15 marketing channels you should focus on in 2025

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Marketing channels are the bridge between you and your audience. That’s why it’s imperative to use the right ones to fulfill your business needs. Aside from driving business growth and sales, these channels can also help boost visibility and engagement.

Adopting a multi-channel approach is beneficial. It allows you to promote your product or service through a variety of avenues. This enhances your chances of reaching and engaging with your target audience. 

Each channel has its strengths, and using multiple channels allows you to reach different segments, diversify your strategy, and minimize risks. 

If you’re unsure where to start, we’re here to guide you. In this article, we’ll explore 15 of the best marketing channels for 2025, along with how to use them effectively and the advantages they offer. Let’s get started.

1. Email marketing

Email marketing is among the most effective digital marketing channels. According to a Statista report, approximately 362 billion emails are expected to be sent and received daily in 2024. This number is projected to rise to 408 billion by 2027.

Clearly, people are already accustomed to receiving communication via email. So, why not use some effective email marketing strategies to promote your business?

Use these best practices and tips to get the most out of your email marketing initiatives:

• Segment your email list: It’ll help you personalize your messages
• Create mobile-friendly emails: Use click-worthy CTAs and clear fonts, and keep your copy and subject lines short
• Focus on nurturing healthy relationships: Share educational content, your brand values, or stories
• Re-engage inactive subscribers: Use offers to get their attention
• Use A/B testing: Test your subject lines, CTAs, body copies, and email layout

Here are some of the advantages of using good email marketing software:

• Retains customers: One of the best ways to build a loyal customer base is via email. You need to ensure that your emails provide value to your customers through promotions, coupons, or product information.
• Reduces costs: Email marketing is often cheaper than other marketing channels that involve high upfront costs. Unlike paid ads, printing, or media space, it offers a direct line of communication with your target audience.
• Keeps your customers informed: You can keep your customers updated via frequent emails. By regularly updating them about your business, promotions, and important changes through email, you can continue to build their interest and loyalty.
• Improves sales: A well-executed email marketing campaign can significantly generate more sales. When you send targeted emails to interested customers, you increase the likelihood of them making a purchase.

2. SMS marketing

SMS marketing involves promoting your brand using text messages. According to Forbes, SMS has an open rate of 98%, which is three times higher than email and 12 times higher than push notifications.

This makes text messaging one of the most effective marketing mediums and channels. You can send recipients discount codes, alerts on new arrivals, and more.

What makes it one of the best marketing channels is that it’s a direct and personal way to reach people. It gives you the freedom to connect with your target customers anywhere, anytime.

You can use SMS marketing to build deeper relationships with customers by sending personalized and targeted text messages. Here’s an example:

You can also send transactional messages to relay important information to your customers, like order confirmation and shipping details. Here’s another example of a transactional SMS:

Here are some tips to get you started with SMS marketing:

• Get permission: Always seek consent from the recipient to send promotional marketing messages
• Make use of an SMS automation tool: An SMS automation tool will also help you automate the process and personalize messages
• Be concise: Keep the message short but valuable, and always have SMS templates on hand to save time on the basics
• Measure results: Track click rates, unsubscribe, bounce rates, and sales, and use these insights to increase the ROI of your automated text messages

3. Push notifications marketing

Push notifications are one of the most effective marketing channels for increasing conversions. They allow you to send brief, eye-catching messages and visuals to your target audience, even those who aren’t actively browsing your store. 

This quick communication can work alongside your email and SMS marketing, helping you reach more people and increase sales.

Omnisend research found that, in 2023, brands sent around 266 million push messages, which was 58 million more than the year before. These messages helped make over $13 million in sales.

Automated messages were especially effective, yielding a 58.7% open rate. They led to three times more clicks and 10 times more purchases, accounting for 21% of all orders from push messages. 

Omnisend users can easily set up push notifications, especially with Shopify, BigCommerce, or WooCommerce. Make sure your website is secured with HTTPS to ensure compatibility with browsers like Chrome, Firefox, and Opera.

There are two types of push notifications:

• Campaign push notifications: These are sent as part of a marketing campaign to promote specific offers, products, or events

You can customize the content, including titles, text, logos, and images, to make them visually appealing. The goal is to grab attention and encourage users to take the desired action.

