November 20, 2019
Best & Worst Marketing Channels Per Industry or Vertical
Businesses are constantly searching for the best and worst marketing channels to advertise their products or services through. The best marketing channels for your business generate a high return on investment. The worst channels are money pits.
Unfortunately, there is no proven method. Finding those channels takes money. You have to test them, and then look at hard data to find out if that channel is bringing the business any benefit. However, there are a couple areas where your business can look to at least get a pretty good indication on what marketing channels will work for you.
Project goals
Choosing the best marketing channel — and avoiding the worst marketing channels — highly depends on your goals as well. You need to discover your primary business or campaign goal first — are you looking for leads? Sales? Clicks, or views?
For example, if you’re looking for leads, you might want to avoid channels that focus on brand awareness. Accomplishing, say, a goal of pulling in leads might be better through encouraging email sign-ups or paid ads that lead to a landing page.
Competitor research
One of the best ways to find out what marketing channels work for your business is to look at your direct competition. Who else in your industry is doing well, and what marketing channels are they using? Search, paid search, social, email? Something else?
Conducting competitor research and finding out what channels other businesses in your industry are using are a great way to start. Tools like SimilarWeb, Ahrefs, and SEMrush are all great tools to get a data-driven look into these channels. Using one of those tools, find out what’s working, and then start using the same or similar marketing tactics with your business.
A lot of it is trial and error. A marketing channel that your business isn’t using doesn’t mean that channel is not effective. For example, you could be running paid ads in a category where no one else is doing paid ads. That generally means cheap paid ads, and excellent return on ad spend.
Time constraints
You also have to factor in time constraints. Marketing channels need weeks and months of testing to pull in accurate, analytical data that can show you whether to continue with that marketing channel or to try another.
If you’re short on time, a riskier or expensive marketing channel might not be the best way to go. If you have plenty of time to work with, you can properly test multiple marketing channels, and even make riskier investments for more potential return. At Pastilla, our testing phase is a minimum of three months.
Project budgets
Choosing the best marketing channel all depends on the budget available, too. Marketing channels cost money, and some of those channels takes a lot of money to start accomplishing business goals.
One example is paid ads, whether that’s through Facebook Ads or paid search. Depending on industry and location, ads can take thousands, if not tens of thousands of dollars in ad spend, per month to start moving the needle in the right direction.
Closing
In summary, there is no best or worst marketing channel. It is highly dependent on your company, business goals, and the product that you’re selling.
Ultimately, finding that best and worst marketing channel is trial and error. You have to accrue hard, analytical data to find out what marketing channels bring your business the most return on investment, and then based on data, avoid the channels that don’t bring in money.
