The Most Effective Marketing Channels

Our friends at Awin (who do not know us at all...like really, they have no clue about us) commissioned Forrester Research to figure out a whole load of marketing studying with numbers- including the question: What are the most effective marketing channels?

The main idea?

How are companies selling...and are they using affiliate marketing do do that selling? Or in corporate speak:

"Awin commissioned Forrester Consulting to survey senior marketers across the US and Europe to better understand their current perceptions of affiliate marketing and how they're realizing real value from their investments in it."

The results are kinda weird.

The results of the most effective marketing channels are.

Lets take it from the top 5:

1. Content marketing/ blogs- 96%
2. PPC- 93%
3. Affiliate/ partner marketing- 92%
   
4. Email- 91%
5. Social media influencers- 90%

And for fun, guess where social media advertising runs at?

Tenth at 80%

This is all nice and fluffy.

But it seems to go against what we have been told. Social first then blogs at the end. The only way we can think of these rankings is the following:

• They use them all. And each one is in a funnel. So we then go into touch marketing. Where awareness then gets funnelled into something else
• There is long term and short term gains
• There is diversification. You have email as "your" audience. You use social media influencer audiences in a synergistic way. You use affiliates to promote a product and pay when they create a sale.You PPC what you want to control and test
  

So with all this info, marketing budgets reflect...

None of this.

Yep. Even though the data states the top 5 give the best returns, marketing budgets are created to fad marketing.

Let's go through the top 5 marketing budgets and see where money can be given away...sorry, spent:

1. Social media influencers- 54%
2. Email marketing campaigns- 48%
   
3. Social media ads- 42%
4. SEO- 40%
5. Retargeting- 37%

And where did content marketing/ blogs end up? 24% of budgets.

Have a guess how much of the budget affiliate marketing gets. Remembering that it is the third largest area where marketers have found generates them cash.

7%

:)

Yep. Just 7% of budgets gets spent on something that generates a lot of revenue and are clearly the most effective marketing channels.

I can roughly understand social media influencers, but like...what would happen if you gave them an affiliate product? Wouldn't that be much better?

This might be reflected in the social media budget- to promote affiliate products. But sometimes affiliate products are no instant sales:

• They need someone to generate content that fits directly with the product
• It may take a few posts to generate a sale
• The seller might need training on how to sell a product
• There might not be any bonuses with the link to incentivise the buyer
  

Money out = money in. Stoopid in = stoopid out

When you have numbers like the above, clearly telling you that blogs are generating a ton for you. Heck, email is awesome...yet you relegate these to small budgets percentages.

Online is all about knowing your numbers and where your sales are coming from. Nothing more nothing less.

Here are some custard filled donut treats from Jasonera to see what we mean:

• Placing a webpage online or even a blog post must do something. Generate awareness, nice. Generate traffic, OK, generate sign up or sales- perfect.
• If you want traffic, what do you want to do with that traffic? Having a viral post is cool, but then what, what is the point?
• Will repeat in most of the articles on this site because it is really worthy to note. Followers mean nothing unless they do something
• You can sell anything as long as you have someone that your product is going to help. So you need the right audience. A huge step in the right direction is when they subscribe especially to an email list.
• MrBeast made his initial money not through revenue from Youtube, it was through partnerships which then jacked up the video views. Those partnerships were delicately formed to fit MrBeasts audience. But those partnerships wouldn't have been created unless MrBeast has a loyal audience that watched his videos when posted. But those audience members were targeted and increased by targeted ways (Colab with other high ranking Youtubers, MrBeast Reacts and MrBeat Gaming).

But all this is changing.

Content creators are getting money from brands. However brands will also start to realise that pay per sale is much better than "see if this wad of cash does anything" marketing. Between 2020 and 2024 affiliate marketing revenues has doubled. TikTok shop is also one of the top ways creators are making money on that platform.

Check out more intelligence marketing articles here

Affiliate section is here.

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