PSA: More channels is not a marketing strategy. How to find the right marketing mix.

Topics covered:

• How startup marketing channels typically evolve after founder-led sales
• Why the “bag of tricks” approach can derail your channel strategy
• How to gather early signals from sales, your CEO, and competitors
• Paid media: where it works best and why it’s often the first marketing lever
• Building a test-and-learn mindset vs. going “all in” on one channel
• Budgeting considerations: balancing paid vs. organic channels
• How scale-ups should approach channel audits and avoid plateauing
• The growing power of video, influencer, and in-app marketing
• The right time (and budget) to invest in analyst relations
• Why website ≠ channel (yes, this one got spicy)
• Final advice: run a channel audit, align with your sales & demand gen team, and rethink your content mix

Key quote:

“You will be shocked how much you’re spending per lead on channels you’ve never measured before.” —Chris

Notable Things We Said

Sandi:

“Just because a brand that’s your competitor dominates on one particular channel doesn’t mean you entering that channel means you too will dominate.”

Chris:

“There is no constant in marketing. You’re either learning or shrinking.”

Erin:

“A good content person is also keeping their eyes on the prize. Sometimes the biggest opportunity is using a familiar channel in a completely different way.”

Transcript

Unknown: 0:00

You. Welcome everybody to our latest episode. Well, I guess it's latest if you're listening to it in incremental order, which you might not be, but it is an episode of our podcast, and this topic is all about the wonderful world of marketing channels and how to find your mix, because that actually is quite the mystery. It might sound simple, but there are a plethora of marketing channels out there, and some work better together than others. Some work better in certain stages of where your your company is at. And so we're gonna we're gonna dive deep into that today. I am going to pass it over to Chris like I told him I would, because he really is our resident Pro on this topic, and Sandy and I will chime in, as we do, even in areas where he doesn't want us to chime in, we will be there. Why should, why should today be any different? No, I, and I don't think I've ever heard the word Bucha on a podcast before. So that's we're elevating, you know? Yeah, right now, yeah, vocabulary. Why not? So the world of channels, this is really interesting, because your CEO, if you come into a startup, your CEO, is probably not thinking in terms of the channels at all, right? They're just, they're just trying to find out what works. They're just trying to find out how to connect them, typically, with founder led sales. It's really interesting, though. It's all direct stuff, right? It's all direct outreach. It's it's all, how do I get the list? How do I how do I communicate with them? It's email, it's in mail. It's all of those things they typically get really good at. If they're going to get to, you know, a funding round. If they're going to get to their first million, they'll typically go that route pretty well. They'll figure out a website early, and then you'll have to re, you know, have to iterate on that about four or five times, super typical, right? But then what do you do from there? And that's typically where marketing comes in. The typical hire is a content hire. We've talked about this the last podcast, which is really interesting. So typical hires a content one, and they'll try, oh, well, we need to do some content. And you'll help the sales team in that. And then you'll also try to figure out an SEO to some degree. And you'll bring in some, some marketing people, you probably try paid. That's, that's a super typical path, and we would call those marketing channels, right? Search and engine optimized content. So the whole SEO side of it, you would call that a marketing channel, the paid advertising side of it, you would call marketing channel, but they're to your to your point, right? There's many of them, many, many, many channels in marketing. And that's the really interesting part about marketing, is that, unlike other things sales, you have a lot of people in the same role marketing, you typically have one person that takes on several roles. So there's a, there's a really different type of relationship with the work there that happens in a marketing team. And if you get the hiring wrong, and you get the channel mix wrong, you're going to have turnover and you're going to be down in water, and you're going to spin your wheels. Yeah. So one of the things we've seen in startups, which, again, it's super common. So if this is, if we're describing you, you are not alone. It's just sort of how it goes. But, but adding your point, Chris about the hires, is a lot of times your first hires will do the thing that we all do when we get some place and we don't, you know, and when we have to sort of get started, and that is, we rely on what we know, right? We rely on what we know worked last time, whether it was the last place, the last role, the last startup. And the funny thing about marketing channels is they don't work for everybody every time in every scenario. So the things that have worked beautifully in a past, in a past role may absolutely bomb in the new one. So, so the other phenomena that we see is, we've talked