A guide to marketing channels and what they actually do
Marketing comes with a lot of terminology. Paid media, owned media, earned media, top of funnel, retargeting, organic social, SEO. If marketing isn't what you do every day, it can quickly become difficult to work out what all of it means, let alone what your business should actually be investing in.
The good news is you probably don't need all of it.
Different marketing channels do different jobs, and the right mix depends on who you're trying to reach, what you want to achieve, your budget and what you can realistically maintain. A channel that works well for one business can make very little sense for another.
This guide isn't designed to tell you what your business should be doing. It's a cheat sheet to the main marketing channels and mediums you'll come across, what they're generally used for and how they can work together.
Key takeaways
There isn't one marketing channel every business needs. Start with your audience and what you're trying to achieve.
Paid, owned and earned media describe different ways your business can reach people, and most marketing strategies use a combination of all three.
Different channels can play different roles throughout the customer journey, from introducing someone to your business to helping them make a decision.
Customer journeys aren't linear. Someone might move between social media, Google, your website, reviews, email and word of mouth before they ever make an enquiry.
You don't need to invest in everything. Understand what job each channel needs to do and focus on the ones that make sense for your business.
First, what do paid, owned and earned actually mean?
If you've spoken to a marketing agency or spent any time reading about marketing, you've probably heard people refer to paid, owned and earned media.
They're simply different ways of thinking about how your business reaches its audience.
Owned media includes the marketing assets and audiences your business has the greatest control over. Your website, blog and email database are good examples. You decide what goes on your website, what you send to your database and when you communicate with them.
Social media gets a little more complicated. You control your account and the content you publish, but you don't own Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn or TikTok, and you don't control how those platforms distribute your content. An algorithm change can affect how many people see what you post, and your followers aren't an audience you can simply take with you if the platform changes.
That's one of the reasons building first-party data, such as a quality email database, can be so valuable. It gives your business a more direct way to stay connected with customers and prospects without relying entirely on another platform to decide who sees your content.
Paid media is exposure or distribution you pay for. Google Ads, Meta Ads, LinkedIn Ads, sponsorships, boosted social content, display advertising and paid partnerships can all fall into this category. You're spending money to reach more people, reach a particular audience or put your business in front of people at a particular point in their buying journey.
Earned media is exposure, endorsement or attention your business earns rather than directly buys. This can include media coverage, Google reviews, recommendations, word of mouth and other people or businesses talking about you.
The lines aren't always perfectly clean. A partnership could involve paid and earned elements. PR can be genuinely earned editorial coverage or paid advertorial. Social media sits somewhere between an owned presence and a platform you don't control. The categories are useful for understanding your marketing, but there's no need to force everything neatly into one box.
Where does the marketing funnel fit in?
You'll also hear marketers talk about the top, middle and bottom of the funnel. Traditionally, the marketing funnel represents someone moving from becoming aware of a business through to considering it and eventually becoming a customer.
Top of funnel is generally about awareness. Do the right people know your business exists?
Middle of funnel is generally about consideration and nurturing. Does someone understand what you do, trust you and have enough reason to keep considering you?
Bottom of funnel is closer to conversion. When someone is ready to act, what helps them choose your business and take the next step?
It's a useful way to think about the role different marketing activity plays, but real people don't tend to move neatly from the top to the bottom.
Someone might discover your business on Instagram, Google you, visit your website, disappear for three months, see another post, ask someone they know about you, read your reviews and eventually make an enquiry. Another person might find you through Google when they're ready to buy and move through the entire process much more quickly.
Different businesses also have very different buying cycles, which is why it's important to understand how your own customers tend to make decisions.
What does that look like in real life?
Take a B2B subcontractor that works with builders.
A project manager might come across one of the subcontractor's projects on Instagram and follow the account. Over the next few months, they see the business working across different sites, watch a couple of videos explaining how they approach their work and occasionally like a post. They never click a link or fill out a form.
Then a project comes up where they need that particular trade. They remember the business they've been seeing on Instagram and send them an email.
If you only looked at where the enquiry arrived, you might say email generated the lead. In reality, organic social had been building awareness and familiarity for months before that email was ever sent.
A B2C journey could look completely different.
A homeowner might search Google when they need a local service, find a business through its Google Business Profile, read its reviews, look at its Instagram, visit the website and then enquire. Google helped them discover the business, reviews helped build trust, social media gave them a feel for the people and work behind it, and the website gave them the information and pathway they needed to make contact.
Neither journey followed a perfect funnel, and neither relied on one marketing channel.
That's why looking at marketing as a mix is often much more useful than asking one channel to do everything.
