Okay, so this is the next lesson of the business model canvas. And here we were talking about the channels that we reach our customers with. So the first set of questions that that we need to ask when we start thinking about the the channels is, how do I how do our customers want to be reached? And how are we reaching them now? Now, what we mean by by channels is all the different ways that we can go and customers can find out that we exist. a startup plans there are I think we're about 19 standard traction channels that cover over a thing for direct sales and people going out and doing sales to PR to pay per click advertising to advertise in magazines and on billboards to having one to one consultations and webinars.

All these different channels that we can reach people. And so now that you've gone through the exercise, and you've identified your customers, yep, one of the things that you need to do is start saying to yourself, okay, what is the best way to reach the screen of customers? Yeah. And that's one question. The other part of the question is, how do they want to be reached? Now, the obvious thing to do is think about, okay, where do they hang out?

Where do they live bait? Where did they talk about your product or service or your competitors, product or service and focus on the same channels, and that's a great way to do it, because you then are already have an audience in the right place. If you choose the channel that they don't tend to use very much. You've then got quite a lot of an uphill battle to actually get people to start using Using that, that channel, and that uses up more of your time and effort and resources. So very much the the way that we look at a channel is decide, okay, so after the 19 or 20, so generic channel, yes. Which are the best two or three?

Yeah. So if you try and spread yourself over lots and lots of different channels, yeah, you only put a little bit of resources, a little bit of effort into Twitch. And as a result, everything gets diluted and you don't have very much impact. But by focusing on two or three like that, the point of a spear, you could punch through resistance and have a much larger impact. So what would I do in a growth hacking for the customers is identify the two or three best channels that are most seed and then within those channels, then So look at more opportunities. So, for example, if I, if a customer was very interested in online communities because people tend to talk about their type of product or service a great deal.

Some of the go to places to start thinking about this would pay somewhere like Cora or Reddit, which are a large general question about the site. And then there will be a lot more very specific community based forums where you can go in and have a look. And that's how you really look at your your channels. And you need to also think about which channel is going to best. So I mentioned Korra a few minutes ago, core brilliant, I think it has 2050 million visitors a month so it's one of the largest websites in the world. The truth is, that is great, too.

Entrepreneurial topics is great for fairly geeky and intellectual topics. It's not to write for same consumer electronics, even though it covers those to a certain match. So if you putting a lot of African horror, you might not get the returns that you were expecting. So, always considering how much bang for your buck from each channel is absolutely important. And some of the channels will just require too much capital investment for you to use tech to get off the start. So for example, for many small bootstrapping start up so some ideas of engineering, this is marketing where you're developing products to give away to get interest, can cost by $10,000 to do the engineering, and if it doesn't work, then you haven't gotten to shave your money.

If you're someone like Unilever, it's a small part of your 30 or $40 million launch project, and therefore, it's a lot more practical. So it's weighing up the both the amount of time and money that you have to invest in the channel in order to make a difference. And often, the most obvious things are the best channels to use for something like say, PPC, or SEO, if you're in a popular category, the competition to win the PPC auction is going to be so intense and the cost is going to be so expensive, that you may not be able to make enough money. So you then need to think about Okay, which is going to be the best channel to use to to sidestep the competition in my particular market, even though the channel itself is very effective and then leads The idea the question is, how do we integrate the channels that we're using into the into the customers routine?

That's a little bit of a customer. Why cumbersome wire? If it's not easy to the customer, yes, they're not gonna use it and then they're not gonna come and find you. So if you think about the different channels of marketing, think about say, Coca Cola, My kids love coke and box which is a type of cereal, lots of chocolate, lots of sugar, sugar and eight, that they actually love them for breakfast. Now, you could decide to run a PPC advertising so every time people search for breakfast area on Google Cocoa Puffs comes up the triple A's that are come down cereal machines. list.

