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If the tests of your idea were positive enough in the last few days, take the next step. If not, repeat the steps from Day 31 if you need to make fundamental changes to your idea or later, between Days 32 and 35, if you only need to make detailed changes to your business idea.

Here is the task for today and the next four days:

Expand channels leading to your target customers that you can easily tap without high investments.

The following channels are at your disposal:

Kanal/EinsatzzweckWerbungInformierenVerkaufAusliefernSupportKostenReichweiteIndividualisiert
Persönliche Ansprache
LadengeschäftXXXXX++-++
Vertriebs-AußendienstXXX++-++
Service MitarbeiterXX++-++
Informationsstand/MesseXXXX+o++
E-MailXXXX-o+
Telefon/Call CenterXXX+o+/o
Flyer verteilen mit/ohne AnspracheXX--+/-
Live-ChatXX-+o
Postsendung/SpeditionXXX+--
Unpersönliche Ansprache
WebseiteXXXXX+++-
BlogXX(X)X-++-
Online Marketing (z. B. Google Ads)XX+++-
Social Media (z. B. Facebook Ads)XX++o
E-Mail-NewsletterXX(X)X--o
InfopostXXX+-o
Flyer auslegenXX---
Radio-WerbungXX+++-
Fernseh-WerbungXX+++-
Kino-WerbungXX+o-
PlakateXX+o-
SponsoringX+o-

To get started, you only need channels for advertising, information, sales, and delivery. As you can see in the table, some channels can cover all aspects (e.g., website). Usually, you’ll combine different channels and later add others or “switch off” previously used channels (e.g., distributing flyers) because you want to focus on more effective ones (e.g., social media marketing).

Continuation of the examples of the use of channels

Example 1: Culture Farm for families and people interested in culture

After the encouraging reactions during the first tests, Tatiana had a website created for the Culture Farm and continues to use the channel “display and distribute flyers” to address her target group directly and learn more about their needs. She knows that she’ll soon have to switch to more effective and more expensive channels and decides to use social media marketing.

Via www.upwork.com, she has found a suitable freelancer who will set up a Facebook page and launch Facebook campaigns with a regional focus. She defines a budget of $200 per month for this channel and develops effective advertising texts together with a friend.

She has found a mother of two children among her friends who would like to bake the cakes for the café to earn some extra money at home. Since this mother also likes to blog, they decided to integrate a blog at the Culture Farm, which the two of them would like to fill alternately with suitable content about children and healthy, tasty food. The website programmer charges $100 to integrate the blog and both reserve three hours a week to post one blog article a week.

So, to start, Tatiana uses the following channels: It’s clear to see the focus of the channels is on advertising and information, the costs are still relatively low, and there’s a mixture of more personal (e.g., blog) and impersonal approaches.

Kanäle für KulturhofEinsatzzweckMerkmale
WerbungInformierenVerkaufAusliefernSupportKostenReichweite Individualisiert
Persönliche Ansprache
Flyer verteilen mit/ohne Ansprache XX--+/-
Unpersönliche Ansprache
WebseiteXXXXX-++-o
BlogXX(X)X-++-
Social Media (z. B. Facebook Ads)XX++o

Example 2: Yoga studio in an industrial estate

Marie continues to use her small stand with retractable banner, bar table, and flyers to advertise and inform interested people. She is also in the process of having a website created and is already planning to offer customers the possibility to book courses directly online. It’s important to her that she tests this sales channel early on because she wants to have as little to do with money as possible in her daily teaching practice and doesn’t want to talk to customers about course fees. In most companies, she is also allowed to display her flyers.

From the test phase, she has now received a quite respectable number of email addresses from interested parties. She decides to set up a newsletter to inform her clients and potential clients about interesting topics concerning yoga, health, and stress reduction. Her web programmer sets up the tool “MailChimp” for her, which is free of charge for the first 2,000 contacts. This should be enough for the start phase and testing.

As there are three very well-located poster spaces in the industrial park, she would like to use them to advertise her new yoga studio. To test the suitability, she initially rents only one poster for the shortest period (four weeks). To differentiate between the channels, she gives a slightly different website name. She has her web programmer use Google Analytics to measure how many customers come to her website via the poster.

The following table shows an overview of the selected channels. It’s clear that this time, sales via two channels are already being tested.

Kanäle fürs Yoga-Studio EinsatzzweckMerkmale
WerbungInformierenVerkaufAusliefernSupportKostenReichweite Individualisiert
Persönliche Ansprache
Informationsstand/Messe XXX-o++
E-Mail XXX-0+
Flyer verteilen mit/ohne Ansprache XX--+/-
Unpersönliche Ansprache
WebseiteXXXX+++-
Flyer auslegen XXX---
PlakateXX+o-

Example 3: Selling wool and knitting patterns for children on the Internet

Stefanie continues to use her Google Ads campaign, and has it expanded. She further developed her website based on Google Analytics findings. She invests $100 per month in Facebook Ads to test this channel and compares it with Google Ads.

Her Google Ads expert recommended maintaining a blog on her website, not dependent on paid advertising in the medium and long term, but also to get “organic traffic,” i.e., visitors who come to her via a standard Google search (without advertising). She already feels like writing something from time to time but decides to ask her friends, who also like knitting, to join her.

To get more visitors to her website right from the start, she decides to write to all sewing schools in Germany, Switzerland, and Austria to draw attention to her new offer. She writes a friendly email and commissions a freelancer via www.fiverr.com to do an online search of all German-speaking sewing schools for $250 and send the email on her behalf.

Kanäle für Strickmuster-Verkauf EinsatzzweckMerkmale
WerbungInformierenVerkaufAusliefernSupportKostenReichweite Individualisiert
Persönliche Ansprache
E-Mail XX(X)X-0+
Unpersönliche Ansprache
WebseiteXXXXX+++-
BlogXX(X)X-++-
Online Marketing (z. B. Google Ads)XX+oo
Social Media (z. B. Facebook Ads) XX++0