The marketing channel cheat sheet
| Channel or medium | Generally considered | Commonly used for | Common funnel role* |
|---|---|---|---|
| Website | Owned | Positioning, information, trust, enquiries and sales | Middle → bottom |
| Google Business Profile | Owned + earned elements | Local visibility, information, reviews and enquiries | Middle → bottom |
| SEO | Owned + earned elements | Search visibility, discovery and attracting relevant website traffic | Top → bottom |
| Organic social media | Nuanced | Awareness, engagement, trust, education and staying visible | Top → middle |
| Blogs / content marketing | Owned | SEO, education, authority and answering customer questions | Top → middle |
| Email marketing | Owned | Nurturing, retention, education, repeat business and conversion | Middle → bottom |
| Google Ads | Paid | Capturing search intent, reach, enquiries, sales and retargeting | Middle → bottom |
| Boosted social content | Paid | Extending the reach of existing organic content | Primarily top → middle |
| Meta Ads | Paid | Awareness, reach, retargeting, lead generation and sales | Top → bottom |
| LinkedIn Ads | Paid | B2B awareness and reaching specific professional audiences | Top → bottom |
| Reviews and testimonials | Earned | Trust, validation and reducing perceived risk | Middle → bottom |
| PR and media | Earned / paid | Awareness, credibility, authority and reach | Top → middle |
| Referrals and word of mouth | Earned | Trust and new business | Any stage |
| Partnerships and collaborations | Earned / paid | Audience reach, credibility and brand association | Top → middle |
| Events and networking | Paid / owned | Relationships, awareness and lead generation | Top → bottom |
| Sponsorships | Paid | Awareness, association and community presence | Primarily top |
| Direct mail | Paid | Local awareness, targeted promotion and lead generation | Top → bottom |
| SMS marketing | Direct / first-party | Updates, reminders, offers, retention and action | Primarily middle → bottom |
*These are common uses, not rules. Most channels can play different roles depending on the business, audience, campaign and objective.
Top = primarily awareness
Middle = primarily consideration/nurturing
Bottom = primarily conversion
Top + middle = commonly useful at both stages
Middle + bottom = commonly useful at both stages
Across the funnel = can play a meaningful role at top, middle and bottom
Any stage = someone could enter through it at any point, which is slightly different again
Website
For many businesses, the website is one of the foundations the rest of the marketing can build around. It gives you the space to clearly position the business for your ideal customer, explain what you do, answer questions, demonstrate why someone should trust you and make it easy for them to take the next step.
A good website shouldn't only list your services. Think about what your customer is trying to achieve or the problem they're trying to solve, and make it clear how your business can help. Unlike social media, where you're working within the limits of someone else's platform, your website gives you much more control over the information, experience and journey you create.
It also supports plenty of other marketing activity. Someone might discover you through social media, advertising, PR, a referral or Google and then use your website to research the business before getting in touch.
Google Business Profile
Google Business Profile is one of the easiest marketing foundations for a business to overlook, despite being free.
A properly maintained profile can help your business appear when people search for you or for relevant local businesses. It gives people quick access to information such as your services, location or service area, opening hours, website and contact details, while also providing somewhere for customers to leave Google reviews.
If you're already creating content for social media, you can also repurpose some of that content for your Google Business Profile. Keeping your profile active and up to date gives people another way to see your work and get a feel for the business when they're researching you.
How important that is will depend on your customer and how they research businesses like yours, but for local and service-based businesses in particular, it's worth making sure the profile is complete, accurate and kept up to date.
SEO
Search engine optimisation, or SEO, is about helping search engines understand your website and improving its chances of appearing when people search for information, products or services relevant to your business.
SEO can become highly specialised, but there are foundational things every business can get right. Your website should have clear page titles and descriptions, useful page content, a logical structure and pages that search engines can access and understand. The language used throughout the site should also reflect the things your customers are genuinely searching for rather than relying on internal terminology they may never use themselves.
A broader SEO strategy can involve technical improvements, ongoing content, local SEO, backlinks and plenty more. How much you need to invest depends on the business and how competitive search is in your market, but getting the basics right gives you a much better foundation to build from.
Organic social media
Organic social media is useful for awareness, engagement and staying visible with the people you want to reach.
Unlike a website, where someone generally needs a reason to visit, social media allows your business to regularly show up where people are already spending their time. You can show your work, educate your audience, introduce your team, share what happens behind the scenes and give people a much better feel for the business over time.
One of the biggest misconceptions is that organic social media should immediately generate leads. It can generate enquiries, but that isn't the only job it can do. Someone might follow your business for months before they need what you sell. When that need eventually arises, the familiarity you've built can help put your business in the consideration set.
