A guide to the top marketing channels in 2024

A guide to the top marketing channels in 2024

As a business operating in the 21st century, you can not deny the importance that digital marketing strategy holds in establishing a strong presence in a marketplace. 2024 is the year of even more digital advertising and marketing growth due to the sheer number of people who have turned to online platforms to discover and engage with brands. A whopping 97% of consumers turn to a company’s online presence before choosing to purchase or visit. It’s simple to see that creating a robust digital marketing strategy is critical to helping your business grow online. With customers relying on online platforms for transactions, it has never been a better time for brands to work on their online visibility and presence but the journey to achieving that is tough and as a business owner, you might even need a digital marketing consultancy to help you in the endeavour. So, if you want to know how to go about marketing channels and implementing them by yourself, the KW Marketing team has you covered.

In this guide, we’ll do a deep dive into the different kinds of marketing channels — traditional and digital — that you can leverage to boost your brand’s performance. What’s more, we’ll also discuss how you can go about choosing the right marketing channel for your brand based on the goals and results that you are looking to achieve.

Looking forward to knowing more? LET’S GO!

What is a Marketing Channel?

It goes without saying that in your life, you have probably encountered a marketing channel at one point or another. But as a business owner for a brand deciding on how to best market your product or service, the term ‘marketing channel’ can seem slightly confusing or complicated. See, the marketing world is full of jargon – but we’re here to guide you through.

So, let us first understand the definition of a marketing channel. A marketing channel is any platform or medium that you can use to market your company, products or services to your target audience. Marketing channels help you place your products or service at the consumption stage i.e. the point of purchase.

Examples of marketing channels include social media platforms, search engine optimisation (SEO), websites, print marketing, and email marketing channels among several others.

You can see now how you may have easily come across a marketing channel without realising what it is. So, let’s take a look at why it is essential to your business.

Why are Marketing Channels Important?

The primary goal of marketing channels is to take your goods from the point of origin to the point of consumption by consumers. They attempt to create a connection between companies/organisations and consumers.

When a company aims to launch a new product or service, the first thing to consider is creating a marketing mix that will bode well for the brand. The crucial Ps of a marketing mix are — Product, Price, Place and Promotion.

Basically, the company will need to first ensure that the product they develop is one that the consumers want to purchase, and set a price that is viable for them. Next, the brand will need to consider where the product or service will be sold — online or offline. If offline, then what kind of physical location should the company opt for.

The last factor in consideration here is promotion. This is precisely where marketing channels come into the picture. If you have an online business, your focus should be on leveraging digital marketing channels, and other businesses can alternatively leverage traditional channels.

Following us so far? Great!

Now, let us take a look at the different types of marketing channels that are available for companies to leverage in their strategies.

The difference between digital and traditional

As discussed so far, marketing channels are how companies can connect and effectively market to consumers. Such channels can be classified into two main categories — traditional and digital.

Your marketing channels will largely depend on your business and sales models. Based on these factors, you can then figure out appropriate channels of marketing.

What is a Traditional Marketing Channel?

Let us start with understanding what a traditional marketing channel is.

As we briefly mentioned earlier, businesses that follow a more traditional model often opt for traditional marketing channels. But that is not all — brands and companies that are growing and scaling up can also make use of these marketing channels to strengthen their promotional efforts.

Put simply, traditional marketing channels are those that result in materials that appear offline. Traditional marketing is definitely a crucial tool in connecting businesses that operate at physical locations with prospective customers. Essentially, traditional marketing channels help businesses reach customers that are spending time away from their smartphones and computers. The more thought you put into the placement of these traditional marketing materials, the better the odds of attracting more attention from your target customers.

When leveraged properly, traditional marketing channels can help brands elevate their marketing strategies significantly, and even help you reach out to that segment of the audience that is otherwise inaccessible through digital channels.

Some of the primary advantages that your brand can get from print advertising are that they are more memorable, they are easily understandable and impactful and lastly, most of these materials have higher permanency. Having said that, some of the disadvantages associated with print advertising are that it is more expensive, makes it difficult to measure the result of the campaigns, and does not involve much customer interaction.

What are the Different Types of Traditional Marketing Channels?

By now, you may have a great understanding of what marketing channels are, how traditional marketing channels fit into your strategy and the pros and cons associated with them. Let us now delve deeper into the different types of traditional marketing channels so that you can effectively use the best suitable ones to your advantage.

