Channel Structure and Organization

The document outlines four types of marketing channels: direct selling, selling through intermediaries, dual distribution, and reverse channels, each with distinct characteristics and uses. It also discusses various electronic marketing channels, including video marketing, email marketing, content marketing, social media marketing, and SEO & PPC, emphasizing their importance in driving traffic and conversions. The text highlights the effectiveness of these channels in reaching consumers and building brand awareness through strategic engagement and content delivery.

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Channel Structure and Organization

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adiba farizan

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CHANNEL

STRUCTURE
AND
ORGANIZATION
Introduction
There are basically four types of marketing channels:

 Direct selling;
 Selling through intermediaries;
 Dual distribution; and
 Reverse channels.

Essentially, a channel might be a retail store, a web

site, a mail order catalogue, or direct personal
communications by a letter, email or text message.
Here’s a bit of information about each one.
Direct Selling
 Direct selling is the marketing and selling of products directly to
consumers away from a fixed retail location. Peddling is the oldest
form of direct selling.

 Modern direct selling includes sales made through the party plan, one-
on-one demonstrations, personal contact arrangements as well as
internet sales.
 Direct selling is different from direct marketing in that it is about
individual sales agents reaching and dealing directly with clients while
direct marketing is about business organizations seeking a relationship
with their customers without going through an agent/consultant or
retail outlet.

 Direct selling often, but not always, uses multi-level marketing (a

salesperson is paid for selling and for sales made by people they
recruit or sponsor) rather than single-level marketing (salesperson is
paid only for the sales they make themselves).
Selling Through Intermediaries

 A marketing channel where intermediaries such as

wholesalers and retailers are utilized to make a
product available to the customer is called an
indirect channel.

 The most indirect channel you can use

(Producer/manufacturer –> agent –> wholesaler –>
retailer –> consumer) is used when there are many
small manufacturers and many small retailers and
an agent is used to help coordinate a large supply
of the product.
Dual Distribution
 Dual distribution describes a wide variety of marketing
arrangements by which the manufacturer or wholesalers uses
more than one channel simultaneously to reach the end user.

 They may sell directly to the end users as well as sell to other
companies for resale. Using two or more channels to attract
the same target market can sometimes lead to channel
conflict.

 An example of dual distribution is business format

franchising, where the franchisors, license the operation of
some of its units to franchisees while simultaneously owning
and operating some units themselves.
Reverse Channels
 If you’ve read about the other three channels, you would have
noticed that they have one thing in common — the flow. Each
one flows from producer to intermediary (if there is one) to
consumer.

 Technology, however, has made another flow possible. This

one goes in the reverse direction and may go — from
consumer to intermediary to beneficiary. Think of making
money from the resale of a product or recycling.

 There is another distinction between reverse channels and the

more traditional ones — the introduction of a beneficiary. In a
reverse flow, you won’t find a producer. You’ll only find a User
or a Beneficiary.
Electronic Marketing
Channels
 Video marketing
 Email marketing
 Content marketing
 Social media marketing
 SEO & PPC
Video marketing
One of the most dominant digital marketing trends today and likely for the next 5-10
years is video marketing.

These statistics illustrate the importance of incorporating video, into your digital
marketing strategy:

 70 % of consumers say that they have shared a brand’s video

 72 %of businesses say that video has improved their conversion rate
 52 % of consumers say that watching product videos makes them more confident in
online purchase decisions
 65 % of executives visit the marketer’s website and 39 percent call a vendor after
viewing a video

Video marketing not only has been proven to build brand awareness, but it’s also
extremely effective in boosting your traffic and conversions. Create video blogs (logs),
based on your blog content. Smartly embed that video in blog posts, as part of your
content marketing strategy. This will attract readership and conversion, plus get more
mileage out of your content.
Email marketing
 Email marketing is one of the most important digital marketing channels
because it has the highest ROI of any marketing tactic, according to LYFE
Marketing.
 Email marketing delivers highly relevant content to a subscriber’s inbox in a
non-invasive way. Email campaigns are an excellent way to increase your
customers and sales.
 Also, it empowers you to get in touch and stay in touch with your customers,
by informing them of upcoming events, other services or new product
offerings.
 Be sure to have an updated email list, personalize the emails and
incorporate a clear call to action to improve click through rates.
 One of the top ways to engage a customer or potential customer and
increase traffic to your website, is through an email newsletter.
 You can maintain engagement through on-going email newsletter
communications, either weekly or monthly, and offer valuable information to
convert or increase your customer base.
 Newsletters should inform your target audience about the latest news,
updates and tips
Content marketing
 Similar to email marketing, content marketing is another one of the most effective
digital marketing channels for producing ROI. LYFE Marketing also reported that
content marketing can generate three times the leads for about 62 %less than
traditional marketing.

 Leads are people who are very likely to buy your product and become loyal
customers, as you nurture that relationship, which is different from website traffic.

 Pieces of promotional content include blog posts, info graphics, video content,
news, checklists, case studies, webinars and white papers—which are excellent
lead magnets. Think about which ones will be most effective in speaking to your
target audience, depending on where they are in the five stages of the buying
cycle and how they consume information.

 To increase organic traffic and lead generation, you must deliver consistent, high
quality content. This type of traffic is unpaid and generated by users who find your
website after using search engines.

 Once you have great content, promote it! Some of the best vehicles to promote
content is through personalized email marketing and sharing your posts on social
media. These are just some of ways to get traffic to your blog and generate leads.
Social media marketing
 One of the ways to use social media to grow customers is to create
original social media content, such as blogs and video, and share it
on your social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn
and Instagram.
 You can utilize these platforms to increase video sharing and photo
sharing. In addition, engage with your audiences by asking
questions.
 Most critically, promptly answer questions and reply to comments.

 You can take that one step further and boost social media
engagement by:

 Employing tagging
 Analysing what posts have worked
 Incorporating holidays and/or trends
 Leverage social media advertising platforms, through Facebook’s
Custom Audiences and Look-a-Like Audience. This will increase your
reach to pages that have similar characteristics to your current fan
base and email list.
SEO & PPC
 Two of the digital marketing acronyms I previously mentioned. One of the
many advantages of SEO and PPC is the ability to streamline your
campaigns and optimize results.

 SEO will help your website rank higher, in search engine results, thereby
driving more traffic to your site and potentially more business. It also will
allow your business to show up at the right time, when your audience is
searching for you.

 Optimized conversion content, based on the buying stage your audience is

in, will present them with the right message.

 PPC, or search advertising, lets you position yourself near the top of
searches, even if that’s not where your website would organically show up.
It works by advertisers paying each time a user clicks on one of their online
ads.
 One advantage is that you’re only charged when a user actually clicks on.
 Another is that you can more precisely target people based on buying
behaviour, pain points and demographics.