Choosing the Right Marketing Channel

What do you need to know to choose the right channel for your marketing efforts?

Facebook is a powerful marketing channel. So should you invest your marketing dollars in Facebook ads? And is e-mail marketing enough, or should you try marketing automation as well? How about Twitter and Snapchat? Worth it?

Maybe, but maybe not.

Choosing the right channel means determining where your target audience spends its time—which may be very different from where you want your audience to be. Many organizations focus on the “flavor of the month,” employing the buzzy marketing techniques without doing the work up front to establish the best ways to deliver their messages to their ideal customers.

Shooting from the hip is never a good idea.

Channels vs. Content

Another challenge for companies trying to grasp how to market their products and services is thinking that content is a channel.

Content is a deliverable of some kind—an article, video, white paper, brochure, website, advertisement, flyer, you name it—and a channel is a method through which you deliver your content to your audience. Marketing channels include social media, e-mail marketing and marketing automation, advertising in all its flavors, direct mail, and so on.

So how do you choose the right combination of channels through which to deliver your content to your key prospects?

Everything Starts with Your Marketing Strategy

The importance of a well-thought-out marketing strategy grounded in research pays dividends when selecting the right channel.

A solid marketing strategy determines the market landscape—including a competitive analysis, audience analysis, and market trends—that will help ensure you reach the right people in the right ways with the right messages and materials.

With this perspective, your marketing team can create solid content that it can deliver through the right channels to make a measurable difference to your return on investment.

Factors in Choosing the Right Channel

Each business is unique, and therefore the right mix of marketing channels for your company will vary based on several factors—all of which your marketing strategy and planning process will address.

In addition to considering the profile of your target audience—especially what it responds to best when it comes to channels—a good strategy will address the best options for your budget and will ensure that the channel aligns with your company’s market positioning and brand positioning. After all, if you have an up-market offering to sell, you don’t want to employ an overly casual channel with an informal feel.

So many options, so little time to assess them all? That’s when smart people get help. For help with choosing the best channels for your business, contact FrogDog today.