One marketing topic little known outside the marketing world is the subject of marketing channels.
We are talking about what medium is used to get your message out. Yellow Pages is a marketing channel. Direct mail is one. Magazine ads. And so on.
Choice of marketing channel is partially dictated by budget since, as I’ve talked about a bit, some channels require a big budget to make any impact at all. A $3,000 per month budget for TV won’t cause 1/10th the effect of a $30,000 TV budget. It probably won’t generate any leads at all.
But that is not the main point of this post.
Innovative choice of marketing channels can greatly multiply the effectiveness of a marketing effort.
The reason has to do with a term “noise” which refers to the amount of competing messages you are trying to make yourself heard through.
Some marketing channels have a lot more going on than others. Think TV commercials or junk mail.
This is why, for example, we love door hangers. You are usually competing only with pizza flyers! And while there are limitations in use, they also cost less per piece, delivered, than direct mail.
We’ve seen these be very effective even in situations where you wouldn’t necessarily expect it.
The moral of the story is, think not only about what your message is, design and so forth, but HOW you are going to get your message delivered.
It can make a huge difference.
