As you develop a marketing strategy and create marketing campaigns, you’ll need to carefully choose the best marketing channels for your campaigns, target audience, and goals. Marketing channels like social media, email, magazines, and text messaging, play a key role in helping you reach your target audience, and they can have a direct effect on your campaign’s success. Understanding the different types of marketing channels, the pros and cons of each, and how to test and best use each channel can maximize your campaign’s effectiveness.
What are Marketing Channels?
Marketing channels are the mediums or platforms you use to reach your target audience.
The most effective campaigns often use multiple marketing channels to promote their messaging. This approach can help your audience become familiar with your brand, making your marketing more memorable and building audience trust in your business.
Types of Marketing Channels
SEO
Search engine optimization (SEO) involves strategically positioning a website so that it ranks for relevant keywords, which can help your audience find your website. Optimizing a site for search engines requires a long-term approach, but it can be a valuable way to steadily bring new leads to your site.
Social Media
Social media platforms have grown rapidly and become a core marketing channel for most businesses. According to the Pew Research Center, 78% of United States adults aged 30-49 use Facebook, 66% use Instagram, and 94% use YouTube. These platforms have tremendously large audiences, and can help businesses reach and engage with their audiences. Different demographics tend to gravitate toward particular platforms, too, which can inform a business’ approach to social media.
Email is a highly effective way to reach a target audience, and Statista reports that by April 2024, 92% of internet users in the United States used email. Once users sign up, businesses can use email to communicate directly with their audience, and email allows for excellent personalization and tracking.
Digital Advertising
Digital advertisements, such as banners, pop-ups, videos, and other media, can help a business rapidly reach large audiences. Digital ads can be highly targeted to a specific audience, which can enhance their effectiveness. Websites, email, social media, and podcasts offer vast digital advertising opportunities.
Blogs and Websites
Blogs and websites that provide relevant information to your audience are versatile marketing channels that can be used for content marketing purposes. Content marketing can help boost SEO, but it can also draw new visitors, boost brand awareness, and build public trust in the brand.
SMS and Text Messaging
Text messaging marketing, which allows you to send a text message directly to a customer’s phone, has become increasingly popular. Customers need to first opt-in to receive texts, but this marketing platform tends to have high open rates and can help you engage with your current customers.
Traditional Media
Traditional media channels, including radio, TV, and print ads, are tried-and-true marketing channels that existed well before the internet. While marketing through these channels tends to be more expensive than digital marketing channels, many businesses still use and have success with these channels. Tracking results can be difficult with traditional media, but these channels tend to have an extensive reach that can help expand your audience.
How to Choose Your Marketing Channels
Determine Your Target Audience
To start, determine and define your target audience. Consider factors like what types of media the audience consumes, which social media platforms they use, and which channels will help you best engage with them.
Consider Your Goals
Your goals will partially help you determine which marketing channels are best for your business. If you want to rapidly reach a large number of new prospects, digital advertising or traditional media might be best. If your goal is to engage with current customers and build trust, then content marketing and email marketing might be a better choice.
Evaluate Your Resources
Developing and maintaining marketing efforts across multiple channels takes team and financial resources. Consider the staff and budget you have available and how well they can support the marketing channels you’re considering. When working with limited resources, start small with just a few platforms. You can always grow your marketing efforts and expand to additional channels once you’re sure you’ll have the required resources.
Focus on Multiple Channels
Rather than focusing on one channel, choose complementary channels that pair well together to help spread your messaging. Content marketing pairs well with social media and email marketing, since you can promote the content you’re creating on your social media platforms and in your emails. These multiple channels can ensure your audience repeatedly sees your messaging, which can boost trust in and familiarity with your brand.
Ensure Funnel Alignment
As you choose your channels, ensure you’re aligning your marketing content with your sales funnel. Your sales and marketing teams need to work together; your sales team should outline each stage of your sales funnel, and then your marketing team should develop distinct messaging that’s tailored to each stage. This alignment makes for powerful marketing that addresses the prospect’s needs, and allows for enhanced targeting, higher conversion rates, and a better customer journey.
Monitor and Revise
Continuously monitor your marketing metrics across each channel to understand how the channels are performing. Use your metrics to strategically improve your marketing, test different messages, and choose new platforms if necessary.
The Importance of Diversifying Your Channel Mix
Diversifying your channel mix can improve the chances of your marketing campaigns being successful. By diversifying your channels, you can get your messaging onto the platforms where your target audience spends time. You can increase your reach across multiple channels, connecting with leads while also engaging with current customers.
A diverse channel mix can also be beneficial when facing challenges. Marketing across multiple channels minimizes your risk if one channel underperforms. It’s also possible for channels like Facebook or Twitter to place restrictions on businesses or kick them off of the platform entirely. If you’ve established a presence on other channels, then you’ll be better prepared to pivot your marketing if you lose access to one of those platforms.
