What Channels Should I Use?
When you’re looking at how to market for your business, there are lots of different channels to choose from. If you don’t choose wisely then it can give you a lot of work to do with ineffective results, so which should you choose and how do you make your decision?
Firstly, know your target customer and where they’re likely to live online. If you don’t know who you customer is then you don’t know where they’re likely to spend time online, what they’re interested in and (to be honest) whether they want or need your product.
Once you’ve figured that out then I’d suggest you focus on one or two channels initially. This shouldn’t overload you with work but you’ll learn lots of valuable lessons and you’ll gather useful data you can use for your marketing strategy in the future.
Here are my recommendations for the channels you should start with:
Social Media
I love this image as it really cuts to the heart of what each social media platform can help you to communicate!
Personally, if you’re looking at starting a social media channel then you need to consider at least one of these big three: Facebook, Instagram and TikTok.
Facebook and Instagram are well established and still have a huge number of users. The flexibility of being able to share images and videos means that it’s not quite as much work when creating content. But they are prioritising pages using videos more in order to compete with TikTok. Plus they both have stores you can sell products from directly and their advertising platforms are pretty easy to use, so you can go further than just organic activity.
TikTok is relatively new to the social media space but it’s usage and popularity exploded during the pandemic, so this is a massive platform to explore if you’re a business that benefits from being shown over video. It also has a large proportion of younger users, which is good for future growth. The only downside is that you can only share videos, so it’s a lot more time intense to support. Having said that they do offer a ‘templates’ area where you can upload photos and it creates mini videos for you.
Then your other options for social media really depend on what business you’re running. LinkedIn, Pinterest, YouTube and Twitter can be beneficial but they need their own strategy as the usages are so specific. LinkedIn is more business focussed, Twitter is more commentary based, Pinterest has a strong lifestyle focus and YouTube is better for longer form content. These channels can work as supplementary support for your business but they need their own plan.
Other Channels
A couple of social media channels are a good place to start but eventually you’ll need additional avenues of communication to talk to existing customers and find new ones, so here are some things to consider:
Website - Creating a basic website for yourself to communicate your brand values, build your subscriber list and/or sell your products is incredibly important. It doesn’t have to be all singing all dancing at first. It’s pretty easy to create something basic yourself with templates from SquareSpace, Wix, GoDaddy and other similar companies.
Google - Setting up your business on Google makes it more discoverable when people are searching. You can also run Google ads to promote your website and give you a boost in those search engine results.
Email - Despite what research might say, email is still a huge channel for communicating with customers and selling products. If you build up the right subscriber list then this can be a great way to sell your products in a relatively cost effective way.
SMS / Messengers - Personally I’d only use SMS or messenger marketing for communicating with existing customers or people who’ve expressed an interest in your products once you’ve established yourself. Sending them a personal discount code for their birthday is a subtle but effective way to use this channel.
There are lots of other channels you can explore but when you’re starting up these are some key ones to investigate and explore in your first year. That’ll give you an understanding of what does and doesn’t work for your business. Then it’s up to you and how much work you’re willing to put in to make them work for you!