to founders and they'll say, Yeah, hire someone to do, we hired someone to do paid or SEO, and it didn't work. So now we don't know what to do with content. Or we're, we're going to, we're going to do, you know, LinkedIn, or we're going to just do blogs, or we're going to just do webinars. It's almost like they, they cut it, they sort of cut it, cut it off because it, quote, unquote, didn't work. And so the thing that I always think about, especially because Chris, I've followed you to many places, is you, you've always preceded me in terms of, you know, role so, so, just for the the audience perspective, I'm product marketing. Chris is is digital and strategy. So Chris is usually there before one of the first. Kind of one of the first hires there. You've established the channels, usually by the time you know the you've identified the team. So how do you how do you figure out what like, where to start, what to do first? Well, I think you bring up a really good point, which is the bag of tricks approach, and most marketers will bring a bag of tricks, and it doesn't work. It doesn't work. I mean, you may may once every three times you may hit it, but it really doesn't work long term in a career or for startups, I don't think you're doing right by a startup to do it that way, right? So whether you're startup or scale up, there's, there's a different mindset that you have to approach. I think channels from, it really comes from a growth mindset, right? And and actively learning what's working in the marketplace, what's not. And so you have that individual component of learning that always has to be happening. And then I actually also like to learn from vendors, right? So you're also also always surveying the marketplace in terms of what's new. What are the techniques and things out there? I would say probably about 90% of stuff that you see on places like YouTube and stuff like that are just noise, and so you have to be able to filter that over time and experiment with it and figure out, really, who are the people to listen to, and to figure out what's newest within a space like SEO is a great example of that, because it's changing so quickly, So but I think the very first step to take is to really, this is, this is right up your ally Sandy, which is, you got to find out where your buyers are. So if you don't know where your buyers are, or actually, let me back up, let's say you do know where your buyers are, but if you're a startup, you're making an assumption that you know who your buyer is, right? Like, there's, there's that product market fit angle, which is a whole different topic, right? Whole different podcast. But if you're, if you're just starting out, and you've got some assumptions, right, some hypotheses about your audience, who your buyer is, maybe got traction with your first few customers, and so you're placing, so what you're suggesting is you place the bet based on where you think or where you know your buyers are, like, where they go and go for information. What else? What else goes into that calculus in terms of just figuring out, like, the right, I guess, the right place to start, and maybe the like, what's the second like, the second channel, right? Because I don't know. I don't know of anyone who just goes in on one, one marketing channel. Oh, yeah, no. I would say, Well, the way to find out where your buyers are is to really survey your your CEO and your your early sales team. And that's the best, a great way to figure out where they are, where they came from, when they first contacted them, where they're communicating with them. That's that's a good first step. The other step is to look at your competitors and figure out what is their digital footprint like. Are they spending money on paid advertising? Which platforms are they spending on? Are they doing search? How are they how are they approaching search, right? So all of those will give you some some indicators. You'll see it in their event schedule, too, if they're doing events, whether it's digital or, you know, in person events, you'll see all of that, right? There's a digital online footprint in a, you know, a footprint that comes just in terms of communicating with your with your buyer. So all of that gives you early indicators of where your audience might be and where your channels might be. Which is, which is great. Some early, early ones that typically work are paid, right? Because, the reason that paid works is because you're attacking the bottom of the funnel. And when I say bottom of the photo, it's, people are ready to buy. They know the problem, they know the issues, they know the industry landscape, and they're looking to buy. And there's some some words that they'll use in there. There's, they're very easy to target, right? So in search, in even paid advertising on someplace like LinkedIn, they're fairly easy to target with a bottom of funnel campaign, and you get, you get great results early on. And so that's fairly easy to do, as long as you go about it, you know, smartly. And I think we'll probably have a future podcast on how to how to do ads and things like that. But that's that's fairly easy. What what begins to be harder is, well, how do I accelerate that. And so then you have to start thinking about, what does that middle of funnel look like in terms of thought leadership, in terms of things like case studies and comparisons, and once people