How Do The Marketing Channels Stack Up?

Getting customers through the door, putting a powerful marketing message in front of the right people and picking the right marketing channels — all at the same time, can be challenging indeed.

Inviting the right prospects to visit your virtual home aka your website, blog, or social media profiles takes the concept of customer acquisition to a whole new level.

It sounds complex and overwhelming especially if you’re new to online marketing. However, if you have your fundamentals in place and that means: you know your customers, you have a strong unique selling proposition (USP) and you crafted a compelling marketing message that cuts through all the clutter and noise and reaches the right people — picking the appropriate marketing channels won’t be such a big deal after all.

In my previous blog post I shared with you three effective distribution and marketing channels.

Here’s a short recap

1. Owned media. This is where you’re 100% in control of the game. You own the messaging.
2. Earned media. Third-party publishers help you boost credibility and increase brand awareness.
3. Paid media. Guaranteed audience and highly-targeted. It requires knowing your target audience very well.

Let’s continue our marketing channels journey, shall we?

It’s time to move away from the helicopter view and have a closer look at four major channels: SEO, email, social and paid search to find out which marketing channel gives you the most bang for your click.

Choose Attractive Marketing Channels

2015 is right around the corner and if you haven’t decided yet how to allocate your marketing resources next year, the following insights will help you in the process. If you want to increase your marketing ROI — which should definitely be one of your main goals — I suggest you consider the following facts.

The team at Conductor has created a handy infographic that pulls together various surveys and industry studies on how the above-mentioned four major marketing channels compare.

Which marketing channel gets the most visitors?

• Organic Search / SEO: 54% of people discover new sites this way
• Email: 51% discover new sites this way
• Social: 32% discover new sites this way
• Paid Search/SEM: 18% discover new sites this way

Furthermore, visitors from organic search are 2x more likely to be extremely engaged and visit 5+ pages, when compared to the other three marketing channels. Social has the highest bounce rate of any marketing channel.

Which channel brings in the greatest amount of quality leads?

For B2B companies it’s email with 40% followed by organic search (36%). Social and PPC are rated equally at 18%.

For B2C companies and E-Commerce the outcomes are slightly different. Customers from organic search remain customers 50% longer than average. PPC ranks a bit higher than email. Social remains last.

Which marketing channels have the highest ROI?

Organic search and email are rated as the best marketing channels when it comes to ROI. PPC is ranked third and social fourth.

Interesting outcomes. Definitely worth considering, when reviewing your marketing plan for next year.

Head over to Conductor if you want to embed their infographic.

What’s your biggest takeaway?

What marketing channels have generated the highest return on marketing investment (ROMI) in your business?