• Browser/web push notifications: For these notifications, the user gives the browser permission to send web push notifications through a browser opt-in box

Let’s explore the advantages of incorporating push notifications into your marketing channels:

• Instant delivery: They reach users immediately, ensuring timely communication about promotions or updates
• High engagement: Push notifications have higher open rates compared to emails as they grab users’ attention more effectively
• Direct access: They appear directly on your audience’s devices, making them hard to miss, unlike other messages that can get lost in crowded inboxes
• Personalization: Businesses can tailor messages based on user behavior and preferences, making notifications more relevant and appealing

4. Omnichannel marketing

Omnichannel marketing involves the use of multiple marketing channels while focusing on the customer experience.

It requires the use of similar branding, messaging, and tone in all marketing channels and platforms. This allows you to deliver a consistent customer experience across all customer touchpoints.

Omnichannel marketing can help you create a distinct and unique brand image that’s easy to identify.

It’s different from multichannel marketing, which involves the use of several media channels that aren’t necessarily integrated.

Here’s an illustration of the difference between omnichannel and multichannel marketing channels:

Use these tips to succeed in omnichannel marketing:

• Know your customers: Understand their pain points, likes, and dislikes in terms of shopping experience
• Be customer-centric: Simplify the customer journey and make it delightful
• Align marketing with all business processes: Your customers should get a consistent experience irrespective of which way they access your business

5. Social media marketing

The key reason why social media marketing is one of the most impactful types of marketing channels is that it can help you reach the masses. Statistics show that more than half of the world’s population is active on social media:

Social media marketing involves the use of platforms like Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, Snapchat, and TikTok to promote your brand and build relationships with your prospects and existing customers.

The 2024 report by DataReportal found that the most popular platforms are TikTok and YouTube. Between July and September 2023, TikTok users spent an average of 34 hours per month on the app, which is the highest among social media marketing channels examples.

This equates to over an hour daily, significantly ahead of YouTube’s 28 hours. In contrast, Instagram users spend about 15 hours monthly on the app. These popular social media platforms are therefore prime hotspots for marketing.

You can use:

• Organic social media marketing: Posting content on your social media accounts in the form of posts, stories, and more
• Paid social media marketing: Posting ads on social media, boosting posts, or other techniques that cost money to promote your brand on social media

Need some tips for effective social media marketing? Here you go:

• Integrate social media with email marketing: Share the social proof and user-generated content you get on your social pages in your email campaigns
• Boost your best posts: Find your best-performing organic content and use paid promotion to reach more people
• Automate scheduling: Use social media tools to schedule your posts and automatically publish them at specific dates and times
• Interact with your followers: Respond to comments and join relevant conversations

6. Influencer marketing

According to the 2024 report by Influencer Marketing Hub, the influencer marketing industry has a valuation of $24 billion.

This shows a huge leap from $1.7 billion in 2016. This is one of the key reasons why influencer marketing is a valuable channel to focus on in 2024 and beyond. 

Influencer marketing involves promoting your brand through endorsements from individuals viewed as experts in a niche (influencers).

These experts have dedicated followers who trust their recommendations.

There are four main types of influencers based on follower count:

• Nano-influencers: 1,000 to 10,000 followers
• Micro-influencers: 10,000 to 100,000 followers
• Macro-influencers: 100,000 to one million followers
• Mega-influencers: One million+ followers

Wondering how to get the most out of influencer marketing?

Here are a few tips:

• Work with nano- and micro-influencers: They have a more targeted audience and higher engagement rates, as shown by Influencer Marketing Hub, where the average engagement rate for nano-influencers is 7.2%, compared to 1.4% for mega-influencers

• Pick the right influencer: Choose influencers who are relevant to your brand and align with your brand values instead of using follower count as the only selection criteria
• Provide creative freedom: Influencers know the kind of content that resonates with their audience, so give them the freedom to create unique content
• Set clear goals: Set SMART (specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-bound) goals and identify your key performance indicators (KPIs)

7. Affiliate and referral marketing

According to a report published by Statista, affiliate marketing spending in the United States was at $9.56 billion in 2023. It’s estimated to reach 10.72 billion in 2024 and approximately 12 billion in 2025.

This is clearly one of the most popular marketing channels and should be a priority for your business.

It involves offering monetary compensation to brand ambassadors, bloggers, influencers, and other partners known as affiliates. They earn a commission for every sale they help generate for your brand.

