What is Channel Marketing Strategy? – Full Overview, FAQs & More   

If you want to see high conversion rates result from your marketing efforts, you need to identify the best distribution channels based on your audience. 

The distribution channels are the platforms that you will use as a brand to promote your products and services. 

Many brands stretch themselves too thin by marketing on too many different channels whereas others just market themselves on the wrong channels entirely. 

That’s why you need a channel marketing strategy to ensure you distribute your content on the appropriate platforms. 

What is Channel Marketing Strategy?

When we say “channel”, we refer to the different platforms that are available for you to promote your brand. Examples of these could be digital channels such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram or it could be more traditional channels such as TV ads, billboards, etc. 

A channel strategy aims to define the best possible channels your brand can use based on the industry of your brand and the behaviors of your target audience. 

It’s fair to say that within marketing, it’s always a good idea to have everything planned out before you actually execute it. That’s why it’s important to have a channel marketing strategy so that you don’t choose the wrong marketing channels for your brand. 

As you can probably tell, if you choose the wrong marketing channels, it can be disastrous for your business. Not only will you spend time, money, and effort on content creation and promotion but you’ll also see little to no increase in conversion rates.

Based on what type of business you have and what type of customers you want to market to, there are many different types of channel marketing strategies you can adopt. 

Find out what marketing strategy best suits your business, HERE.

The Different Types of Marketing Channel Strategies

For the purposes of this post, we will focus mostly on digital channel marketing strategies. This is because they are far easier to implement and definitely the go-to for new businesses. If you don’t have a lot of budget, digital avenues of marketing are usually the safer bet. 

Not only are they cost-efficient but they are far easier to adjust and change as well. 

Some common forms of channel marketing strategies include

Digital Sales Through an Online Store 

This is when you set up a website for your brand and have an online store for it right there on the website. Customers can visit your website, browse through your products to see what they like and then make a purchase on the spot. 

To gain traction for your online store, there are many different approaches you can take. The first and most obvious one is through search engine optimization (SEO). 

This involves using the best SEO practices to ensure that your website is easily indexable and scannable by search engines. It also involves using trending keywords that people are searching for that are relevant to your niche. 

The inclusion of these keywords as well as the use of the best SEO practices will ensure that your website is favored by search engines. As a result, when people search for relevant terms, your website will be displayed much higher on the search engine results page. 

The higher up your website is on the results page, the higher your discoverability and your reach are. 

SEO can be a great way to direct organic traffic to your website and find potential customers that are looking for exactly what you’re offering. 

Social Media Marketing 

Another great way to promote your brand and the products or services you have is through social media. Social media is something that most, if not all, brands use to some extent to promote their brand image. 

The great thing about social media is that not only can it be used to drive sales and increase conversions but it can also be a great way to improve your brand image. You can use it to provide informational posts to your audience and increase your brand’s recognition. 

The particular social media platforms that you choose should also be a part of your channel marketing strategy. We don’t recommend that you try to market your brand on many different social media platforms when you first start out as a brand. 

Most likely, at the start, your budget and manpower won’t be enough for you to effectively market on several different platforms. 

Instead, you should conduct market research to determine the habits and preferences of your target audience. Figure out which platforms are most popular among your target audience and focus solely on those couple of channels. 

For example, if your product is focused on teenagers, then you’ll find a lot more success if you choose channels such as Instagram, Snapchat, and Tiktok rather than something like Facebook.

Some social media platforms are great for your marketing channel strategy because they come with built-in e-commerce options. For example, you can use Instagram to set up your online store right there. 

People can browse through your products on Instagram and make a purchase without ever having to leave the website. 

You can also use social media to drive traffic to your brand website. You can do this by adding a link to it within social media posts as well as within your social media bios for your pages. 

One problem you may run into with adding links is that some social media platforms such as Twitter come with character limits. That means you can only have so many characters within a single social media post. 

As you can probably imagine, adding a link to such a post can be tricky since the link will take up a lot of characters. This can sometimes leave you with very few characters to properly convey your brand messaging. 

One solution to this issue is to use a link shortener. 

To shorten your link through Pixelfy, register an account and log in.

Step 1: You’ll be at the dashboard page once you log in.

From here, you can check out insights and analytics from the links you shortened using Pixelfy in the past. 

You also get access to the fast shortener box located at the top of the page.

