A marketing channel represents the set of activities necessary to create a distribution for a product and make sure that the product is delivered in the hands of the right people and that the potential customer is satisfied with it. The marketing channel also needs to be aligned with the brand message of the company.
Marketing Channels, also known as distribution channels or trade channels, refer to the various paths or routes through which products or services move from manufacturers or producers to end-users or consumers. These channels are a crucial component of the marketing mix, allowing businesses to reach their target markets efficiently. Marketing channels can involve intermediaries like wholesalers, retailers, agents, and digital platforms. The choice of channels depends on factors such as the nature of the product, target audience, and market dynamics.
Types of Channels
– Direct Channels: In direct channels, products or services are sold directly from the manufacturer or producer to the end consumer without intermediaries. This includes company-owned stores, e-commerce websites, and sales teams. – Indirect Channels: Indirect channels involve intermediaries between the manufacturer and the end consumer. These intermediaries can include wholesalers, distributors, retailers, and agents. – Online Channels: With the rise of e-commerce, online channels have become prominent. These include online marketplaces, company websites, and social media platforms. – Offline Channels: Traditional brick-and-mortar stores, physical retail locations, and trade shows represent offline channels.
Key Functions
– Distribution: Channels ensure the efficient distribution of products from producers to consumers, minimizing time and cost. – Market Access: They provide access to a broader customer base and markets, helping businesses expand their reach. – Customer Service: Channels can enhance customer service by providing information, support, and after-sales services. – Market Information: They serve as a source of market information, helping businesses understand customer preferences and trends. – Risk Management: Channels can help manage risks associated with fluctuations in demand or supply chain disruptions.
Channel Design
– Channel Length: The number of intermediaries involved in the channel (short, long, or hybrid) affects costs, control, and efficiency. – Channel Width: The number of outlets or intermediaries at each level (exclusive, selective, or intensive distribution) impacts market coverage and exclusivity. – Channel Integration: Decisions on vertical integration (owning intermediaries) versus outsourcing affect control and cost. – Channel Relationships: Building strong relationships with intermediaries is critical for collaboration and mutual success.
Advantages
– Efficiency: Marketing channels streamline the movement of products, reducing time and costs. – Market Reach: They enable access to a wider customer base and diverse markets. – Expertise: Intermediaries often have specialized knowledge and skills in marketing and distribution. – Risk Sharing: Channels can help mitigate risks by spreading them across multiple players. – Customer Convenience: Channels provide convenient access points for customers, enhancing their shopping experience.
Challenges
– Channel Conflict: Conflicts can arise between different channel members, such as retailers and wholesalers, over issues like pricing and territory. – Coordination: Coordinating activities among various channel members can be complex, requiring effective communication and collaboration. – Costs: Maintaining intermediaries and managing channel logistics can add to the overall cost structure. – Evolving Consumer Behavior: Changes in consumer preferences, such as the shift to online shopping, require constant adaptation of marketing channels.
Real-World Example
A smartphone manufacturer may use a combination of marketing channels. It might sell its products directly through its online store, use retail partnerships with electronics stores for offline sales, and leverage e-commerce marketplaces like Amazon to reach a broader online audience. Each channel serves a specific purpose and caters to different customer segments.
A quick intro to marketing channels
Growing a digital business is not easy. With the low barriers to entry and the millions of websites out there, it’s important to find the right marketing mix to gain traction.
The marketing mix is a term to describe the multi-faceted approach to a complete and effective marketing plan. Traditionally, this plan included the four Ps of marketing: price, product, promotion, and place. But the exact makeup of a marketing mix has undergone various changes in response to new technologies and ways of thinking. Additions to the four Ps include physical evidence, people, process, and even politics.
A distribution channel is the set of steps it takes for a product to get in the hands of the key customer or consumer. Distribution channels can be direct or indirect. Distribution can also be physical or digital, depending on the kind of business and industry.
There are many marketing channels you can take advantage of. For instance, at digital level, there are dozens of digital channels available.