know the problem, and then backing up all the way to top of funnel, have we really identified the pain in the marketplace that we're really solving the business problems that we're solving, the personal problems? Right? Don't forget that, right, the personal problems that we're actually solving for people right, within the context of their jobs. So that's where it begins to be a little bit harder. And I think that's where I would say, and I'll pause after this. I think where the test of my approach comes in, and being able to to make intelligent decisions about, about what is the breadth of the things that you want to try. So are you saying, start specific, and then, kind of like, branch out, you know, start very specific with bottom of funnel, and then kind of like, back, back out that way, is that what you're suggesting, yeah, because that's specifically what your, your CEO, or your your company is going to look for, is results. And so you have to focus on the stuff that's going to get your immediate results first. That's the way that I always like to start. Anyway, if you want to start with the top of funnel and you want the long game, you might not be in a job very long. So, I mean, that's one approach. So, yeah, go ahead. Oh, sorry. I think to clarify, the bottom of our marketing funnel is the top of the sales funnel. And so I think what you're what Chris is saying and what Aaron is saying is, if you start at the if you start at the bottom, then you are feeding, you are feeding into the sales funnel, meaning you're tethered a little bit more closely to sales. You're collaborating much more, and you're sort of establishing kind of that port that the cadence of that buyer journey, which hopefully gives you insight to kind of go go backwards. Is that kind of what you're Is that why, I guess, Chris, from your perspective, why you start there? This is why, this way sales people like you, Chris, this is why you become, you become a friend of sales, because you start at the bottom. Because my instinct would be to start at the top, which is, you know, but also, you know, I'm thinking of it from a product marketing perspective, right? So I'm thinking about like, how are we positioning this thing, you know, what? What value are we giving to the to the buyers? Who else do we need to educate in the market? What are their most pressing pain points? I'm thinking of it that way, but this is why I come after you, in the hiring, in the hiring journey, especially when it comes to activating the marketing motion. And I think that's really, that's sort of what, what what you're getting at is like to get started, to activate that motion, you start from the bottom and go back. You have a chance. And by the time you get frustrated and testing because your messaging is not resonating, you go, Oh, okay, we probably need a product marker. Like it's a logical hire at that point, right? It's an easy it's an easy hire to make. Yeah, yeah. And do you suggest starting with, like, one or two channels, and then once you master, you know, one or two of those, then move on to your next addition to the mix? Yeah? You, I think you always want to have, hopefully you get to your first channel pretty quickly, right the first channel or two, pretty quickly, you may have to revamp those channels. You always have to revamp and redo your approach and and have goals set for just the infrastructure, for how you approach that channel, the process for how you do the creative and complete projects within that channel. So there's always, there's always that week work, even in the channels that that are producing. But you want to have a couple core channels and always be testing two or three channels, always be testing two or three so and there's a lot of ways you can do that with content, and we could, that's probably a later episode as well, but there's, there's ways that you could do that pretty easily. You know, it might be actually good to talk about the breadth of the channels that are actually out there, because people might not fully understand what when we say channels, what does that actually mean? Yeah, and how many are we talking here? Because I think I can name six, and there are probably 16. But so website, SEO, paid ads? Yeah, I would consider a website. I wouldn't consider website channel. Web websites, your foundation. Website isn't a channel. No, that's a foundation. That's a foundation. What's the difference between a foundation and a channel? Well, I think there's a differentiation between a lead capture mechanism, and then a general informational resource, just a mechanism to be able to pass a demo or a trial on right, or a sale, you could get a sale there. And something that actually generates, generates business, generates the interest. And so there's, I differentiate between the website and SEO. For that reason that's interesting, because when I think about channel, I think from product marketing perspective, I think about message, messenger, audience and channel. And to me, a channel is a way to get your story out, so the website is a primary channel, right? It's a it's a vehicle through which I'll stop using our channel, because we'll turn it into a drinking game, but it's a vehicle through which you can get your story out. But you're saying that's foundational, that's just home to me. It's just like having a sales team. We're going to make a poll