Comprehensive Guide to Channel Strategy in Marketing

In today's dynamic marketplace, mastering the art of channel strategy is more important than ever. Did you know that businesses that use multiple marketing channels witness, on average, a 24% increase in revenue? For marketing experts, mastering channel strategy is key to achieving growth and engaging customers.

Our article will show you how marketing channels work and help create a powerful strategy that connects with your audience. Follow along as we explore marketing channels, helping you make a bigger impact with your brand.

Effectively handling multi-channel marketing is important for a few reasons. 

First, it widens your brand's reach. Each platform attracts different people, so using many helps you connect with more diverse audiences. When your brand appears in multiple places, it sticks in potential customers' minds and influences their buying choices.

Second, multi-channel marketing boosts engagement. Each platform has its users, so adjusting your message for each one helps get people more interested. For example, nice pictures work well on Instagram, while professional articles shine on LinkedIn. Understanding your audience and using the right channels means more interaction and a stronger group of customers.

It involves understanding target audiences, identifying competitive advantages, setting goals, and outlining strategies to achieve those objectives and resolve marketing challenges. It focuses on product development, pricing, promotion, and market segmentation.

It focuses on picking the best channels, such as selling direct sales, retailers, e-commerce platforms, wholesalers, etc; and making sure products end up where they're needed, precisely when they're needed, and in the right amounts. 

Simply put, think of marketing strategy as the big plan for promoting and selling products. Meanwhile, channel strategy is the detailed map showing how these products get to customers. Both strategies team up to make sales successful and help the business grow.

Omnichannel and multichannel might seem similar, but they have key differences that affect how customers view your company.

Omnichannel focuses on customers and uses all available channels.

Multichannel focuses on products/services and uses multiple channels to promote them.

If you want to create a good customer experience across all touchpoints, choose the Omnichannel strategy. This approach prioritizes customers and involves all available channels to engage and support customers. 

On the other hand, if you're focused on highlighting specific products or services across various platforms, the Multichannel strategy is more suitable. It concentrates on product promotion through multiple channels to reach diverse audiences.

When planning how to reach customers, there are a few important things to consider:

Understand your Target Audience, which means analyzing their preferences, behaviors, and needs.

Once armed with audience insights, the next step is Channel Selection. This involves choosing platforms where your audience spends their time.

However, selecting an effective channel isn't just about choice; it's also about Budget Allocation. Distributing your resources across various channels ensures each gets the necessary investment.

Lastly, regularly tracking sales, engagement rates, and ROI helps measure each channel's effectiveness. This helps you figure out what's working best and where you might need to make changes.

Even though new ways of doing marketing appear all the time, the main channels we use have stayed pretty much the same for the last decade. It's more about how we use these channels that's changing. Let's check out the four main ones:

Paid marketing channels are platforms where businesses invest money to display their advertisements or promote their content. These channels involve paying a fee for displaying ads, reaching audiences, or generating leads. 

Examples include Search Engine Advertising, such as Google Ads; Social Media Advertising (Facebook Ads, Instagram Ads, or LinkedIn Ads); Display Advertising (Banner ads on websites or apps), and Paid Influencer Marketing.

Paid marketing channels are effective for several reasons:

• Targeted Reach. They allow businesses to target specific demographics, interests, or behaviors.

• Quick Results. Paid channels lead to immediate visibility and results, which allows for increasing brand awareness, or driving traffic to their website faster than SEO or email marketing.

• Measurable ROI. They offer detailed analytics to track ad performance, measure ROI, and make data-driven decisions.

• Flexibility and Control. Businesses can set budgets, adjust targeting options, and modify campaigns as they happen.

When it comes to quickly reaching interested customers, Pay-Per-Click (PPC) stands out, especially in search engines and social media ads. 

The magic of PPC is in its targeting. You can aim your ads at specific audiences based on location, interests, age, and browsing behavior.

Moreover, PPC offers immediate visibility. Once your campaign is up and running, your ads start showing to your chosen audience right away, giving your brand instant exposure.

The cherry on top is the control: you set the budget, decide who sees your ads, and can track performance in real time.

