Despite the fact that Field of Dreams is one of my favourite movies, the adage “If you build it, they will come” is unfortunately not applicable to content marketing. We often overlook the fact that content marketing channels is made up of two words: content and marketing. The most gratifying and fun element of a marketer’s job is frequently creating content, but delivering that content is just as crucial.
After all, no one will come if they haven’t seen your content.
This is why it’s critical to understand marketing channels and determine which ones you should employ to leverage your content marketing objectives. In a nutshell, marketing channels refer to the many methods and platforms that you employ to engage with your target audience. While the decision to employ specific channels should be based on your audience insights, it’s also critical to understand the value of each channel.
The HubSpot Blog surveyed over 1,000 worldwide marketing experts working in B2B and B2C firms to learn more about the marketing channel’s that are being used by businesses today.
We’ll go over the findings in this post to help you understand how to increase your reach, resonance, and income while focusing on what matters most: your customers.
Focus on the Following Marketing Channels
- Use of social media
- Websites/Blogs
- E-mail marketing
- Marketing across several channels
- Video marketing
- Influencer Marketing
- SEM (Search Engine Marketing)
- marketing of Podcasts
- Marketing by word-of-mouth
The Most Effective B2B Marketing Channels
Social media, websites & blogs, & email marketing are the top channels used by B2B marketers, according to HubSpot data (as shown in the image below).
Because of LinkedIn, social media is the most popular digital marketing channel (which is reported as their most effective channel). It’s full with businesspeople, which is exactly who you want to reach as a B2B marketer.
Because consumers frequently rely on websites before making purchasing decisions, B2B marketers are likely to devote a substantial amount of work to website and blogging channels. A website is a wonderful way to transmit information to those involved in B2B sales.
Because of the ubiquity of websites, SEO is one of B2B marketers’ key marketing strategies. Customers will find your website if they search for terms directly relevant to what you offer and find it in the SERPs if you use keywords that are hyper-related to your business. Given that search engines are the most common way for people to learn about new products and services, and that Google receives 97,105 searches per second, SEO has enormous ramifications for businesses who use the strategy for advertising.
For B2B marketers, email is a valuable channel since it allows them to exchange educational content with their customers. In fact, 40% of B2B marketers believe that newsletters are essential to their success. Subscriber segmentation and message personalisation are the most effective strategies for sending emails.
B2B marketers should anticipate to continue investing in blogs and email marketing in 2022, while increasing their investments in social media.
The Most Effective B2C Marketing Channels
The top channels for B2C marketers are the same as for B2B marketers, but the order is different: social media, email marketing, websites, and blogs. Despite the fact that they employ comparable channels, B2C marketing is more concerned with providing entertaining content and quick answers than B2B marketing is with building long-term business connections with customers.
The focus on social media is likely due to the fact that 3.6 billion people used social media in 2020, with Statista forecasting a rise to 4.41 billion by 2025. B2C customer’s are likely already on social media as a result of this. Short-form video content and influencer marketing are two of the most popular social media trends used by marketers.
While most people identify email marketing with newsletters, it may also be used for B2C content such as tailored messages, timely announcements such as product debuts and sales, and cart abandonment emails to remind customers. Furthermore, email is a privately held media channel, which means no one is prescribing when, how, or why you should contact your prospects (but keeps in mind that customer’s will unsubscribed from oversaturation).
When it comes to websites & blogging, the two go hand in hand; blogging aids in brand awareness, driving traffic to your site, converting leads, and, most importantly, establishing yourself as an authority source. When you create your blogs with SEO in mind, you’ll be more likely to meet your marketing goals because you’ll appear in SERPs when customers search for content related to your business.
B2C marketers will maintain and increase their investments in websites/blogs, email marketing, and social media, similar to B2B marketers.
Omni-Channel Marketing
While it may focus that concentrating your efforts and investments on a single marketing channel is the optimal strategy, this is no longer the case. According to HubSpot data, 92 percent of marketers use more than one channel, and 81 percent use three or more.
This idea is endorsed by Neil Patel, CMO and co-Founder of NP Digital, who claims thats marketing is shifting its focus on All good channels eventually become overcrowded.” In 2022, brands will place a greater emphasis on all channels and become more omni-channel… It’s the only way to keep up with the competition.”
Content repurposing is a popular omni-channel marketing strategy, with 82 percent of social media marketers recycling content across several social channels. However, B2C businesses are more likely to use this strategy than B2B businesses.
Video marketing
If you haven’t considered video marketing yet, now is the time. Video may help you increase conversions, increase ROI, and build relationships with your audience. Video is the most popular media medium for marketers to use in their campaigns. Furthermore, 69 percent of consumers prefer to learn about a brand through video.
