ShivaniMarketing is not a one-day show; it is a process where you interact, attract and persuade consumers that you can offer value to them. Moreover, it requires research, selling, promoting, and distributing your products or services.
Without marketing, no business can survive, and neglecting it means that your business would fail. However, even if you have a great product or service, you won’t be able to make any sales because customers don’t know and appreciate its value. So if you wish to grow, you have to make efforts to do marketing on different marketing channels. Now you must be wondering what marketing channels are. If you are not aware of these channels and don’t know which one to use for your business, then read this article till the end.
What is a Marketing Channel?
Today, there are several platforms that allow you to showcase your product and services there. Large businesses leverage online or digital channels and then prepare strategies or initiatives that businesses or marketers use to spread awareness of their products and services.
It does not matter whether your business employs multi-channel marketing concentrated on different strategies or omnichannel marketing focused on the personal customer experience; the right marketing channels are available to help you out. Learn why omnichannel communication is Important
9 Best Marketing Channels For Your Business
1. Business Website
Today, a business website is the first touchpoint where customers interact with your business. Therefore, developing a business website and investing in good hosting is a great way to market your business. Moreover, You can use a business website as a tool to improve your image and spread your business’ message.
Further, you can make use of a website as an eCommerce store through which customers can purchase your products. Whenever people want to purchase anything, they tend to use search engines to explore new products and services.
According to Google, approx 89% of B2B customers and 81% of online shoppers utilize search engines to learn more about new products and services. Therefore, whenever someone seeks something that is related to your business, you require your website to be on the top search results and be quickly found by the user.
Therefore, you have to use Search Engine Optimization (SEO) if you want to be discovered by people. SEO is an assessable, trusted process used to send data to search engines that your website is worth showing in their index.
By precisely doing SEO for your website, you will make the best out of this marketing channel, which will lead to a respected, well-known brand and high sales.
2. Blogs
Nowadays, blogs have become one of the most powerful marketing channels. When we talk about the business blog, it means it is a stand-alone web page or portion of an existing business website. It is specially assigned to write about materials associating with the business’ industry or its subfields.
The best way to drive more customers to your business is by regularly giving them new, original content. Therefore, you have to ensure that your business blog is well-researched, thought-provoking blog and also SEO optimized.
While it’s great to own a blog with useful content, your business is also essential to be featured on other blogs with links to your business website. Therefore, you should strive to take your business to both fellow bloggers and customers while also working on your SEO grading.
Blogging also forms one of the simplest, fast and direct ways of interacting with consumers.
You can inform them about your business and urge them to give feedback and opinions. Moreover, you can utilize this information to understand your customer’s requirements. Not only this, it further acts as a customer channel that you can use to communicate with the target market about the business’ value proposition.
3. Social Media
With more than 2.7 billion social media users globally, social media marketing is one the largest and most powerful marketing channels. Social media marketing entails building and sharing content on social media to accomplish your business’s marketing goals.
Social media marketing includes posting text and image updates, videos, and other content to promote audience engagement. With the high number of social media platforms, it is also essential to thoroughly choose which ones to apply based on your target market.
Your presence on social media makes your business more accessible and consumers in the loop about your business. It also allows you to acknowledge issues and conversations in real-time. Further, social media acts as a platform for customer service, suggestions, and criticisms.
4. Content marketing
You have to ensure that you do not bombard existing and prospective buyers with “purchase” messages when they are not interested in purchase. If they find them irritating, then the chances are that they will never recommend your products and services to their friends and family. It will get you a negative word of mouth that further leads to a negative reputation.
Content marketing is a strategy focused on consistently producing and sharing valuable content. It covers blog posts, videos, case studies, infographics, ebooks, interviews, white papers, etc. — to entice a specific market segment.
Content marketing intends to drive leads or customers to complete an action that’s beneficial for your organization.
Companies utilize content marketing to:
- Establish or position a brand
- Generate leads
- Retain customers
- Boost sales
- Equip pre and post-sale information on their target audience requirements
- Support SEO and social media marketing initiatives
- Build authority/reputation
5. Influencer marketing
Influencer marketing employs people with a dedicated social media following to brand mention or recommends your product or service to their followers.
