It was Colonel Content in the Courtyard with the Comment!

Look at you go.

You’ve done your customer research.

You’ve done your messaging and positioning.

You know what questions you need to answer for your audience (aka content).

But if that has you looking like this when trying to turn that into “marketing”

Today is the day we clear that up.

When you’re done, you’ll know:

• What a “marketing channel” actually is

• How to choose what content to use in whatever channel you choose

• What your next steps are to actually setting up a channel and running with it

• How to know if your channel is working

• Some words of warning before you do too much

Let’s get to it!

This is how we filter it down to choosing a channel from customer research and content intuition

We already know what to say (that’s in the choosing what kind of content part we did in our last issue)

Choosing a marketing channel is just deciding where to say it.

What we perceive on the target audience industry norms - where are they most comfortable being honest about their problems.

List out all of the places that you found your target audience talking about their problems and/or that they were actively enjoying

Here’s how that can translate from What they said → What channels to choose

• Word of mouth/private conversations → setting up a referral program and letting current users get paid for referring their friends

• Podcasts → pitching to be a guest

• Google/ChatGPT → writing specific guides to answer those questions with zero fluff

• Newsletters → asking to write guest issues

• Private Communities → joining and answering questions organically, then asking the community mods for suggestions on how you could help the community more

Be very specific,

• Not just “Private Slack Communities” but “Print Design Summit’s Slack group”

• Not just “Podcasts” but “The Tax Factor“

• Not just “Search” but “Answering a how-to-do-x question completely”

Ex: How to Do Customer Research (Even If You're Scared to Talk to People) which answers the number one question we get around understanding your audience and is our most-shared blog post to date.

See what awareness stage that channel trends to

Awareness stages are how you map where someone is in talking about their problems (and close they are to actually getting a solution)

• Unaware - They don't know why [pain point] is a thing

• Problem Aware - They know that this pain point exists, but they're not sure how to fix that

• Solution Aware - They know that they need to fix this item and are looking for resources on how to do that. You show them how to DIY it, or they can have us DIFY (Do It For You)

• Product Aware - Proof you can solve their problems, answering lingering objections

For example, Reddit majorly covers the problem and solution aware stages, with people asking for solutions or recommendations for problem-fixing resources. But some posts might be more “Problem Aware”, and others more Product Aware”. When you’re trying to get your first customers, focus on the latter. once you have some customers, do both.

Go back to the content you already decided answered their questions best and match it to the awareness stage and channel

Last issue we talked about making content that answers specific questions. Looking at the awareness stages, match whether the question that started the content is around:

• Telling them that their problem is a problem (Unaware)

• Explaining that the problem they have can be fixed (Problem Aware)

• Walking them through how to fix the problem and suggesting your solution is a great way to do it (Solution Aware)

• Proving that your way is the best way to solve their problem (Product aware)

Match it to the channels

Start with the highest awareness level channel (Product aware) + content mix first

These are the people saying “shut up and take my money”….if they knew who to tell to shut up and take their money.

Choose two channels to start with

One “Push” and one “Pull”

• Push channels - you putting the content directly in front of potential customers, but they might not have been actively asking

  • Ex channels: LinkedIn, Newsletters, Podcasts

• Pull channels - customers are searching for a solution and your content shows up

  • Ex channels: Search, Answering questions in communities

Decide what success means for those channels

Ah yes, “KPI’s”. We touched on experiments last week, here’s the numbers nitty gritty.

• If your product is self-serve, you should be tracking pricing page views and new user

• If your product is sales-heavy, you should be tracking demos booked

In case you’re wondering, the delineation between Marketing and Sales is that demo call. It’s Marketing’s job to get them to a call, it’s Sales job to close them after that.

Depending on the channel, there might be a lot of possible steps between “See content” and “Close”.

To start out you just need to be tracking who and in what numbers are closing and where they came from.

Go to work, Take it back now y’all.

Lay out a plan of attack for each channel (we’ll have more on this next week!).

You just need to answer two questions:

• How do I create the content that answers those questions?

• How do i post/upload/share it in the channel i chose?

That’s it!

A word of warning:

There is no “definitive set of marketing channels” that you have to try.

Your customers are unique, and so are you.

Don’t choose marketing channels from an arbitrary list ChatGPT or some influencer spit out.

Choose them based on being helpful to your audience.

Sophia 💜👩🏽‍💻 & Aelia ⚡️🧕 

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