A digital channel is a marketing channel, part of a distribution strategy, helping an organization to reach its potential customers via electronic means. There are several digital marketing channels, usually divided into organic and paid channels. Some organic channels are SEO, SMO, email marketing. And some paid channels comprise SEM, SMM, and display advertising.
In the short-term, you need a single marketing channel that works pretty well. Yet, before you find out you will need experimentation, to get to what we can call your “product-channel fit.”
Or that single channel, that will be good enough for your product to meet a sustained number of interested customers and build a valuable business.
Let’s get to the list.
Affiliate Programs/Affiliations
Affiliate marketing describes the process whereby an affiliate earns a commission for selling the products of another person or company. Here, the affiliate is simply an individual who is motivated to promote a particular product through incentivization. The business whose product is being promoted will gain in terms of sales and marketing from affiliates.
Affiliate marketing isn’t new. Companies like Amazon have mastered it, since the beginning to quickly grow their traffic, and sales. While it might seem simple to just enroll a bunch of affiliate marketer to your program and get them going. There are always a few things to consider:
Control
Affiliate marketing is great for amplification, however it might make you lose a bit of control over your communication strategy, as it’s hard to track how affiliates promote your product.
Not easy to get going
While it’s easy to set it up. It’s not that easy to make sure that affiliates sell your product.
You need to initially help them get familiar with your product so that they can sell it in the right context.
And easy enough to sell so affiliates can earn a continuous flow of income from your product sales, and therefore they keep pushing them.
Billboards
Source: duckduckgo.com/billboards
While this might seem not an advanced marketing channel, in reality, billboards can work pretty well, especially as marketing is done at the local level.
Also, digital brands, like search engine DuckDuckGo have been using billboards to create brand awareness.
Indeed, above you can see the map of all the locations worldwide where DuckDuckGo has placed a billboard.
Business Development
Business development comprises a set of strategies, tactics, and actions to grow a business via a mixture of sales and marketing. Indeed, while marketing usually relies on automation to reach a wider audience, and sales usually leverages on the one-to-one approach to close complex deals. Business development is about creating distribution strategies to scale up a business.
That is about distribution and creating new channels to help the business scale up. In addition, business development is also about deal-making and finding those partnerships that can help the company grow at 10x speed.
Community Building
Building your community today is simpler if done at scale, as social media platforms (Facebook, Instagram, Twitter) enable companies to manage them.
However, it’s important to highlight, that while any company is willing to put some effort in amplifying its product via social media platforms.
In reality, building a community takes much more effort.
Content Marketing
Content marketing is one of the most powerful commercial activities which focuses on leveraging content production (text, audio, video, or other formats) to attract a targeted audience. Content marketing focuses on building a strong brand, but also to convert part of that targeted audience into potential customers.
Content helps build trust, relationships and it’s still among the most effective form of marketing. Content not only helps you establish trust, and authority, but it can also be used for practical purposes, like explaining the product, answering questions, and more.
Email marketing leverages a set of tactics to build a stronger brand, drive traffic to your products, and build a solid funnel for converting leads into loyal customers. While email marketing isn’t new, it’s still one of the most effective marketing strategies to build a valuable business.
Newsletters have become very powerful ways to communicate your brand message, build your community and sell your product.
While it might seem an old marketing channel that is among the most interesting ones, and worth building up, even before you have anything to sell.
Display Ads
While display ads that leverage on banners might have a very low conversion rate, it might also be less expensive compared to other paid channels.
Therefore, a good alternative to explore to attract and build an audience. Tools like Google Ads can be used to set up your Display Ads campaigns.
e-commerce SEO
Some of the key strategies to take advantage of Amazon’s platform are about understanding customers’ needs, using testimonials and reviews, improve product variety while offering competitive pricing. While price and variety matters, it also matters to differentiate your offering compared to existing players.
Building up e-commerce on Amazon has become pretty common. And Amazon itself is the most popular product search engine.