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How to Create a Cross-Channel Marketing Strategy
A cross-channel marketing strategy allows your business to reach your target audience on multiple channels. These steps will guide you through the process of creating a cross-channel marketing strategy:
Develop Buyer Personas
Crafting buyer personas can help your marketing team to better identify and understand your ideal customer and target audience. Details like your target audience’s behaviors, preferred channels, and interests can help you create content that they’re more likely to engage with.
Map the Customer Journey
By mapping the customer journey, you can identify touchpoints where the customers will interact with your brand. This mapping process also identifies any gaps in the journey that you can address before launching your campaign.
Set Goals
Set specific goals for your campaign, such as whether you’re looking to generate leads, sell products, or increase engagement. Assign specific numbers to each goal so you can evaluate the success of your marketing and identify any shortcomings.
Choose Your Marketing Channels
When you choose channels for your cross-channel marketing, consider where you’re most likely to connect with your target audience. Your buyer personas can be helpful in identifying the channels your target audience uses. Consider which channels are the best fit for your goals.
Monitor Metrics and Optimize Marketing
When you launch your campaign, monitor metrics and use that information to continuously improve the campaign’s performance.
Testing Marketing Channels
Testing marketing channels can help you determine which channels and messaging are most effective, so you can strategically improve your marketing efforts.
Set Goals for Testing
Start by setting your goals for the testing process, since those goals will guide you as you structure and run the tests. You might want to test how different messages perform on a particular platform, how one message performs across different platforms, etc. Outlining your goals can help you determine which metrics you need to gather and how to create your tests.
Select Channels to Test
Once you’ve identified your goals, you can decide which channels you want to test. Keep in mind that channels can vary in their structure and performance, so it’s best to try to test similar channels with similar audiences when you’re comparing channel to channel.
Create and Run A/B Tests
A/B testing lets you compare different elements of your marketing campaign, such as various messages, headlines, calls-to-action, images, platforms, and more, by sending different versions to different audiences To get the best, most comprehensive results, create multiple variations of each test so you can identify patterns and ensure that you’re getting reliable, consistent data. If you’re A/B testing display ads, take advantage of platforms that offer AI-powered A/B testing, for faster, more efficient results.
Look for Patterns
After you’ve completed your testing, review the results and make sure that you’re comparing the same metric across multiple channels. Look for patterns in the test results that can signal that one channel performs particularly well or particularly poorly, or that a certain type of content performs well or poorly on certain channels. These patterns can help you identify changes you can make to improve the effectiveness of future marketing.
Repeat the Process
Testing your marketing is an ongoing process. Once you’ve concluded tests and identified areas for improvement, make those changes and test your campaign again. Doing so will help you continuously improve your marketing.
Channel Metrics
Monitoring the following metrics can help you determine how well each channel is performing:
Conversion Rate
The conversion rate identifies the percentage of individuals who complete a desired action, such as signing up for a newsletter or making a purchase. It indicates how effective your marketing is in getting your audience to complete that desired action.
To calculate a conversion rate, you need to divide the number of conversions, or viewers who took the desired action, by the size of your audience reached. Multiply the result by 100 to get your conversion rate percentage.
Return on Investment
Your return on investment (ROI) is a financial metric that indicates how profitable each marketing channel is. To determine each channel’s ROI, calculate how much revenue was generated in comparison to how much you spent on each marketing channel. You can use this metric to determine which channels you may want to invest more in.
Click-through Rate
The click-through rate refers to the percentage of times your audience clicked on your ad in comparison to the total number of impressions your ad had. If the click-through rate is high, then it means that your ad is effective and your audience is engaging well with it. A low click-through rate signals that an ad is not effective and needs to be revised.
Customer Acquisition Cost
Your customer acquisition cost is a financial metric that indicates how much you paid to acquire a new customer through a certain marketing channel. If a channel has a lower customer acquisition cost, then it’s a more economical option for your business than channels with a higher customer acquisition cost.
To calculate your customer acquisition cost, divide the total amount that you spent on a marketing channel during a certain amount of time, by the number of customers you acquired during that same period of time.
Customer Lifetime Value
Understanding your customer lifetime value can help you make strategic, well-informed decisions in your marketing strategy. The customer lifetime value refers to the total worth of a customer during their entire relationship with your business.
Channel Attribution
With marketing channel attribution, you can better understand how effective your marketing channels are. Through attribution, you will give credit to the touchpoints of the customer journey, so you can identify which touchpoints are most important in driving conversions.
There are several attribution models suitable for working with multiple marketing channels. I’ve highlighted some of the most commonly used models:
Linear
Under the linear attribution model, every touchpoint in the customer journey receives equal credit for the conversion.
Last Click
The last-click attribution model gives full credit for the conversion to the last touchpoint that occurred before the conversion. This model doesn’t give attribution to other touchpoints that may have still contributed to the conversion by building brand familiarity.
Time Decay
Time-decay models tend to be one of the most comprehensive attribution models for multiple-channel campaigns. With the time-decay model, all of the touchpoints receive credit, but the touchpoints that are closer to the conversion receive more credit for that conversion.
