Choosing the Right Channels

Is it possible to ever have enough tools?

Or is that the easiest way to get burnt out because you’ve overcomplicated everything for yourself? 😅 

In newsletter #2:

• Q&A: Choosing the Right Channels

• Candid News: Tool Reviews & Recommendations

• Opportunities: Opportunities for work

Choosing the Right Channels

In response to my first newsletter, I received a great question:

This is a really good question because everyone is on LinkedIn for work, so why not focus my efforts there?

• It would minimise the effort to setup a platform and figure out new tooling.

• All the while making it easier to target an existing audience that is already on-platform and looking for what I’m putting out there.

• Plus it will allow be to build a knowledge bank of information for my followers and potential clients to find me.

Honestly, for the most part this is all some consultants need to do - especially if:

• You don’t need many clients to operate,

• You’ve already got quite an established and targeted following,

• And if you’re in an industry where consultants are paid fairly well or long-term contracts are common.

If that’s you, then yes LinkedIn is usually sufficient for the regular inbound lead, plus it gives your network a direct line when they’re ready to call on you.

LinkedIn is an efficient way to share your content and connect with clients.

But one of the telling signs of a really good marketing channel is being able to tap back into when and how it is relevant to your business goals.

For example, when I wanted to launch my community, I had a LinkedIn following of 2000+ and a responsive and supportive network. They engaged and commented and even shared my posts.

But at the end of the day, I had literally no way to:

• Contact any of them directly (and with consent),

• Know what specific topics or products they were actually interested in, or

• Actually have control over how my content is distributed or even presented (not without a bit of ad spend anyway).

Plus, did you see the way everyone freaked out earlier this year when LinkedIn derped out and no one could access their “portfolio" of content? 😂 

You do not own your social media channels.

I recently launched a new community with a really big client and here are some interesting stats to illustrate this point:

• Instagram followers = 360 000

• Waitlist sign-ups = ~2 000

• Free community sign-ups = ~ 415

• Paid members = 30

While this particular client has a massive reach and a really engaged social media audience. It takes time to build trust and credibility for a new offer and program. And the nature of social media is that content has a very short lifespan - and we all know how hard it is to create content that is evergreen and reusable.

And then I read, and loved this recent reminder in a Circle article about how marketing funnels are great. But that they require that you constantly feed them with leads in order for the sales to trickle down at the sales pipeline.

If you’re a small business, its exhausting to constantly be launching new ideas and content — and trying to keep up can cost you dearly. So it’s useful to think about the flyweel affect; where your efforts build up momentum over time that in turn drives leads through your business ecosystem.

This is an especially useful model if you’re a one-person-show who actually manages everything from marketing through to sales, customer onboarding and retention. At least, it helps me optimise my time and effort when I think this way:

While LinkedIn is very good at attracting new audience members — as a social network. It isn’t very good at facilitating the engage and delight functions required to really convert leads with momentum.

So if you have a LinkedIn presence that is working for you - great! You now need to figure out how you can really engage those members with your brand in the long-term and turn them into clients/advocates.

This is what I decided on:

Julie Solomon uses “email marketing“ as the silver bullet channel for engagement — and since it is the channel that usually drives the most sales it does make sense.

But if you have another owned platform, like a free community or your own app — that is likely also a great owned channel.

Though in the end you’d still end up needing to send email soooo… As much as I’ve dragged my feet about starting a newsletter…

I need an owned channel that facilitates a solid customer journey.

In the next newsletter, I’ll discuss why I chose Beehiiv after testing out Substack, ConvertKit, Circle and MailChimp as alternatives.

Candid News:

Since I get asked about tools A LOT, I’ve set up a new Tools page where you can see the apps and tools we use at Candid.

If you’re a member of the Candid Community, you can see full reviews of a more comprehensive list of apps used by other consultants here.

Got a brand or marketing question?

Submit it here for me to answer in my next newsletter!

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