Using the right sales techniques, building a sales funnel, and perfecting your product are all important for success. But in order to succeed, you need to choose the right sales channels.
This article will walk you through the most effective sales channels that you can use today and provide a brief overview of how they fit into the larger sales picture.
The Importance of Choosing the Right Sales Channels
An important part of sales excellence is understanding your customers. Knowing who they are, what their goals are, what they want to see in a product, and where they look for information related to it — all of these things will help you build a more effective sales strategy.
This knowledge should also dictate the choice of sales channels. Choosing a sales channel that doesn't resonate with your audience will result in wasted resources.
You should also consider your company's overall goals and budget. Some sales channels can deliver results quickly but may require a high budget. Others start generating a return on investment after months of work and require less spending.
Choosing the right mix of sales channels and sales operations KPIs lets you focus on your intended audience and work toward your long-term goals, rather than wasting time and money on initiatives that won't deliver a strong ROI for your business.
Online Sales Channels Worth Considering
In this list, we won't touch on traditional sales channels like in-store purchases or TV ads. Those might be viable options, too, depending on the type of business you run, but this article will focus on 15 online sales channels grouped into four main categories.
1. Content Sales Channels
Content has become one of the most versatile sales channels. Even though these sales channels are mostly useful for driving new leads to the top of the marketing funnel, 60% of marketers use content to generate sales. Here are the four content sales channels that might be best for your business.
SEO
SEO is a crucial channel for most businesses because it supports every part of the sales funnel. Targeting commercial or transactional keywords can drive sales directly. Targeting informational keywords can help improve brand awareness and trust, attract leads to the top of the sales funnel, and convert them down the line.
Generating sales with SEO requires analysis. One way to do that is to use a website traffic checker to estimate organic traffic and discover keywords that drive the most visitors. Insights from regular checks and comparisons with industry leaders help target the right demographics, set achievable goals, make cost-effective marketing decisions, and ensure long-term growth.
Newsletter
Good search visibility, along with other website traffic channels, ideally converts users into the first step of the sales funnel—a newsletter subscription. This is the primary sales instrument for most businesses since it has one of the highest ROIs among all sales channels.
The most important step towards improving sales numbers with a newsletter is segmenting the recipient list and personalizing the content based on their interests. To achieve these, you can use a free newsletter builder to create and send customized newsletters to engage with your target recipients. Content that announces discounts or presents new products for preorder is most likely to drive sales.
Podcast
This sales channel is most popular with audiences under 34 and works well at the top of the sales funnel. Research shows that running a business podcast can increase trust in your company, which is crucial for decision-making.
There are a couple of ways to sell with a podcast. Your B2B podcasts should focus on demonstrating how your products can solve the problems you discuss or on sharing your authentic experience.
Video
Even though video is generally seen as a way to increase brand awareness, 87% of video marketers said this channel directly influenced their company's bottom line. In the same survey, 87% of consumers said video improved their attitude towards a brand, and 82% said they were convinced to buy a product because of a video.
Short videos under 60 seconds on platforms like Instagram Reels and TikTok are the most effective for B2C sales. For B2B sales, how-to and educational product videos on YouTube, LinkedIn, or Facebook are the best choices. 44% of consumers say a video is their first choice when learning about a product, so investing in this type of content can increase sales.
2. Outbound Channels
Inbound sales channels build a larger sales pipeline with people interested in your content and business. Despite sometimes having a low response rate, they're a great way to make sales quickly.
Outbound ABM
Account-based marketing is a strategy that focuses on customer accounts with the potential to yield the most profit for your business by studying their pain points and personalizing your communication.
The key to success with this sales channel is not to save time on researching your customer. Since you're focusing on a small number of accounts projected to deliver the most value, you'll need to personalize your sales efforts to maximize conversion rates in e-commerce logistics.
Cold email
The main challenge of using cold email as a sales channel is finding the right balance between research, personalization, and email volume. It's best to have higher volumes, since the success rate isn't high, and researching hundreds of companies takes a lot of time.
But the less personalized your emails are, the lower the eventual success rate will be. So, your best bet is either to streamline the research workflow to keep it to a minimum or to put more effort into personalizing marketing proposals for leads that are more profitable for the business.
Social selling
Social selling doesn't just involve cold DMs to potential customers; it also requires being active on your chosen social media platform and building rapport with leads.
