Validating Marketing Channels - When You Know, You Know

Let me take you back to the 8th grade.

When meteorologists started talking about potential snow day hit the news, we’d spend the entire day at school staring out of the window and wondering if the sleet we were looking at was snow or not. The stakes were high - a day off for snow was what it was all about. Every 20 minutes, an overly optimistic kid would shout out “snow!” and a mad dash to the window would ensue.

It wasn’t snow though. It was the same damn sleet though, almost every single time.

But when the snow started, there wasn’t any question about it. Flakes look different and even though you can find the occasional snowflake in sleet, when it snows, you know.

Marketing channel selection.

Channel diversification matters. In an interview I did with Guarav Vohra, Superhuman’s Head of Growth, a few years back, his approach was to always aim to have channels they are scaling and channels they are validating:

Any given channel should last around 18 months at the very least, and maybe longer if you’re lucky, and you’re able to optimize and improve that channel… you’re going to want to have one or two more growth channels spun up and continually being optimized by your growth team. …

Growth depends on scaling channels and then discovering more.

But that necessity, that urgency, means that when you're experimenting with new marketing channels, there are false signals everywhere you look .

Sometimes, they’re there because you’re willing them into being. You tell yourself that the referral program didn’t take off…but look at all the email clicks! That LinkedIn ad campaign brought a big fat zero in revenue but the clicks were there!

That’s just sleet. Back in your chairs, kids.

The High Costs of Chasing Sleet

I’ve been there.

I’ve tried to force referral campaigns through incentives or discounts, using high-ticket incentives and branded incentives. I’ve pushed partnerships webinars with leading brands. We’ve blown money at trade shows with the best of them. Some worked and some didn’t.

Most, incidentally, were experiments that we decided we had to run since our competitors were doing it.

And we wanted them to work so bad that we’d convince ourselves that we just need another variant or another small tweak.

But if it feels like it’s not working, it’s not working. You can't wish a new channel into working and when it's snow, you know .

Then Why Does it Work for Competitor X?

Unlocking a new channel is an arcane combination of things like:

• Market-marketing fit
• Your team’s capabilities
• Budget
• The competitive landscape
• CAC/LTV cost structure
• and more.

But if your initial attempt falls chin-on-the-pavement flat, there’s a decent chance that in your particular snowflake constellation, you can’t optimize your way to making it work.

Ironically, when you have a competitor that has unlocked a new channel, it increases the drive to replicate their channel (yes, Mr. CEO, thank you for forwarding their LinkedIn post again). But your capacity to actually pull it off may be diminished since they are already likely in scale up mode while you’re just getting started.

While you’re in validation mode with your home-grown referral tracking built on Google Sheets and Zapier, your competitor already has a functioning SaaS tool one. They have the personnel - like a partnership manager.

You’re validating but they are scaling with resource you can’t justify (yet).

That doesn’t mean you should be a defeatist.

Organic leaders can be dethroned. Alternative partnerships can be forged. But you need to do it right. Specifically:

1. Make sure you are being honest with yourself. Before you get started, make sure you know what snow looks like. Create a concrete and objective validation methodology that would justify investing the right resources to continue to invest and scale.If you are going head to head with Dropbox’s referral campaign during their heyday, make sure that you aren’t reading every referral link click, signups or referral for more validation than it is. Sometimes it’s just sleet.
2. Do it right. The worst way to validate is to do so in a way that will leave you with inconclusive takeaways. The “yes, I still think it would work if we did X.” Your worst case failure should still be a “hey, at least we know X doesn’t work.”
3. Map your team’s capabilities. Building new channels takes resources - time, money, energy, whatever. Make sure you know what your team is actually capable of pulling off. Speak to at least one other person who has unlocked that channel at their organization.
4. Budget for experimentation. Following the same note, make sure your annual budget is set up to give you some leeway to experiment with new channels.
5. Build new channels around your ICP. Build a relationship with your best users and see how and where they are at. See what their favorite large platforms are and see what acquisition channels work for those platforms. Different types of users are prone to different types of channels; if another analogous company has done the work for you, make sure you capitalize on that.

When Channel Validation Works

Channels don’t get validated in one fell swoop.

Additional investment gets approved again and again and again.

For example, in one product I worked on organic became our channel. The first three months were abysmal but we built up a cadence of validation specifically clustered around buy-intent rankings, traffic, signups and bookings were set and beat.

Once we cleared that hurdle, we set our sights higher. Rinse, wash, repeat until organic became a 10x channel for us.

That justified further investment that ratcheted up until it became close to impossible for many competitors to even compete in the same field. It was very, very clear when it wasn’t sleet. And that’s as good as any Snow Day at home.