The goal of every business or startup is to generate revenue and make a profit. To achieve this goal, a ton of investment is made towards pushing the product or service to the target customer. Depending on your business goal and type of product/service, you would need to invest these resources into different marketing channels. The question now is – how do you know the best marketing channels for your B2B outfit?
If you are spending a million dollars on your advertising or marketing channels, you would definitely want to get a positive return on investment (ROI) for your efforts.
To achieve this positive ROI, you would need to invest in the best marketing channels for your business. In this article, I have curated a list of the best B2B marketing channels for your business in 2021.
This article would be a guide on how to make informed marketing decisions and also reduce losses.
What Are Marketing Channels?
Marketing channels can be defined as the avenues/mediums that businesses use to meet their target customer. Most of these channels are independent of each other but also walk hand in hand to ensure that the product reaches the end customer.
Marketing channels can occur in either of these four stages.
- Manufacturer to consumer
- Manufacturer to retailer toconsumer
- Manufacturer to wholesaler to retailer to consumer
- Manufacturer to agent to wholesaler to retailer to consumer
Before you start promoting your business via these marketing channels, it is important that you have a plan. Check out this in-depth guide from Moosend on creating a marketing plan.
What Are The Four Types Of Marketing Channels?
There are four main types of marketing channels. They include:
- Direct selling;
- Selling through intermediaries;
- Dual distribution; and
- Reverse channels.
Here is a little bit of information about each of them:
Direct selling
Direct selling is the marketing and selling of products directly to consumers away from a fixed retail location. Peddling is also the oldest form of direct selling.
Direct selling is different from direct marketing. In direct selling, sales agents reach out and deal directly with clients. While direct marketing involves an organization seeking a relationship with the customer without the aid of an agent or retail outlet.
Selling through intermediaries
This is a marketing channel where businesses use intermediaries such as wholesalers and retailers to make a product available to the customer. The chain is usually producer/manufacturer -> agent -> wholesaler -> retailer -> consumer.
Dual distribution
In this marketing strategy, businesses use more than one channel to simultaneously reach the customer. They may decide to sell to the customer directly, make use of intermediaries, or sell to other companies for resale.
A good example is where franchisors license it’s operation units to franchisees while simultaneously operating some of those units themselves.
Reverse channels
Unlike the first three channels that move from the producer to the consumer, reverse channels go in the opposite direction – from consumer, intermediary, to beneficial. A good example of reverse marketing channels is making money from the resale of a product or recycling.
Another difference between reverse channels and other traditional marketing channels is the introduction of a beneficiary. In the reverse flow, there is no producer. You only get the user or beneficiary.
What Is Omnichannel?
Omnichannel is the concept of using all of your channels to create a unified experience for your customers. It combines both traditional and digital channels, online and in-store experiences, and also point-of-sale channels.
What Is Omnichannel Marketing?
Omnichannel marketing is using digital and/or traditional marketing channels to send a relevant message to a brand’s customers regardless of the customer engaging with the brand, nor the channels used to engage.
The key difference between multichannel and omnichannel marketing is that with a multichannel marketing strategy, businesses send out the same promotional message to all its customers.
Omnichannel marketing, on the other hand, changes the messages and adapts it to how the customer interacted with other channels. This means that as the customer advances through the customer journey, the message would be automatically updated to suit the customer.
To learn more about multichannel marketing, check out this article by SendPulse on the basics of multichannel marketing. (You will learn what multichannel marketing is and the key multichannel marketing elements.)
17 Best Marketing Channels For Your Business
As a business owner, startup founder, or entrepreneur, here are the best marketing channels for your business.
1. Word of Mouth Marketing
The best marketers are satisfied customers. A satisfied customer would do more in creating awareness for your business than paid advertising campaigns.
Even further, most potential customers would trust the recommendation from another customer than paid brand marketers. Research has shown that only 4% of marketers are deemed trustworthy by customers. What this means is that for every 100 customers that are approached by a marketer, only 4 of them would trust the marketer enough to purchase anything from them. This number would surely lead to a negative ROI.
Why should this worry you?
You need trust to be able to convince someone to purchase anything from you. No customer would purchase a $1000 product from you if they don’t trust you.
Customers trust their fellow customers. Unlike marketers who sing the praises of a product because of the commission they would receive on making a sale, a customer would only praise a product if it benefited them.
You need to take advantage of this and create your own word to mouth marketing strategy.
How should go about using word of mouth marketing for your business?
In simple terms, you need to create a connection with your customers. Instead of just talking with them, convince your customers that your company values them. Show them that your main aim is to deliver the best product or service.
One way to do this is by providing amazing customer service. 58% of customers are more likely to spend more with businesses that provide excellent customer service.
