15 Most Impactful Sales Channels Online for 2024

Using the right sales techniques, building a sales funnel, and perfecting your product are all important for success in 2024. 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 on that sales channel.

You should also consider your company's overall goals and budget. Some sales channels can produce results fast but might require a high budget. Others start making a return on investment after months of work and don't require as much spending.

Choosing the right mix of sales channels and sales operations KPIs allows you to focus on your intended audience and work towards your long-term goals instead of wasting time and money on something that won't produce as much of an ROI for your business.

Online Sales Channels Worth Considering in 2024

In this list, we won't touch on traditional sales channels like in-store purchases or TV ads. Those might be a viable option, too, depending on what type of business you run, but this article will focus on 15 online sales channels sorted into four main categories.

1. Content Sales Channels

Content has become one of the most versatile sales channels. Even though these types of sales channels are mostly useful for drawing 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 types of businesses because it has uses for every part of the sales channel. Targeting commercial or transactional keywords can lead directly to sales. Targeting informational keywords can help improve brand awareness and trust as well as 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 such regular checks and comparing your progress with industry leaders help with targeting the right demographics, setting achievable goals, making cost-effective marketing decisions, and ensuring long-term growth.

Newsletter

Good search visibility, along with other channels of website traffic, ideally converts users to the first step of the sales funnel—a subscription to a newsletter. 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 running a business podcast can increase trust in your company, and that's crucial for decision-making.

There are a couple of ways to sell with a podcast. Your B2B podcasts should focus on showcasing how your products can help with 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

Inbound sales channels build a larger sales pipeline with people who are interested in your content and business. Despite sometimes having a low response rate, it's a great way to make sales fast.

Outbound ABM

Account-based marketing is a strategy that focuses on customer accounts that have the potential to yield the most profit for your business, 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 bring the most value, you'll need to personalize your sales efforts to maximize the chances of conversion in e-commerce logistics.

Cold email

The main challenge of using cold email as a sales channel is to find the right balance between research, personalization, and the volume of emails sent. It's best to have higher volumes, as the success rate isn't going to be 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 to either streamline the research workflow to keep it to a minimum or put more effort into personalizing marketing proposals for leads that seem more profitable for the business.

Social selling

Social selling doesn't just involve cold DMs to potential customers; it also requires being active on a social media platform of your choice and building a rapport with leads.

To achieve success with social selling, you have to pay more attention to leveraging your online presence and building relationships with the decision-makers than to actually 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

Paid sales channels might provide a lower ROI due to the need to have a spending budget, but they are great for generating sales fast. 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 in 2024.

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 of search ads hovers around 4%, and most of those converting actions are purchases, not simply subscriptions or likes. Display ads fare way worse, with conversion rates around 0.5%.

One of the most effective ways to improve the conversion rate on Google ads and drive sales is by being specific with 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 four out of five people on the platform drive decisions for their companies, making LinkedIn the perfect way to find them, study 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 all the types of ads and make strategic decisions about when to use them. Be especially careful with inbox ads, as a message that comes off as inauthentic and 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 the attention of your viewers, you'll have to focus on a specific audience that might be more willing to convert. Partly, it means finding your target audience when setting up the ad, but it's best to do remarketing on YouTube as it has the most potential to drive sales.

Meta ads

Meta's two platforms, Instagram and Facebook, also offer a lot in terms of targeting and access to an interested audience. Even though most people use these social media platforms for entertainment and not for work, the conversion rate for B2B businesses is 10%, which is on par with B2C.

As with most other ads and sales channels in general, matching the audience with the right messaging is key to driving sales. Segment your audiences and serve them content that is more aligned with their pain points and goals.

4. Network

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 to make sure the attendants are interested in your product and to showcase your products. 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 audience of the influencer you want to work with 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 no's 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 work on improving customer satisfaction rate and overall product quality so that more people will 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 who are interested in what your brand has to say, but with community marketing, these people can also interact with each other.

If you've built a community, there are multiple ways you can use it to aid sales. You can consult your community members about the product as a focus group, make user-generated content publicly available to attract leads from search 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.

Looking for more ways to upgrade your sales? Leverage free sales training solutions!