Digital marketing and AI · 2 min read

Buying Channels: What I Paid For and What I Skipped

More channels is not a strategy. Each one has to be priced, verified and worth the margin it costs.

Every channel salesperson will tell you that the answer is more channels. Over twenty years of marketing my own businesses I have used most of them: search, paid search, email, PR, trade shows, display advertising. What has mattered is not how many, but how each one was bought.

Negotiate the package, line by line

In May 2018 I was putting together a marketing package for topseos with the company behind the SMX search-marketing conferences and its publications. My first list was long: native ads every quarter, a million display impressions a month across their sites, booths, bag inserts and signage at two conferences, plus standing banners placed around the aisles.

Their first proposal came back with a rate card. I returned it as a spreadsheet:

Green approved, Red rejected, Blue requesting you to meet me on my rate request to make those happen.

My counter-proposal was narrower: a booth, bag insert, banners and display impressions at one show for $6,000, two smaller packages at $1,000 each, and a separate buy of international display impressions. On that last item I asked the question that should come with every impression-based buy:

How would we verify these impressions?

They came back the next day, and I replied: “Good on all ends. Let’s get started.”

Use the cheap channels hard

In January 2014 my instructions to my assistant included making sure we had the email addresses of all our partners, by website, and finding:

free exhibition/sponsorship opportunities for Credit Card Processing, BWDA, topseos, Retirement, Legal, and pr agency

Six businesses, one request: look for the events where we could be present without paying for it.

Skip what will not move the number

In 2024 a publishing partner and I were planning a local directory for Naples. His questions included whether we should make an intriguing launch video. My answer:

Google SEO + Paid to get traffic to us. No need for intriguing video; won’t make a huge dent.

On paying commissions to more people to help sell, I wrote:

The more hands you get in this business, the less the profit margin for both of us.

What I still use

Every channel gets the same three questions. What exactly am I getting for the money? How will I know it was delivered? And will it move the number, or just make the launch feel bigger?