Print Advertising

When you are a budding brand that is new on the block, creating awareness of your existence and offerings is one of your primary goals. Print advertisements help you do just that. Print advertising involves raising awareness about your brand by placing advertisements on mediums such as newspapers and magazines.

Remember, you will have several options when you look to leverage print advertising. However, choose those publications that align best with your brand offering, and are most likely to be read by your target audience.

Print advertising is good for all kinds of companies, specifically ones that are looking to make a dent through their physical location.

Radio

If you think radio advertising is not as effective as it once used to be, you are not completely wrong. But it definitely comes with its share of advantages. Radio advertisements are still one of the primary channels to consider for attaining local recognition. You can promote your brand as well as products effectively through the radio as long as you have a definitive and impactful copy. A captivating and engaging radio ad is just as important as any others – focus on creating intrigue and curiosity. What’s more – creating an evergreen radio ad that will be good to use for a long time can save money in the long run. As always, pay attention to the timing and placement of the ad.

Radio advertising is good for brands that operate at physical locations and want to target a local audience.

TV

As traditional marketing channels, radio and television advertising typically go hand in hand. Television advertising follows the same logic as radio advertising, with an additional and more prominent visual element. As of 2026, it is estimated that there will be over 5.68 billion TV viewers across the globe.

If you aim to be a global brand, there are quite a few perks that you can gain by opting for television advertisements. Broadcasting your brand to such a wide audience raises the odds of people taking notice and researching your company and products. Take the yearly Christmas ads that we all get excited for year on year! Look for opportunities to create a memorable signature character or theme in the tv advertisements and you’ll have content to come for years on end. This marketing channel is best for brands that have a bigger advertising budget and want to attract a wider audience — possibly nationwide.

Billboards

Billboards are everywhere, aren’t they? That’s precisely why you should consider advertising on them. Billboard advertising is a proven way to be present at multiple locations and be visible to a wider audience. Billboards generally combine images and copy to create highly engaging and attractive visuals.

The most important thing — it should be absolutely memorable for the audience. Also known as outdoor advertising, billboards are a great way to portray your brand’s creativity as well. This advertising is best for all kinds of brands that want to get more visibility and want to be memorable for customers.

Direct Mail & Newsletters

If you use emails regularly, you may invariably come across mail from companies that simply drop into your inbox to introduce themselves. This is the power of direct mail, except they are in the physical format.

With the help of direct mail, you can stay in touch with customers who live in the vicinity of your business or have interacted with your business in any capacity. Before online forms and websites were a thing, businesses used to collect names, and contact details of customers so that they can stay connected.

Brands mail printed materials such as letters, postcards, and brochures to customers to either introduce or promote their products. Such materials can also help you make them aware of your location, offerings and the convenience they have by deciding to buy from you.

Even though it may sound too traditional, know that coordinating digital and direct mail increased the response rate by 63%, website visits by 68%, and leads by 53%. Win, win and winning!

Events & Trade Shows

Event marketing has by and far been a consistent strategy to market brands, products and services alike. The format and actual event may change based on the industry, however, the production of materials for such events is also a necessary tool.

Whenever you walk into a conference or trade show, you will find yourself bombarded with fliers, catalogues and brochures. For a person who belongs to the industry, these materials are necessary to get the extra information. This marketing channel is best for brands that have products which require demonstration and raising awareness.

But what is a digital marketing channel?

So far, we have discussed extensively the traditional means of marketing and the channels that you can use in the process. It is now time to shift our focus toward the digital. Digital marketing channels refer to those channels that can help you establish better communication with customers. While different kinds of digital marketing channels offer various kinds of returns to brands, digital marketing channels can be the main driving force for brands that have or want to establish an online presence.

And the different types of digital marketing channels are…

It is time to now delve deeper into the different types of digital marketing channels. While there is no fixed pathway to marketing your brand digitally, knowing about the different ways to do it is definitely beneficial. So without further ado, let us understand the different types of digital marketing channels and all that they can contribute to your strategy.

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)

To make your website work effectively for your business, you need a little bit of extra help. We’re not just talking about hiring a very effective digital marketing consultancy (Hi!); we are talking about a term that has revolutionised digital marketing — SEO.

Over 90% of online experiences start with a search engine. So, making a mark on the search engines is absolutely crucial for any business that wants to succeed in the digital space. This is where SEO comes to your rescue.

