Channel mix matters more than you think

It's not just what they hear about you, it’s where they hear about you.

Brand building isn’t just awareness building

Over the last few months we’ve been working with the very good folk over at Tracksuit (not an ad, though they did slip me a drink bottle) to help better understand not just how the Yonder brand is growing over time but also in what ways.

Yes, awareness is important. But if you’re just slapping your logo on things and patting yourself on the back when your CPM comes in lower than you thought then sadly it sounds like you’re missing the point. Marketers have become so obsessed with measuring impressions that we’ve forgotten to even think about the actual impression we’re leaving on consumers.

One of the big challenges most startups face is building trust with their potential customers. And until recently I’ve seen solving that as mostly a creative-led solution. You know the game: show the TrustPilot score, show your customers, show that PR mention you got from Forbes in 2021. Trust, sorted.

I’ve come to realise however that creative brilliance is only half the battle. There’s a second, often overlooked ingredient: channel mix. Not all channels signal your brand values equally. Even with an identical message, some platforms inherently lend more credibility and authenticity than others.

Why don’t you see car ads on Facebook?

Potential car owners are on Facebook. So why aren’t there any car ads? Guess how many ads the Ford Motor Company is running on Meta at the moment? About fifty. They produced over four million cars in 2024 and they’ve got fifty ads running on the most powerful advertising network in the world. A teeth whitening brand in Australia launched 750+ this week.

So where are they advertising?

About half of all automative advertising in 2023 was on TV alone. But why? Why aren’t they using these insanely powerful advertising networks to target car buyers who are literally ready and raring to go?

My guess is that most car brands are typically a lot older than most startups, and therefore are more accustomed to more traditional advertising methods like brand partnerships, print media and television. They’ve been able to continue to spend effectively on these channels at scale because they have huge advertising budgets.

Basically, they’re doing what they’ve always done because it’s always worked. The digital advertising revolution came and went all the car CMOs forgot to talk about it when they went for their little annual car meetings that definitely happen.

So consumers have become conditioned to become aware of car brands that way

TV ads, sponsoring football kits, newspaper spreads and buying up billboards is really expensive – not to mention the significantly more expensive production costs compared to digital ads. So simply showing up on these advertising mediums brings with it a sense of security and legitimacy that consumers find trustworthy – particularly in the context of car safety, and perhaps in my case, financial services.

Think about the brands you see on TV – car brands, banks, insurance, food and beverage brands. All things that are used by huge segments in the market and so therefore demand much higher media and production budgets and so therefore can exist on these channels that have much higher barriers to entry. Today just about anyone can advertise on the internet. If you’re on TV then you’re a serious business.

Here are ten of the most common marketing channels and their associated trust according to Neilsen.

1. Television Advertising: ~55%

2. Print Media (Newspapers/Magazines): ~54%

3. Radio Advertising: ~50%

4. Out-of-Home (OOH) Advertising: ~48%

5. Email Marketing: ~45%

6. Native Advertising/Content Marketing: ~43%

7. Social Media Ads: ~39%

8. Search Engine Ads: ~38%

9. Digital Video Ads: ~35%

10. Display/Banner Ads: ~32%

People are just way more likely to trust a brand they’ve seen on TV than one they’ve only heard about on the internet. The message might be the same, but the medium it’s delivered on is actually the more important bit.

It seems so obvious when you think about it but as marketers we’re not typically conditioned to think about channel authority when thinking about our marketing mix. It’s always about efficiency and I think this is leading early stage brands into dark patterns of internet marketing channel addiction.

It's not just what they hear about you, it’s where they hear about you.

Here’s some data I’ve snatched from our Tracksuit account (again, not an ad, but if you hit them up then tell them I sent you so I can negotiate a cheaper deal next year. Ta).

The first two images tell one story:

The Yonder product proposition is very competitive in the market, sitting just behind the competitor average when it comes to value for money and marginally ahead when it comes to the relevancy of our rewards.

This is good.

The next two images tell a different, altogether more relatable story for more startups:

When it comes to consumer trust, Yonder is miles behind the established brands in our industry. And despite offering great value and relevant rewards and benefits, Yonder isn’t considered to be as premium as other competitors.

This is bad.

Channel mix matters more than you think

So while trust-building and premium-ness is a pretty complex challenge for brands that isn’t solved in one way, a particularly strong hypothesis I have is that our reliance on mostly digital channels, while effective at reaching loads of people, may actually be hindering some of our progress on how we build trust and legitimacy with audiences.

It might not be that digital channels themselves are the problem, but rather that we lack balance in our overall media mix. Imagine if Yonder appeared on a football kit (Hello Arsenal, still waiting for that DM) and regularly featured on traditional channels like TV, OOH, print and through key brand partnerships. In that case, our digital efforts would complement these more trusted mediums.

Time to start trust-weighting your channel mix

The absence of these channels in your mix could be undermining your brand’s trustworthiness, even if the message remains the same. It’s probably time to start trust-weighting channels as part of your marketing strategy alongside creative.

Who’d be a marketer, eh?