As such, mastering Amazon SEO can be a powerful way to sell a product continuously.
SEO
SEO hacking is a process of quick experimentation that aims at efficiently growing the organic traffic of web properties. Where traditional SEO strategies look at a steady growth, SEO hacking finds unconventional ways to quickly gain traction. That is a process well suited for small web properties and startups looking to scale up organic traffic against large media outlets.
Social Media
Market segmentation is the process of dividing the market into sub-groups. Market segmentation can be based on characteristics such as age, behaviors, income levels, and more. This process helps to understand what your key customers want, where they are, and how to talk to them effectively.
Key Highlights
Marketing Channels:
A marketing channel encompasses the activities required to create product distribution and ensure that it reaches the intended consumers while aligning with the brand message.
Marketing Mix:
The marketing mix is a comprehensive approach to a marketing plan. Traditionally based on the four Ps (price, product, promotion, and place), it has evolved to include additional elements like physical evidence, people, process, and politics.
Distribution Channels:
Distribution channels determine the steps a product takes to reach consumers. These can be direct or indirect, and digital or physical, depending on the industry and business type.
Digital Channels:
Digital marketing channels assist organizations in reaching potential customers through electronic means. Organic channels include SEO, SMO (social media optimization), and email marketing, while paid channels comprise SEM (search engine marketing), SMM (social media marketing), and display advertising.
Multichannel Approach:
Over time, it’s beneficial to adopt a multichannel approach, utilizing various distribution channels to reach a broader audience.
Affiliate Programs:
Affiliate marketing involves individuals (affiliates) earning commissions for promoting and selling products for other companies. However, maintaining control and ensuring affiliates promote products effectively can be challenging.
Billboards:
Billboards, though traditional, can be effective for local marketing and brand awareness, even for digital brands.
Business Development:
Business development involves scaling a business through sales, marketing, and partnership strategies. It focuses on finding new distribution channels and partnerships for rapid growth.
Community Building:
Building an online community involves more effort than just utilizing social media platforms. It requires engaging and nurturing relationships with followers.
Content Marketing:
Content marketing leverages various forms of content to attract and engage a targeted audience, building trust and authority.
Curated Newsletters:
Email marketing through newsletters can effectively communicate brand messages, build community, and promote products.
Display Ads:
Display ads, while potentially having lower conversion rates, can be cost-effective for building an audience and driving traffic.
e-commerce SEO:
Mastering Amazon’s platform and using SEO strategies can lead to successful e-commerce sales.
SEO:
SEO hacking involves experimenting to quickly increase organic website traffic, especially useful for startups looking to scale quickly.
Social Media:
Social media segmentation involves dividing the market into sub-groups based on characteristics to effectively communicate with key customers.
Case Studies
Industry/Business Context
Description
Application of Marketing Channels
Examples and Impact
FMCG (Fast-Moving Consumer Goods)
The distribution of everyday consumer products.
Utilizing a network of retailers, supermarkets, convenience stores, online marketplaces, and distributors to reach a broad consumer base. Managing shelf space, promotions, and product availability.
Companies like Procter & Gamble (P&G) distribute household products through retail stores, e-commerce platforms, and partnerships with supermarkets.
Automotive Dealerships
The sale and distribution of automobiles.
Collaborating with automakers to operate dealerships that offer a variety of vehicle models and provide sales, service, and maintenance support.
Ford, Toyota, and other automakers have dealer networks that sell and service their vehicles in local markets.
Travel and Tourism Agencies
Travel planning and vacation packages.
Offering travel planning services through physical agencies, websites, and mobile apps. Partnering with airlines, hotels, and tour operators to provide comprehensive travel experiences.
Expedia and Booking.com are online travel agencies (OTAs) that offer a wide range of travel services and accommodations to travelers worldwide.
Real Estate
Buying, selling, and renting properties.
Real estate agencies and online platforms connect buyers, sellers, and renters. Marketing properties through listings, virtual tours, and advertising channels.