SEO includes a set of strategies that are aimed at optimising your website and all your digital marketing efforts so that your company can rank in the organic search results. SEO has by and far proven to be a more time-tested and sustainable strategy than paid campaigns in generating a long-term impact.

Showing up as a top search result for questions or queries that your target audience has related to your product or service is just the thing you want to put your brand on the map. You always have the option of having an expert digital marketing consultancy take care of this for you, but in case you want to implement SEO on your own, here are a few tips that you can follow:

Quick Tips

  • Integrate the right keywords and empower your content to perform better
  • Build relevant and high-quality links for your content, on authoritative websites
  • Ensure that your website is always up-to-date in terms of technical features and requirements and focus on delivering a seamless website experience to customers.

SEO as a digital marketing channel is best for brands that want to have higher visibility in the organic search results and establish a strong digital presence.

Content Marketing

Any brand that has a website has heard about the superpowers of content and content marketing. The age-old practice of bombarding customers with “call to buy” emails and messages rarely works anymore.

Instead, customers now prefer brands that support the various stages of their buying journey with relevant content. This strategy of marketing your brand and its offerings with the help of creating and distributing valuable content is known as content marketing.

Your content marketing strategy can use several formats and target a wide range of goals for your brand. You can use content to raise awareness among customers, generate leads or in some cases, even prompt customers to buy your product or service.

Content marketing can perfectly complement your SEO strategy, which is probably why more than 57% of companies have a documented content strategy.

Quick Tips

  • Have a long-term focus when you are trying to develop your content marketing strategy
  • Content marketing works best when clubbed with other marketing strategies
  • Produce highly valuable content that assists customers with each stage of their buying journey

A content marketing strategy is best for brands that want to develop credibility and visibility organically in the long run.

Social Media Marketing (Organic)

It would not be an actual list of marketing channels without mentioning social media platforms. The word on the street right now is that brands need to invest extensively to make a dent on social media channels. But the truth is far from it. You can create quite a bit of impact with the help of a solid social media marketing strategy as long as you know how to leverage it to your advantage.

As of 2024, there are over 5 billion social media users worldwide. While this statistic is not surprising at all, the lack of companies leveraging this growing opportunity definitely is. Today, the average person jumps across at least seven social media platforms every month.

With that in mind, companies that want to target this huge opportunity should have a consistent presence and activity on several social media platforms. Most importantly, social media marketing is the perfect way to engage with your customers and really understand more about their behaviour and needs.

Quick Tips

  • Have an organised strategy for social media, create a calendar and follow it religiously
  • Social media marketing strategies work best when combined with other kinds of digital marketing strategies
  • Get to know your target audience on social media platforms and post content that they will find useful.

Social media marketing is best for brands that are targeting a younger demographic and want to increase brand engagement

Email Marketing

Everyone today uses emails — one way or the other, which is why companies have consistently found it to be a successful marketing channel for quite some time. Email marketing is a tool using which companies can develop and nurture relationships with existing as well as potential customers.

Like other digital marketing channels, emails can be used for a wide array of purposes including raising brand awareness, keeping customers informed, and pushing higher product sales among others. It is also a great way to engage with customers who have shown interest in your brand or all that it has to offer.

Email marketing is such a preferred marketing tool because you can expect a return of £29 for every £1 spent that you spend on the strategy. But remember, just as you do with any marketing strategy, creating optimising content and providing value have to be at the top of your priority list.

Quick Tips

  • Personalise your emails as doing so increases the odds of your email getting opened and read properly
  • Do A/B testing with email drafts so that you can target maximum effectiveness from your email marketing campaigns
  • Write highly impactful subject lines and email copy to generate maximum results from your email marketing strategy

Email marketing is best for brands having a target audience that uses emails as the primary mode of receiving marketing messages and communication.

Influencer Marketing

Regardless of how good your brand or product/service is, you are going to need a good marketing strategy to back it up. And when you are looking to immediately get customers, you need influencers. This is pretty much how it works today.

Influencer marketing is a strategy that brands use where an individual who has expertise in their industry, is hired to try and vouch for the products or services offered by the brand. Influencers are termed so for a reason. They usually have a large social media following and significant engagement.

A typical influencer marketing campaign can be carried out in the following formats:

  • Sponsored Content
  • Product Reviews
  • Giveaways and Contests
  • Product Collaborations

You may have undoubtedly come across a few influencer marketing campaigns especially if you are active on social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram or TikTok.

