Choosing, prioritizing, measuring, and optimizing different channels is a major part of any marketing/growth job.
But there is no such thing as the perfect channel that would work for every company and in every situation.
Once in a while, a new channel might emerge and it might perform better than everything else for certain companies for a period of time. But most of the time there are trade-offs to consider.
In this post, I’m sharing a simple visual guide to selecting the most promising starting channels for testing and understanding their inherent trade-offs.
Predictability vs. Cost Trade-off
The performance of some channels is easier to predict before you invest any time or effort. It’s also easier to forecast how they are going to perform in the future. Generally — but not always — these channels tend to cost more as companies are usually willing to pay extra for certainty.
