Are you offering product delivery and service that meet your customers’ needs? Or are these channels falling short as well?

Using the right channels to market your products and serve your customers is key to the success of your business.

This post will help you map out your customer channels as part of your Business Model Canvas so you can focus your efforts and streamline your operations.

Customer Channels

Customer channels are the lifeblood of your business, feeding profit and sending energy to your operations.

Mapping out your channels will tell you where and how to interact with your customers at every stage of their journey. Before you dive into filling out the Channels component of your Business Model Canvas, make sure you’ve laid out your Value Proposition and defined your Customer Segments.

Customer channels describe how you reach your target customer segments.

• How do you make potential customers aware of your business or your product?
• How do you convince customers to buy your product?
• How will they purchase your product?
• How will the product be delivered to customers?
• And after the sale, how can you continue to support customers and develop a relationship with them?

Your company’s success is determined by whether you’ve chosen the right channels to match what your customers want and need. That means not all channels are equal.

If you’re pouring money into Facebook ads but your customers are mostly spending time on LinkedIn, your choice of the channel will hurt your bottom line.

Your channels need to match what your customer segments want when it comes to getting information, shopping experience, and access to after-sale assistance.

Channels and the Customer Journey

The marketing, sales, and distribution channels your company uses provide specific services to your customer.

In the graphic below, you can see the goals of various channels involved in winning and retaining customers. Orange shows the responsibility of your marketing channels, yellow shows what sales channels need to do, and green represents your distribution channels.

Let’s go through the phases of your customer journey and see how channels play an important role.

Aware – For your customer segments to even know about your company and what it provides, you need to decide how you are going to initially reach them. Through your marketing and advertising, your customer segments find out about your product and/or services and develop enough interest to want to know more.

Consider – Next, reviews, comparisons, trials, videos, or other methods need to provide information for your customer segment to evaluate your product to decide to buy it.

Purchase – Once your customer has decided to buy your product, they need to purchase it through a sales channel. The customer might buy it at in a brick-and-mortar store or online.

Delivery – If the customer bought your product in a store, they just take it home. Today, many customers are buying online from Amazon, Etsy, or eBay, which offer a variety of options for delivering your product.

Support – For best customer satisfaction, providing the customer access to assistance after the purchase is important. Customers will have questions. They might want to make a return or exchange. A delay may occur in shipping. You want your after-sale customer service to amaze people with your commitment to their satisfaction.

Loyalty – The hardest part of marketing a product is gaining the customer. Once the customer is impressed with your product, they may be interested in additional products or repeat purchases. The customer may also become an advocate for your product.

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