The right platform depends on the audience. If your customers spend their time on LinkedIn rather than Instagram, there's little value in investing heavily in Instagram simply because that's where you think a business is supposed to be.
Blogs and content marketing
Blogs and other educational content give businesses an opportunity to answer the questions their customers are already asking, demonstrate knowledge and build authority around the things they do.
This article is an example of exactly that.
Content like this can become evergreen content that continues to be useful long after it was originally published. It can also support SEO by giving search engines useful, relevant information to surface when someone is looking for answers related to your business.
A blog doesn't have to be the format either. Your main piece of content could be an article, guide, report, white paper, video or something else entirely. What's more important is what you do with it afterwards.
Once you've invested the time in creating something useful, think about how that information can work across the rest of your marketing. Could one article become three educational videos? Could those ideas become a series of social posts? Could you turn it into an email or an email series?
Rather than constantly trying to come up with something new for every channel, start with a useful idea and look at how you can adapt it for the different places your audience spends their time.
Email marketing
Email marketing is one of the most useful ways to maintain a direct relationship with customers and prospects who have chosen to hear from your business.
An email database can become a valuable business asset. Unlike social media, you're not entirely reliant on an algorithm determining how many of your followers are shown a particular piece of content. You can communicate directly with people who have already shown enough interest to give you their details.
That doesn't mean every email needs to sell something. One of the simplest ways we think about email marketing is ‘give to receive’.
Give people something useful. Answer their questions. Share your knowledge. Send them content that helps them do something, understand something or make a better decision. Keep providing value and give them a reason to want to hear from you.
Then, when you do have something to sell, an event to promote or an action you want them to take, you're speaking to an audience you've already been giving something to rather than only appearing in their inbox when you want something from them.
Email can also nurture prospects through a longer buying journey, keep your business front of mind, distribute content, encourage repeat business and reconnect with previous customers. The role it plays will depend on the business and what that particular audience needs from you.
Google Ads
Google Ads can be particularly useful when someone is actively searching for the thing your business provides.
A person searching Google for a commercial electrician, architect or local roofing company is expressing intent in a way someone casually scrolling through Instagram isn't. Search advertising gives businesses an opportunity to appear in front of those people at that moment.
Google's advertising network can also be used in other ways, including display advertising and reaching people who have previously interacted with your website.
The important thing is not to treat Google Ads as a substitute for having the basics in place. If you're paying to bring people to a website that doesn't clearly explain what you do or give them confidence in the business, you may simply be paying to send more people into an experience that isn't doing its job.
Costs and competition vary significantly between industries. If you're going to invest meaningful money, understand how the campaigns work or engage someone who does. Paid advertising needs to be monitored and optimised rather than treated as something you switch on and forget about.
Boosted social content
Boosting an existing social media post is one of the simpler ways to put some paid spend behind organic content.
If a post is already resonating with your existing audience, that can be a useful signal that it may be worth extending its reach. Boosting allows you to put that content in front of more people without building a more complex advertising campaign.
You have fewer options and controls than you would through a full advertising platform such as Meta Ads Manager, but that isn't necessarily a problem. If the objective is simply to get a strong piece of content seen by more relevant people, a boost can be enough.
Meta Ads
Meta Ads across platforms such as Facebook and Instagram give businesses significantly more control than simply boosting a post.
Depending on the campaign, they can be used for awareness, lead generation, website traffic, retargeting and sales. They also allow businesses to reach audiences beyond the people already following their accounts.
Paid social creative often needs to work harder and faster than organic content because you're putting the business in front of people who may have no existing relationship with it. The opening seconds, message and reason to keep watching or take action become important.
Like Google Ads, campaign structure, targeting, creative and ongoing optimisation matter. If you're investing heavily, it's worth learning how the platform works or engaging someone who specialises in it rather than guessing and hoping the spend produces a return.
LinkedIn Ads
LinkedIn advertising is particularly relevant to B2B businesses because of the professional information available for targeting.
Depending on the campaign, businesses can reach people based on characteristics such as job function, seniority, industry and company information. That can make it useful when you're trying to reach a specific professional audience rather than a broad consumer market.
That specificity can come at a cost, so the same question applies as it does everywhere else: who are you trying to reach, what do you want them to do and what is reaching that audience worth to the business?
Reviews, testimonials and social proof
Some of the most persuasive marketing about your business doesn't come from your business at all. It comes from the people who have already worked with you.
Google reviews can be powerful, particularly for local and B2C businesses. They're essentially word of mouth made visible. Someone researching a business can see what previous customers experienced before deciding whether to make contact.
For B2B businesses, social proof can take different forms. Testimonials, case studies, client recommendations and examples of previous work can all help reduce the perceived risk of choosing a new supplier.