Step 2: To shorten any link that you’d like to include within your social media posts, simply copy the link and paste it into the fast shortener box. 

Click the Shorten button to go to the next page.

Step 3: On the next page, you’ll get the shortened URL which will have a lot fewer characters compared to your original link. 

You can use this shortened link within any of your social media posts. 

Email Marketing 

Email marketing campaigns can be extremely effective if done properly. 

You have to spend some time populating your email list that you can gather through surveys and sign-up forms on your social media pages and your website. 

Once you have a sizable email list of individuals that’d be most likely to be interested in your product(s) and/or service(s), you can start to develop email campaigns. 

These could involve content that showcases the key features of your latest products. You could also have limited discounts or exclusive offers for the people that you send these emails to. 

This can give them a great incentive to check your brand out and maybe even make a purchase. 

Furthermore, it’s a technique that can be used to nurture relationships between consumers and possibly turn them into long-term loyal customers for your brand. 

Collaborations with Marketing Channel Partners 

One of the best ways to break into a particular marketing channel when you are new to it is to collaborate with someone who is already established in it. 

Any brand within the same niche or an individual that is a prominent figure within the industry can be suitable for you to do collaborations with. 

These can be PR efforts to promote your products and services, their products and services, or both. You can also have incentives for customers as part of your collaborative efforts such as discounts, exclusive offers, giveaways, and more. 

How to Create an Effective Channel Marketing Strategy?

In this section, we’ll provide some tips you can apply to your own business in order to create an effective channel marketing strategy for your brand. 

Keep in mind that a channel marketing strategy is a part of your overall marketing strategy and dictates what channels you will use for marketing. 

Many of the steps involved to determine an effective channel marketing strategy are steps that you will take to develop your overall marketing strategy anyway. 

These steps are: 

Step 1: Conduct Extensive Market Research 

When it comes to market research, you have to research both your target audience as well as your competitors. Both of these entities can give you important clues related to which channels would provide the best results for your business. 

First of all, you have to look toward your target audience. These are the individuals that would be most interested in the product or service that you are selling. Depending on your niche, what you have to offer will not be appealing to everyone. 

Hence, you have to figure out what type of people would be most responsive to your brand messaging and choose to interact with your ads if they see them. 

It can be a good idea to develop a buyer persona for your brand. A buyer persona is a fictional representation of the ideal buyer for your brand. You can determine different traits and characteristics for them to figure out which platform they would frequent most. 

Some traits you can choose to describe include: 

• Age
• Gender
• Income
• Marital status 
• Geographical location 
• Hobbies and interests 

If you’re having trouble figuring out which platform to choose through your target audience’s habits, you can look towards your competitors. 

What are the platforms that your competitors are most active on? 

Depending on your niche, there’s a high chance that the target audience for your competitors and your brand overlap. You can definitely get an idea of which platforms are the best when you study your competitors to check what channels they focus on the most. 

Another thing you can keep an eye out for is to look for platforms where your target audience is present but very few of your competitors are.

This can be key as you can find channels that have not been taken advantage of by any of your competitors yet. You can then set up your own marketing posts on those platforms and gather an audience for your brand uncontested. 

Step 2: Choose Channels According to Your Content 

One other factor you must keep in mind apart from target customers and competitors is the type of content you intend to create. 

If your content creation team can make all different types of content, this won’t be too big of an issue. However, if your team or your niche necessitates a certain type of content, you have to choose the marketing channel strategy accordingly. 

For example, a platform like Snapchat would not be the best choice if you intend to make long-form videos or text content. 

A platform like Facebook would not be ideal if you intend to make mainly text content for your brand. 

Even if your target audience is present on these channels, it would still not be the right choice since you’d be limited by your content type. 

Hence, you have to make the best decision based on: 

• Your competitors 
• Your target market 
• The type of content you want to create 

When you first start out, focus on only one or two platforms at most. Once you start to generate sizable revenue from them, you can expand into other platforms.

Wrapping Things Up… 

That’s how a marketing channel strategy is constructed and how you can plan to choose the best one based on your niche and competitors. 

There are a bunch of options you have in terms of running marketing campaigns according to your marketing channel strategy. This includes paid ads, organic ads, collaborations with channel partners, and much more. 

If you have any confusion or questions, please reach out to us in the comments section below. Check out complete guides on marketing and branding on our blog.