Short-form contents takes the cake for both B2B & B2C marketers when it comes to video creation, and they plan to increase their investments in the strategy for 2022. (29 percent of marketers even plan to leverage it for the first time). Facebook, YouTube, and Instagram are the most popular video sharing platforms, with Instagram being one of the most effective video marketing platforms.
Marketing with Influencers
When a business joins with a relevant, well-known creative in their sector to distribute commercials or specific pieces of content, this is known as influencer marketing. Influencer marketing is a valuable marketing channel, according to 71 percent of marketers who believe the quality of traffic generated by influencer marketing is superior to other ad formats. Using influencers to meet your marketing goals can help with brand exposure and social proof.
Consumers are losing faith in marketers, and they are avoiding content that is designed to generate sales leads. Instead, they put their person in influencers because they see them as people like them, especially when they have similar interests. Influencer content is a type of user-generated content, sometimes known as word-of-mouth marketing.
The strategy is effective for 53.6 percent of B2B marketers and 59.5 percent of B2C marketers who implement it. Your competitors are already distributing this high-trust, high-return content to their consumers, and you should follow suit. The return on investments ROI for influencer marketing is a plus, with a $5.78 ROI for every dollar spent. Marketers will continue to invest in the channel in 2022, with 87 percent aiming to maintain or increase their current levels of investment.
SEO stands for “search engine optimization.”
Search engines are also one of the most effective marketing channels, according to HubSpot statistics, with 56 percent of marketers saying it helps them meet their objectives.
This means that optimising all of your company’s current channels will almost certainly increase traffic and conversions. While a website may come to mind when optimising SEO, you should also consider your YouTube channel, Google Maps Google My Business page, blog, and even podcast episodes.
Consider using the pillar-cluster architecture into your blog to build a healthy organic presence online (35 percent of B2B and 59 percent of B2C marketers report it as an effective strategy). You’ll create a single pillar page that gives a high-level summary of a topic and links to cluster pages that go deeper into the issue’s subtopics, signalling to Google that your pillar page is an authority on the topic.
Marketers report that adopting a search insights report, optimising photographs or videos for visual search engines, and optimising load speed are all effective SEO techniques.
Marketing with Podcasts
Podcasts were listened to by 55 percent of Americans aged 12 and up in the last month, with 37 percent listening for an average of six hours each week. Because the demand for audio content has skyrocketed, podcasts are a good way to meet your audience where they are.
Podcasts and their hosts can not only help you develop a unique relationship with your audience, but they can also help you develop a unique relationship with your audience since episodes feel conversational and convey a more human side of your business.
Customers aren’t limited to listening to podcasts while staring at their phone screens, which allows for more engagement. Your ideal listener, for example, can listen to an episode in their car on their daily commute, while walking their dog, or while cleaning their house.
How to Start a Business Podcast is a featured resource.
According to neuroscientists, narrative is one of the most effective strategies to captivate attention and elicit emotional responses from customers. It will never change because the human brain is wired to demand, seek out, and respond to a well-crafted story.
Only one-third of marketers utilise podcasts or other audio content in their marketing strategies, but 53 percent of those who do claim it is the most effective media type. Furthermore, 51% of those who presently use the channel plan to increase their investment in 2022, while 26% of marketers plan to utilise it for the first time in the next year.
Marketing via word-of-mouth
70% of consumers believe that brand trust is more crucial today than it has ever been. Consumers now have less faith in businesses and the paid content they create than ever before. So, what’s an marketer to do when the individuals he or she is trying to persuade don’t believe in them? They must rely on their customers’ recommendations of their brand to inspire more customers to buy from them, a practise known as word-of-mouth marketing.
Because marketers have an objective, people trust other consumers more than marketers. They market their products and services in order to increase sales, but customers will only enthuse about a product or service that actually benefits them. Consider the following research findings if you’re still sceptical:
- Consumers believe a person who is similar to them (another consumer) is 14 percent more trustworthy than a brand employee.
- Peer-to-peer dialogues build trust in a brand more than sponsored advertising, according to 39% of consumers.
- When it comes to making purchasing decisions, 9 out of 10 consumers check reviews.
However, word-of-mouth marketing does not have to be limited to face-to-face interactions. Customers who are happy with your service, for example, will talk about you online, tell their roommates about it, and leave favourable reviews on your product pages. Only one of those examples requires a genuine in-person conversation, but they all involve consumers endorsing your brand’s trustworthiness and authenticity in order to inspire others to buy your products.
Create a customer experience that fulfils your audience’s needs and provide excellent customer service to encourage this form of marketing. To put it another way, you must put your clients’ demands ahead of your own.
Now it’s your turn.
Varied marketing channels provide different benefits, but most businesses can use a combination of channels in their marketing strategies to achieve their objectives.
Because your audience is likely to be diverse and dispersed, leveraging several channels allows you to create multiple points of contact, which will help you nurture leads and increase conversions.