Real estate agencies like RE/MAX use their network of agents and online platforms to market and sell residential and commercial properties.
Entertainment and Event Ticketing
Ticket sales for concerts, sports, and events.
Utilizing ticketing platforms, box offices, third-party ticket sellers, and partnerships with event organizers to sell tickets to audiences. Managing seat allocation and pricing strategies.
Ticketmaster and StubHub are examples of ticketing platforms that connect event organizers with customers seeking tickets to live events.
Apparel and Fashion Retail
The distribution of clothing and fashion items.
Operating physical stores, e-commerce websites, and mobile apps. Collaborating with fashion designers, wholesalers, and suppliers to curate and sell clothing collections.
Fashion brands like Zara and H&M use a combination of physical stores and online channels to reach fashion-conscious consumers.
Agricultural Produce
The marketing and distribution of agricultural products.
Utilizing farmers’ markets, grocery stores, distributors, and online platforms to connect farmers and producers with consumers and businesses. Managing freshness and quality.
Farmers’ markets and online platforms like Farm Fresh Direct connect consumers directly with local farmers, promoting fresh and sustainable produce.
Telecommunications
Distribution of telecommunication services.
Offering voice, data, and internet services through physical stores, call centers, websites, and authorized resellers. Managing customer service channels and technical support.
Telecom companies like AT&T and Verizon have retail stores, online portals, and customer service centers to distribute their communication services.
Financial Services
Banking and financial product distribution.
Operating bank branches, ATMs, online banking platforms, and mobile apps. Providing financial advice through advisors and brokers.
Banks like Chase and Wells Fargo offer a mix of physical branches and digital banking channels to serve customers’ financial needs.
What are 4 types of marketing channels?
There are several ways to classify marketing channels. One of the most effective ways is to understand whether you own or not that distribution and marketing channel and whether it’s direct or indirect.
Some marketing channels include SEO (organic traffic via Google and other search engines), SEM (or paid acquisition traffic via Google and another search engine), social media marketing, events, meetups, billboards, and more.
What is the best marketing channel?
When you kick off a marketing strategy, there are faster channels to speed up your product sales, like SEM or SMM. However, over time it’s critical to build a distribution that is owned via marketing channels like newsletters, blogs, e-commerce, and more.
Account-based marketing (ABM) is a strategy where the marketing and sales departments come together to create personalized buying experiences for high-value accounts. Account-based marketing is a business-to-business (B2B) approach in which marketing and sales teams work together to target high-value accounts and turn them into customers.
Ad Ops – also known as Digital Ad Operations – refers to systems and processes that support digital advertisements’ delivery and management. The concept describes any process that helps a marketing team manage, run, or optimize ad campaigns, making them an integrating part of the business operations.
Venture capitalist, Dave McClure, coined the acronym AARRR which is a simplified model that enables to understand what metrics and channels to look at, at each stage for the users’ path toward becoming customers and referrers of a brand.
Affinity marketing involves a partnership between two or more businesses to sell more products. Note that this is a mutually beneficial arrangement where one brand can extend its reach and enhance its credibility in association with the other.
As the name suggests, ambush marketing raises awareness for brands at events in a covert and unexpected fashion. Ambush marketing takes many forms, one common element, the brand advertising their products or services has not paid for the right to do so. Thus, the business doing the ambushing attempts to capitalize on the efforts made by the business sponsoring the event.
Affiliate marketing describes the process whereby an affiliate earns a commission for selling the products of another person or company. Here, the affiliate is simply an individual who is motivated to promote a particular product through incentivization. The business whose product is being promoted will gain in terms of sales and marketing from affiliates.
The bullseye framework is a simple method that enables you to prioritize the marketing channels that will make your company gain traction. The main logic of the bullseye framework is to find the marketing channels that work and prioritize them.
Brand building is the set of activities that help companies to build an identity that can be recognized by its audience. Thus, it works as a mechanism of identification through core values that signal trust and that help build long-term relationships between the brand and its key stakeholders.
