How to choose the right marketing channels

The marketing channel landscape is more diverse and fragmented than ever. Deciding how to allocate resources is a big challenge for marketers. There is no one silver bullet formula for any business, but the following advice should help guide decision making if you don’t know where to start or how to improve your current mix. 

NOTE: This article is specifically about choosing channels for the “Promotion” part of the  famous 4Ps aka the full marketing mix. Please remember that Promotion is only one weapon in your arsenal, marketers should also be leveraging tactics across the other 3 Ps of Price, Place and Product which will be covered in future articles. 

Start with strategy 

I will start to sound like a stuck record in this newsletter, because robust strategy is always the first step when making decisions about what to do or how to invest. Understanding where you play and what you’re trying to do provides the all-important evaluation criteria for what channels to activate.

Strategy step 1: be clear on your objectives 

Too often marketers jump straight to selecting channels without being clear on what they’re trying to achieve. In practice, different channels are more or less effective at different things. And how you use and combine different channels affects the results you achieve. Just because you did something last year, doesn’t mean it’s still the right choice to achieve your goals this year.  

Things to consider here are:

• Do you have a problem at a specific stage of the funnel that you’re trying to address?
• Are you trying to drive conversions within an existing demand pool or grow your pool of demand?
• How do you want to balance your focus between acquisition and retention?
• Are you going after one audience or multiple audiences and do you have the same objectives with each?
• Are you trying to reposition yourself or build specific associations for your brand?
• Are you launching new features/products/initiatives that you want to promote?

Strategy step 2: understand your category

When it comes to selecting the right channels you need to understand how the dynamics of your category and distribution model affect your choices. This is easier if you’re a veteran in your category as you will intrinsically know what works. But if you’re working on a new category or for a startup that is creating its own category then you need to put your thinking hat on. 

Ask yourself questions like:

• Is your product/service a big-ticket purchase or a cheap impulse buy? 
• Do purchases in your category require careful consideration and multiple decision makers? 
• How long is your sell-cycle? 
• Are your sales happening online or offline? 
• How frequently are customers in-market to buy? 

The answers to these questions should shape your thinking on which channels are most useful to you and how to use them.

For example, performance marketing is a great way to drive online sales for frequently purchased, low-value and impulsive products and so investing heavily here makes sense. For new technologies and highly considered purchases in B2C or B2B, content and influencer marketing are a valuable persuasive tool. For expensive and infrequently purchased consumer propositions, richer-format and more entertaining channels like online video or radio are required to build memories that prime for future sales. 

Strategy step 3: define tightly who you are trying to reach

At the heart of channel selection is who you're trying to reach. Demographic information is usually not specific enough for effective targeting. You need to bring in psychographic information to define your audience's interests, activities, opinions and values. This helps tighten up your media buy but also allows you to think about where to show up contextually and how to tailor your messaging, content and creative to be more engaging and more likely to drive outcomes.

Build your knowledge of different channels and what they do best

Once you’ve done the heavy lifting on your strategy the next thing is to make sure you have a good understanding of the range of channels available and how to use them. Do your research and if you need more expertise then consider bringing in experts like agencies or freelancers to support you - it's a worthwhile investment to ensure you're allocating your budget in the best way.

Here is some general thought starters:

• Think beyond Google and Meta: it's easy to default to running Google and Meta ads when you’re looking to scale up. There's definitely a place for them in most marketing plans but effective and efficient marketing requires a broader mix. 
• Don’t neglect organic channels: a solid content strategy can be a cost-effective way to build awareness and bring people into your funnel. It requires an investment in content that’s engaging and offers a distinctive point of view. The channel is also useful as a test-bed, helping you understand what resonates before investing in paid media.
• Partnerships help you punch above your weight: for smaller brands, partnerships are a great way to build credibility by association and piggy-back on their reach and audiences. Look for partners with similar brand values and audiences and ideally those bigger/more established than you. 
• Traditional channels aren't dead: don’t write off traditional media like radio, out-of-home or advertorials. These channels can be highly effective in demand building as they are more immersive than an online display ad and, in most cases, costs have come down as they compete with new channels. They are also increasingly digital and so offer ways to target, making them more relevant for smaller brands.
• Small-scale influencers for reach and conversion: micro or nano-influencers usually have highly engaged audiences and so offer a targeted way to reach new but highly relevant audiences in a more noticeable way than paid ads. They can also drive conversions for some impulsive consumer categories.
• Get out in the real world: real-world interactions should not be overlooked to get yourself noticed. For smaller brands, standing out is key and this is hard in a purely digital context where attention is short and divided. Pop-up events, product demos, sampling, conferences and industry fairs are all great ways to drive awareness among targeted groups. And the face-to-face experience is considerably more memorable. 

Channel selection and creative development go hand-in-hand

When it comes to advertising, it's proven that the quality of the creative is a much greater determinant of return on investment than your media buy. So, if you’re not investing the time and resources into high-quality creative, you’re leaving money on the table. The same principle applies to organic channels, where the quality and relevance of content is critical for success. 

The primary consideration for developing quality creative and content is tailoring it to the channel and specific placement it's served in. To illustrate the point, you’re unlikely to see optimal brand-building results from running a highly rational and information-dense static format on Youtube. And you’re unlikely to generate lots of leads by running long-format brand videos as sponsored LinkedIn posts. 

This is why planning channels and creative executions in siloes makes zero sense. I often see marketing teams deciding on a channel mix first and then trying to figure out what to do in each one, or worse still, just deploying existing assets that were developed for something else. The right approach is to plan channels and creative in an integrated way. Build creative platforms then think about which channels allow you to execute those most effectively and work on tailored executions per channel that maximise the effectiveness.

Remember channels work together 

Another clear argument to plan in an integrated way is that channels never work in isolation, and can have compounding effects on each other. For example events for potential customers can be a great way to engage media whilst also generating engaging organic content; when your audiences are exposed repeatedly to the same messaging across multiple touch points the impact is proven to be greater. Content strategies should work hand-in-hand with SEO, SEM and retargeting strategies to maximise conversion potential. And brand-building campaigns need to be coupled with lower funnel activation to achieve maximum short and long term impact. Across any and all different touch points you want to be showing up with a consistent identity and serving the same messaging so that everything works together for greater effect. It’s vital for marketing teams to plan and execute collaboratively to take advantage of this.

Your blueprint for channel planning

The key takeaways

𝟭. 𝗦𝘁𝗮𝗿𝘁 𝘄𝗶𝘁𝗵 𝘀𝘁𝗿𝗮𝘁𝗲𝗴𝘆: be clear on objectives, category dynamics and audience

𝟮. 𝗧𝗵𝗶𝗻𝗸 𝗯𝗿𝗼𝗮𝗱: don't limit yourself to obvious choices or what you've done before

𝟯. 𝗨𝗻𝗱𝗲𝗿𝘀𝘁𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝘄𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝗱𝗶𝗳𝗳𝗲𝗿𝗲𝗻𝘁 𝗰𝗵𝗮𝗻𝗻𝗲𝗹𝘀 𝗮𝗿𝗲 𝗴𝗼𝗼𝗱 𝗳𝗼𝗿: do your research or bring in an expert

𝟰. 𝗣𝗹𝗮𝗻 𝗰𝗵𝗮𝗻𝗻𝗲𝗹𝘀 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗰𝗿𝗲𝗮𝘁𝗶𝘃𝗲 𝘁𝗼𝗴𝗲𝘁𝗵𝗲𝗿: read the full article to access my blueprint for right approach to channel planning