I then go to the supermarket. I make buying decision in front of the front of the display counter, pick up the syrup, go to the checkout seeing an advert on the computer, get to say bye Coco crimes by coco pops doesn't fit in to my normal buying routine. So it's probably a very low value unless you can find a way to get me to integrate that into my Bible in a better way of doing it would be to say something. Do you want to find a way? another site? Do you want to find a way to get your kids to really eat their breakfast quickly in the mornings that clicks on to take you through to a cocoapods page?

They give you a coupon you print up a coupon and you can with you to the supermarket, and then aha in front of the shelves with your cereal, you have a coupon for cocoa box, and then you go and do it. So it's working out how to integrate the advertising that you're doing on the channel that you're reaching your customer with their routines and habits that are already in place and a little Hey, it's a lot easier to change the way that you do things than it is to you can change the way that customers go does things that's quite hard. So to quickly summarize where we are, so, channels are the way that we touch our customers and they are the touch points, many types of sales or marketing we will need multiple touch points to engage with our customers. Many e commerce sites you need 20 or 30 touches to a customer before they will say will come up and buy from you, in other people like cocoa calm companies, often you have been touched thousands of times before you make the decision to go and buy that new Honda CRV.

So channels do a number of things for you. The first and probably the most important one is they raise awareness amongst customers of your value proposition and what the value proposition can do that customers don't know about you. They're not gonna look the devil for me, they're not gonna buy from you. The second point, he said he allows customers to evaluate their value proposition. So you're providing them with information or the option that they're considering and that helps them to weigh whether you're offering is better or worse than the more data competition is offering and whether it actually satisfies their their needs and their requirements with online businesses, your marketing channels will often enable the customer to just physically buy the value proposition yet it acts as a as a means of delivery of the actual value itself. Even to certain extent with cars, you can buy a car online, though that's not popular, buy shoes on Zappos incredibly popular.

So it's a way of doing it. And finally, as a way of delivering the the after sales, the customer service that people acquire after they after they buy a product. So when we look at my channel, there are following five Is the customers gonna go through a and this is broadly speaking, the buying process that the customer goes through as they consider whether to buy something or not. And you need to be your channels need to get involved in this. So the the first phase is want to where you need to create awareness amongst your customers or potential customers that your product your value proposition actually exists. The second phase is the evaluation phase, where they then start evaluating the competing benefits of dis benefits of different options.

They said the third phase is the purchase phase where they go out and they purchase it with a lot of internet sites. Yes, this the whole The shopping cart is absolutely critical to the success of your business. This is followed by the actual process of delivery. And this This is the fourth base. And here, some companies have really focused on making the channel very, very effective lazada A Southeast Asian, shopping online shopping, our company promises that is easy as anything, you go to website, bank, and within a few hours, your products that you bought are delivered to your home without you even having to leave the home. That said that said focusing very much on the delivery space.

And then the final phase that you need to your channels to deliver is the service and the after support phase. So this is the focus on the channels. How to But first off the first time that you go through this state to two or three channels, yeah, you need to be specific enough that you're meaningful, but not too specific that you get lost in the detail. So a bad way of doing a job would be to say, Well, one of my channels is internet marketing. It's like, that's too, that's too broad. You really haven't thought about where on the internet your customers hang out or what your customers really want.

You'd haven't thought about how to how to engage them. On the other hand, if you're you're saying that your marketing channel is to post a an article or the fisherman's weekly for for fly fishing once a week, and that's a little bit specific because there are a number of For that, we work just as well. And you could aggregate all those different forms together so that you're you're posting or doing something for them. So it's very much thinking about, okay, where what channels are going to go best likelihood of success and are going to change consumers behavior. So they start getting more awareness about me or coming to my website and buying from them. So first of all, get get some ideas, and then on a separate piece of paper, start drilling down into those and do a thought exercise about which is going to be the most cost effective for you and how well that's going to work.

So this has been a lesson on the channels that you use to go out and reach your customers. Go ahead, add this onto your business model. First, think a little bit more about it. ask me any questions in the comments below and do as you see your business model canvases and how you how getting how you get gone.