A marketing channel refers to one of several different tools, platforms, and touchpoints that businesses use to communicate with a market segment and guide them along a customer journey. As we’ll explore in later sections of this article, marketing channels can include digital channels like social media and websites, as well as offline channels like networking events and word of mouth.
When you develop a solid channel marketing strategy and optimize your methods on every channel, your business can benefit in several ways:
- Reach new markets
- Deliver value to potential customers
- Build brand equity
- Generate leads
- Increase sales
- Reduce the cost of doing business
- Improve customer experience
1. Social media
Social media marketing leverages the power of high-value content such as instructional videos or inspirational quotes to attract audiences. When you post content related to potential customers’ interests, you can catch their attention while they are engaged in regular social media activities like scrolling their feeds or messaging contacts on platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn.
2. Email
As a marketing channel, email offers the opportunity to deliver personalized messaging to subscribers’ inboxes, develop relationships with your audience, and convert them into customers. The emails you send can include educational material, product discounts, announcements of new offers or events, free gifts and coupons, or surveys and polls.
Depending on the features of your email system, you can usually measure the effectiveness of email campaigns with metrics such as open rate, click-through rate, and conversion rate. By segmenting your subscriber list and automating the delivery of multiple emails, you can lead subscribers along a customer journey without having to compose every single email manually.
3. Web
Consider a website as an online anchor and powerful marketing channel for your brand. When you are building a website and driving traffic to it, take time to optimize the site’s structure, design, content, and calls-to-action so that visitors are encouraged to subscribe or make a purchase.