And when you can get a happy customer or client on camera, video testimonials can be gold. Instead of the business telling people how good the experience is, a real customer explains it in their own words.
One good video testimonial can also work hard. It can live on your website, become organic social content, be shared through email, form part of a case study and potentially be used in paid campaigns. It's a good example of how one piece of content can support several different marketing channels.
PR and media
PR can help businesses reach audiences they don't already have access to while building credibility through association with a publication, media outlet or other trusted source.
For a builder or architect, that might mean having a project featured in a respected design publication. For another business, it could mean contributing expertise to an industry article, appearing on a podcast or being interviewed about something happening in their sector.
It's worth understanding the difference between earned editorial coverage and paid placement. Both can have value, but they're not the same thing. What makes sense depends on the audience you're trying to reach, the credibility of the publication or platform and what you ultimately want the exposure to achieve.
Referrals and word of mouth
For plenty of businesses, referrals and word of mouth are some of their strongest sources of new work.
A recommendation comes with trust already attached. Someone else has effectively told the prospective customer that your business is worth considering before you've had to say anything yourself.
The challenge is predictability. You can provide a great service, stay connected with previous customers and make it easy for people to recommend you, but you can't completely control when someone will make a referral or how many referrals will arrive next month.
That doesn't make word of mouth any less valuable. It simply means businesses looking for predictable growth may need other marketing channels working alongside it.
Partnerships and collaborations
The right partnership can create value in a few different ways. Sometimes it's about audience. Collaborating with a business whose customers overlap with yours can introduce your business to people who may never have come across it otherwise.
Other times, the value is association. Working alongside a respected, well-known or trusted brand can strengthen how people perceive your own business, even if you don't expect the partnership itself to generate immediate enquiries.
The key is alignment. Look at who the other business reaches, what it stands for, what each party brings to the relationship and whether the partnership makes sense to the people you're ultimately trying to reach.
Events and networking
Events and networking are both about connecting with people, but they can play slightly different roles.
Exhibiting at an event or trade show can put your business in front of a concentrated audience, demonstrate products or services and generate leads. It can also be expensive once you factor in exhibition fees, displays, collateral and people's time, which makes audience fit important.
Networking can be much simpler. Industry events, business groups and informal introductions can build relationships that eventually lead to referrals, partnerships or work. Like most relationship-based marketing, the value isn't always immediate or easy to attribute to one conversation.
Sponsorships
Sponsorship is generally an awareness and association play.
A local business sponsoring a sporting club, community organisation or industry event might not be able to directly attribute every enquiry to that sponsorship. The value can come from repeatedly putting the brand in front of a relevant community and building an association with something those people already know or care about.
Sponsorship can become expensive, so audience alignment matters. Being seen by a lot of people isn't particularly useful if they're not people your business wants to reach.
Direct mail and letterbox marketing
Physical mail might feel old school, but there are situations where its ability to target a specific geographic area can still be useful.
A landscaper who has just completed a major project, for example, might send a well designed project card to surrounding homes. Rather than trying to reach everyone, they're putting relevant work in front of people who live in an area they already service and where there may be similar properties or potential customers.
That doesn't mean every business needs to start printing flyers. Like any channel, it comes back to the audience, objective and execution.
SMS marketing
SMS gives businesses a very direct and immediate way to reach customers, which can be both its strength and its weakness.
It can work well for appointment reminders, important updates, timely offers and communication people genuinely expect to receive. Because a text message feels much more personal and immediate than a social post or email, irrelevant or overly frequent promotional messages can also become annoying very quickly.
If SMS makes sense for the business, use that direct access carefully. Commercial messaging also comes with consent and unsubscribe requirements, so businesses need to make sure they're using customer data appropriately.
So, which marketing channels should your business use?
Probably not all of them. Start with the customer. Who are you trying to reach? What are they looking for? Where do they spend their time? How do they research businesses like yours and what do they need to see before they're comfortable taking the next step?
Then look at what the business needs marketing to achieve. You might need greater awareness, more enquiries, better-quality leads, stronger customer retention or a way to stay front of mind during a long buying cycle. Different goals will require different combinations of channels.
From there, build a marketing mix that you can realistically support and keep reviewing it. Your website might provide the foundation, social media might build familiarity, email might nurture prospects, reviews might build trust and paid advertising might put the business in front of people when they're ready to act. The role each one plays will depend on your business.
There isn't a perfect marketing mix, and it doesn't need to stay the same forever. Understand what each channel is there to do, measure what you reasonably can, keep experimenting and change the mix as the business and its customers change.
The goal isn't to be everywhere. It's to be in the right places for the people you're trying to reach.