Another research showed that people are more likely to share something on Facebook if it makes them feel good about themselves. So, making your customers your priority should be a part of your business strategy.
Any business can use referral marketing software to set up and manage their own referral programs to take their business to the next level. For further reading, learn how to ask for referrals from your customers.
2. Your Website
Your website is one of the most important marketing channels you have at your disposal. This is where most new customers would come to learn about the products or services you offer. Studies show that 81% of customers would make research online before making a purchase decision.
Having a website increases the chances of generating leads and making sales. Customers should be able to easily locate your company’s website when they search for it on search engines.
There are certain things you should consider when running a company website.
Make the site mobile responsive
In 2018, over 58% of website visits were from mobile devices and this number is growing exponentially. Most people are using their phones to surf the internet; so it is important that your business website is optimized for mobile. Not only that, having a responsive site will increase your website’s visibility in the SERPs.
Make it easy to find
Your website should be easy to find. The best practice is to use a domain name that is the same as your business name. You can also have multiple domains that describe your business but make sure they point to your main website.
Make it easy to navigate
Your website should be organized and easy to navigate. You can invest in a good theme like Astra if you do not have the resources to build a custom theme. Also, have a clear way for visitors to go back to your homepage no matter where this the visitor lands. This is because your homepage is where your main value proposition is.
Keep your website’s pages uncluttered
If a site has too much information, it overloads the customer’s mind, making it unable to retain the new information. Ensure that only information that adds value to the customer is on the screen. Also, balance the ratio between images and text. Remove clutter so that you can give the customer a good browsing experience.
PS: Another way to increase the leads you generate from your website is by running giveaways. Read this in-depth guide by Vyper on how to run viral blog giveaways
If you haven’t built a website for your brand yet, I have written an in-depth guide on how to create a website.
Tip: It is also important that you track your website’s visitors for a clear picture of where they are coming from. Doing this will help you adequately nurture your leads, improve customer experience, and optimize your overall sales process.
3. Social Media
Social Media is a significant part of every business strategy. There are over 2.95 billion social media users worldwide and this number is projected to grow to 3.43 billion people in 2023.
Your target customers are on social media media and it is important that you are active there. A lot of customers go to social media to make research on a business.
Social media offers several advantages for your business. Social media would increase the frequency, quality, and reach of your marketing. It is a very efficient and fast way to promote your business products, services, events, and any other marketing activities.
These are some of the reasons you should be active on social media.
Market from anywhere
One huge benefit of social media is that you can market your business from anywhere in the world. You can promote a new product, remind people of an event, and even educate your audience from any location.
Connect with your target audience
One of the most effective ways to interact with your target audience is via social media. It allows you to engage with them directly and immediately. It is also a more quality way of interacting with your audience. Instead of using traditional avenues like flyers and TV ads, you can converse with them directly on social media.
The Note: While most brands would concentrate on popular social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter, there are other social media platforms that are great for engaging with your customers. A good example is TikTok. With millions of users already using the platform, TikTok marketing should be a part of your business strategy.
4. Email Marketing
Unlike most forms of marketing, email is great for engaging with people that have already expressed interest in your brand. With email, you are able to reach these individuals directly. You can send updates regarding products, send newsletters, and upsell them on products and services. It is cheaper to sell to an old customer than a new one. In fact, it would cost you 5 times more to acquire a new customer than retain an old one.
Email also brings in the highest ROI of all the marketing channels. The reason is that these individuals willingly gave you their emails so they are more willing to do business with you.
Also compared to social media channels like Instagram, Facebook, or Twitter, Email has the highest click-through rates. Email averages around 3.42% click-through rate compared to Facebook and Twitter which averages 0.2%. With this incredibly high ROI, email should be a part of your marketing strategy.
Another advantage is that it is very cheap. Even if you don’t want to invest in a paid tool, there are a ton of free tools you can check out.
5. Content Marketing
When done correctly, content marketing is one of the best b2b marketing channels. Content marketing entails you telling the story that your audience is interested in and in a way that is useful to them.
For a brand to grow, they need to communicate their brand’s story in a way that the customer would understand.
This is a good definition of content marketing from CMI –
“Content marketing is a strategic marketing approach focused on creating and distributing valuable, relevant, and consistent content to attract and retain a clearly-defined audience — and, ultimately, to drive profitable customer action.”
The difference between content marketing and other traditional forms of marketing is that one offers the customers value and the other is just businesses trying to sell their products. Most times, the information from traditional marketing is not relevant and can be seen as spam.
The great thing about content marketing is that it works hand in hand with other b2b marketing channels. Regardless of your marketing tactic, quality content must be a part of the process. Whether it is PPC marketing, social media, email marketing, you need to invest in creating quality content that delivers value to the customer.
