Hi friends - Peter gave us a fantastic 3-point checklist last week to answer the question, “When should I introduce paid ads in my marketing strategy?”.

And his advice supports all of my lived experience! If you invest in this strategy prematurely, you are just lighting your cash on fire. Don’t do that.

BUT, when you introduce it in the right setting, it can seriously amplify your pipeline generation efforts!

Next up - what channels should you target?

What channels should I target?

Ultimately, there are three main criteria for choosing the right channel for paid ads:

1. Does my audience exist on this channel & can I easily engage them?

2. What is the expected ROI of my time and financial investment?

3. How big is the barrier to getting started with the channel?

How do you know if your audience is on a particular channel & if it will be easy to engage them?

For major platforms, you can often make educated guesses based on your own experience and behavior. Trust your intuition as a founder or marketer—if you see your audience engaging on a platform, they’re likely there.

A great way to further validate your intuition is to search for these audiences on Google or on the individual platforms you are considering.

For example, you can search “x topic + reddit” on Google, a very common search, to find all of the relevant Reddit audiences where you should be advertising. Or search on LinkedIn to see if there are LinkedIn groups for your target audience.

Even if your audience exists on this channel, we still have to consider whether targeting and engaging them with our paid ads will be easy.

Think about two potentially more challenging scenarios:

• A) targeting a hyper-niche audience, and

• B) being a category creator

Let’s say we’re selling ultra-premium bird-watching equipment; we need to ask ourselves these types of questions:

• Would this be an audience that we could target with the interest or behavior targeting that is available on the platform where these target customers hang out?

• Is this interest too niche for the capabilities of the platform? Or is this something we need to target through search ads and have these target audiences find us instead?

• And is our bird-watching equipment completely novel and category-creating, such that our target audience won’t even be searching for it? (ie. Search ads)

Finally, let’s assume you know where your target customers spend time, let’s assume that you can target them effectively on multiple channels, the final consideration is the scale of those channels. 

The most common example is considering Google vs. Bing. Presumably, both platforms have similar types of audiences and targeting capabilities, but if Google has 20x the audience of Bing, is it even worth launching on Bing at this point? Or should we do that later when we reach a larger scale and have the resources to do so?

Resources:

• Global search engine market share

• Global social media statistics

What is the expected ROI of my time and financial investment?

At the end of the day, paid ads are about ROI—how quickly you need a return and how long you're willing to wait. If you need immediate ROI—and as a startup, you likely do—focus on high-intent channels where users are actively searching for your solution.

This is where you want to consider two primary factors:

• Your price point or ACV

• The length of your sales cycle

Think of it this way: if it takes six months to a year for a buyer to go from being unaware of a problem to recognizing their need, discovering products, researching options, and finally making a purchase, then for the fastest ROI, you should only engage buyers in the final stage of their journey, when they have a well-defined need, and you’re simply capturing demand. Channels like Google Search Ads, Bing Ads, Amazon Ads, or Apple Ads (for apps) are ideal for this approach.

For high-consideration purchases (B2B or high-priced B2C), the buying decision takes longer, making search-based or high-intent channels essential. In B2B, this delay is often due to complexity and the need to understand the impact on an organization. In high-cost B2C, it’s simply the price—people think twice before purchasing a Rolex!

Conversely, low-cost, impulse-friendly B2B or B2C products can thrive on discovery-based channels (e.g., social media), where engagement can quickly lead to conversion. Most buyers don’t need much deliberation for a $20 purchase, so you can turn passive interest into an emotional buy quickly.

How big is the barrier to getting started with the channel?

The final consideration for choosing the right channel is understanding the barrier to getting started, and that means understanding how much budget you need and what other resources—beyond budget—are required to launch effectively.

A simple way to determine a budget is by working backward from your desired results.

To create revenue, you need a sufficient amount of traffic, which means you need to understand your cost per website visit, often by understanding the cost per click (CPC). If CPC is high, you’ll need a larger budget to generate enough traffic and conversions. If CPC is low, you’ll be able to get traffic more quickly and determine performance faster.

The next factor to consider is creative requirements. While conversion tracking is fairly standard across platforms, ad creatives vary significantly.

• Text ads (like Google Search) are the easiest and fastest to launch, while

• Image-based ads take more effort but are still manageable.

• Video ads, on the other hand, demand the most resources and planning, which can be a significant hurdle for a resource-constrained startup.

When you take these factors into account, certain trends start to make sense.

There’s a reason many businesses start with Google Search Ads—not only do they allow precise targeting, but they also come with low creative requirements, making them an efficient choice for paid acquisition.

Meanwhile, other platforms with low CPCs and minimal creative needs (such as image-based ads on Meta) can provide high traffic volume quickly, making them another strong option for testing.

Now, let’s put it all together. Three key criteria must be considered simultaneously:

1. Does my audience exist on this platform, and can I engage them? If not, CPC and ROI don’t matter—you won’t reach the right people.

2. Will I see a positive ROI in a reasonable timeframe? Consider your price point/ACV and sales cycle length. If not, you’ll burn money before seeing meaningful results.

3. Is the barrier to entry (CPC, creative needs) manageable? If not, execution may be too difficult or expensive.

Ideally, you should be able to check off all three before moving forward. But if you can’t, you should at least meet two out of three.

The most flexible factor is often barrier to entry—if you have the right audience and expect strong ROI, it may be worth overcoming high CPCs or creative challenges to make it work.

For example, if Google Search is the best channel for your audience and offers strong ROI potential, but CPCs are expensive, it might still be worth prioritizing. Since text ads require minimal creative effort, it makes sense to get your business in shape and launch sooner rather than later.

See ya next week!

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