September 8th 2020

A marketing channel represents the set of activities necessary to create a distribution for a product and make sure that the product is delivered in the hands of the right people and that the potential customer is satisfied with it. The marketing channel also needs to be aligned with the brand message of the company.

A quick intro to marketing channels

Growing a digital business is not easy. With the low barriers to entry and the millions of websites out there, it’s important to find the right marketing mix to gain traction.

The marketing mix is a term to describe the multi-faceted approach to a complete and effective marketing plan. Traditionally, this plan included the four Ps of marketing: price, product, promotion, and place. But the exact makeup of a marketing mix has undergone various changes in response to new technologies and ways of thinking. Additions to the four Ps include physical evidence, people, process, and even politics.

At the same time, finding your key distribution channel to build your brand, will enable you to build a valuable company in the long-term.

A distribution channel is the set of steps it takes for a product to get in the hands of the key customer or consumer. Distribution channels can be direct or indirect. Distribution can also be physical or digital, depending on the kind of business and industry.

There are many marketing channels you can take advantage of. For instance, at digital level, there are dozens of digital channels available.

A digital channel is a marketing channel, part of a distribution strategy, helping an organization to reach its potential customers via electronic means. There are several digital marketing channels, usually divided into organic and paid channels. Some organic channels are SEO, SMO, email marketing. And some paid channels comprise SEM, SMM, and display advertising.

While, over time, it makes sense to go for a multichannel approach.

In the short-term, you need a single marketing channel that works pretty well. Yet, before you find out you will need experimentation, to get to what we can call your “product-channel fit.”

Or that single channel, that will be good enough for your product to meet a sustained number of interested customers and build a valuable business.

Let’s get to the list.

Affiliate Programs/Affiliations

Affiliate marketing describes the process whereby an affiliate earns a commission for selling the products of another person or company. Here, the affiliate is simply an individual who is motivated to promote a particular product through incentivization. The business whose product is being promoted will gain in terms of sales and marketing from affiliates.

Affiliate marketing isn’t new. Companies like Amazon have mastered it, since the beginning to quickly grow their traffic, and sales. While it might seem simple to just enroll a bunch of affiliate marketer to your program and get them going. There are always a few things to consider:

Control: affiliate marketing is great for amplification, however it might make you lose a bit of control over your communication strategy, as it’s hard to track how affiliates promote your product.
Not easy to get going: while it’s easy to set it up. It’s not that easy to make sure that affiliates sell your product. You need to initially help them get familiar with your product so that they can sell it in the right context. And easy enough to sell so affiliates can earn a continuous flow of income from your product sales, and therefore they keep pushing them.

Billboards

Source: duckduckgo.com/billboards

While this might seem not an advanced marketing channel, in reality, billboards can work pretty well, especially as marketing is done at the local level. Also digital brands, like search engine DuckDuckGo have been using billboards to create brand awareness. Indeed, above you can see the map of all the locations across the world where DuckDuckGo has placed a billboard.

Business Development

Business development comprises a set of strategies, tactics, and actions to grow a business via a mixture of sales and marketing. Indeed, while marketing usually relies on automation to reach a wider audience, and sales usually leverages on the one-to-one approach to close complex deals. Business development is about creating distribution strategies to scale up a business.

Business development isn’t just about getting sales through the door. That is about distribution and creating new channels to help the business scale up. In addition, business development is also about deal-making and finding those partnerships that can help the company grow at 10x speed.

Community Building

Building your community today is simpler if done at scale, as social media platforms (Facebook, Instagram, Twitter) enable companies to manage them. However, it’s important to highlight, that while any company is willing to put some effort in amplifying its product via social media platforms. In reality, building a community takes much more effort.

Content Marketing

Content marketing is one of the most powerful commercial activities which focuses on leveraging content production (text, audio, video, or other formats) to attract a targeted audience. Content marketing focuses on building a strong brand, but also to convert part of that targeted audience into potential customers.

Content helps build trust, relationships and it’s still among the most effective form of marketing. Content not only helps you establish trust, and authority, but it can also be used for practical purposes, like explaining the product, answering questions, and more. That is why content marketing can be so powerful.

Curated Newsletters

Newsletters have become very powerful ways to communicate your brand message, build your community and sell your product. While it might seem an old marketing channel that is among the most interesting ones, and worth building up, even before you have anything to sell.

Display Ads

While display ads that leverage on banners might have a very low conversion rate, it might also be less expensive compared to other paid channels. Therefore, a good alternative to explore to attract and build an audience. Tools like Google Ads can be used to set up your Display Ads campaigns.

e-commerce SEO

Some of the key strategies to take advantage of Amazon’s platform are about understanding customers’ needs, using testimonials and reviews, improve product variety while offering competitive pricing. While price and variety matters, it also matters to differentiate your offering compared to existing players.

Building up e-commerce on Amazon has become pretty common. And Amazon itself is the most popular product search engine. As such, mastering Amazon SEO can be a powerful way to sell a product continuously.

SEO

SEO hacking is a process of quick experimentation that aims at efficiently growing the organic traffic of web properties. Where traditional SEO strategies look at a steady growth, SEO hacking finds unconventional ways to quickly gain traction. That is a process well suited for small web properties and startups looking to scale up organic traffic against large media outlets.

Social Media

Market segmentation is the process of dividing the market into sub-groups. Market segmentation can be based on characteristics such as age, behaviors, income levels, and more. This process helps to understand what your key customers want, where they are, and how to talk to them effectively.

Real also:

Distribution Channels
Digital Marketing Channels

Read more:

What Is Business Model Innovation
What Is a Business Model
What Is Business Development
What Is Business Strategy
What is Blitzscaling
What Is Market Segmentation
What Is a Marketing Strategy

The post The Marketing Channels To Grow Your Business appeared first on FourWeekMBA.

This post first appeared on FourWeekMBA, please read the originial post: here

People also like

The Marketing Channels To Grow Your Business

Related Articles