11 Top Marketing Channels: Examples With Pros & Cons

If we squeezed the idea of marketing channels into a single picture, it’ll look something like this:

Businesses use different means (content, messages, ads) to reach their audience in places where they hang out (e.g., social media, Google Search) or reach them directly (e.g., text messages, emails). They may use a selection of channels or all available channels.

In this post, you will get an overview of the most commonly used channels today: what they are about, how they are used, and what they are best at.

Organic search refers to the non-paid search results from a search engine.

Organic search is one of the pillars of the entire internet. In all, 68% of online experiences begin with a search engine (BrightEdge).

The practice of optimizing webpages to increase traffic and visibility in this channel is called search engine optimization (SEO).

Example

At Ahrefs, we create blog posts about topics relevant to our product. At the same time, we try to target topics that offer search traffic potential and are within our capability to rank.

We use Keywords Explorer to find good topics for our blog. The SEO metrics show us how much traffic we are potentially looking at (TP) and how hard it can be to rank (KD).

This way, when people Google things related to SEO and marketing, we can naturally feature our product.

Each piece of content that ends up ranking adds up to your overall organic traffic. So the more high-ranking content you have, the more potential customers visit your website. Plus, evergreen topics can generate traffic for years after publication.

Social media platforms are used to engage brand followers and other users through organic reach or by paying to reach a defined audience.

Social media is not just Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn. Messaging-only apps like Discord, Slack, and WhatsApp also fall into the same channel category.

Do social media users “consume” content from brands? Quite surprisingly, 90% of people on Instagram follow a business (Instagram).

Example

Social media is complex. It’s a mix of product marketing, PR, and customer support. Trying to summarize it is like trying to summarize all conversations in the world.

Each brand on social media tends to develop its own voice while publishing a balanced mix of product marketing, conversations, entertainment, and company news.

And so while some brands will be super serious and “business-oriented,” others will try to win hearts with candor and authenticity.