What are marketing channels?

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What's the first thing you think of when you hear the word "channels"? Do you think of television channels or perhaps a water channel?

They are two very different things, but if you think about the meaning of the word channel, you will see that in both cases, and in all the others where it is used, the idea is the same: the channel is a means of distributing or transmitting something.

When we talk about television channels, they are a medium by which the broadcaster reaches the viewer or, in the case of water channels, they are the medium by which water is carried from one point to another.

Marketing channels follow the same concept, since they are the ways in which you can bring your product to your end customer , that is, they are the way you show them your products for purchase.

This is because people have less and less time to devote to any aspect of their lives and, although the act of buying is interesting for the vast majority , access to information and the Internet make the consumer increasingly rational in the time dedicated to this activity.

Thus, we can say that the main objective of marketing channels is to make a product arrive as quickly as possible to the place where the consumer expects to find it.

But placing your product in the right place when your ideal consumer is ready to buy it will vary depending on the profile of your target audience and the type of product you sell.

With this in mind, below we present the types of distribution strategies, with their intermediaries, that you can use and how to choose the best solution for your company.

Why are marketing channels so important?
To understand this a little better, let's think about the following example: what do you do when you're hungry? One possibility is to go to the kitchen, grab a piece of bread, a slice of cheese, and a glass of chocolate milk.

In fact, you can easily find these items in a store or market, right?

Now, assuming you are the cheese maker, you would likely need to purchase large quantities of milk and packaging on a weekly basis to produce your product, which would not be possible to solve with a simple trip to the market.

Transport trucks would probably need to be cameroon phone number list sent to livestock farms and packaging manufacturers every week.

However, these suppliers or sellers of these products may offer, for your convenience, the possibility of receiving orders via the Internet or by telephone and sending the products directly to your factory.

The ways in which marketers move products from the point of production to the point of consumption involve marketing channels, which are essential for carrying out the activities necessary to link the producer with the end user.

That is, the market and the distributors of packaging and milk mentioned in the example are members of a distribution channel, without which the piece of cheese would never reach your table when you are hungry.