6. SEO
When it comes to acquiring new leads, search engines are one of the best marketing channels at your disposal. In fact, research shows that 89% of B2B buyers and 81% of online shoppers use search engines to research new products and services.
Most of your target audience makes use of Google to look for solutions to their problems. If you have properly optimized your content for search engines, these customers would easily find you online.
How does SEO work as a b2b marketing channel?
SEO is a marketing channel that helps you bring potential customers to the product and services you offer even when they don’t know how to find you. When people go through the search engines, they might come across your product listing and if it is convincing enough, they would purchase from you.
If your business model is just to serve the needs of your existing customers, then you don’t need SEO. But I doubt that there is any business that isn’t interested in acquiring new customers.
7. Podcasting
Right now, there are more than 850,000 active podcasts and more than 30 million podcast episodes online in over 100 languages. Not only that, over 165 million people in the US have listened to podcasts and 22% of them listen to it weekly. (Source)
A ton of people are gradually demanding for more audio content. The average person spends up to 14 hours weekly listening to their favorite podcasts.
Even though the demand for podcast shows has increased, nobody would listen to your show if it’s not interesting or delivers value. You need a show that is different from all the branded noise on the internet.
One way to excel at podcasting is by looking at the popular topics and interviews in your industry and making something better. When you host interviews, try to get the big names in your industry. The bigger the names, the more awareness and engagement your show would receive.
Even if you don’t want to run a podcast show, you can appear in other people’s podcast shows. This is another effective way to bring awareness to your brand. By appearing on other people’s shows, you introduce yourself to their audience.
If you are thinking of starting your own podcast show, I have written an article on the best podcast hosting services on the internet.
8. Pay-Per-Click Marketing
If you are looking for a marketing channel that would help you create awareness and generate sales fast, then PPC is the way to go. PPC or pay-per-clickis an internet marketing model where advertisers pay a fee whenever their ads are clicked.
Essentially, PPC is you buying visits to your site instead of waiting for those visits to occur naturally.
The two most predominant forms of PPC marketing are search engines advertising and social ads. The most popular of the two is search engine advertising.
Search engine advertising allows advertisers to place bids for ad placements on the sponsored links area of sea engines. When a visitor searches for a keyword related to an advertiser’s business offering, their ad would show at the top of the results.
Google Ads (formerly known as Google Adwords) is the most popular form of PPC marketing. This platform allows advertisers to create ads that show up on Google search engine or other Google properties.
For example, if you bid on the keyword “PPC software”, your result would show on the top of the search results when a user searches for that keyword on Google.
Every Time your ad is clicked, you pay a fee to Google. So let’s say you pay $3 for a click, but the click result is $300 per sale, you would make a huge return on your investment.
To be successful with pay-per-click marketing, these are some factors you should put into consideration:
- Keyword Relevance:You should bid on keywords that are relevant to your business offering. This would increase your chances of making sales
- Landing page quality:Create landing pages that are visually appealing, persuading, and with a clear call-to-action so that you can effectively convert the leads that click on your ads.
- Quality score:Quality Score is Google’s rating of the quality and relevance of your keywords, landing pages, and PPC campaigns. When you have a high-quality score, you will get more ad clicks at a lower cost.
9. Voice Applications
According to Comscore, 50% of all searches by 2020 would be voice searches. Whether it is through the use of Apple, Google, or Amazon, the use of voice applications is increasing.
The use of voice applications is a marketing channel strategy that not making people are looking at right now.
So how can you get started with voice search?
Target long-tail keywords:Most customers that use voice search would make their queries in the form of long sentences. So to capture these searches, you should create content that targets long-tail keywords. Also, optimize your titles and meta descriptions for speech.
10. Chatbot Marketing
Chatbot marketing is a marketing channel strategy where a computer application carries conversations with users with the help of AI and is used to promote products or services.
With the use of a chatbot builder, businesses can create a virtual assistant and add it to their website. You can also connect the virtual assistants to messenger apps like Facebook Messenger, Snapchat, and Whatsapp for increased accessibility.
One key benefit of chatbot marketing is that you can answer users’ questions as soon as possible. With chat messages, you can answer customer queries in a matter of seconds.
11. Text Messaging
Text messaging is an underutilized marketing channel strategy. It is an effective and cheap way to connect with customers that have shared their phone numbers with you.
Another form of text messaging is push notifications. Enabling push notifications ensures that your audience does not miss any of your content. Plus a target buyer opting for push notifications is a sign that they are interested in your product or service.
There are a ton of push notification apps that offer free tier services so you can check them out to see if they are an effective means of marketing.
