Marketing Matters: Channel Selection
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Last week, we discussed the importance of knowing your audience. As a conscious business, we know you put your consumers and social good first, and with your audience defined it’s time to find channels to share your messages. Don’t worry though, I’ll give you a hint; you’ll achieve the most when you select the channels that best serve your people. It’s a two-way street! When you reach consumers where they are, they no longer need to go out of their way to find you or to benefit from your offerings. Everyone wins!
Thinking about your conscious consumers, let’s discuss how you can serve their unique needs. While a goal of your marketing is generating sales, you will also be using inbound marketing to share your story, mission and purpose. These are factors that will lead to your ultimate success connecting to these consumers (and increase sales through customer life cycles). For example, an ethical fashion brand has a very visual product and consumers who closely follow what’s trending. Instagram and Pinterest are important social media platforms this brand can use to share their behind the scenes production process, tell stories about team members and community impact and share about their newest designs. From photos and video posts on social media, fans can go to their website for a deeper look into who the brand is and presto – the virtual cart begins to fill.
Your audience will be looking for content that fits your product just as we’ve selected two social channels fit to the ethical fashion brand, but you can also use data to find where your fans are online (and to understand where they’re willing to go). As you use information to fuel the marketing efforts of small businesses like yours, you can be more effective in the content you create and the channels you select.
Data-Driven Strategy
On that note, you may hear the terms data and insights – are they the same thing?
Data: Factual information, statistics and measurements of things or events. An example of a data point is the number of visitors on your website or the percentage of people who open your emails. Data as a collection refers to a set of measurements or information, like customer data.
Insights: Conclusions and recommendations drawn from analyzing and understanding data you collect. For instance, recognizing that more people open your emails at 10:00 am compared to 2:00 pm leads you to an actionable observation to send emails earlier.
Benchmarks
Merriam-Webster defines an insight as, “the power or fact of seeing into a situation.” I love this definition because a data point in a void tells marketers nothing. If your click-through rate (CTR) is 20% do you think that’s great? Horrible? Why? Unless you have other data to compare this statistic to, it’s meaningless. Using benchmarks can help, but to best understand your performance, collecting historical information and monitoring month-over-month changes in engagement is critical.
A foundational understanding of these concepts is beneficial when thinking about channels and customer relationship management (CRM) for several reasons:
Your data will not matter unless you take the time to understand and learn from it.
From the beginning, you should select meaningful metrics to collect and monitor (quality not quantity - stay tuned for an upcoming blog that takes a deeper dive on this point)
You will understand that engagement changes based on the channels you use and this is good.
You can identify which new channels offer opportunities and which may not be worth your time.
You can allocate your resources to serving valuable relationships with your customers in the best ways possible.
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Channel Champions
Keeping all this in mind, let’s define a marketing channel. Simply put, a channel is anything that allows you to reach a customer and deliver products or services. If it’s helpful, think about a radio station – a platform where interested viewers can listen in. Your marketing channels do the same thing. Customers can “listen in” for what’s new with your business, to get your content and to purchase your products and services. Using this analogy, your analytics are equivalent to ratings and you want everyone in your target market to get excited about new music and DJs. You might be asking, how are you going to get the word out? Well, let’s dig in.
You have defined your consumer and you understand who you are talking to, so where do they spend time online? Whether you are running a brick and mortar store or doing everything digitally, you will need to find where your messages will make the greatest impact and attract your tribe. A few standard digital channels include email, websites, social media, pay-per-click (PPC) ads, content marketing and search engine optimization (SEO). However, this list is always growing and as Maricel Rivera explains in The Blueprint from The Motley Fool, influencer marketing, partnership marketing and community building are among other great marketing channels for small businesses. This is because you are promoting in an inbound way, meaning you are drawing customers in, versus outbound channels like print advertising, where you are interrupting the customer while they read something else. Think of inbound as creating a signal – you provide value which generates interest and you can continue to engage and serve customers through regular content. You’re not distracting – you’re the main attraction.
To start your channel selection process, take a moment to assess your current channels and efforts. Answer these three questions:
What platforms are you using?
What is your audience size on each channel? Largest? Smallest? Why is there a difference?
Where is your highest engagement rate?
Measuring Engagement
Engagement rates provide information on who is interacting with you – opening emails, clicking links, commenting on posts and spending time with your content. For instance, while your email was sent to 816 people, only 25 people clicked a link within it so your engagement based on CTR is 3% (= 25/816).
This is a great starting point, but remember that these channels should serve your newly defined audience. Don’t abandon the channels you’ve developed, but definitely branch out when you see your people spending their time elsewhere. If your business has not launched yet, fear not – you can also start with an analysis of your competition and complements.
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Industry Analysis
As you know, your conscious business is operating in a complex and dynamic environment. Understanding your industry and the other brands and content your consumers are engaging with is critical. Also, keep in mind while some competition will be obvious, other competitors look different but meet the same consumer needs or values you are addressing. Let’s define these terms thinking about our ethical fashion brand example.
Competitors: businesses similar to yours engaging consumers in the same category/categories. For our example, these are other fair-trade and ethical clothing companies.
Complements: the products and services which also engage and provide value to your target audience but meet different needs. Rather than just clothing companies, this could include ethically sourced jewelry, shoe brands and related lifestyle or beauty products that our consumers choose.
Industry: the business environment defined by relationships with companies and products similar to yours which can be further divided into sectors and subsectors. While our fictional brand operates in the fashion and clothing industry, it sits in the ethical and conscious consumption sub-sector. Understanding trends like moving away from fast fashion, treating employees and models ethically and using recyclable fabrics and materials matters.
Investigate the engagement questions we mentioned regarding platform use, audience size and engagement for companies related to yours to see what they’re doing. Consider studying the strategy and content of Patagonia, Made Trade and Blue Beautifly when thinking about conscious consumers in general. These brands are doing wonderful things across the web and set a worthy example offline, too. You won’t have deep insight into everything other companies do, but starting with understanding their websites and social media helps. You should also look up industry averages for metrics like email opens and click-through rates when comparing your efforts and setting goals. Campaign Monitor has great resources to start.
Conscious Consumer Leadership
While doing your industry and channel research, identify the following to serve your audience:
Key media outlets – for social, print, digital and beyond
Popular and/or local influencers – depending on your size and scope
Current trends – opportunities for your business
Partnerships between companies – where are conscious brands working together and can you join the party?
Events – look for opportunities to showcase what you’re up to with a captive audience
Keep networking and thinking about your consumer relationships as you make your channel selections. Learn from the leaders. Last, think about the groups providing thought leadership for conscious consumers – what social movements and organizations align with your audience and what you’re doing? Stay in the know and check out what these groups are up to as you get going:
Share Your Story
These organizations should give you an idea about what your conscious consumers have on their minds but many other groups are making positive changes in the world, so remember to search beyond this list! We’re excited to see which channels you choose to share your story.