who, yeah, consider his website a channel? Yeah, yeah. Because I guess I mean that aside, I won't belabor the point we can have this food fight later on another episode where we argue. We'll call it fight club edition. Is this a channel or not? But I guess when it comes to, when it comes to figuring out, not just figuring out what to do next, and sort of going back through, you know, going back up the funnel, as you were describing a couple a couple of minutes ago, at what point, at what point does budget kind of factor into the calculus of, like, where to go first and what to try? Because paid, I understand it is, it is the it is a great place to test but, but unless you're maybe a consumer product, or you've got millions, you can burn through a lot of money quickly or fear in a market where you're, you're going, you're going after an incumbent that's very well established, paid can be, can be expensive, but effective, but expensive. So how do you balance the channels that are quote, unquote free versus those where there's some, there's some real hard costs associated with even managing it? Well, I think there's, there's a level set that happens usually when I first come in around budget, right? And the budget is comprised of the people that you have a right to be able to run those channels, and then the actual channels themselves. And so if you project out what you're receiving within the paid ad channel, currently, that typically, is not what you need long term to be able to hit the goal. And so you have to be able to talk as a as a marketing a CEO, sales, you know, your entire go to market team, you have to be able to to have the conversation, to have the hard conversation around budget, and say, Okay, this is what it looks like over this time. What is going to get us there next and and how many things do we want to test, what do we have the capacity to test, and where our best bets. And so you have to be able to understand, I think, the three areas, one is, what is the, what is the, what are the people necessary? What is the software necessary, and what is the vendor and the promotional spend associated with all of that. And so if you can account for all of that, and that just takes experience to be honest with you. And if you don't have that experience, you can go out and talk to vendors, but within the channels that you're testing, you have to be able to approach it from all all of those angles to be able to do a budget. And I think the worst mistake that I I see new leaders come in and have is they'll say, Hey, we're going to try this, and they have to get approval for every single month, every single effort that they do, and they they get bogged down, and they get slowed down because there isn't buy off for what the overall plan is, because they don't have an overall plan. And so that that really is an issue. So, yeah, good, good point. I think in that, okay, and then how do you think about scale ups in this scenario? Because the other thing that we've seen is, there's, there's a there's sometimes that, that weird plateau. It's like, you think you're on a hockey stick. Sales may be on a hockey stick, but marketing like your channel starts some some channels start to burn out, not perform. Things go sideways. You may find competitors popping up in other places. I'm looking at you Tiktok right, where it's like, oh, we need to be on this, or we need to be on that. And that's that's sort of can can, that can be in conflict with your budget, your strategy, just your team, your process. So how do you think about, how do you think about advising on, like, what, how to find your channel mix when you're a scale up and maybe some channels are either burning out, failing, plateauing, or you haven't tried anything new in a while? Yeah, it's really interesting, because I have friends that love scales, because they think, Oh, the infrastructure is already set. Oh, scale ups are worse. And the reason is because you usually had a channel that's blown up, or you've had staff turnover, or you're about to have staff turnover, and all of a sudden, the things that are going to work are not going to work. You're trying to you're not only trying to fix us, you know, a small team. You're trying to fix a huge a huge enterprise, a huge boat, you're trying to turn a huge boat, is what you're trying to do. And so it ends up being a bigger problem than they actually think it is. So let's see. To answer your question just in terms of channels, is that what you're asking just in terms of how, how do you pick the channels? Yeah, yeah. How do you find your mix when you're when you're when you're scaling up and maybe you're seeing a plateau of performance or new opportunities to experiment? So typically, what happens at that point is people become you start to have some siloing, and so they're not doing the basics that I talked about. They're not doing they're not looking in their channels, they're not talking to vendors. They're not figuring out what the next step is. They don't have a growth mindset when it comes to their channels. They just expect that that results going to come in. It's always going to come in. And there is no constant in marketing. So you always have to be learning or or shrinking just in terms of your result, and your ability to produce that result. So that's, that's one part, I think, anyway, is you have to be able to do that and and I think at