Here’s an example of Omnisend’s affiliate email marketing program:

Just like affiliate marketing, referral marketing also involves compensating people who promote your brand. The difference here is that customers promote your brand, and you don’t necessarily have to pay them a commission, but you may offer other rewards.

You can use specialized software to run referral programs, as they’re popular these days and can help streamline your referral process. The referral marketing software market size is expected to grow to $713.3 million by 2027 from $226.9 million in 2019.

Let’s discuss ways to create successful affiliate marketing and referral marketing programs.

Tips to create an effective affiliate program:

• Choose the right products: Go for products with a high average order value, as these are more lucrative for affiliates
• Analyze the affiliate programs of your competitors: It will help you create a competitive program that will attract high-performing affiliates
• Set goals: This will help you assess if your affiliate program is performing well and if it’s not, take measures like adjusting the commission structure

Tips to create an effective referral program

• Enroll satisfied customers: These are customers with a high lifetime value and high engagement
• Do A/B tests: Check the pitch and incentives that are attracting the most referrals
• Pick the right time to enroll customers: This can be done after a purchase or after a customer has shown signs of loyalty and satisfaction
• Create a seamless experience: Make it easy to redeem the referral rewards

8. Partnership marketing

It’s one of the less popular marketing channels, but it’s still effective. It involves two or more businesses or a business and an individual collaborating to help each other reach their respective goals.

Here’s an example of a partnership between Nike and Cristiano Ronaldo:

By combining Ronaldo’s insane popularity in sports with Nike’s high-quality sports shoes, the brand set up a mutually beneficial partnership in 2003. According to Forbes, the player has worn 60 different Nike cleats over a span of 13 years.

Partnership marketing can involve:

• Hosting joint educational seminars or podcasts
• Conducting joint research studies
• Producing premium content together
• Co-creating a product or product bundle together

Here are some tips for effective partnership marketing:

• Choose the right partner: Partnering with a complementary business means you’ll have a similar target market
• Play to your individual strengths: Each partner brings a unique value proposition that, brought together, you’ll have a brilliant and successful campaign
• Open lines of communication: It will ensure you and your partner are on the same page regarding campaign execution, messaging, and KPIs
• Set terms and conditions upfront: It will make it easier to resolve conflicts or avoid them altogether

9. Content marketing

Content marketing is one of the most effective marketing channels out there. In fact, 32% of marketers use content marketing for their brands, making it the fourth most popular channel after social media, websites, and emails.

It involves the creation of valuable and relevant content to attract, engage, and delight a specific target audience.

Check out the Omnisend blog to see how we’ve created a content hub for all things related to email marketing, SMS marketing, and other marketing tactics:

Here are some content marketing tips to get you started:

• Understand the buyer’s journey: It will help you create content that encourages purchases, boosts retention, and creates loyalty
• Educate your audience: Use content to establish your website as a reliable source of information
• Create content consistently: Use a content calendar to plan your content
• Create in-depth content: Include data, statistics, and original research in your content
• Create a marketing plan: Use a marketing plan template to track all your initiatives and strategies in one workspace

10. Video marketing

A study by Wyzowl found that 82% of consumers have decided to buy a product or service after watching a video. In fact, people are more than twice as likely to buy from a brand after watching a video. 

This shows why video marketing is one of the best ways to promote a business online.

One of the most effective video marketing tips is using eye-catching visuals. You can even reuse images from other marketing channels, like emails, for more impactful results.

One of the B2B marketing channels Omnisend promotes itself through is Omnisend’s YouTube channel. These videos are insightful, giving users a walkthrough of the tools and providing value when it comes to email marketing.

To get the best results from your video marketing efforts, use the following tips:

• Cover one topic in each video: Talking about a single topic will keep the video short, preferably under five minutes, and maximize engagement
• Use CTAs: Clear calls to action can be used to guide the viewers toward the next step, whether it’s making a purchase or signing up
• Avoid sounding too promotional: Provide useful information that leads your viewers down the sales funnel without being too pushy
• Share user-generated content: Videos of customers using your products or testimonial videos are great for providing social proof

11. Podcast marketing

Over 60% of US consumers are podcast listeners. This makes it an effective marketing channel for you to reach your target audience.

Podcast marketing involves the use of audio content to promote your products or services.