Joining forces with other brands or people to create marketing campaigns is what partnership marketing is all about. When 2 brands or influencers work together, they introduce each other's audiences to new products or services, making both brands more visible. 

For example, if a clothing brand partners with a popular social media influencer, it can attract the influencer's followers, promoting sales for both. Partnership Marketing can take various forms, such as co-branded campaigns, joint events, affiliate marketing, or cross-promotions.

Besides partnership marketing, making the most of online marketing channels is a great way to increase your brand's visibility and connect with more users online.

SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is a set of strategies and practices used to improve a website's visibility and ranking in search engine results pages (SERPs).

The primary goal of SEO is to get your website to show up higher in search results without paying for ads. You still have to spend money to create good evergreen content and place backlinks. But in the long run, your content will work for free and can bring in traffic for many years.

Engaging audiences through Social Media Marketing is a powerful (and free) way to connect with people online. You can build communities around your brand, encourage conversations, ask questions, and respond to comments. This community-building approach creates loyal followers who actively engage with the brand.

Let's consider Sephora as an example. They engage with their audience by responding to comments, organizing Q&A sessions, and conducting polls. These efforts cultivate a strong community sense among their followers.

Sephora collaborates with influencers to feature user-generated content on their Instagram. When people witness their favored content creators endorsing products in practical use, it enhances credibility and trust.

Moreover, Sephora diversifies its content formats by using various mediums such as videos, stories, regular posts, and live sessions. This diverse approach ensures they appeal to various audience preferences and communication styles.

Content marketing is about creating and sharing valuable, relevant content to captivate and engage your intended audience. Blog posts, infographics, videos, podcasts, ebooks, webinars, and case studies are used for this purpose.

According to the Content Marketing Institute, 73% of B2B marketers and 70% of B2C marketers use content marketing as part of their overall marketing strategy.

For business owners, content marketing is indispensable. Here are key practices to focus on:

• Understand your audience's needs and values by interacting with potential customers. Create content that aligns with their objectives.
• Use data and buyer personas to shape your content strategy.
• Share true experiences to show the value and authenticity of your content. Use expert insights and storytelling to make it engaging.
• Optimize your budget by identifying channels and content formats that bring the best results.
• Write your content for users (but don't forget about search engines). Quality content aligned with search intent helps improve discoverability and rankings.

Keep your content updated with the latest trends and best practices to maximize its value over time. Refresh outdated material for continued relevance.

Email marketing is sending messages or emails to a group of people or potential customers. Businesses use it to tell about products, share news, or build relationships with subscribers. 

Why is email marketing so popular? It's because almost everyone with a mobile can check emails on the go. It's also cheap and easy to use.

However, successful email marketing is about maintaining a healthy email list.  For example, GoPro gives discounts to get visitors to subscribe. A simple form gets more people to sign up without asking for too much.

Here's how you can improve your email marketing campaign:

• Segment your audience based on preferences or behavior.

• Personalize emails to resonate deeply with recipients.

• Optimize for mobile devices to ensure seamless viewing and functionality.

• Experiment with subject lines and email formats to boost open rates.

• Add interactive content, such as polls or surveys, to gather subscriber insights.

Even with the increasing preference for online shopping, traditional marketing channels remain effective in reaching audiences.

Print ads help broaden your reach among potential customers via newspapers or magazines. If your goal is to raise community awareness, placing ads in newspapers can introduce your brand, location, and products. Identify the magazines your target audience prefers, as using ads there will generate more sales leads.

TV and radio advertisements play a major role in marketing, but TV commercials can be quite expensive. They're still popular in the United States, Japan, and parts of Europe where many people tune in to TV.

Lately, TV ads have gotten smarter and can be tailored for specific groups and even allow viewers to engage with the content.

Why are they effective? They reach a wide range of people. Measuring their impact has become more sophisticated with better ways to track viewership. Despite the high cost, TV ads remain a preferred choice for brands that want to reach a massive audience.

Direct mail works well for businesses targeting specific local or demographic groups, especially those in local services, retail, or real estate.

