📩 How To Prioritise Your Digital Channels

Hey 👋

Welcome to Neighbourhood Post issue #2 - the weekly newsletter for leaders and people in marketing.

Thanks for the positive feedback on the first newsletter. You can look at it 2 ways; I started as I mean to go on, or I peaked early and it’s downhill from here. 📉

Let’s find out which one it is shall we?

This week we’re talking about which digital channels you should choose to focus on, because (spoiler alert) the more you choose, the less effective you’ll be.

Let’s go.

Time to stop spreading yourself so thinly 😰

It’s the 5th of July 2023.

The sun rises and the wind carries the collective groan of one million social media managers and marketing directors.

Out of the blue, Threads has launched.

At Twitter’s lowest point, Zuck decides to pounce and suddenly there is another channel to think about. On top of the 1,218,245 we already manage.

We’ve been walking a marketing tightrope for the past 10 years:

✅ To be successful you need a multi-channel strategy.

❌ To be unsuccessful, spread yourself thinly across multiple channels.

We can all agree that when we try to do everything, we end up being good at nothing. The question on your lips is “OK Dan, if we can’t focus on everything, what channels should we prioritise?”

The common answer is “choose the channels where your audience spends the most time.”

Not bad advice, but it’s flawed because your audience tends to be on a lot of different channels.

So instead, we recommend considering which objective is currently most important to you:

1. Reach 📣

2. Conversions 💵

DON'T YOU DARE ANSWER “BOTH”.

Well you can, but be prepared to spend money. When resources are thin, you have to prioritise.

Let’s phrase it differently:

• Do too few people know about you?

• Or do lots of people know about you, but don’t convert?

When you work out which best sums you up, you can start to choose the right channels.

But better than that, we’ve done the hard work for you.

We ranked some popular channels on two levels:

1. Their ability to reach new audiences

2. Their proximity to conversion

Then we plotted them on a graph:

Now, I could spend ages talking about this*, but I’ll keep it brief:

1. Choose whether you need reach or conversions

2. Think about which channels your audience use most

3. Pick 2-3 and create a strategy around them

If you focus your attention and ignore the other channels for now, you’ll start to see an improvement in your digital performance.

For bonus points, you can also use this graph to map out a customer journey:

Still choosing just 2 or 3, think about how you can move your audience from top left to bottom right, encouraging them to hop between channels at the right time.

If you’re a bigger organisation with higher capacity and deeper pockets then you can choose more channels, but please don’t try to do them all.

Now, I’m sure you’ve noticed something interesting.

Those cheeky channels in the top right corner - the golden bullet for both new audiences and conversions. Paid ads are by far the best way to get your audience to convert quickly, at scale. But you need larger budgets to make that happen, ideally over £1000 per month. 💸 🤑 💰

Anyway, that’s enough for now.

Key takeaway - Prioritising channels by audience and objective will help you identify 2 or 3 to choose. Go all in on them, and ignore the others.

See you next week ✌️

*If you fancy humouring me, let’s grab a coffee.

What we’re looking at 👀 and listening to 👂

🎧 Joe has been jazzing it up with Chet Baker, which helps his productivity level reach 110%. You should try it too. Dan’s been loving the new James Blake album.

📺 Rosie is (re)watching the US Office, sparking the age-old debate: Who’s better, Brent or Scott?

Before you go - we’ll never use these newsletters to directly sell you our services, but know that we’re always here if you need any expertise or support 👍