6 Digital Marketing Channels to Explore Going into 2026

It might look like the economy is all doom and gloom, with consumer confidence at an all-time low and crippling debt figures crushing both the national economy and consumer credit.

But let’s zoom out for a second. If that isn’t true, things will be alright, but even if it is, then it is high-time for you, as a business owner, to cash in.

Buy low, as the old adage is, and if things are at a low, economically, now, not tomorrow, is the time to invest in digital marketing for your eCommerce business.

That said, here are 6 digital marketing channels for you to explore going into the new year.

Search Engine Optimization

Every year some “marketing expert” says search engine optimization, or SEO, is dead, and every year that person is wrong.

Search engine optimization consists of a series of signals called ranking factors that, when improved, move your website’s listings higher in the traditional search results.

That is, when people search through an engine like Google, the pages that have the best “SEO scores” show up at the top.

These listings get the most clicks, have the highest conversion rates and values, and are seen as the most credible.

It is the single best digital marketing channel you can invest in, bar none.

Answer Engine Optimization Services

Answer engine optimization services, also known as AEO, AI, and AI SEO, are like traditional SEO, but they focus almost exclusively on content, which makes them adjacent to content marketing.

With answer engine optimization services, the goal is to get your website, or its pages, to show up as outputs through answer engines, like ChatGPT, Copilot, or in a SGE, such as Google’s AI overview.

Like SEO, AEO has a fairly high rate of return when implemented properly, and it will also support your other marketing initiatives.

Pay Per Click

Pay-per-click marketing, also known as PPC, is a collection of paid digital marketing strategies in which you pay each time one of your listings is clicked.

Typically, PPC marketing is run through search engines. You bid on keywords to get your ads placed at the tops of the search results, and pay each time you get a click.

It is much faster than SEO, but costs can quickly accumulate, and there are some industries which are not permitted to run PPC campaigns.

All the same, run in tandem with SEO, it can help turn a profit in the short term, since SEO takes a while.

Social Media Marketing: Paid and Organic

Social media marketing can be an effective way to generate buzz, leverage content, and create interest in your products.

Paid social media marketing, not too different from PPC for search engines, boosts your ads or posts, and some platforms will even allow you to sell directly through them.

Email Marketing

Email marketing, one prong of an organic digital marketing strategy, can be an effective way to wring more value out of your existing book of business.

The good thing is that once you have an email list, you know the people to whom you’ll be marketing will either be past customers or at the very least already be familiar with your business.

Therefore, email marketing tends to have a fairly high return rate as well, even though it can be resource intensive.

Influencer Marketing

Lastly, we have influencer marketing, which can be a highly valuable digital marketing channel for those looking to invest in their brand visibility and credibility.

Especially in this era of AI-generated content, it’s tough to distinguish what’s real from what’s fake. Influencer marketing can be effective because it rides on leverage associated with the credibility of the influencer, helping to circumvent that concern.

It can be somewhat hard to directly assign revenue drawn from influencer marketing, but all the same, it can be a highly valuable digital marketing channel, especially when run in concert with one or a few of the other channels mentioned here.

Start Budgeting for Marketing Today

Now’s the time to start looking at your digital marketing budget for 2026 if you haven’t yet, and whether you decide to invest in answer engine optimization services, PPC, influencer marketing, or some combination of the channels mentioned here, time’s a-ticking. Don’t let 2026 begin without having a strategy in place!

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