Every couple of years, a platform shows up that everyone in marketing is suddenly talking about. Your boss forwards an article. A competitor is already on it. Someone in the Monday meeting asks what the plan is.
This page once made the case for Clubhouse, an audio app that had its moment. The advice was reasonable at the time. What it lacked was a way to tell a lasting channel from a busy season.
So here’s the version we’d have liked to write: five questions to ask about any new marketing channel before you move a dollar toward it. They hold up whatever the next one is called.
Is your audience there, or only other marketers?
New platforms fill up with marketers first. That makes them look bigger and more useful than they are, because the people posting about the channel are the same people you’d be competing with on it.
Look for your actual buyers. Ask five customers where they spent time online last week. Check whether the people who sign your purchase orders have accounts, and whether they use them. If you sell to facility managers and the platform is full of social media consultants, you have your answer for now.
“Not yet” is a fine answer. You can look again in six months.
Who owns the relationship?
On a platform, your followers belong to the platform. It decides who sees your posts, what it costs to reach them, and whether your account stays up. You’re renting.
A list you own works differently. An email list or a mailing list of customers and prospects is yours to keep, and it goes with you when you change vendors.
So judge a new channel partly by what it leaves you with. Does it move people onto your list, or does it keep them inside its own walls? If a channel can’t hand you a name and a way to reach that person, you’ll be paying rent on that audience for as long as you want it.
Can you measure it against a channel you already run?
A new channel reports its own numbers in its own terms: views, listens, impressions, reach. None of them tells you whether it beat what you’d have done with the same money.
Pick one channel you already run and understand. Then pick one measure both can share, such as quote requests, booked calls or orders. Give each channel its own landing page, phone number or offer code so you can tell which one produced the response.
If you can’t set up a comparison like that, you can still try the channel. Call it an experiment, and don’t ask it to prove anything.
What does a small test cost, and what result keeps it going?
Write the test down before you start. Four lines will do:
- How much money
- How many staff hours a week
- How many weeks
- What result earns it a second round
Staff attention is the cost people miss. A free platform that takes your best writer six hours a week is not free.
The last line matters most. Set the pass mark while you’re still calm about it. Once the test is running, every number looks promising to the person who pushed for it.
Fund the test with new money or spare hours where you can. Don’t pay for it by cutting the mailing or the email program that’s bringing in work today.
What happens to the work if the platform changes?
Platforms change their rules, their pricing and their reach. Some close. Ask what you’d still have the day after: the content, the contacts, or only the lessons.
This is where we’ll speak as a printer. Print and mail hold a steady place in a channel mix because they reach a list you own. A postcard or a catalog goes to the address you chose, and no feed decides whether it shows up.
Mail also pairs well with a test. If a new channel brings you names and addresses, mailing services let you follow up with those people directly. With variable data on a digital press, each piece can carry the recipient’s name and an offer that fits them, in a run small enough for a pilot.
A simple rule for testing a new marketing channel
Keep the channels you own fully funded. Set aside a small, fixed share of budget and hours for one new thing. Give it an end date and a pass mark. When the date comes, grow it or stop it.
If you’d like to talk through the print side of your channel mix, we can help. We’re an independently owned commercial printer in Fenton, Missouri, and the owners are personally available to clients. Call (636) 343-1167 or request a quote.