that point you also have to be able to do an analysis, do a SWOT analysis, right? Just figure out what's happening in the marketplace. Where are your competitors gaining ground that you had no visibility to, which is probably happening. And then, you know, where are those opportunities? Oftentimes, what I find in an industry that's really stale, right, that has had some acquisitions, that has, you know, you're starting to see some silent because companies are getting bigger because of that, right is that you're gonna find entire channels that have been neglected. Video is a great example of that, right? And Aaron, I think, you know, I have done this in the past. We've come in and done something totally different than anybody in the marketplace and totally captured attention and helped the company grow, because we were able to take a different, more human approach within something like video that was not used before, and it just blows me away that that happens. It's but it's because it gets harder to do integrated marketing the larger you get, right? Let's, let's bring it back to the initial question we were answering, which is, what are the channels? Oh, yeah, we'll leave website alone. But so others are because there's you could break them up too, like, owned, earned, you know, whatever. But, yeah, there's email, right? Social media, yeah, this podcast. What do you think communities like forums, channel? What else do you Yeah, influencer is a great one that's a whole science in and of itself. These days, there's many different ways to approach that partner, partner and many different types of partners, right? You have, like, oftentimes, if you're integrating with their software, there's platform partnerships, there's industry service partners, there's resellers, so you can have partners that channel, they call it, right? So that's a that's a whole different animal. The channel is a channel. The channel is a channel. And I would say content syndication, right? And if people don't know about that, you can there's open, public marketplaces like Google right for Google ads, for search and display ads. Then there's also private, walled off gardens, right, where there's might be a set of websites that are industry specific, that and newsletters might be part of that. They're industry specific, that are walled gardens that you have to get into, and you pay per lead. That's typically what the model looks like. And they use content to be able to to produce those leads. So content syndication that you might not be aware of. That's one you know, affiliate, affiliate, affiliate marketing. For sure. For sure. There's about a million channels that you that you can use. It doesn't mean you should use them all, but, and you don't have to use it just because the other guys using it. I think that's the that's one of the lessons, one of the lessons learned, just because it works for someone like everything is not for everybody, as my aunt used to say, Yeah, and just because a brand that's your competitor dominates on one particular channel doesn't mean you entering that channel means you too will dominate. Sometimes you've got to figure out your own way to get your own story out. And I think the thing that I've seen with scale ups, especially when they get siloed, is the first thing I've noticed, especially when I've done, like, new messaging and new new positioning and just all of that, you know, all the work that just goes along with like, Hey, we've got to reimagine and re envision what we're doing. We almost always uncover that we have a huge gap of content. There's just nowhere near enough content to support all the channels that we've now, you know, either signed up for or, you know, identified, and your content strategy has got to evolve, I think, just as quickly right alongside your your kind of, your go. The market, and you can't ignore channels. You can't just say, Hey, we're gonna win here, here and here, or we're gonna go after this audience without understanding, well, where are, where are they? Like, what? Where do they live? Because there's nothing worse than finding out that you need 18 videos and they're 10 grand a piece. And you right, you've just blown up the budget. So I guess what's, what's and Aaron, I know this is you have lived and breathed this nightmare, but like, what's, what's been, what's been, your approach that's been most effective when it comes to marrying up, like the content strategy, with audience, with the with the goals, and just sort of figuring all of that out in the while, you know, while, the while the team is thinking about like, hey, what channel should we, you know, should we pursue in service of the goal that we're trying to hit? Yeah, it's almost like a patchwork quilt, you know, because content, like we were saying in our, you know, how to hire marketing episode is usually like, third, fourth in, you know, if that. And so it really is kind of coming in and getting a lay of the land of like, okay? And at that point, some channels have already been tested, even before content has gotten in the door, right? And so it's kind of looking at, okay, what's working, what's not. Do we have a content strategy? Because sometimes people are very cute, and they think they have one. And then the content person comes in. We're like, that's adorable. And so, so then, you know, you you're like, Okay, do we need to create