing content pieces and gated assets that help you capture emails. 

Once you have a robust enough email list, then your digital marketing strategy needs to incorporate the work of an email marketer who can create nurture streams and keep people interested in your brand. 

In tandem with this growing potential customer base, you could start on bottom of funnel efforts like paid ads or setting up an e-commerce or social-commerce flow.  

Working with social media influencers to promote your products 

Sharing user-generated content to build a relationship with your followers

Digital marketing covers multiple touch-points such as paid ads and email, while social media focuses specifically on marketing to followers and potential followers through social media platforms. Social media is a form of marketing under the digital marketing umbrella.

With social media marketing you can communicate with your consumer base in a more casual, conversational, and immediate way than say through an email or blog post (depending on your brands tone of voice of course). It also encompasses its own wide range of skills and strategies, from community building to engagement-driving copy (perhaps even creating a viral Tweet or two!). 

AI in digital marketing and social media

The lines definitely blur even more when you throw Artificial Intelligence (AI) into the mix. AI technology isn't exactly new anymore, but it is gaining steam — much less of a fringe gimmick than it used to be, especially when it comes to marketing.   It's being used on social media channels such as Snapchat, allowing users to "try on" apparel, such as sunglasses, before purchasing. AI can also help segment audience behavior, providing automation wherever possible, and generating leads. 

Marketers can leverage a variety of marketing channels and marketing tactics to push their message, but they need to make sure the message fits the channel.  

There are dozens of different types of digital marketing channels, so it can be helpful to group them under the buckets of paid, earned, and owned media. Here's an overview of the different types of digital marketing channels that you can use to connect with your audiences:

With owned media, you’re in control here—this refers to any property that you control or create. The great part about this channel is that you are in direct control of the messaging, promoting the content you want your customers to see. 

Examples of owned digital marketing channels include:

Other written content (such as gated assets)

Earned media could also be referred to as word-of-mouth marketing. It’s the coverage your brand receives as a result of your various digital interactions, which you have little to no control over.

There are good and bad things about growing brand awareness through earned channels. In both senses, it offers you free placement in front of a new audience (i.e., someone else says something about you for “free”), and this can generate a powerful impact. The biggest caveat is that you don’t have control over the messaging. 

Examples of earned digital marketing channels include: 

Paid media is any placements in which you pay to be in front of an audience. It allows you to get in front of curated look-alike audiences — a great way to quickly target new customers. Paid channels can only stretch as far as your budget allows, so they need to be approached very strategically and take conversion rates into high consideration. 

Examples of paid digital marketing channels include: 

All three of these areas help you understand your audience, financial efficiency, and how you stack up against your competition. Present insights and learnings in your digital marketing reporting to stakeholders.

Tip: Take a look at the findings of the biggest Global Digital Report 2023, and download the whole Global Digital Report 2023 here.

Now that you have a complete understanding of the who, what, why, and how of digital marketing, let’s take a look at some examples for inspiration. 

Search Engine Optimization is the process of helping your website to rank higher in search engine result pages. SEO allows you to appear at the top of search results, which inherently increases the amount of organic traffic to your website. 

For example, when Googling “plant burgers”, you can see from the image below the top three results based on the keywords you were looking for. In a search engine, like Google, these top-ranking search results will always appear underneath the paid results.

Optimizing your webpages and writing content designed to show for specific keywords, are essential digital marketing skills to help boost your SEO. 

Pay-per-click (PPC) falls under paid media and is meant to quickly boost leads and drive traffic to your website. How it works: you choose the keywords or phrases you want to trigger your ads and then set a bid. If your bid is among the highest, you will appear at the top of the organic listings. One of the best parts of PPC? You only pay when people click your ads, making it a great strategy for connecting with the most qualified leads. 

Here are the types of channels you can use PPC:

Let’s take a look at the phrase “airline tickets” into Google search results. As you can see from the image below, the top four results are paid Google ads, with CheapOair winning at the highest bid.

Today, over 4.5 billion people use social media, and this is predicted to rise to 5.8 billion by 2027. It's the perfect place to connect with your audience, generate leads, and drive traffic. 

There are multiple platforms you can use for social media marketing. Among the most popular are: 

TikTok (Tip: Take a look at these TikTok scheduling tools)

In addition to using these channels for free, posting organically, you can also invest in paid social ads to take it a step further. A good way to manage all of your social accounts is with a suite for marketing professionals like Meltwater where you can create, plan, and schedule all your content in one place.

You can also use social listening to research and monitor billions of social conversations to gain insights related to consumer sentiment, brand health, and your competition.

What Is Digital Marketing? A Beginners Guide.

Video marketing has become an absolute necessity for marketers looking to both reach and capture audiences on social media and online platforms. Marketers are certainly no stranger to the benefits of video marketing today — it helps potential buyers understand products and make purchasing decisions through a digestible visual medium, and this is true for both the B2C and B2B sectors.

And while it seems like every layman can now produce engaging videos of decent quality and appeal (just take a look at social platforms such as TikTok), not every video goes viral or leads to the boost in sales or leads your higher-ups are looking for. 

This happens because marketers may not always be creating the types of video content that their audiences crave. Furthermore, it takes time for a brand, page, or new content format to gain sufficient traction. As such, marketers can’t create one-off video content in the hopes that they deliver on the results that were planned for. While this caveat can make video marketing seem daunting, marketers can easily venture on the path to success with the right video content strategy.

In this guide, we spill the secrets for successful video marketing so that you can add video content to your marketing arsenal with ease.

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Video marketing is simply the use of video for business marketing, be it directly or indirectly. This can mean using video content as a marketing tool to attract followers, raise awareness about your brand or product, drive leads to your site, or generate greater sales. 

Video content can be hosted on owned platforms such as your website, blog, or social media platforms, as well as third-party sites such as Wistia, YouTube, or Vimeo. 

In the following section, we will take a look at the various types of content available to marketers.

The first step towards successful video marketing involves the creation of the right type of video content for your audience.

The types of video content that marketers can create are as follows:

Interviews, Partnerships, and Speaking Opportunities

Augmented Reality (AR) & 360-Degree Videos

Brand videos serve to introduce your brand to consumers who may not be familiar with your company.

Product videos fulfill a similar purpose but go deeper into explaining a certain product or product feature.

As such, this format is more top-of-funnel and serves to create greater interest in your brand. Animated videos can be used to put a creative spin on your brand or concept. 

Who brand and product videos are for: Potential clients looking to discover new brands or existing clients looking to learn about new features.

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