Ryan Deiss grades marketing channels for $20M revenue companies. Email gets an S-grade for reliable ROI. Paid social, short-form video, YouTube, and SEO earn A-grades, while cold outreach gets a D and should be abandoned at this scale.
Marketing channels, $20 million in revenue. Email? S. Email is always S. I don't care what you're at, email will always be S. Podcasting? At $20 million, I'm gonna give it a C. Now's the time to start thinking about brand and positioning and starting to make investments into that. And podcasting, both from an advertising perspective and maybe even thinking about hosting your own podcast, it could make sense at $20 mil. Paid social? A. I mean, it still is incredibly valuable. It's incredibly essential, but you should pretty much have it dialed in and somebody should be managing it. SEO/Geo. S, you need to make sure at $20 million that your brand can be found whenever and wherever people are looking for you, whether that is on Google or it's in Gemini or it's in Claude or it's in chat or it's in wherever. At that point, you should have the resources to do it, and that's essential 'cause that's the future. Short form. A, it's absolutely critical, and in fact, you should be expanding it. Out. Events. S. At $20 million in revenue, you should be attending every major industry event, and you might even look at creating your own. This is the time to think about it. YouTube. A. It's always an A. It can't be less than an A. It's where the most eyeballs are captured at any given moment in time. Referrals. A. At $20 million, you should be generating referrals. You should have a system around getting those referrals, and referrals absolutely should be coming in. They probably have been, or you never would have gotten there. Partnerships. S. At $20 million, you likely are doing all of the easy stuff. You're in all the channels, you got people managing that. It is now time to go and pursue the relationships that are going to get you access to the places that you don't have. And you probably need to have somebody who is a head of partnerships, head of business development to run it. Cold outreach. D. I'm not saying that it can't work, but you should be beyond that at $20 million.