content strategy? Most likely, yes, looking at, you know, what did Product Marketing create? What is, you know, what are the what's the vision, the company vision and goals, and kind of looking at everything together, and sort of like Patchwork, quilting it or Frankenstein it together, that makes it, you know, cohesive approach. And then, and then, really, actually working closely with your your demand, Gen, resource team, what have you, and like, Okay, what channels are at our disposal, what's working, what's not. Because the good thing about, like, a great content person is that they are also keeping their eyes on the prize. And like Chris was saying, like, we've brought in video to places where they have never touched a video before, or they did it in such a systematic, you know, way that you're expecting. And so it's like, okay, hey, we could, you know, differentiate, differentiate ourselves. And yes, it's video, the channel that we've already done, but let's try it in a different way, you know, kind of a thing that that we haven't before. And so that's why getting a really strong content person into your into your team mix will help as you identify your channel mix. Did that answer your question? Sandy, yeah, definitely. That's really insightful. I think it's really important to differentiate between an early content person, which people usually hire, and someone like you, Aaron, which is a content leader, and that's there's a huge difference there, right? Someone that can come in and power all of your channels and have forethought to be able to plan out and to be able to execute and all of those channels, all those different formats, all of those different processes, all of those different skills necessary to do that is not something an early content person can usually do it's a leader. Yeah, totally agree. I was gonna say, I was gonna add one thing, you know, there are specific channels that you can use in a scale up or a larger company that typically don't work in a smaller company. Yes, well, I think some really interesting there's two I think that come to mind right away. One is you're typically going up market after a period of time within software is a good example that you're going a little up market. If you're retail, you may be going maybe going up market in terms of your ticket items and things like that. So there's a natural up market motion in whatever type of industry that you're in with that comes Account Based Marketing, right? So you can do a lot of targeted marketing based on the some really lists a finite number of people that are those larger targets, right? And so there's a whole bunch of messaging methodologies or ways that you can do that, ways that you can reach out to them that are that are a different, totally, totally different animal than normal marketing, right? So without Account Based Marketing within that, I think you can also leverage media industry analysts and those relationships industry kind of comparison site listings, those are typically right in the product marketers tool set right but that's that is a channel to me that's typically not touched by smaller companies. And I'll add one more on a bonus one here, if you have a product typically. Typically getting space inside of a product for marketing, to be able to reach out and touch, touch people and message the people, typically does not exist in a smaller or less mature company. So in product, marketing can be huge. That's something that I've used at past places like working for much larger companies that I've doubled the the demo count just with some simple messaging inside of a product before. So super, super easy to do if you have that, that those things at your fingertips, whereas you don't when you're a smaller company. Yeah, totally agree. I love in app marketing as a product marketer, especially when product marketing is doing double duty as customer marketing, and they only upsell motion and they only upsell quota, because there's nothing better than to be able to get, get, get customers when they're sort of in their flow, to either introduce a new feature or maybe get them to consider unlocking additional value or letting them know that there's a release like it saves you an email a lot of times, which we know email can sort of be a burned out channel. But also, I think, I think one of the other reasons why I like it, like it when it's a scale up, or scale up into enterprise, and a lot of times they sort of go hand in hand, because, to Chris's point, you've gone, you've started at whatever point, and then you've moved upmarket. The other thing is that doing in app, in app marketing early on, if your products a little buggy and the experience isn't quite great, they'll start to your users may start to associate your brand with that lack of quality. And so you can't have something that's, you know, bugging out. And then, you know, then followed by like, Hey, would you like to come this webinar and learn about this new, you know, this new feature, because your users perspective will be, hey, fix this bug, and maybe I'll look at, you know, look at, look at you again. So, yeah, I agree. I think it is a little risky to have it right up front. The other places where I've seen in app marketing work, well, is complex workflows. Like to just sort of guide a customer through, guide your user through an experience, and then use those opportunities