Expand Your Outreach with Smarter Multi-Channel Marketing

Trying new marketing channels can feel risky – especially when you already know what your current channels deliver. It’s natural to stick with familiar tools and avoid anything that looks complicated or uncertain.

However, your potential customers aren’t standing still. They watch different TV, listen to different stations, scroll different platforms and move through the world in ways you may not yet be reaching. The channels you haven’t tried are often where your next loyal customers already are.

Expanding your marketing mix doesn’t mean replacing what works. It means adding new channels in a smart, controlled way so you can grow faster without wasting budget.

Preparation: How to Turn a Test into a Win

Good results start long before your first ad goes live.

Before choosing a new channel, think about what success would look like. That might mean lowering the cost of getting a new customer, increasing the number of first-time buyers, or encouraging people to spend more with you.

Once you know what you want to achieve, create a simple, testable idea. For example:

• “Outdoor placements will maximise visibility during key travel and commuting moments.”
• “Regional TV will boost awareness in areas where we want to grow.”

Your advertising should also match the channel you choose. Radio works best with a clear voice and a memorable sound. TV connects through emotion and simple storytelling. Print gives space for detail and proof. Out-of-home (OOH), posters, billboards and screens, works when messages are short and bold.

To measure success with mass-awareness channels, focus on the shift in brand recall and how it influences customer behaviour over time. When more people recognise your brand, they’re more likely to choose it when making a purchase, often without consciously realising why. This uplift in brand recall is a strong indicator that your awareness activity is working, and it frequently translates into increased sales as your brand becomes the default choice.

Controlled Expansion with Shakespeare Media

At Shakespeare Media, we help businesses grow by adding new marketing channels with confidence. Instead of treating each channel separately, we build joined-up campaigns across audio, TV, cinema, OOH and digital so each one supports the others.

Our planners and buyers identify where your audience spends their time and secure the right slots, regions and formats for your budget. Finally, we report. This keeps everything easy to understand, even if you’re not familiar with marketing jargon. The result is controlled, strategic growth, not guesswork.

How to Choose the Right Channel for Your Audience

Your perfect next channel depends on how your customers live their daily lives. If your audience spends time in the car, parents on the school run, tradespeople driving between jobs, commercial radio or digital audio can build trust quickly. People hear your message repeatedly, which makes it memorable in turn increasing brand salience.

If you want to change perceptions or tell a richer brand story, regional Linear TV or connected TV (CTV) is ideal. It’s powerful, emotional and can be targeted to specific areas.

Cinema can be a highly effective fame driver thanks to its uniquely high attention environment. Audiences are fully focused, with no distractions, and your message is shown to a room of people who have chosen similar films, resulting in extremely targeted, interest-aligned exposure.

For businesses with strong local presence, OOH advertising near high traffic areas such as supermarkets, retail parks or busy roads can make your brand feel “everywhere” within a certain area.

Print still matters when attention and detail are important, especially in local newspapers instilling trust.

Digital search and display advertising then acts as the “closer,” turning the interest generated offline into real enquiries, website visits and sales.

Social media provides an opportunity to reach audiences where they naturally spend time throughout the day. It’s ideal for engaging content, rapid message testing and precise demographic, interest or behavioural targeting, helping brands stay relevant and top-of-mind.

Understanding Your Market Helps You Make Smarter Choices

Before investing in a new marketing channel, it helps to know how your market behaves. Using audience-insight tools such as YouGov can show you:

• Which regions contain your best customers
• Which channels they pay attention to
• Where they actively consume media
• Where your competitors spend (and where they don’t)

You may find, for example, that you’re currently strong on social media but you’re completely absent from radio and this is where your new audience is, leaving an entire audience segment open for you to reach.

These insights guide your decisions and help make your first step into a new channel more successful.

Budget, ROI and the Power of a Structured Test

Testing a new channel doesn’t have to be expensive. You can ring-fence a portion of your budget to run a short, focused test. During the test window, usually around 6 to 8 weeks for radio or TV and 4 to 6 weeks for social and digital (due to the learning phase), and slightly shorter for OOH, you’ll start to see early signs of performance, such as:

• More searches for your brand
• Increased footfall near your OOH locations
• More enquiries after a TV burst

When these early indicators look promising, scaling becomes an informed decision, not a leap of faith.

Real-World Results from Local Businesses

A local theatre wanted to grow beyond word of mouth. By combining radio, nearby OOH posters and coverage in local press, they saw Google searches for their shows rise in sync with each radio burst, and ticket sales grow across multiple venues.

A racecourse in the North West used connected TV (CTV) to showcase experiences in a way static images couldn’t. Not only did enquiries increase, but the average ticket value rose because households understood the full offering.

Meanwhile, a coastal holiday park group paired DAB radio with targeted digital ads to encourage earlier bookings. The familiarity created through radio and the detail delivered through digital helped shift demand forward, improving cash flow and reducing the need for last-minute discounts.

These results came from choosing the right channel, crafting the right message and measuring everything clearly.

The Hidden Cost of Doing Nothing

Sticking to the same channels feels safe, but it has its own risks.

When brand awareness is low, search costs rise. Competitors who use more channels gain attention faster. Businesses become dependent on discounts to drive traffic. And the longer you wait to show up where your customers already are, in the car, at home or out in their community, the more expensive it becomes to catch up later.

With the right preparation, creative and measurement, new channels aren’t risky, they’re reliable engines of growth.

Shakespeare Media: Your Partner for Confident Outreach Expansion

Shakespeare Media helps brands grow by choosing the right audiences, selecting the channels those audiences truly notice and running campaigns that feel natural in every format. Our transparent, easy-to-understand reporting gives you confidence in every pound you spend.

• Start with one well-planned channel.
• Learn from it.
• Scale what works.

Do this a few times, and you won’t just expand your marketing mix – you’ll build real, lasting momentum.