Nowadays, direct mail has stepped up its game as it can get personal by tailoring content based on who's receiving it. 

However, it can get a bit expensive with the production and postage costs. Unlike digital methods, it's more difficult to know right away how successful it's been.

About 59% of customers prefer using the phone as their primary communication channel, which makes telemarketing quite important. Telemarketing is used by B2B and B2C companies and involves selling products or services via phone calls. With cold calling, you can talk directly to potential customers, understand their needs, and demonstrate how your offering can address their problems.

This strategy goes beyond just pitching sales; it's about creating a personal connection and building trust with prospective customers.

Outdoor advertising is a great way to market a product within specific local areas. For small business owners, billboards, bus benches, and transit ads can be highly effective. But the success of any outdoor campaign starts with its visual representation.

The outdoor sign is often the first thing potential customers notice. It should strike a balance – eye-catching enough to attract attention without being overwhelming, while also informative about what a business offers.

When creating a solid multichannel marketing strategy, businesses should consider the following steps to ensure customer engagement and consistent brand representation across all platforms:

This step helps recognize the main touchpoints across various channels that customers interact with throughout their purchasing journey. These touchpoints can include website visits, social media engagement, emails, phone calls, in-store visits, advertisements, reviews, etc. Understanding these touchpoints will help you create a more effective multichannel marketing strategy to engage customers at every stage.

Next, find the best media to market based on where your target audience spends their time. For example, if your audience is mostly young people, they might hang out more on TikTok or Instagram than on Facebook. It's important to find out where your audience likes to be online so you can focus your marketing efforts there.

Review past marketing efforts to understand which channels produced the best results and contributed most to your goals. Assign funds based on the channels that align with your objectives and have historically performed well. This helps to expand reach or frequency, getting more out of your investment for better returns.

Using marketing automation and CRM tools helps sync your marketing efforts across different platforms. These tools make tasks easier, automate workflows, and keep all customer information in one place. 

By bringing these CRM tools together, businesses can create better marketing plans that send the same messages and give personal experiences everywhere. This helps keep customers interested, improves sales, and makes marketing work better overall.

Crafting a content calendar helps keep messaging consistent on social media, blogs, emails, and other channels. Making standard content format and style for each channel creates a unified brand voice while suiting various audience preferences.

Using tools for real-time feedback enables quick responses to market shifts. Social media listening platforms such as Hootsuite or Sprout Social can provide real-time feedback that allows businesses to adjust strategies in response to changing market conditions. By establishing these mechanisms, companies can stay agile and improve their approaches.

Google Analytics is widely used for measuring digital marketing performance, yet it has limitations in data collection. Fortunately, alternative tools like OWOX BI, HubSpot, Piwik PRO, and others go beyond these limits.

These platforms don't just complement Google Analytics; they significantly enhance its capabilities. They offer a broader range of functionalities, providing deeper insights into audience behavior and boosting campaign effectiveness for businesses.

Selecting the right KPIs for channel strategies is essential as they show where to focus your efforts or which channels need more attention. Make sure that you include the following basic KPIs in your strategy:

• Click-through rates (CTR) tell if the content is compelling by measuring the percentage of clicks an ad or a link receives compared to the total number of impressions. 

• Conversion Rates indicate the percentage of users who complete an action, such as making a purchase, filling out a form, or signing up. 

• Engagement Metrics cover likes, shares, comments, time spent on a page, or interactions per visit. 

• Return on Investment (ROI) evaluates the profitability of your marketing efforts by comparing the cost of the campaign to the generated revenue. 

Understanding what metrics to measure is crucial, but having a reliable tool to collect accurate data is just as important. This is where OWOX BI comes in.

With OWOX BI, you can trust your data's accuracy. It solves numerous analytical issues like errors, data fragmentation, and challenges posed by ad blockers or cookie consent. This tool focuses on user behavior, not just browsers or devices, merging all site activity and data from various sources into one user profile. In addition, creating reports becomes effortless as you don't need coding or complex data handling. You select your preferred metrics and instantly generate the report.