Quick Tips

  • Do not rely just on the follower count of the influencers that you are associating with. Instead, use a combination of follower count along with engagement on their channel to find influencers who can bring about a real impact.
  • Ensure that the influencers that you pick are aligned with your brand values and voice.
  • Keep the content created by influencers subtle and not overly promotional or sales-oriented.

Influencer marketing is best for brands that want to cater to the masses and have a target audience that relies heavily on reviews and credible user feedback.

Word of Mouth Marketing

Admit it — every time you make a big purchase, you rely on someone’s expert opinion to ensure that you are making the right choice. It is not just you though. A study shows that people are 90% more likely to purchase a product that is recommended by a friend, simply due to the higher trust factor.

This is not a novel discovery, of course. But when you consider the plethora of mediums that you can use to discover a product, you can truly understand how powerful word-of-mouth marketing can be for your brand.

Word of Mouth Marketing (WOMM) is the result of targeted efforts by the brand, which results in an organic expression of satisfaction by customers. The primary factor of consideration here is experience sharing about a product, service or brand as a result of a successful marketing and sales strategy.

Even in the physically disconnected world that we live in today, social media platforms offer the perfect opportunity for customers to share their buying experiences and express them directly to their acquaintances and the brand itself.

And as stressed before — yes, it absolutely works!

Quick Tips

  • Enable user-generated content (UGC) for your brand by incentivising and encouraging customers to share their experiences
  • Utilise hashtags to your benefit by sharing them with your customers
  • Show off the customer reviews on the landing pages and web pages on your website

Linked to influencer marketing, word of mouth marketing is best for brands that have a highly valuable product or service that needs that extra promotional push to generate sales.

PPC Advertising

While taking organic means to marketing and advertising is a proven way to sustain any momentum that you generate for your brand, paid channels can help you generate a quick buzz around it.

Take PPC Advertising for instance. It is an online advertising model using which brands can get clicks from target users, wherein the advertiser will pay each time a user clicks on an ad. Essentially, this means you are buying the visits to your website – but this way of generating traffic is the perfect way to get things moving for your brand immediately.

Before you embark on a PPC ad campaign, it is crucial to figure out a specific bidding strategy as well as figure out a budget that works for your brand. Based on these aspects, you can then move forward with customising your target audience on the basis of interests, locations, and search terms.

Quick Tips

  • Target long-tail keywords to generate more value out of the traffic that you are getting
  • Have a strong attribution mechanism in place with so that you can derive the exact value that you are fetching from PPC advertising campaigns
  • A single CTA will be unable to generate the same kind of effect across different platforms such as websites, social media and search. Instead, using a wide range of CTAs can raise the odds of conversions more effectively.

PPC marketing is best for brands that want to see immediate boost in website traffic and higher conversions for a definite period of time.

Podcast Marketing

Having started out in the 2000s, podcasts have now become a strong marketing tool in recent years. Statista predicts that the number of podcast listeners worldwide will increase to 504.9 million in 2024.

That said, podcast marketing is the perfect tool for brands that want to increase awareness and grow their audience. One thing is sure — for a brand to grow using podcast marketing definitely takes time. And yes, simply creating a podcast for the heck of it all does not work either. There is a whole strategy involved in creating a valuable podcast for your brand and marketing it.

Podcasting does not just mean recording an audio episode for your listeners. It also includes a transcription as well as description which should ideally be optimised for SEO. With that in mind, it is important to have a clearly defined brand strategy associated with your podcast. We highly suggest listening to highly successful podcasts to derive inspiration and learn the craft.

For example, if you are a digital marketing agency that is looking to leave a lasting impression on your target audience, you have the opportunity to leverage podcasts quite extensively. Invite some of the most celebrated marketers worldwide and have them share their views on topics that may interest your target audience. In the long run, doing so can help you increase awareness as well as establish credibility.

Quick Tips

  • Audio descriptions should be transcribed and keywords should be integrated for the podcast
  • Focus on leveraging the audience of the guests that you invite on your podcast
  • Consider repurposing your podcast as a YouTube video to capture that extra audience

Podcast marketing is best for brands that have a lot of informative content and want to target top of the funnel customers.

But how do I pick the best digital marketing channel for my business?

