Build a Marketing Channel Strategy

When it comes to selecting which marketing channels to use, the choices can be overwhelming. With the continuous creation of new social media platforms, it’s easy to wonder: Do I need a professional Instagram account? Should I start a podcast? Should I be making TikTok videos?

Or maybe you hate the humble bragging that’s endemic to most marketing channels with a burning passion. Perhaps the mere thought of marketing yourself raises your hackles.

To overcome these obstacles, we’ll explore how to identify the select channels and approaches that best align with your goals, your audience, and your authentic self to yield the most effective results.

For independents, marketing channels serve three main purposes, which overlap interchangeably depending on what stage your business is currently in:

• Lead Generation. Clients, clients, clients. You need them, and lucky for you, they tend to congregate (and look for solutions) in predictable places: social media platforms like LinkedIn, Instagram, and TikTok.
• Community relationships. As the saying goes, your network is your net worth. Staying active within a network of your peers on messaging platforms like Slack or Discord brings shared resources, referrals, and advice.
• Thought leadership. Your IP is your business, so it behooves you to build your reputation as an expert in your field. Channels that support longer-form owned content, whether email newsletters, personal Substacks, or site-hosted blogs, give you a platform to show off your expertise and unique point of view.

All of this probably sounds great (and it is!), but remember: Your time is limited, so you need to get clear on the results you expect and the effort you’re prepared to put in.

When it comes to selecting which marketing channels to use, the choices can be overwhelming. With the continuous creation of new social media platforms, it’s easy to wonder: Do I need a professional Instagram account? Should I start a podcast? Should I be making TikTok videos?

Or maybe you hate the humble bragging that’s endemic to most marketing channels with a burning passion. Perhaps the mere thought of marketing yourself raises your hackles.

To overcome these obstacles, we’ll explore how to identify the select channels and approaches that best align with your goals, your audience, and your authentic self to yield the most effective results.

Once you’re clear on your goals, also need to figure out where you enjoy spending time and where your audience spends time. Where those two overlap is where you want to be.

Where do you enjoy spending time?

Your enjoyment is essential for authentic content—and you have to be authentic. If you're just cranking out Twitter content (…xeets?) because you think you should but secretly find it soul-sucking, trust that your audience probably knows you feel that way. When they sense that, they’re likely to miss your message.

Instead, invest your time in the channels you actually enjoy using—because you should enjoy this work! Creating content about and for your brand and building connections that help you build it shouldn’t be a chore you dread. This is the good stuff, so make the platforms work for you, not the other way around.

Where do your clients spend time?

In the early days of social media, there was an implicit bias towards full buy-in. Brands were reliably on every channel there was, duplicating content in hopes of finding traction with disparate audiences.

We’re older now and wiser, and we know that we don’t have to be on every platform. If you can reliably say your audience isn’t on Facebook, it’s okay to skip Facebook! It's liberating to delete channels that aren’t worth your time or energy, so simplify when and where you can as you refine your approach.

Sometimes, meeting your audience where they are means investing in offline experiences from industry conferences to a little table at your local farmer’s market. Organic, serendipitous conversations are often the most memorable and can be a legitimate way to find new leads.