12. Live Streaming
Live streaming is a viable marketing channel for your digital strategy. It allows your brand to reach your audience immediately, directly, and in real-time. It is a powerful means to communicate and entertain your audience through video communication.
There is now a growing number of streaming tools around the world to improve accessibility. Even social media platforms like Facebook are aggressively promoting their live stream capabilities.
The best thing about live video is that there isn’t any learning curve. All you need is to choose the platform of your choice. You can make use of Facebook, Instagram, or TikTok’s live streaming features to connect directly to your audience. All you need is a good camera (any decent phone or laptop would suffice), a microphone (if you want awesome audio), and someone who is comfortable in front of a camera.
13. Retargeting
Using retargeting strategies to reach your target audience can help you maximize the result you get from your lead generation campaigns. When your target audience views your retargeted ads, they are more likely to engage with your content.
According to CMO, 25% of online viewers enjoy seeing retargeted ads. Another report from Criteo showed that website visitors who are retargeted are likely to convert by 43%.
Retargeting works well because it allows you to target people that you have already reached with your marketing efforts in the past but haven’t converted yet. There are some individuals that might need that extra push before they would take the desired action.
There are several ways you can use retargeting to meet new customers. Some of these retargeting strategies include:
- Your Website Visitors:You can retarget ads to individuals that have visited your site in the past. This is the most effective retargeting method because these prospects are already familiar with your business and are more likely to convert.
- Internet Searches:There are several retargeting tools that can help you target prospects based on their internet searches. Search retargeting helps you to capture prospects with high purchase intent.
- Specific User Lists:You can create a custom list of people that you know are already interested in your product or service. Examples of such prospects are people that have subscribed to your newsletter.
- Lookalike Audiences:Advertising networks like Facebook and Twitter allow you to retarget new audiences that look like your site visitors (hence the name lookalike audience). They use factors such as age, gender, location, etc, to create this audience list.
14. Newsletter
Newsletters are one of the marketing channels that are easy to ignore. Even though there are more than four billion active email accounts in the world and the fact that it is 40 times more effective in acquiring new customers than Facebook and Twitter, not a lot of marketers are taking advantage of it.
Running an email newsletter helps you connect with your customers. It helps them know you better. Constant communication with your audience also increases customer loyalty.
Email newsletters can also help drive traffic to your website. Instead of waiting for people to reach your site organically, you can use an email newsletter to direct people to your website.
When running a newsletter, it is important that you use a strong call to action button just like this example from Parkrun.
15. Webinars
While webinars have been around since the beginning of the web, it is still one of the most effective marketing channels around. One significant advantage of a webinar is that it gives you an opportunity to be an authority in your field.
With webinars, you can create visually and informative content that is valuable to your customers. It offers you the opportunity to also interact and engage with your customers on a personal level.
Webinars are very effective in generating leads. While you can reach thousands of people with email marketing, you can’t really determine how many of them are engaged. With webinars, you can be sure that the people that register for your webinar would show some level of intent.
Webinars are also very cost-effective. Many of the tools are free and cheap. All you need is a good webcam, a good internet connection and you can reach a ton of people easily. Unbounce has a really great article on how to increase revenue using a webinar.
16. Whitepapers
Whitepapers should be a significant part of your content strategy. Here are some reasons why you should create whitepapers:
- Increases your company’s profile as thought leaders.
- Sets your brand away from competitors
- Effective means of lead generation
White papers remain effective because they combine the persuasiveness of an article with the product information of a brochure. They educate without selling. However,with the right tactics, white papers can be powerful salespeople.
When creating whitepapers, these are some factors you should take into consideration: Create whitepapers that are
- Rich, educative, and offers value. Not just sales documents
- Statistically sound and offers well-researched findings
- A clearly communicated point of view that is relevant to your industry and timely
- New innovative ideas that prompt thinking.
No matter the form of delivery you choose, ensure that you deliver content that offers value to the reader.
17. Augmented or Virtual Reality
Most marketers are used to the traditional mediums of digital marketing like social media and blog posts. While these channels work perfectly, improvement in technology has created more effective and immersive ways to reach customers in 2020.
In his annual post, Mark Zuckerberg claimed that virtual reality and augmented reality “will redefine our relationship with technology”. We can already see this happening through specialized VR training apps and AR games like Pokemon Go.
Studies from Tech Jury show that 67% of marketers want to see more ad spaces in VR and AR applications. 70 percent of consumers also say that augmented reality can also help them learn new skills.
CMI does a good job of explaining AR/VR storytelling for marketing.
Go find new B2B marketing channels!
We have seen a list of the best B2B marketing channels that you can try out yourself. Depending on your business goals, some of them would work better than others. The key is to perform regular AB testing until you determine the marketing channel strategy that works best for you.