The best marketing campaigns succeed because they can clearly convey a message to a specific audience. How? Through storytelling.
They can be told through LinkedIn posts, reels, hopping on the latest TikTok trends, emails, trailers, Facebook Ads and a whole host of other mediums. As an agency or business, it’s an exciting time to be a marketer because one message or brand story can be conveyed through so many channels. Thus, allowing you to interact with your audience everywhere.
But, here’s the catch – As options increase, so does the complexity, and with that is a slowdown of execution, especially when there’s multiple teams to include in the process.
That’s why it’s important to choose the right channels for your business.
We have created this definitive guide for you to make the best decisions regarding marketing channels for your business.
Rule of thumb: If you’ve recently launched and don’t have a strong online presence, start with one channel.
Step 1: Resource bandwidth
First things first, determine how much time and money you need and the extent of delegation you’re able to handle.
Be realistic about these factors as they will determine how quickly you can build a resonating storyline. Regardless of which channel you choose, you’ll have to spend a fixed amount of resources and anything more gets added to the tab!
For example, let’s say you’ve decided to run an email marketing campaign, briefly consider the factors that go into developing an email campaign.
– Email Marketing software- avg. cost between $20-500 a month
- Database collection
- Content Writing
- Landing Page
All of these costs money and effort, therefore require consideration before starting.
Once you review your resource bandwidth, you’ll have a better picture of priorities.
Step 2: Define your goals
Consider what your objectives are.
Are you looking to generate leads?
Increase direct conversions on your e-commerce store?
Generate greater traffic on your blog?
Regardless of your objective it’s important to define them to gain clarity on your marketing strategy.
Knowing your goals will allow you to better gauge which channel will benefit your organization the most.
To make it simple, choose one of the options below then run that Google or YouTube search till you’ve learnt enough to decide.
- Online Sales
- B2B Lead generation
- Brand Awareness
- SEO authority
- Increasing problem and solution awareness
- Retargeting
- Monetizing audience base
Step 3: Where are you at…. Customers
I cannot stress this enough… know your customers! Where do they hang out, what does their weekend look like? Which influencers do they follow and what are they searching on Google (probably the best place to start).
Speak to them as often as you can by running surveys, joining groups and asking your friends and family.
Remember, your customer is a person, and they are constantly bombarded by the media and competitors. So it’s important to find the gaps where you can stand out and create an opportunity with your business.
There’s usually two ways to do this: one-on-one or via writing different types of content…In some cases, you might have to do both.
Platform breakdown
- LinkedIn – working professionals age (30-60)
- Instagram – Basically everyone, but based on conversions (20-35)
- TikTok – Hard to define, age (<24)
- YouTube – Millennials, Gen Z age (15-35, but there’s a growing older population)
Step 4: Scope the competition
Oftentimes your competitors have already put in the grunt work to establish a working marketing channel. Thus, making it easier for you to cater your efforts towards what’s working.
The channel(s) would be validated as being an effective method to acquiring customers, and allowing you to create a roadmap to do the same.
Methods of scoping your competition include:
- Any leading SEO tool – Ahrefs, SEMrush
- Browsing through socials – Not only followers, but where are their audiences engaging with them
- Facebook Ads Library – If they’re bold enough to still be advertising on Facebook
Step 5: Analyze the results & Work on your strategy
Based on your research and customer data points, start putting together actionable insights. Such as, what topics your customers are interested in?
What are the pain points that your solution is addressing?
Once you’ve found some key points you should be able to narrow down channel(s) that will allow you to interact and create resonance with your target customers, alongside creating an identity for your brand!