to then, you know, help them unlock more value, help them, you know, help them find more feature function that that's in there that they may not already otherwise know of, and then sort of as a very close funnel on, make that your opportunity to sort of engage them with, you know, upsell and expansion something else, because they've, you've sort of taken them, taking them on a on a journey through your through your app, while you're using it. And, yeah, I also agree about the analyst, the analyst relation stuff, the you know, getting their attention and sort of getting on their radar comes with a hefty price tag. And if you're a startup, you probably don't have that money. But one thing I would suggest, though, if you are a startup, if you are not already doing so, please, please, please, if you were funded by Vc, leverage your VC and those relationships with those analysts to sort of get to some of the press in some of the analyst intros that you may that you may need, something I'm a huge, huge fan of, is the pre brief. The pre beat the pre brief brief with Gartner, so before you drop the, you know, six figures there, or, you know, as your products gaining traction, analysts like to know what's new and what's up and coming. So they will take your call. You can do a pre brief and sort of get a good understanding of what you will need when you want to do that formal briefing, so that when they're writing that report, they will think of you fondly. So that is, Chris, is that a channel? Absolutely the analyst report? Okay, we agree. We agree, absolutely. And you're driving, you're all driving, all your channels back to where a website which is okay, all right, all right, we're gonna have this debate. You know why this is, you know, this is because of the attribution piece. And when you start, when you look at from an attribution perspective, you can double count stuff, really easy if you, if you count website as channel. So that's why that makes sense. Okay, yeah. You know, this is a really interesting conversation. I think we could go on for forever. Aaron with this, because there's, there's advice within each channel. You know, I could tell people, Hey, you do events too early. You're going to kill your budget, your company, and you're going to focus around it, over, rotate on it. Each one of these channels has little caveats like that, just in terms of where you are in your in your life cycle as a company, and your maturity as a as a marketing team. So an idea for us is we write a little let's do a little pros and cons, and maybe in that I will state my case that I still think low key that websites channel, but that'll be my little personal manifesto. But maybe that's something that we offer in our show notes, is a couple of pros and cons or considerations for some of these kind of the top top 10 channels that we see for B to B, yeah, I just find Chris. I just signed Chris up for writing assignment. So it's very heavy right now. Very happy. Like, and Aaron's like, shoot, Chris can take it, yeah. And also like each channel to like, there are certain aspects of it, like, where it's like, okay, this aspect of the channel you can use when you are smaller, and then as you gain traction and as you become a larger organization, then you can do more with that channel in these ways, you know. And so it's not like some channels are completely off limits, you know, to certain, you know, parts of your kind of company journey, but there's just different ways that you can leverage those channels. So yeah, it's almost like each channel could be its own podcast episode. And another thing that, Oh, absolutely, with how marketing and sales can work together. That's a whole other conversation as well that we can talk about. But I feel like for this episode, we're good. Is there anything else that you guys wanted to cover before we sign off? I think my parting wisdom for you, founders are early stage marketers that are in in a startup. If you haven't done it recently, or you don't remember the last time you've done it, schedule a channel audit and don't do it around your QBR when you're already on the hot seat for performance. A cuddle with your dimension person, your product person, maybe your sales person, client, success if you have it, and just double check who your buyers really are. Because, like I said, if you're an early stage startup and you're finding product market fit, you that may change and that may also inform, help inform your dimension later on. Hey, these are place, other places where I can go and look and see where we can find new opportunities. So do that audit. Do it now. If you haven't done it already, just schedule it. Schedule it for early next week and help use that to help kind of guide what kind of what you do in the next couple of months. Chris, what's your advice? I think it piggybacks off yours. You will be shocked. You will be shocked how much you're spending per lead on channels you have never measured before, and you'll go, Oh my gosh. Why are we doing that? Let's not do that. It becomes really apparent, really fast. Very true, awesome. Well, thank you, everybody for tuning in, and for another shall I say, amazing, incredible episode of our podcast. And yeah, well, we'll stick more info around. You know how to manage your channel, mix in the show notes, but yeah, thanks for tuning in, and we will see you next time you.