Influencer marketing campaigns involve:
- Product reviews
- Sponsored content
- Content and product collaborations
- Giveaways and competitions
- Platform “takeovers”
Click here to know more about Influencer marketing
6. Email Marketing
Email marketing is a reliable, low-cost, and powerful way of connecting with potential consumers, nurturing them, and turning them into customers. Email marketing lets you grow and maintain a relationship with the customers by constantly sharing valuable information. But, most importantly, email marketing enables businesses to have absolute control over the customers’ content, which enables custom messaging.
Email marketing serves as an information channel between the consumer and the business to share the product or service information. Prompting users to subscribe to your online publications is an excellent way to keep them up-to-date with your newest news and stories. And, since it takes an average of 6 to 8 touchpoints to create a qualified sales lead, urging people to subscribe to your emails will produce more leads and revenue for your business.
While you may only require to link email marketing with newsletters, you can utilize it to send personalized communications to your target audience, boost time-relevant content like product launches and sales, and further nurture leads.
7. Partnership marketing
Partnership marketing occurs when two brands collaborate to build campaigns that are useful to both parties. It’s a cost-effective way to expand your market reach and solidify your brand’s reputation by operating with an organization whose products or services complement yours.
Examples of this form of marketing involve:
- Co-hosting events
- Resell partnerships
- Producing co-branded content
- Affiliate marketing partnerships
- Referral partnerships
- Sponsorships
- Product distribution partnerships, such as including a partner’s products in your giveaway bundles or packages
- Joint products
- Charitable partnerships
All you have to do is to determine the brands you want to partner with. Partners that have reputable organizations can let you realize your goals. After that, set the key metrics and performance indicators to track. This way, you’ll understand whether you’re accomplishing your goals or not.
Moreover, be extra careful with reporting; it means that you have to ensure that you have the right tools and systems to pinpoint which lead accurately or sale was produced by which partner, mainly if the partnership includes monetary incentives.
8. Word of Mouth Marketing
70% of customers state that trusting a brand is more important today than ever before. But, sadly, consumers also trust brands, and the paid content they create is more diminutive than ever before. So, what’s a marketer to do when people they want to persuade don’t believe them? First, they have to rely on their customers’ brand suggestions to encourage other customers to buy, also known as word-of-mouth marketing.
People believe other consumers over marketers because marketers own an agenda. They advertise their products and services to make sales, but buyers will only recommend a product or service if it really benefits them. If you’re doubtful, consider the following research findings:
- Customers state that recommendations from another customer are 14% more convincing than a brand employee.
- 39% of consumers develop trust in a brand from peer-to-peer discussions than 23% from paid advertising.
- 9 out of 10 consumers see reviews while making buying decisions.
You can promote this type of marketing by building a customer experience that matches your audience’s requirements and providing top-notch customer service. In other words, you are required to serve your customers’ demands before your own.
9. Podcast Marketing
According to the statistics, 55% of the U.S. population aged 12 and above listened to podcasts. The demand for audio content has been bombarded, so it’s worth thinking about podcast marketing to reach your audience where they already are.
Not only is its demand high, but podcasts and their hosts can encourage you to develop a unique relationship with your audience as episodes seem conversational and share a more personal side of your business.
Podcasts also generate more opportunities for interaction, as customers aren’t confined to listening while looking at their phone screens. For instance, your ideal listener can play an episode in their car while commuting or doing household chores.
As per the researchers in the neuroscience field, storytelling is one of the most reliable ways to captivate attention and resonate with consumer emotions. The human brain is processed to crave, seek out, and react to a well-crafted narrative — that’ll never break.
Wrapping It up
In this article, we have mentioned several marketing channels. Now, what you want to explore will depend on your requirements and budget. However, we recommend you try as many as you can to improve your chances of success.
All marketing channels that we have mentioned in this article are the best way of approaching customers as they will support you to stay relevant, competitive, and effective, especially in this advanced age. They might even empower you to grow. So don’t forget to make use of them.
How referral marketing can help you expand your market reach?
Referral marketing is one of the most effective and powerful ways to reach your target audience. Not only this, it further lets you create personalized experiences that help you attract and engage old as well as new customers. So, if you are planning to leverage it then InviteReferrals’s referral program software can make it easier for you. Want to know more about it? Schedule a free demo today.