According to inbound marketing platform HubSpot, brand dilution occurs “when a company’s brand equity diminishes due to an unsuccessful brand extension, which is a new product the company develops in an industry that they don’t have any market share in.” Brand dilution, therefore, occurs when a brand decreases in value after the company releases a product that does not align with its vision, mission, or skillset.
The brand essence wheel is a templated approach businesses can use to better understand their brand. The brand essence wheel has obvious implications for external brand strategy. However, it is equally important in simplifying brand strategy for employees without a strong marketing background. Although many variations of the brand essence wheel exist, a comprehensive wheel incorporates information from five categories: attributes, benefits, values, personality, brand essence.
The brand equity is the premium that a customer is willing to pay for a product that has all the objective characteristics of existing alternatives, thus, making it different in terms of perception. The premium on seemingly equal products and quality is attributable to its brand equity.
Brand positioning is about creating a mental real estate in the mind of the target market. If successful, brand positioning allows a business to gain a competitive advantage. And it also works as a switching cost in favor of the brand. Consumers recognizing a brand might be less prone to switch to another brand.
Business storytelling is a critical part of developing a business model. Indeed, the way you frame the story of your organization will influence its brand in the long-term. That’s because your brand story is tied to your brand identity, and it enables people to identify with a company.
Content marketing is one of the most powerful commercial activities which focuses on leveraging content production (text, audio, video, or other formats) to attract a targeted audience. Content marketing focuses on building a strong brand, but also to convert part of that targeted audience into potential customers.
One of the first mentions of customer lifetime value was in the 1988 book Database Marketing: Strategy and Implementation written by Robert Shaw and Merlin Stone. Customer lifetime value (CLV) represents the value of a customer to a company over a period of time. It represents a critical business metric, especially for SaaS or recurring revenue-based businesses.
Customer segmentation is a marketing method that divides the customers in sub-groups, that share similar characteristics. Thus, product, marketing and engineering teams can center the strategy from go-to-market to product development and communication around each sub-group. Customer segments can be broken down is several ways, such as demographics, geography, psychographics and more.
Developer marketing encompasses tactics designed to grow awareness and adopt software tools, solutions, and SaaS platforms. Developer marketing has become the standard among software companies with a platform component, where developers can build applications on top of the core software or open software. Therefore, engaging developer communities has become a key element of marketing for many digital businesses.
A digital channel is a marketing channel, part of a distribution strategy, helping an organization to reach its potential customers via electronic means. There are several digital marketing channels, usually divided into organic and paid channels. Some organic channels are SEO, SMO, email marketing. And some paid channels comprise SEM, SMM, and display advertising.
Field marketing is a general term that encompasses face-to-face marketing activities carried out in the field. These activities may include street promotions, conferences, sales, and various forms of experiential marketing. Field marketing, therefore, refers to any marketing activity that is performed in the field.
interaction with a brand until they become a paid customer and beyond.
Funnel marketing is modeled after the marketing funnel, a concept that tells the company how it should market to consumers based on their position in the funnel itself. The notion of a customer embarking on a journey when interacting with a brand was first proposed by Elias St. Elmo Lewis in 1898.
Funnel marketing typically considers three stages of a non-linear marketing funnel. These are top of the funnel (TOFU), middle of the funnel (MOFU), and bottom of the funnel (BOFU). Particular marketing strategies at each stage are adapted to the level of familiarity the consumer has with a brand.
A go-to-market strategy represents how companies market their new products to reach target customers in a scalable and repeatable way. It starts with how new products/services get developed to how these organizations target potential customers (via sales and marketing models) to enable their value proposition to be delivered to create a competitive advantage.
The term “greenwashing” was first coined by environmentalist Jay Westerveld in 1986 at a time when most consumers received their news from television, radio, and print media. Some companies took advantage of limited public access to information by portraying themselves as environmental stewards – even when their actions proved otherwise. Greenwashing is a deceptive marketing practice where a company makes unsubstantiated claims about an environmentally-friendly product or service.