To succeed with social selling, you have to pay more attention to leveraging your online presence and building relationships with decision-makers than to reaching out cold. People who already engage with you on social media will be easier to convert when you decide to reach out in person.
3. Paid Channels
Paid sales channels might offer lower ROI due to the need for a budget, but they are great for generating sales quickly. Paid ads are also one of the easiest channels to track as you can calculate ROAS and know with a good degree of certainty whether there are any outside factors that influence it, unlike with content marketing.
These are the four most useful paid sales channels.
Google ads
Google Ads might be one of the best paid sales channels because, with search ads, you can target users who intend to make a purchase rather than simply serve ads to unsuspecting people. The average conversion rate for search ads hovers around 4%, and most of those conversions are purchases, not just subscriptions or likes. Display ads fare way worse, with conversion rates around 0.5%.
One of the most effective ways to improve conversion rates in Google Ads and drive sales is to be specific about the audience you target. Not only can you choose the right keywords to target, but you can also choose the demographics to show those ads to. This not only narrows down the list of people the ads are served to but also increases the number of conversions.
LinkedIn ads
While advertising B2C products on this platform offers little to no benefit, it's essential for B2B sales. This is mostly because 4 out of 5 people on the platform drive decisions for their companies, making LinkedIn the perfect way to find them, understand their needs, and contact them.
LinkedIn offers different types of ads, from promoting posts to leaving sponsored inbox messages. So your goal when optimizing LinkedIn ads for better sales is to understand the different ad types and make strategic decisions about when to use them. Be especially careful with inbox ads, as messages that come across as inauthentic or impersonal will likely be ignored.
YouTube ads
YouTube is the primary platform for video marketing, and while it's possible to post image ads, it's best to use the platform for its intended purpose — video ads. Video ads are often reserved for top-of-the-funnel leads, but there's a way to make sales on YouTube as well.
Apart from grabbing your viewers' attention, you'll also need to focus on a specific audience that's more likely to convert. Partly, it means identifying your target audience when setting up the ad, but it's best to do remarketing on YouTube, as it has the greatest potential to drive sales.
Meta ads
Meta's two platforms, Instagram and Facebook, also offer robust targeting and access to interested audiences. Even though most people use these social media platforms for entertainment rather than work, the conversion rate for B2B businesses is 10%, which is on par with B2C.
As with most other ads and sales channels, matching the audience with the right messaging is key to driving sales. Segment your audiences and serve them content that better aligns with their pain points and goals.
4. Networks
These types of sales channels are all about partnering up with others, whether it's with creators or your audience.
Sponsorships
This sales channel is mostly used by larger companies. They sponsor events, trade shows, or industry associations. Smaller businesses can sponsor smaller events, sometimes even on a local level. For instance, an online music shop could sponsor a small band gig at a cafe.
The two most important things to consider when getting into a sponsor deal are ensuring the attendants are interested in your product and showcasing your product. For offline events, it's important to let the attendants know how to contact you, so a small gift with a business card can go a long way.
Influencers
Sponsorships are hard to get, so marketers prefer influencers over sponsorship deals. A good partnership with an influencer essentially allows you to build trust with their audience and can encourage people to give your product a try for the mere sake of helping the creator.
Verifying that the influencer's audience aligns with your ideal customer profile is an important step, but it's even more important to let the influencer do their job. Don't give them a detailed content brief; just give them a list of hard nos and let them create content that will resonate with their audience.
Referral program
This is one of the most effective sales channels for B2B businesses, as nothing commands as much trust as a personal recommendation from a friend or a family member.
The main problem you can run into is incentivizing your existing customers to recommend your product. Simply doing an email blast with an offer of a dollar credit for a recommendation might not be enough. You need to improve customer satisfaction and overall product quality to encourage more people to recommend you.
Community
Community marketing is a rather complex technique, but in terms of sales goals, it functions a lot like a newsletter. You essentially build a community of people interested in what your brand has to say, but with community marketing, they can also interact with each other.
If you've built a community, there are multiple ways to leverage it to drive sales. You can consult your community members as a focus group, make user-generated content publicly available to attract search leads, or sell directly to them by offering exclusive discounts or new products.
Summary
Choosing the right mix of sales channels can mean the difference between long-lasting success and wasted effort. Use this list of the best sales channels as a reference, decide which ones are best for your business and ideal customer, and use the tips from this article to optimize them for conversions.
Remember to track each channel's performance diligently and calculate ROI to gauge whether your efforts are worth it.
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