25+ Distribution channels
People tend to stick to what they know, but this is a mistake. Growth marketers should be channel agnostic—we shouldn’t fall in love with any particular marketing channel. Rather, we should just pick the right channel that’s most appropriate given the constraints of the business.
Before you hone in on any one channel, consider all the options at your disposal (many both organic and paid). A step in that direction, is to just be aware how many different marketing and distribution channels are out there. Below, we’ve compiled a list of a variety of marketing channels—every single one of which is big enough for a typical startup to hit meaningful scale!
Search
— SEO / organic Search
— AdWords
— Youtube search
— Amazon search
Social media
— Quora
— Audience-specific platforms and forums (e.g. StackOverflow)
— Snapchat
Paid ads
— Facebook ads
— Twitter ads
— LinkedIn ads
— Quora ads
— Reddit ads
— Youtube ads
— Programmatic / display
— Newsletters (paid)
— Billboards
— Magazines & offline
— Radio & television
Publicity
— Publicity & PR
— Non-traditional PR
Content marketing
— Blogging
— Podcasting
— Youtube
— Engineering-as-marketing (free tools)
— Influencer marketing
— Guest posting / guest appearances
Sales-based
— Outbound sales (cold calling)
— Street sales
— Telemarketing
Partnerships
— Affiliate marketing
— Joint Ventures (e.g. Snoop Dogg)
— Business development (e.g. resellers, distributors, etc.)
— API integrations
User-get-user
— Virality (e.g. “powered-by”)
— Word-of-mouth
— Referral marketing
Others
— Messenger apps
— Non-global platforms (e.g. WeChat, VK, etc.)
— Voice
— Aggregator listings (e.g. Google Maps, TripAdvisor)
Each channel works for some businesses, but none of them work for everyone. Which channels are potentially usable for your business, that you had never even thought about?
Tips
- Growth marketers should be channel agnostic. We should be considering any option that will get the job done, and get us the growth we’re looking for.
- No matter what type of business you're in, it's usually just one channel—and one channel alone—that generates over 80-90% of all your traffic volume and thus acquisition.
It's not equally spread across a bunch of channels (!!). One channel brings almost all the growth, and most of the other channels look bleak in comparison. Obviously it's not the same channel for every business.
It's not equally spread across a bunch of channels (!!). One channel brings almost all the growth, and most of the other channels look bleak in comparison. Obviously it's not the same channel for every business.
In Practice
- Mailchimp gets almost all its growth from the "powered by Mailchimp" line, in the footer of every email.
- Hubspot grows based on the traffic their blog and free content generates
- Dropbox grew big based on a double-sided referral scheme ("refer a friend, to get free storage")
- TikTok grows because people share TikTok videos to other people in their network, e.g. via Whatsapp
- Microsoft Teams grows because Microsoft bundled it into Office 365, and sells it via enterprise sales teams
- Squarespace grows because it spends big money on paid advertising, especially on podcasts
- Quora grows because it ranks for millions of long-tail keywords
Pair with
- Book: Traction by Gabriel Weinberg and Justin Mares
