The 8 Best Brand Marketing Channels For Your Business

To build a successful business, you need a brilliant brand marketing strategy. But to drive the best possible outcomes, choosing effective brand marketing channels is also equally important.

Marketing channels act as a vessel between you and your audience. They help you reach more people and increase awareness around your products and services. This way, brand marketing channels facilitate the seamless exchange of information between your brand and your consumer base.

So, making an informed choice here is absolutely crucial to achieving profitable business outcomes. For that, companies need to understand brand marketing channels and how it affects their brand.

In today’s article, we will discuss the ins and outs of brand marketing channels and how you can choose the ones that will work for you.

Definition of brand marketing channels

A marketing channel is a set of people, organizations, and activities that work together to transfer goods (products and services) from the point of origin to the point of consumption. Businesses use different types of marketing channels for different purposes.

For example, product marketing channels focus on promoting a particular product range. However, brand marketing focuses on endorsing your brand in its entirety. It creates buzz around your brand image and makes you relevant to your target market. This, in turn, brings you new customers and increases ROI.

In its essence, brand marketing acts as a platform that helps businesses communicate with their target market efficiently. They should seamlessly deliver your message as a brand, help you achieve your marketing objectives, and give you enough data to measure your success.

Types of brand marketing channels

Here are the top 8 types of brand marketing channels your business should consider:

1. Social media

In this increasingly digital world, social media is a place where people across the globe come together. According to reports, there are roughly 4.74 billion social media users around the world, which equates to 59.3% of the total global population. Leveraging social media offers brands an immeasurable potential to reach out to new customers and drive brand visibility.

That’s why social media is now the most popular brand marketing channel across industries. Whether you run a B2B brand or B2C company, prioritizing your social media presence will help you sustain a profitable business.

For B2B companies, a proper LinkedIn profile helps in building industry connections. You get to interact with business-minded people, learn from the experts, and enhance your brand visibility in a crowd full of potential customers.

For B2C brands, reaching out to individual customers take priority. Hence, it makes sense to focus on social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, etc. Reports back it up by referring to Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube as the highest social media investments for B2C brands.

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2. Email marketing

Besides social media, another common element among the modern population is email. How many people without email addresses do we actually know? Not many.

That’s what makes email marketing a powerful way of engaging with audiences who have shown interest in your product, service, website, or brand. It allows you to build meaningful connections with both your existing customers and prospective leads.

You can use email marketing to keep your customers updated on your brand and deliver personalized marketing pitches with high conversion rates. All you need to do is to create an email list and schedule strategically designed and compelling emails.

You can use email marketing to send them welcome messages and follow up on abandoned carts with persuasive emails. Delivering attractive offers, freebies, and vouchers through emails will also help you pique their interest in your services.

3. Content marketing

In the digital marketing space, content is king. Customers don’t get excited by salesy advertisements anymore. To promote your brand, you need to offer value and knowledge.

When you curate content that helps your audience navigate their problems, it shows your expertise in the field. You can subtly show how your product brings them effective solutions without nagging them with “buy” messages.

This type of brand marketing is centered on consistently distributing valuable information through engaging blog posts, videos, infographics, e-books, case studies, interviews, white papers, etc.

Developing entertaining content will not only increase your reach but will also attract specific segments of the market with high conversion rates.

Depending on the industry, companies use content marketing to:

• Establish reputation and expertise in the field
• Offer pre- and post-sale information
• Generate leads
• Retain customers

4. Influencer marketing

Influencers are dominating the social space right now, and they are here to stay.

Want to outshine your competitors and gain a loyal following? The smarter way to go is to jump on the bandwagon of influencer marketing.

Brands across industries are using influencer marketing for:

• Sponsored content
• Product collaborations
• Product reviews
• Giveaways and competitions
• Platform “takeovers”

Influencers are people with a dedicated social media following and a significant engagement rate. So, they hold the power to make an impact on their buying decisions. When you collaborate with them and get them to endorse your products on their channels, you reach out to their followers.

5. Advertising

Although a more traditional approach to marketing, advertisement still remains a very potent method of reaching out to the target market. You can run both online and offline advertisements depending on your requirements.

The majority uses the internet — but the word “majority” does not include everyone. To make your marketing efforts more robust, invest in offline advertising as well. There is a wide audience demographic that you can reach this way.

Some of the popular offline advertisements methods include:

• Billboards
• Business cards
• Giveaways at fundraisers and local events
• Cold calling
• Print advertising, etc.

You can also choose to run online advertisements on Google, Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, and individual websites. These are cheaper than offline advertisements. You can also leverage the excellent analytics systems available to measure the success of your online ads.

