Choosing your Channel Mix: A Step by Step

Any successful marketer knows that choosing your channel mix is a crucial aspect of any well-built marketing strategy. But, deciding where your money will be best spent in the short term, especially when you don’t have a lot of performance data at your disposal, is not always an easy process. In this article, we run through our simple steps to choosing your channel mix and helping you streamline the process.

Before we start, it’s important to be aware that determining a channel mix is certainly not a set-and-forget task. Once you’ve chosen the channels you want to test initially, you will have to continue to check in with the data and consider reducing the budget, changing channels, etc. according to what you see. Understanding the best channels for your business can only happen through continued testing and experimentation.

1.  B2B or B2C

Before you even think about channels, ask yourself: is your business B2B or B2C? The categorization your business falls into will be key to channel choices. If it’s B2B, you’ll likely lean more toward platforms like LinkedIn Ads, Google, Bing, and Capterra, whereas B2C ecomm will likely also deploy Google but also Facebook, Instagram, and Youtube Tik Tok, etc. While this gives you an initial idea of what kinds of channels to scope out, you should try to get more specific and consider the specific industry your business falls into. This will be a very helpful starting point.

2.  Competitor research

Now you’ve had initial industry research, it’s time to narrow your efforts down. Do some research into your specific research into your direct and indirect competitors – what are they running? This can give you a solid idea of what channels you should be concentrating your efforts on. Use tools like Ahrefs to see what keywords your competitors are bidding on for Google (if any). And use social tools like RivalIQ to see what social media platforms their running ads on and what these ads look like. They even allow you to see real LinkedIn ads examples from your current competitor campaigns to give you a sense of what types of activity they are using this channel for.

3.  Keyword research

Next, do your own keyword research and see what opportunity is at each funnel stage (top, mid, and bottom). This can help you determine how much you want to put into each channel. If you have quite a few high-intent, decent search vol bottom-funnel keywords, Google ads may be a very integral part of your channel mix. You may then choose to supplement it with content tests like Facebook brand awareness videos in the short term.

4.  Resources & Budget

After you’ve seen what opportunity there is for you and what the competitive landscape is like, you need to take a good hard look at your resources and budget. How much can you justify investing in your initial channel mix? Especially if you have no data to back you up yet to your broader team. What does your investment in each channel look like and what can you justify it? If you only have one marketing person at your disposal, you might want to reconsider running 8 different channels and concentrate on a few channels to start with.

Now there you are – the bones of deciding on an initial channel mix for your business. Without a lot of data to base your decisions on, this is your best starting point and will give you a great launching pad to success.