By now you must have a deep understanding of all that marketing channels have to offer and the various ways in which you can take your traditional and digital marketing strategies to the next level.

We have also discussed the various different kinds of marketing channels that you can use for your business. It goes without saying that not all of them will be the right fit for your business. The ideal marketing channels for your business are more likely to be the ones that fit well with your goals and objectives. A digital marketing consultancy such as KW Marketing will help you to figure out your digital marketing strategy. It is important to choose wisely considering you are going to dedicate a great deal of time, money and efforts towards the marketing channels that you decide to utilise. So, make a smart investment and bolster your business to consistently outperform your competition by engaging a digital marketing consultancy.

Top 5 Effective Marketing Channels to Consider in 2024

We have covered quite a bit of ground when it comes to understanding all things marketing channels. What’s more, we have also delved deeper into the various types of marketing channels that you can explore as a brand, it is time to get more specific. In 2024, in the aftermath of a global pandemic, economic uncertainty and climate change, the way people related to brands, and engaged with them have changed significantly.

With that in mind, here are some of the most important marketing channels that you should consider including in your strategy in 2024 and beyond.

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)

As the world has become more and more digital, you see people relying more on search engines than ever before. What does this tell you?

You absolutely need to befriend search engines. And the proven way to do so is getting your SEO strategy right.

If you find yourself relying heavily on digital traffic, it is time to take a hard look at how SEO-friendly your website is. That would be your ideal starting point. Is your content optimised? Have you integrated high-performing keywords in your website content? Have you taken care of internal linking?

These are some of the most pertinent questions that you would need to ask while implementing SEO for your brand. But this is just the on-site SEO part of it. You will also need to check at the backend for adherence to technical SEO and ramp up your efforts in terms of off-site SEO. In terms of technical SEO, you might want to carry out a log file analysis to get important insights.

Off-site SEO refers to all the activities that you shall carry out outside of your website to boost your SEO performance. For instance, several brands rely on link building to acquire high quality backlinks to their websites.

Hence, in 2024 — do not ignore SEO and finally give it the importance it deserves for establishing a strong presence on search engines.

Social Media Marketing (Organic)

The next major marketing channel that definitely deserves your attention and investment in 2024 is social media marketing. Social media marketing can be a sustainable marketing strategy as long as you decide to build your presence and influence organically.

Social media marketing can bring you the traction that you are looking for as long as you take an organised approach to it. Brands today use social media platforms to increase brand awareness, drive website traffic and even boost their sales.

Social media marketing, when utilised right, can be a great tool for startups and small businesses. Plus, in the past couple of years, customers now expect brands to interact and engage with them a lot more on social media channels than ever before. You have to work hard and create a strong presence on these platforms to attract the relevant audience and users.

Email Marketing

As a brand, you must never underestimate the power of well-designed and creative email marketing campaigns. Emails are still one of the most popular communication channels used by brands, making email marketing quite an important marketing channel.

Furthermore, Statista predicts that email marketing revenue will reach over 17.9 billion by the end of 2027. It is the right time for brands to invest in creative content and graphics that can be integrated into emails. It is also the right time to consider including newsletters and email blasts to keep your customers updated and engaged.

Email marketing campaigns can be used to address a wide array of marketing goals such as nurturing of leads, and increasing customer engagement with the brand. With over 300 billion emails sent every day, your brand will need to invest in high-quality and creative content to stand out from the rest.

PPC Advertising

After discussing the various ways in which the above marketing channels organically contribute to your brand in 2024, let us look at a paid channel that may be just as effective. PPC advertising is a necessary marketing channel that brands that want to boost their brand momentum in a short span of time need to invest in.

With the increased competition in the digital space, and increased digital costs if you want to make an impact, brands need to consider a viable paid option to drive sales and conversions. PPC advertising does just that and more for brands that require that extra impetus immediately.

With PPC advertising, you have the added advantage of appearing prominently to your target users so that you can at least get a buzz going for your brand that you can later leverage on.

A digital marketing consultancy that you can rely on

We have talked quite a bit about marketing channels, the various types of it and all they have to offer for your brand. But remember, marketing channels can be quite useless if they are not the right fit for your brand. It is important to ensure that the marketing channels you choose are aligned with your brand and its goals so that you can reap the benefits. But if you are confused on where to start and how to benefit from these marketing channels, we get it. Get in touch with us today, and we would be LOVE to know more about your marketing goals and strategy.

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