6. Event marketing

Event marketing is an experimental brand marketing channel that promotes brands, products, and services through memorable experiences and dedicated events.

Live events offer companies the opportunity to connect directly with the target audience and communicate their message. These create effective public relations and put your brand into a positive spotlight.

The event marketing method is particularly popular among B2B brands. According to Forrester Research, events make up 12% of the B2B marketing budget.

7. Partnership marketing

Partnership marketing is two brands collaborating to run joint campaigns that benefit both of them. This approach amplifies your reach by communicating to the audience of your partner brand.

Make sure you partner with brands whose products compliments yours. This will establish your credibility and reputation in the space. Some of the partnership marketing methods include:

• Referral partnerships
• Resell partnerships
• Charitable partnerships
• Joint products
• Sponsorships
• Co-hosting events, etc.

8. Customer service and support

Another effective brand marketing channel is well within your traditional responsibilities as a company. Offering consistent and personalized customer service will portray your brand as a responsible service provider. Your existing customers will trust your products and services and endorse you among their family and friends.

Treating your customer service as a brand marketing channel drives you to constantly improve your services while turning your customer base into your brand advocates.

Choosing the right brand marketing channels

While there are several brand marketing channels with great success rates, you don’t have to adopt each one of them. In fact, a haphazard focus on every imaginable marketing channel can result in failure.

Thus, you need to choose brand marketing channels that offer the best results for your industry.

Here is how:

The target audience and their preferences

You can only choose the right brand marketing channels when you know where your targeted audience roams. So the first step you need to take is to conduct thorough research on their digital presence and understand what they expect from you.

This will help you target brand marketing channels capable of offering the best range of your target market. When you have a thorough understanding of their pain points, you can curate content and emails to pursue them.

For example, if your brand targets the teen population, LinkedIn may not be the best channel for you. Here, Instagram or TikTok will bring you desired outcomes.

Similarly, sending out emails to a customer with vouchers irrelevant to them will only harm your marketing agenda.

Personalization is the key here, so your choice of brand marketing channels should seamlessly align with your audience’s presence and preference.

Before you decide on a brand marketing channel, find answers to the following questions:

• Where does my audience base spend time online?
• What type of content and topics are they interested in?
• How do they consume content?
• Who do they follow regularly?

The brand's message and values

The channel you choose should highlight your brand’s values and mission. Consumers get bombarded with media clutter every day. To get noticed, your marketing strategy must leverage the message your brand wants to send.

For example, if you sell body-positive apparel for women, your brand marketing channel should be able to reflect that value and reach that segment of the market.

To identify brands capable of delivering your brand message, you can run a competitor analysis. That will help you see the channels that align with your industry.

The budget and resources available

Another important element to consider before choosing a brand marketing channel is your marketing budget. Mapping out a plan only to find out that it surpasses your resources will just be a waste of time. So it's better to weigh your options from the finance perspective.

While there are a few free or cheap options, some marketing channels are much more expensive than others. For example, you can run social media marketing with no significant investment. On the other hand, advertising on billboards demands quite some expenses.

Here you need to strike a balance between your budget and the prospective ROI of the brand marketing channel. Posting on Facebook, Instagram and YouTube is free. But to deliver high-performing content through these channels, consider investing in developing an effective SEO strategy. If you are using videos, ensure high-quality productions.

Here are a few expenses you should consider while mapping your marketing budget:

• Developing an in-house marketing team outsourcing expertise
• Content creation, web design and development, and strategy
• Marketing tools and software
• Paid advertising
• General expenses for each digital marketing channel

The goals and objectives of the marketing campaign

You need to have clarity in your marketing objectives to choose effective barn marketing channels. No matter what channel you choose, if you don’t know what you want to achieve, the chances of your success are next to nothing.

Thus, start by setting SMART (specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and timely) marketing goals. Your goals will help you identify the right channels for your business.

Is it your goal to establish your brand as an expert in the industry? Head to LinkedIn.

Do you want to reach out to a younger crowd? Use YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok.

If your aim is to build personal and regular connections with your audience and develop an effective follow-up strategy, email marketing is your best option.

Conclusion

Every product in the market has several alternatives. To become a successful business, you must keep your relevance intact as a brand.

Your brand marketing channels define the success of your campaigns. That’s why choosing the right one should be one of your paramount concerns.

Not every available option will work for you. So make sure you conduct ample research on your audience, your competitors, and the market standards before choosing a marketing channel.

However, differentiating between different types of marketing channels can seem confusing. To understand the intricacies, you need to go beyond theoretical learning.

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