Which marketing channel is best for your startup?
How to prioritize the 6 marketing channels.
If you’re trying to find the best startup growth channels, here’s a set of simple questions to help narrow down the list.
But first, Peter Thiel said it best:
“Most businesses get zero channels to work: poor sales rather than bad product is the most common cause of failure. If you can get just one distribution channel to work, you have a great business. If you try for several but don’t nail one, you’re finished.”
That’s it — you just need to master one channel. But how do you choose which one?
Good news? This is actually a simple decision.
Bad news? Picking is the easy part. Getting a channel to actually work is hard.
E.g. SEO is “winner-take-almost-all,” the top 3 results (out of 500,000) get 70%+ of the traffic.
Online ads are sold via auction so the company with the best conversion funnel and the deepest pockets wins.
Organic social and influencers…the top 1% get almost all the followers, likes, and clicks.
So ask yourself: Which of these channels can you be in the top 1% in the world?
That’s down to 2 things:
1. Best alignment with your business (structurally)
2. Best fit for your team’s talents
Here are some questions to help decide:
𝗦𝗘𝗢 & 𝗶𝗻𝗯𝗼𝘂𝗻𝗱: Is there any search volume, are people even looking for something related to the thing you sell? Can you create great content and build enough domain authority to rank for it?
𝗣𝗮𝗶𝗱 𝗮𝗱𝘃𝗲𝗿𝘁𝗶𝘀𝗶𝗻𝗴: Is the product so easy to show or explain that you can “hook” someone with a glance? Do you have good direct response copy, design, experimentation and data skills? Can you afford it?
𝗢𝗿𝗴𝗮𝗻𝗶𝗰 𝘀𝗼𝗰𝗶𝗮𝗹 & 𝗶𝗻𝗳𝗹𝘂𝗲𝗻𝗰𝗲𝗿𝘀: Do your prospects follow influencers? Do you have a remarkable product (i.e. visually stunning, a great story or cultural caché)? Can you get deals with top influencers in your space?
𝗗𝗶𝗿𝗲𝗰𝘁 𝗢𝘂𝘁𝗿𝗲𝗮𝗰𝗵: Is your product expensive enough to be profitable after you pay your sales & sales ops teams? Do you have the ability to attract and develop sales and lead-gen talent?
𝗩𝗶𝗿𝗮𝗹 / 𝗽𝗿𝗼𝗱𝘂𝗰𝘁-𝗹𝗲𝗱: Is your product naturally multi-player? (meaning, will customers bring more customers as a part of using your product?) Can you do great UX design and rapid product experimentation?
𝗣𝗮𝗿𝘁𝗻𝗲𝗿𝘀 𝗼𝗿 𝗿𝗲𝘀𝗲𝗹𝗹𝗲𝗿𝘀: Does your product naturally sit downstream of another product or service to help a partner build their core business? (e.g. Shopify 𝘸𝘢𝘯𝘵𝘴 to partner with Stripe and PayPal to help their new sellers get up and running.)
Most importantly, instead of constantly testing channels, pick your best one and experiment to master it. That takes time, so experiment constantly. (And when an experiment doesn’t work, take time to figure out why. I’ll leave a link in the comments to “How to debug a failed marketing experiment”
Helpful? I post each week, follow me so you won’t miss them –> Matt Lerner
