Review #3: Let’s Talk About Channels For This Growth Thing

Hey y’all,

Life is kicking me in the ass and this honestly feels like a lot now. I’m learning new things so I’m thankful for that. That being said, it’s Week 3 into CXL’s course.

If you haven’t followed the other stuff, I’m taking CXL’s growth marketing mini degree and I’m sharing my thoughts and reviews from the classes I take weekly. You can check last week’s article on LinkedIn and Medium. I like the instructors and how they say the most complex things in the simplest ways and I highly endorse this course for anyone who’s coming into the field or for people like me who have been there for a while.

Anyway, let’s go into what I learnt this week. This week, we’re talking about channels. We’ve been able to dissect what growth is, come to an understanding that customers are the driving force for it to happen and now we’re looking at channels to reach out to these customers.

What channels can I possibly find these customers?

• SEM (Search Engine Marketing) — SEM is more commonly used to refer to pay-per-click advertising because of the paid search methods used. Think of Google and Bing.
• SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) — Search engine optimization is the process of improving the quality and quantity of website traffic to a website or a web page from search engines. SEO targets unpaid traffic rather than direct traffic or paid traffic. A 2021 research from Zero Limit Web reveals that the first five organic results account for 67.60% of clicks in Google.
• Social/Display Ads — Display advertising is a method of attracting the audience of a website, social media platform or other digital mediums to take a specific action.
• Email Marketing — Email marketing is the highly effective digital marketing strategy of sending emails to prospects and customers.
• Content Marketing — Content Marketing is a strategic marketing approach focused on creating and distributing valuable, relevant, and consistent content to attract and retain a clearly defined audience — and, ultimately, to drive profitable customer action.

Image: Fabrik Brands

Okay but I use all/some of these. What am I not doing right?

• Focus on data — Know when it’s not working and it’s time to say no
• Allow channel to scale before you bid farewell — It’s not rocket science
• You are not your competitor — That your competitor is blown on TikTok doesn’t equate that you will be successful on there
• Don’t spread too thin — Take baby steps and give proper attention before saying no.

Instead of doing these, what should I do?

• Use these channels quantitatively — Straight to the point
• Track the key performance indicators you need to track — Ensure you’re tracking right. The best growth marketers look at what channels have a great ROI and can scale compared to channels with a higher ROI but limited scalability.
• Make use of channel-specific strategies — What works on Instagram may not essentially work on Twitter even if you’re appealing to the same people. So look at the channels and think of how to strategise per channel.
• Study your audience — We’ve been shouting audience for a while and it cuts across here because it’s when you know them that you can reach out to them.
• Identify channels that are mismatches — Some channels are an outright mismatch for you based on the category of people your product appeals to or the product itself. It is necessary to identify these and stay away.
• Avoid too competitive channels — You’ll most likely spend more and get shitty ROI

What about emerging channels?

Tiktok has been in existence for a while. However, it wasn’t up until recently that the app became that app. There are more creators, more people are signing up every day, other social media channels are building their ‘Tik-tok’ like features into their products and businesses are making use of it more. Take an example, Risevest. Risevest is a company that allows people to make dollar-denominated investments in more productive markets. They’ve started making Tiktok-like videos to disseminate quick finance facts.

For emerging channels like mobile, applications, VR etc, the clue is to study the audience, choose the channel meticulously, test it and measure the results effectively.

An effective means to do this is using the Bullseye Framework (from Traction), which consists of 5 steps:

• Brainstorm
• Rank
• Prioritize
• Test
• Focus

Emerging channels are perfect as they can help you be at the forefront of the conversation and subsequently ahead of your competitors. What was the in-thing last year may not necessarily be the in-thing today. Shopping companies were obsessed with apps and adding to cart before. Now, people are making use of VR to fit themselves into the clothes and it’s mindblowing.

TL-DR

• Your customers are the reasons you’re on the channels in the first place.
• It is important to pick 1–3 channels that work for you whether you’re an early-stage company or a large corporation.
• Good search engine marketing requires constant optimization to look at keyword traffic, search trends, and fluctuation on PPC cost. However, with a lot of attention, it can drive success.
• 30% CTR typically go to the first position, 12% to third place and lower positions on a page typically get 1–2% of clicks
• More than 50% of adults have more than one social media account
• Email marketing is great for new prospects, as well as retaining and engaging existing customers when it’s personalized.
• YOu can dabble and experiment with different channels. But the biggest mistake is thinking you should be in all places at all times.
• When a channel performs for you, throw more resources at it. Move the budget from underperforming channels. Continue to monitor the performance regularly because you may begin to face audience fatigue (ads become less effective with time and repeated exposure, usually).
• If your ROI is slipping, consider modifying your strategy and always be in a position to test and innovate. Not all channels can scale up and maintain their ROI. Tactics and channels evolve