Why and How to Focus on Fewer Marketing Channels

Today, I’m talking about going deep before going wide in marketing – focusing on one marketing channel and not a new channel – and why you’ll get better results that way.

First, let’s define what a marketing channel is:

A marketing channel consists of the people, organizations, and activities necessary to transfer the ownership of goods from the point of production to the point of consumption. It is the way products get to the end-user, the consumer; and is also known as a distribution channel. – Wikipedia

In this article, HubSpot breaks down marketing channels into 7 areas:

Each one of these channels requires an organization to put in a lot of work to get meaningful results from them.

Yet people often jump from one activity to another before they’ve built a working marketing channel.

It’s always more efficient to optimize what’s working rather than starting a brand new endeavor.

Eating My Own Dog Food

I’ll admit it–I am constantly wondering what Avalanche could achieve if we just:

• Started running paid ads.
• Started creating more educational videos.
• Spent more time creating podcasts.

But all of those take a lot of time, money, and people resources in order to do well, and we don’t know if they’ll be fruitful. We haven’t put people, processes, or profits towards trying to make any of these work.

What we do know is that we generate revenue from:

• Word of mouth.
• SEO.
• Email marketing.

But we haven’t optimized the performance of these PROVEN channels yet. There is still a lot of work to be done in these areas.

So when we ask, “how can we get more out of our marketing?” We don’t look to invest in areas we have no experience or proven results from. We look to what is working and optimize it.

We’ve been doing this for a while, and it works.

How You Can Decide Where to Go Deep

Look to what’s working and what you haven’t invested in or invest very little in.

One of my favorite questions to ask potential clients that might be a good fit for working with us is – “have you ever received a lead from your website that came from a search engine and turned into revenue?” followed by “have you ever invested in SEO and content?”

If the first answer is yes and the second no or very little, then SEO may be an area worth investing in. It’s a proven but not prioritized channel.

Hunt for your proven channels or at least evidence that one of them might be close to being proven, then find an expert in that area that can help you optimize that channel for more meaningful outcomes.