There are several ways you can market your business using podcasts. You can create educational content in your podcasts, be a guest in niche-related podcasts, or have influential podcast hosts talk about your brand.

Here are a few tips to use podcast marketing to your advantage:

• Create a landing page for your podcasts: It should have a clear headline, a description, and links to related episodes
• When starting, publish three to five episodes: People will want to listen to another episode after listening to the one they found insightful, so always launch with a few episodes
• Promote your podcast: Invite industry experts as guests and ask them to promote your podcast on their marketing channels. Creator Lab, for instance, is known to invite experts from all niches

12. SEO (search engine optimization)

SEO is one of the most cost-effective online marketing channels.

It involves increasing the visibility of your website on search engines to rank for relevant search queries.

SEO attracts traffic to your website, which may lead to sales conversions. But it’s important to have your website appear in the first few positions of the search engine results page (SERP) to increase your click-through rates (CTR).

As evidenced by this research by Backliko, the first position in SERPs has a CTR of 27.6%, while the last position has a CTR of 2.4%.

There are two elements of SEO:

• Off-page SEO: Taking actions outside your website, like building backlinks, to drive traffic to your website and increase your search rankings
• On-page SEO: Optimizing elements on your website like keyword optimization and meta content to drive traffic and improve rankings

Use these tips for effective SEO:

• Meet search intent: Create content that meets the purpose of a user’s online search
• Use keywords naturally: Place keywords strategically, such as your page titles, subheadings, and URLs
• Create useful content: Write for humans, not search engines
• Get quality backlinks: Aim to get links from authority websites

13. Online advertising

This is one of the paid marketing channels that can deliver quick results. It involves different advertising techniques, such as:

• Display advertising: These are ads containing images and text that appear on third-party websites, such as banners
• Native advertising: This is a paid advertising channel where the ad content matches the form and appearance of the site they appear in
• Paid social: These are ads that appear on popular social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram and target a specific audience
• Remarketing: These are ads served to people who have already shown an interest in your business but haven’t taken action
• Search engine marketing (SEM): This is where an advertiser pays to have their website appear at the top of SERPS, above organic results, and is also known as a paid search

It’s an effective marketing channel with a market size that’s expected to grow to $786.2 billion in 2026 from $350 billion in 2020.

Here’s how you can get the most out of online advertising:

• Always segment your target audience: Create targeted advertisements for each segment you create
• Measure your ROI: Ensure you’re getting more revenue from an ad than what it costs
• Get creative: Use striking visuals and memorable messages to catch attention
• Always include a short CTA: Use persuasive language to direct prospects to the next step

14. Word-of-mouth marketing

Next on the list of marketing channels is word-of-mouth marketing.. It’s one of the most affordable and effective marketing channels.

Word-of-mouth marketing is where your customers’ experiences with your business are reflected in their dialogues with other people. If you positively serve your existing customers, they’ll recommend your products to their families and friends.

Here’s a list of tips to encourage word-of-mouth marketing:

• Give freebies: Reward your loyal customers by giving them free gifts and personalized offers
• Conduct giveaways and contests: Your customers will tell their friends and family about them and will be happy to participate if the rewards are lucrative
• Go the extra mile for your customers: Always deliver more than you promise

15. Event marketing 

This marketing channel revolves around events and networking. Whether you’re hosting your own events or participating in community and industry gatherings, event marketing offers maximum visibility.

This applies to both in-person and online events. They can help you attract new customers. In fact, 79% of businesses in the US leverage event marketing to generate leads.

Here are some tips for effective event marketing: 

• Define your audience: Tailor your event marketing strategy to align with your target audience for maximum impact
• Use social media: Promote your event on social media platforms and share event details, use hashtags, and engage with followers to pique their interest
• Partner with local businesses: Collaborate with other businesses for sponsorships or gatherings to reach new audiences
• Offer incentives: Give discounts, freebies, or other perks to encourage attendance, such as a discount for the first 50 registrants or a gift for attendees who bring a friend

Which of these marketing channels will you use?

Go through this list of marketing channels and find the ones that are most relevant to your business.

The best part about these examples of marketing channels is that you can use automation tools to reduce the manual workload and get better results.

At Omnisend, we can help you automate your email marketing, SMS marketing, push notifications, and omnichannel marketing to take your business to the next level.