Grassroots marketing involves a brand creating highly targeted content for a particular niche or audience. When an organization engages in grassroots marketing, it focuses on a small group of people with the hope that its marketing message is shared with a progressively larger audience.
Growth marketing is a process of rapid experimentation, which in a way has to be “scientific” by keeping in mind that it is used by startups to grow, quickly. Thus, the “scientific” here is not meant in the academic sense. Growth marketing is expected to unlock growth, quickly and with an often limited budget.
Guerrilla marketing is an advertising strategy that seeks to utilize low-cost and sometimes unconventional tactics that are high impact. First coined by Jay Conrad Levinson in his 1984 book of the same title, guerrilla marketing works best on existing customers who are familiar with a brand or product and its particular characteristics.
Hunger marketing is a marketing strategy focused on manipulating consumer emotions. By bringing products to market with an attractive price point and restricted supply, consumers have a stronger desire to make a purchase.
Integrated marketing communication (IMC) is an approach used by businesses to coordinate and brand their communication strategies. Integrated marketing communication takes separate marketing functions and combines them into one, interconnected approach with a core brand message that is consistent across various channels. These encompass owned, earned, and paid media. Integrated marketing communication has been used to great effect by companies such as Snapchat, Snickers, and Domino’s.
Inbound marketing is a marketing strategy designed to attract customers to a brand with content and experiences that they derive value from. Inbound marketing utilizes blogs, events, SEO, and social media to create brand awareness and attract targeted consumers. By attracting or “drawing in” a targeted audience, inbound marketing differs from outbound marketing which actively pushes a brand onto consumers who may have no interest in what is being offered.
Integrated marketing describes the process of delivering consistent and relevant content to a target audience across all marketing channels. It is a cohesive, unified, and immersive marketing strategy that is cost-effective and relies on brand identity and storytelling to amplify the brand to a wider and wider audience.
The marketing mix is a term to describe the multi-faceted approach to a complete and effective marketing plan. Traditionally, this plan included the four Ps of marketing: price, product, promotion, and place. But the exact makeup of a marketing mix has undergone various changes in response to new technologies and ways of thinking. Additions to the four Ps include physical evidence, people, process, and even politics.
Marketing myopia is the nearsighted focus on selling goods and services at the expense of consumer needs. Marketing myopia was coined by Harvard Business School professor Theodore Levitt in 1960. Originally, Levitt described the concept in the context of organizations in high-growth industries that become complacent in their belief that such industries never fail.
Marketing personas give businesses a general overview of key segments of their target audience and how these segments interact with their brand. Marketing personas are based on the data of an ideal, fictional customer whose characteristics, needs, and motivations are representative of a broader market segment.
Meme marketing is any marketing strategy that uses memes to promote a brand. The term “meme” itself was popularized by author Richard Dawkins over 50 years later in his 1976 book The Selfish Gene. In the book, Dawkins described how ideas evolved and were shared across different cultures. The internet has enabled this exchange to occur at an exponential rate, with the first modern memes emerging in the late 1990s and early 2000s.
Microtargeting is a marketing strategy that utilizes consumer demographic data to identify the interests of a very specific group of individuals. Like most marketing strategies, the goal of microtargeting is to positively influence consumer behavior.
Multichannel marketing executes a marketing strategy across multiple platforms to reach as many consumers as possible. Here, a platform may refer to product packaging, word-of-mouth advertising, mobile apps, email, websites, or promotional events, and all the other channels that can help amplify the brand to reach as many consumers as possible.
Multi-level marketing (MLM), otherwise known as network or referral marketing, is a strategy in which businesses sell their products through person-to-person sales. When consumers join MLM programs, they act as distributors. Distributors make money by selling the product directly to other consumers. They earn a small percentage of sales from those that they recruit to do the same – often referred to as their “downline”.
