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So what is channel strategy, and why is it so important? A lot of marketers talk about marketing being more than just advertising in the form of TV ads or billboards, but they rarely explain how those advertisements are placed for your business and what channels you use to promote yourself.
Channel strategy refers to all of these factors – where your business advertises through various media, the types of media that advertise your business, and the timing of these advertisements.
It’s crucial to know this information because it impacts not only your own company’s success, but also the success of other companies competing for the same attention as you.
If someone else in your industry is doing well, they probably have good channel strategies too! You can pick their brain on what worked for them, and find out some tricks of their trade.
There are many ways to develop your own channel strategies, however, it always comes back to two things: research and experimentation.
Research means finding out what has worked before for similar businesses, while experimenting means testing different versions of an advertisement, media site, or overall campaign to see which one works best.
This article will go into detail on each part.
A marketing strategy is a plan of action to gain exposure for your product or service. It is usually focused on finding new customers, promoting products, increasing sales, or improving audience engagement.
Most companies have a set internal marketing strategy that includes things like keeping an eye on social media, producing solid advertisements, and conducting direct promotions.
Externally, they may focus on growing their followers on various platforms, investing in advertising, creating engaging content, responding to comments and messages, etc. These are all part of what we refer to as channel-specific strategies.
Channel specific strategies relate directly to one another and to the overall marketing strategy. For example, if your company’s main goal is to increase its online presence through social networking, then developing a strong Instagram account is integral to that.
It is important to consider how each individual platform can help you achieve your long term goals. For instance, by posting pictures and encouraging conversation, you will gather more attention and influence on Instagram, which can be leveraged into other sites and opportunities.
A channel strategy is something that focuses on which channels will help your business reach its marketing goals. For example, if your goal is to increase online sales, then choosing a well-known website design company over another means investing in social media, TV commercials, billboards, etc.
Based on what we discussed earlier, this makes sense. Having more channels of communication can boost exposure for your product or service!
By having different mediums used to promote your products, you’re giving people a way to access them. This helps your potential customers find you!
But how do you choose which ones are needed? That’s where market research comes into play. You have to determine whether there’s enough interest in a given channel before investing in it. If so, then invest! And don’t spend all your money quickly!
Plan out your budget properly and test the effectiveness of each one until you find your sweet spot.
A successful marketing strategy is one that creates strong relationships with your audience, consumers, and even competitors.
This relationship can be through direct engagement (speaking to them about their concerns or questions), indirect engagement (writing about products and services they want) or passive engagement (seeing how you can benefit from their business by reading an article).
Relationship building is a process that takes time, but it will not stop until it has invested in you – the marketer. You must remain engaged with what you have chosen as your field of influence -– whether it's via social media, website content, advertisements, etc.
It is important to remember that no one ever made a profit alone, so think of ways to help others succeed before asking for something in return.
As I mentioned before, marketing is about communication and relationships, so how you approach your market and what messages and strategies you use depend on who your audience is.
This brings us back to our initial discussion of marketing strategy, which was defining what kind of business you have and who you want to be in that business. By doing this, you’ve already determined if and how much of an emphasis you will place on creating relationships with others or products.
If your company focuses more on helping other companies grow, then your channel strategy will emphasize growing your followers, supporters, and customers. If they are spending lots of money on your product, then your channel strategy should focus more on providing great service and supporting them, keeping them coming back!
As we discussed earlier, staying connected through various channels and systems can help promote your brand and expose it to new people, which is important for growth.
As we mentioned before, creating a strong marketing presence starts with defining your market and creating an understanding of who your customers are. This is particularly important in the era of digital technology where you have more opportunities than ever to reach out to people!
After defining your target audience, the next step is establishing what makes you different from other brands in that market. What sets you apart? What value do you provide for your consumers?
This is referred to as your brand or product value. Many times, however, people get stuck here because they don’t know what to include about their product or service. More often than not, companies use keywords to describe their products and services.
By including the right keywords, you are giving false information to your potential clients.
When defining your marketing strategy, you must first determine who your target audience is! This will change depending on what products and services you are offering with your business.
For example, if you own a shoe store that offers only leather shoes, then your target audience would be people who like buying expensive shoes.
If your service or product can be either cheap or expensive, then your target audience could be anyone as long as they are not budget conscious.
By having no defined target audience, your company would not know who to aim its advertising at and how to spend money effectively. You would also lack goal orientation because your company would not have one.
One of the most important things you can do as a marketer is know who your audience is. You should consider yourself very lucky if you have an established brand that has loyal followers, because that’s probably already done their marketing for them.
If you’re trying to break into the marketplace with new products or services, you will need help spreading the word about yours. This article will talk more in depth about how to identify your target audience and what types of media you can use to spread the message.
Your target audience makes up part of your overall marketing strategy, so it is extremely important to understand who they are and what appeals to them.
While some marketers may think that marketing is just about telling people about your product, this isn’t quite true. Sure, part of what we call “marketing” is telling people about your products and services, but it goes much deeper than that.
Marketing includes things like developing strong relationships with others in the organization or within the community, creating content to spread awareness of your company and its offerings, finding ways to promote these products through social media channels and advertising, and more.
All of these activities are part of what we refer to as “channel strategy.” They all relate back to our initial definition of marketing as having something to do with how you communicate with potential customers.
But aside from educating consumers, channel strategies also include other actions, such as promoting your brand at events, offering reward programs for customer purchases, etc.
