Here’s a comparison that should shock you. In 2006, your media outlet options totaled about a half-dozen: TV, radio, print, direct mail, outdoor, and maybe a website. That was back when Pluto was still considered a planet (it’s now considered a dwarf planet). Today, your targets are spread across dozens of platforms, apps, feeds, and screens, and the rules have changed. Advertising has shifted from trying to be seen everywhere to being in the right place, in front of the right person, at the right moment.
So what’s the ‘reasonable’ reaction to that?
“We’ll pick the one or two channels that work for us and focus all our efforts there.”
Focus feels like it is the ideal move, since nobody can be everywhere. So you choose the one or two channels you know best, pour your efforts into them, and tell yourself that doing a few things well beats doing many things poorly.
But your prospect audience is not on just one or two channels.
They are scattered across dozens.
That’s what the single-channel bet misses. Your buyers do not sit still on one platform waiting for your message. A hiring manager catches a post on LinkedIn, half-reads an email, hears your name from a peer, searches you a week or so later, and lands on your website, in no particular order. No single touch makes that all happen. Awareness is built by the pattern, not the post.
The question is no longer which channel.
It’s whether you show up across the mix.
Focus feels disciplined, and in most cases it is. But in today’s world of twenty-some channels, betting on one or two quietly makes you forgettable. The prospect who needed you saw your competitor seven times across six platforms but saw you only once (if at all). When the hiring need finally hits, they call the name they remember. Presence is not vanity. It’s the difference between being in the mix and being invisible.
This is not a call to do things haphazardly. It’s exactly the opposite. The explosion of channels is the reason you need a plan and not a scramble. You won’t be on all channels, nor should you try. You find the correct mix of channels where your buyers actually focus their attention. You show up on those consistently and with a single coherent message. Comprehensive and coordinated beats scattered and occasional every time.
The firms that win are not the ones doing it all. They are the ones who are present, consistently, where their buyers are actually looking, while their competitors bet everything on a couple of channels (and wonder why no one remembers them).