Channels
Marketing channels for founders: which channel for which audience
A marketing channel is not a tool, it is a place where your audience already is. Which one fits follows from one question: does the group actively search for what you offer, or does it have to come across you? Searchers are reached through search ads, which work the same day and stop the same day, and through articles, which take months and then keep working. Everyone else is reached through places, intermediaries and referrals. Test three channels in parallel for four weeks with a fixed cap, and compare a single figure: the cost per paying customer, with your own hours priced in.
A channel is a place, not a tool
Most founders ask the channel question the wrong way round. They start from the tool they know best and look for an audience to point it at. It works the other way: the audience was somewhere long before you existed, and the channel is simply the route to that place. Which is why the same question has a different answer for a mobile bike repair service in Portland than for a piece of accounting software.
The second, quieter price is easy to miss. Every channel costs either money or time, and only the money shows up on a bank statement. Four hours a week spent on a profile look free and are the most expensive item in many founders' first year, because those hours are gone from the work that gets paid for.
Speed against after-effect
Search ads
Visible the same day, gone the same day. You are renting attention and paying for it per click, for as long as the ad runs.
Articles and search
Three to six months before the first customer, after which the text keeps working, including in the weeks when you do nothing.
Referrals
Needs satisfied customers before it starts, then keeps growing on its own, because every referred customer can refer again.
Take one fast channel and one lasting one, never two of the same kind.
The bars illustrate speed and after-effect, they are not measured data. The point of the pairing is the risk: two fast channels leave you with nothing the month you stop paying, two slow ones leave you with no revenue until then.
Three kinds of reach
Every channel belongs to one of three groups. The group decides what it costs you, how fast it delivers and what is left when you stop.
Bought reach
Ads in search engines, social networks, trade media or the letterbox. You decide when it starts, and you decide when it stops.
Costs
Money, immediately and continuously
What remains
Nothing. The day after the last unit of budget, the flow is zero.
Owned reach
Your site, your articles, your mailing list, your profile in a specialist forum. Everything you can reach without asking anyone.
Costs
Time, a great deal of it, over months
What remains
Nearly all of it. An article that ranks and a list of addresses are yours.
Earned reach
Referrals, reviews, mentions by others, introductions through intermediaries, coverage in the trade press. You can prompt it, but you cannot buy it.
Costs
Good work, and asking for it
What remains
A lot, as long as the work stays good. It disappears with the reputation.
The channel question presumes a chosen group: how to define your target audience in four steps →
Eight channels a solo founder can start
Sorted by how quickly they produce a first customer. Every one names its limit, because a channel that fits badly is not fixed by more budget.
| Channel | Lead time | Typical cost | Limit |
|---|---|---|---|
| Search ads | 1 day | Paid per click, priced by auction; industries differ by more than tenfold | Only works if people search for your service at all. Something nobody knows has no search volume. |
| Articles and search | 3 to 6 months | No money, but around 4 hours per article and a year of patience | Pays off from roughly ten articles onwards. Stop after three and the time is gone. |
| Referrals | After the first customers | No money, one sentence at the end of every job | Does not scale predictably. You can ask the question, you cannot decide the answer. |
| Intermediaries and partnerships | 2 to 8 weeks | No money, but something of value for the partner | You are borrowing someone else's trust. Poor work damages two reputations at once. |
| In person and events | 1 to 4 weeks | A stand fee or nothing, but always half a day to a full day | Reaches only as far as you can travel. For local services that is precisely the advantage. |
| Social networks, unpaid | 2 to 6 months | No money, but 3 to 5 hours a week | You are building on rented ground. If the platform changes its rules, the reach is gone overnight. |
| Social ads | 2 days | Paid per thousand impressions or per click, cheaper than search ads in most markets | Reaches people who are not looking for anything. That makes the path to a sale longer than with search ads. |
| Email list | Immediately, once you have addresses | Free up to a few hundred addresses, a small monthly fee after that | Not a channel for strangers. It only works on people who gave you their address. |
Ad prices are set by auction and differ between countries and industries by more than tenfold, so no figures are given here. The only price that matters for your decision is the one your own four-week test produces.
Four questions that pick the channel
In this order. The first two narrow the list, the third sets the limit, the fourth decides between the ones that are left.
1Does your audience actively search for what you offer?