How to Optimize Your Channel Mix Strategy
Look for Personalization Opportunities
When possible, personalize your marketing across your channels. For example, you can segment your campaigns based on past customer behavior, so customers who have previously purchased certain items see messages about relevant items they’re likely to purchase. The more you can customize your messaging to your audience’s interests, the more likely they are to engage with your marketing and take the desired action.
Continuously Analyze Your Channel Mix
Regularly analyze each channel’s performance. Review metrics often to identify ways to test and improve each channel to further optimize your campaign’s performance.
Be Prepared to Change Your Channel Strategy
If your metrics indicate that a channel is underperforming, be prepared to change your strategy. You might need to implement new messaging on a channel, or you might have to change your strategy entirely and try using a different channel. Successful marketers are open to testing and revising their strategy to ensure they get the best results, so don’t be afraid to pivot.
How to Allocate Budget Across Marketing Channels
Identify Proven Performing Channels
Use metrics to evaluate the success of each channel. Put more of your budget into high-performing channels that generate your desired results to maximize the value you get for your investment.
Look for New Channels
You can maximize the effectiveness of your budget by looking for new, emerging channels. A channel like an up-and-coming niche website or podcast can be a valuable marketing opportunity that’s available at a lower price than more well-established channels. Investing some of your budget in a new, more affordable channel can yield positive results.
Monitor Performance and Adjust Your Budget
Monitor each channel’s performance throughout each campaign and adjust your budget as needed. As certain channels start to out-perform others, you may want to shift your budget to put more money into those top-performing channels.
Key Takeaways
You can build a multi-channel marketing campaign to reach your target audience on the platforms and spaces they frequent. But, with so many channels to choose from, it’s essential to strategically select channels that support your campaign goals. Developing and optimizing your multi-channel marketing takes an attentive approach, and you’ll need to frequently test and review metrics to adjust your approach as needed. This investment of time and effort is well worth it, since it can help you to optimize your marketing for better results.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
Is a website a marketing channel?
Yes, a website can be a marketing channel. You can use your website to promote your services or products, and you can pair your website with content marketing, SEO, and social media marketing to drive your target audience to the site.
What is the role of a marketing channel?
A marketing channel serves as the medium you will use to reach your audience. Marketing channels are an integral part of an effective marketing strategy.
What are some channel marketing examples?
A business that uses social media to grow its business page and engage with its customers is one example of a marketing channel. Alternatively, a business might develop a content marketing strategy that offers its target audience helpful content, so they come to trust the business and then buy related products or services from that business.
What’s the difference between owned, earned, and paid channels?
Owned channels are channels that you create, like your business website and blog. Earned channels are exposure that your business gets from a source outside of the company, such as through customer reviews or social media mentions. Paid channels are those channels that cost money to market on, such as digital advertising.
Which marketing channels should I use for a startup?
When marketing a startup, choose platforms that you can scale organically and that allow for precise audience targeting. Social media, SEO, and content marketing can all be solid channels that help you strategically grow your startup audience while staying within a limited budget.
Which channel should I focus on with a limited budget?
If you’re working with a limited budget, look for a platform that you can largely scale organically, such as social media, email marketing, or SEO.
What’s a good channel mix for lead generation?
When your goal is lead generation, a channel mix including content marketing, social media, email marketing, and digital advertising can be highly effective.
Which marketing channel has the best ROI?
Many marketers agree that search, paid advertising, and social media marketing offer the best ROI. According to a survey performed by Statista in 2022, small businesses reported that Facebook, direct mail, and email offered the highest ROI. ROI will vary depending on your business, your campaign, and your marketing approach, so be sure to continuously measure performance and adjust your marketing strategy for the best results.
What percentage of my budget should go to brand vs performance channels?
According to Marketing Week, Les Binet advocated for brands to allocate 60% of advertising spend to brand building and 40% to performance marketing. Binet’s principle may be good advice, but you may need to tailor that allocation based on your brand’s goals.
What’s the best attribution model for multi-channel campaigns?
Attribution models help marketers assign value to each touchpoint in their campaign to better understand the campaign’s effectiveness. Time-decay attribution models are often best for multi-channel campaigns, since they give more credit to touchpoints that occur closer to the conversion, but they also encompass touchpoints that occurred earlier on in the campaign. These models provide a more complete view of the campaign and the customer journey than other models.
What are low-cost marketing channels for early-stage startups?
Marketing channels that offer some organic reach are low-cost options that are ideal for early-stage startups. Channels like social media, email marketing, content marketing, and SEO can all be solid options for your startup. If you’re starting to look into display advertising, consider working with a platform that specializes in performance advertising, particularly one that utilizes an AI powered by first-party data, which can help you to create, launch, and optimize your ads more quickly and easily.
Which channels scale best with limited team resources?
If you have limited team resources, look for channels that require minimal time investment and monitoring. You can scale social media, SEO, and email marketing even if you have limited team resources, but be sure to only implement campaigns across the number of channels your team has the time to manage.
