A new channel often seems like a good idea if performance is stagnating. But more often than not the better decision is to double down and change your approach to an existing channel.
Every channel has its quirks and needs to be learned as the user behaviour is always different.
Here are 6 questions to ask to help guide your decision making:
1. Have we built a system to churn out creatives and landing pages for one channel?
Most paid marketing channels need a repeatable input of creative and landing pages. A weekly testing cadence is ideal for finding winners and scaling accounts. Operationally this can be challenging for many brands. If you haven’t built this for one channel likely opening up another is just going to duplicate the work across another medium. These are the crucial inputs for scaling up any channel.
2. Have we scaled one channel to at least 20k spend per month?
Scaling an ad account or a channel is proof that you have some level of product market fit. If you haven’t hit scale on one channel it's unlikely you will on another. Unless you have proof or evidence that your customers are strongly favouring one over the other. For example if you are a fashion brand and you've tested Pinterest but not Instagram it could be time to switch horses.
3. Have we got a hypothesis that we are only reaching part of our audience with our current mix?
This is similar to the above point. If you have a hypothesis that your audience is really active on one channel such as maybe Reddit then it can make sense to go and find them there even if you haven’t fully cracked another channel.
4. Do we have the resources to build more landing pages and creatives to crack the new channel?
This is a crucial question to ask before committing to a new channel. If you are already struggling to resource for one channel its not advised to increase the workload and distract your team. You need to be able to deliver weekly creative and landing page updates in order to progress and improve your metrics. As always focus is really important in order to be able to go deep and really figure out the nuts and bolts of the channel. However If you are not wanting for resources then committing to more may not be an issue.
5. Are we willing to invest 3 months into testing our approach to a new channel until it starts working?
Making a new channel work takes a lot of test and learn. So it's important to be able to commit to testing for a longer period of time. The first creatives and concepts will most likely fail so a strong commitment to testing is key to making something work in the long run. Testing a new channel can cost anywhere between 7.5-15k over the course of 3 months including creative, media and other costs of running the channel.
6. Do we think we can reach the same audience more cheaply on another channel due to lower CPMs?
Another good reason to open up a new channel is reaching the same audience more cheaply. TikTok is a great example of this. It has the same reach as Instagram but the CPMs are a fraction of the cost. If you have strong reason to believe your audience hangs out on a certain channel that is more cost effective this can be a good reason to go after them.
Closing thoughts
If you are able to answer a good proportion of these questions with a strong YES then you are probably on the right track in opening up a new channel. If not then its best to keep focusing and cracking Google or Meta.
The essentials for scaling ad accounts are usually the same: A process for new creative tests, a process for setting up funnels and finally winning products that can drive your acquisition funnel.
Happy scaling!
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