Stop Spreading Yourself Thin: A Framework for Channel Selection
Most channel decisions get made by imitation, bias, or by whoever is selling to you. How to choose deliberately.
- Most channel decisions get made by imitation, not analysis.
- Figure out how many channels you can reasonably support well.
- Channel follows how your buyer actually buys — not what you enjoy doing.
- Half-running 6 channels looks like bad luck. It is arithmetic.
- Decide what would make you quit before you start.
- Rented audiences and owned ones are different assets. Buy both, deliberately.
Most companies have a version of the same list. 6-7 channels, all *technically* running, none of them working well. Somebody is posting on LinkedIn twice a week. There is a webinar next month. Somebody bought a booth. There is an SEO retainer nobody reads the reports from.
Nothing on that list is a bad idea. The list itself is the problem.
How channels really get chosen
Ask a team why they are running a channel and you get one of about four answers.
"Our competitors are doing it."
You are copying a company with a different buyer, a different budget, and problems you cannot see.
"Everyone says you have to be on it."
Someone with a quota said it. That is not the same as evidence.
"We got a good deal on the sponsorship."
A discount on the wrong channel is not a saving.
"The founder likes doing it."
Sometimes the right answer. Often the reason a channel outlives its results.
Early on you have to try things, and imitation is a reasonable starting heuristic when you have no data. The issue is when teams never revisit the reason.
Most teams can run 2, well
This is the part teams push back on hardest.
A channel is not a task. It is a system — someone owning it, a consistent point of view, a cadence people can rely on, a feedback loop, and enough time for compounding. Most teams will find there are 2 that are worth more than the rest. 3 if one is on autopilot and you are lucky.
Run 6 and you are producing 6 streams of evidence that your company is inconsistent. The prospect who sees a strong post, then finds a stale site and a webinar you cancelled, learns something true about your operating capacity.
Half-running 6 channels is not bad luck. It is arithmetic.
Start from how your customer buys
Before you shortlist anything, write down how a real customer actually bought from you last time. No, not the funnel diagram. What really happened.
Who raised it first. Who they had to convince. What they read. Who they called to check you were real. How long it took. Do that for your last 5 deals and the pattern is usually embarrassingly obvious.
Most channel mistakes are motion mismatches. Paid ads pointed at a committee that takes 9 months. A community program aimed at a buyer who decides alone in a week. The channel was fine. But it was answering a question nobody was asking.
Rented and owned are different purchases
Worth stating, because they get compared as if they were the same thing.
- Rented — ads, sponsored placements, other people's audiences, most social platforms. Fast, measurable, and it stops the day you stop paying. Nothing accumulates.
- Owned — your site, your search presence, your list, your customers, your reputation. Slow, harder to attribute, and it keeps working. It also gets more valuable as it ages.
Rented buys you time. Owned buys you a business. Early companies over-index on rented because it produces numbers this quarter, then wonder why growth stops the moment spend does. Pick at least 1 of each and be honest about which is which.
Decide what would make you quit
Before you start, write down what proof would look like and what failure would look like. Both. In advance.
- How long. One full buying cycle, minimum. If your deals take 4 months, a 6-week test tells you nothing.
- What counts. Not impressions. Conversations with the right kind of person, or nothing.
- What kills it. A number and a date, agreed while you are still optimistic. This is the whole point — nobody kills a channel in the moment, because there is always a reason to give it one more quarter.
- Who owns it. One name. A channel owned by the team is owned by nobody.
Write it down somewhere you will actually look. The version in your head does not count, and it will quietly revise itself in favor of continuing.
how they actually buyShortlist
channels that fit thatPick two
and say no to the restDefine
what proof looks likeRun
one full buying cycleDecide
double down or kill
What I would do first
If you are between first customers and scale and staring at that list of 6, here is the order.
- Write down the buying motion from your last 5 deals. An hour, and it will change your mind about at least one channel.
- Kill or pause everything that does not match it. Not "deprioritize." Stop.
- Pick 2. One that produces conversations now, one that compounds.
- Make sure your site can actually be found first. Every other channel sends people there, and a strong channel pointed at a weak site wastes the channel.
- Set the kill criteria before you spend anything.
The hardest part is telling people you are stopping something. That conversation is short, and the alternative is another year of doing 6 things at a quality that convinces nobody.
If you want a second opinion on which 2, that is a conversation we have all the time. How engagements run, or book a call.
Free tool: kairos, our free launch planner.