Founders guide to picking the right marketing channels ðŸ§
Going from MVP to traction is hard. Especially when you're not a marketer.
I've gone through this a few times now (with side-projects and funded start-ups), and I want to share the general process I've found to work best.
Tip: Before you start, make sure you have a customer persona ready. Your understanding of who you are selling to is key to nailing this.
Here's a quick summary:
- First, create a list of all marketing channels you can think of.
- Next, rank them based on factors like reach, time, etc. (Example below👇)
- Pick the top two channels and spend the next 6 weeks validating them.
Shortlist your channels
The first thing to do? Open a Notion doc or an Excel sheet. Prepare a list of marketing channels. Most channels fit into three buckets:
- Paid - Ads (Google, FB), Affiliates, Influencers, etc.
- Organic - Social Media, Content, SEO, referrals, etc.
- Integrations - Marketplaces, app stores, etc.
Here's where your customer research is crucial. Make sure you list all channels where you're sure your audience hangs out and spends time.
Once you're ready with a list, we move to the next step.
Rank your channels
Now, you need to rank each channel for a certain set of parameters. I recently did this for my latest project (MyCheckins), and here's what the result looked like:
For each parameter you list, it makes sense to be very specific about what it means. Here's an example:
These parameters should be unique to you and your situation. For me, it was important to have a targeted audience with a low time to results.
I also went a little overboard and added scores to each parameter to get a clear, prioritized list at the end. But that's not necessary unless you need it.
If you have questions on the specifics - do drop a comment :)
Pick and test the winners
Once you are ready with the rankings, you can see a clear picture of which channels make the most sense for your business. Now you're ready to test.
For testing, I'd recommend taking 4-6 weeks per channel and setting clear goals for validation. This can be a post of its own - but a general rule of thumb is to stick to the basics and just experiment until you see signs of traction.
If you're unable to get results after trying everything, it's time to drop it and move on to a different one. Doing this a few times should be enough to find at least one or two channels that work well for you.
I hope this post helps. As an engineer who spent a lot of time figuring out marketing (and finally making it work on different products), I enjoy sharing what I learn. I got here learning from others before me, who did the same.
Again, super happy to answer any questions you might have. Cheers!
nice
Hey Rushabh, great to see this process outlined here on IH. I’m currently working on a product to manage the testing of acquisition channels. Any interest in giving it a try? It’s free and I would love your feedback.
MarketingPad.io
Hey @stephencharles, I gave your tool a try yesterday. I've broken down my feedback into three parts - landing page, onboarding, and product.
Here's what I think.
Landing Page
While there is a lot of room for improvement, I think you've done a good job with the messaging. I am someone who very recently experienced the pain point you're solving for, and I connected with the copy pretty well.
Where you can improve:
Onboarding
I think this is where you can improve significantly. There were too many steps on the main onboarding page that I had to read through.
I was also not able to get a clear picture of the product doing that. Maybe breaking it down into steps, adding visuals, or creating a demo project first can help.
One great example is Trello. You can understand some key principles here: https://growth.design/case-studies/trello-user-onboarding
The more friction a user runs into before experiencing the true value of the product, the more likely they are to bounce. I felt your process has a lot of friction right now.
Product
After the onboarding process, I jumped into the product and created a goal and a campaign to try it out. However, I couldn't see what value this would add for me.
If it's just a place to maintain a list of all initiatives I'm working on, I'm not sure I'd want to use it. I already have a marketing stack with too many products.
From your landing page, my initial impression was that it will help me aggregate my data, sheets, and tracking and plug them into my experiments.
Basically, I felt like there was a mismatch between expectations and reality. I think there is room for improvement on the product side. How can you help me solve my problem better? The current way wasn't convincing enough for me, personally.
Also, the UX can be a lot better. Many features/sections felt disconnected. You can make it more cohesive and cut the friction in many places, imo.
I think this is where working with your customers, understanding their workflows, and figuring how you can fit into it will help a lot. I'm happy to share my process if that helps. I happen to work in product and growth full-time.
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I hope these points help. Again, these are from my personal perspective so I could be wrong in a few areas. But I hope this adds value.
All the best!
Amazing feedback, thanks so much for taking the time to write this up.
The Landing page advice makes sense, I need to test some new copy.
Same with onboarding, I need to do more research on which techniques will work well with my app.
For the product, I had 2 follow up questions...
"From your landing page, my initial impression was that it will help me aggregate my data, sheets, and tracking and plug them into my experiments."
Could you expand what you were expecting here? Does this mean using something like Zapier to send all of your ideas from other sources into the MarketingPad list? Or are you thinking that you would want to see your KPI data imported from other software such as Google Analytics?
Also, when you say the features are disconnected, do you have a specific example? I don't have much UI/UX experience so I'm trying to see it from your perspective.
Thanks!
This is interesting. I am in the process of running a lot of experiments and I definitely would appreciate a tool that makes the process simpler.
Let me take the tool for a spin in the next couple of days, and I will get back to you with some feedback right here. Thanks for sharing.
Wow! That's a pretty fresh perspective on how to prioritize your channels. Thanks for sharing!
Glad you liked it. Thanks!
This comment was deleted 3 years ago