So many platforms, so little time!

 It came up in a conversation I was having today with a group I was training. The killer question.

"So with all these different channels and platforms and ways of interacting with people, how do we pick what to do so we get the results but don't have to sleep in the office?"

And I feel their pain, I really do!  However I reckon that it all has to come back to the basics. Just because the rules have changed that doesn't mean we jump the gun and forget the sound principles of good marketing that got us here in the first place. Not everything that worked in the old world works in the new one but these do:

Know where to find your people

Often cited as "fish where the fishes are", this is a no-brainer when it comes to focused and effective marketing activity. You have to identify which channels and platforms your customer is using.

That awesome YouTube video you did that still hasn't got any views recorded, that killer discussion you posted in that forum that no one responded to; are you sure, hand on heart that your target audience are definitely actively, regularly using that platform in significant numbers?

But I don't know for sure and I can't afford market research!

Well firstly, yes you can. There are loads of free profiling and surveying tools out there (you've heard of Google right? Yeh, it is that simple. Search and you shall find.) that enable you to engage your target audience in a cost effective, time economic way and find out what their typical behaviours are. Sure you might have to provide some sort of incentive in exchange for the information but what's a voucher or a bottle of bubbles compared to hours of your (no doubt pretty expensive) time spent getting it wrong?

The second point here is that you ought to be tracking the effectiveness of every activity rigorously so if you are getting it wrong, you can stop, pronto! Again there are lots of free analytics programmes and plug ins to help with this even if your senior management team don't want to shell out for a paid for solution.

So there's your answer. Don't do it all, do it right. You really don't have to be a genius to figure it out, you've got nothing to lose except the overtime.