The Net Promoter Score (NPS) is a measure of the ability of a product or service to attract word-of-mouth advertising. NPS is a crucial part of any marketing strategy since attracting and then retaining customers means they are more likely to recommend a business to others.
Neuromarketing information is collected by measuring brain activity related to specific brain functions using sophisticated and expensive technology such as MRI machines. Some businesses also choose to make inferences of neurological responses by analyzing biometric and heart-rate data.
Neuromarketing is the domain of large companies with similarly large budgets or subsidies. These include Frito-Lay, Google, and The Weather Channel.
Newsjacking as a marketing strategy was popularised by David Meerman Scott in his book Newsjacking: How to Inject Your Ideas into a Breaking News Story and Generate Tons of Media Coverage. Newsjacking describes the practice of aligning a brand with a current event to generate media attention and increase brand exposure.
A microniche is a subset of potential customers within a niche. In the era of dominating digital super-platforms, identifying a microniche can kick off the strategy of digital businesses to prevent competition against large platforms. As the microniche becomes a niche, then a market, scale becomes an option.
We can define pull and push marketing from the perspective of the target audience or customers. In push marketing, as the name suggests, you’re promoting a product so that consumers can see it. In a pull strategy, consumers might look for your product or service drawn by its brand.
Real-time marketing is as exactly as it sounds. It involves in-the-moment marketing to customers across any channel based on how that customer is interacting with the brand.
Relationship marketing involves businesses and their brands forming long-term relationships with customers. The focus of relationship marketing is to increase customer loyalty and engagement through high-quality products and services. It differs from short-term processes focused solely on customer acquisition and individual sales.
Reverse marketing describes any marketing strategy that encourages consumers to seek out a product or company on their own. This approach differs from a traditional marketing strategy where marketers seek out the consumer.
Remarketing involves the creation of personalized and targeted ads for consumers who have already visited a company’s website. The process works in this way: as users visit a brand’s website, they are tagged with cookies that follow the users, and as they land on advertising platforms where retargeting is an option (like social media platforms) they get served ads based on their navigation.
Sensory marketing describes any marketing campaign designed to appeal to the five human senses of touch, taste, smell, sight, and sound. Technologies such as artificial intelligence, virtual reality, and the Internet of Things (IoT) are enabling marketers to design fun, interactive, and immersive sensory marketing brand experiences. Long term, businesses must develop sensory marketing campaigns that are relevant and effective in eCommerce.
Services marketing originated as a separate field of study during the 1980s. Researchers realized that the unique characteristics of services required different marketing strategies to those used in the promotion of physical goods. Services marketing is a specialized branch of marketing that promotes the intangible benefits delivered by a company to create customer value.
Sustainable marketing describes how a business will invest in social and environmental initiatives as part of its marketing strategy. Also known as green marketing, it is often used to counteract public criticism around wastage, misleading advertising, and poor quality or unsafe products.
Word-of-mouth marketing is a marketing strategy skewed toward offering a great experience to existing customers and incentivizing them to share it with other potential customers. That is one of the most effective forms of marketing as it enables a company to gain traction based on existing customers’ referrals. When repeat customers become a key enabler for the brand this is one of the best organic and sustainable growth marketing strategies.
360 marketing is a marketing campaign that utilizes all available mediums, channels, and consumer touchpoints. 360 marketing requires the business to maintain a consistent presence across multiple online and offline channels. This ensures it does not miss potentially lucrative customer segments. By its very nature, 360 marketing describes any number of different marketing strategies. However, a broad and holistic marketing strategy should incorporate a website, SEO, PPC, email marketing, social media, public relations, in-store relations, and traditional forms of advertising such as television.
Gennaro is the creator of FourWeekMBA, which reached about four million business people, comprising C-level executives, investors, analysts, product managers, and aspiring digital entrepreneurs in 2022 alone | He is also Director of Sales for a high-tech scaleup in the AI Industry | In 2012, Gennaro earned an International MBA with emphasis on Corporate Finance and Business Strategy.
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