A broken bike produces a search query, a novel service nobody has heard of does not. Check it for free in five minutes: type three of your customers' own phrasings into a search engine and see whether paid ads appear. Where competitors are bidding money, there is demand.
Yes: search ads and articles first. No: places, intermediaries and referrals first.
2Where does your group already gather?
Channels are places, not tools. Write down the five places your audience came together at before you existed: a club, a workshop, a specialist forum, a parents' chat, a trade fair. Every one of those is a channel nobody is auctioning off to you.
Three places where you become visible without a budget beat any ad with a hundred in wasted reach.
3What may a customer cost?
This number decides which channels you are allowed to consider at all. It comes from the contribution margin over the life of the customer relationship, not from the price. Without it you can neither approve nor switch off a channel, and you will confuse expensive with unsuccessful.
Work it out before you spend the first unit of budget. The calculation is further down.
4Do you have more time or more money?
Every channel costs one of the two, and nobody has both. Bought reach costs money and delivers immediately. Owned reach costs months of your time and delivers later, but without an expiry date. An honest answer here sorts the list faster than any scoring matrix.
Little money and little time means one single channel, not three half-run ones.
What a customer may cost
This is the one calculation without which no channel can be judged. It runs on the contribution margin, meaning what is left of an order after the direct costs, not on revenue.
Worked example, mobile bike repair
Eighty is the ceiling, not the target. The second half of the rule matters just as much: how quickly does the money come back? A customer who cost eighty pays that back on the second job, which in this example is around six months later. Anything that only pays back on the fourth job is a cash problem for a solo founder, however well the sum works out over five years.
The one-third guide follows the widely used rule that the lifetime value of a customer should be roughly three times the cost of winning them (David Skok). It describes a settled business. A young venture that is still learning may run tighter for a while, as long as it knows it is doing so.
Where the contribution margin comes from: startup pricing, five steps to your first price →
In five steps to your first channel
The order follows the method Gabriel Weinberg and Justin Mares describe in "Traction": consider every channel, rank them, test the best three at the same time, then put everything into the one that wins.
Work out the ceiling per customer
30 minutesTake the contribution margin of an average job, multiply it by the number of jobs a customer typically triggers over the years, and take a third of that. This is what winning a new customer may cost. Until you have real figures, calculate with a single job. It is strict, and it protects you from the most expensive kind of optimism.
Result: one figure you can measure every channel against.
Collect every channel, then cut to three
1 hourWrite one sentence for each of the eight channels describing what it would concretely look like in your case. Not "referrals" but "ask for an introduction to a neighbour at the end of every job". Then delete anything that needs more than two weeks of preparation or costs more than ten times your ceiling. From what remains, pick three: one fast, one lasting, and one you consider unlikely.
Result: three channels, each with a concrete sentence on what you will do.
Three tests in parallel, each with a cap
4 weeksSet every test a limit in advance: an amount of money, a number of hours and an end date. In parallel, because four weeks one after another takes a year, and because channels only become distinguishable in comparison. Keep the third, unlikely channel in deliberately: in practice it wins more often than the ranking beforehand suggests.
Result: three sets of figures with effort, enquiries and paying customers per channel.
Compare one number, not five
1 hourDivide the effort spent on a channel by the number of paying customers it produced. Not by clicks, not by enquiries, not by followers. Clicks can be bought, customers cannot. Price your own hours into the figure, otherwise every time-intensive channel looks free.
Result: cost per paying customer for three channels, directly comparable.
Concentrate on the winner, add a second channel later
The next 3 monthsOne channel will do markedly better than the other two. Put money and time into it until the inflow stops growing or the cost per customer breaks your ceiling. Only then is a second channel worth it. Spread too early and you run three channels adequately instead of one that carries you.
Result: one channel that delivers customers predictably, and an evidenced figure for what they cost.
Before any channel comes the direct route: getting your first 10 customers, one at a time →
Consent, labelling and reviews
Three of the eight channels come with rules that catch founders out. An email list may only be sent to people who agreed in advance, and the safe way to show that is a confirmation link they clicked themselves. Advertising has to be recognisable as advertising, which applies to a paid post by someone else just as much as to your own. And reviews have to be genuine: buying them, writing them yourself or only publishing the good ones is misleading, not marketing.
None of this restricts the channels that carry the most weight at the start. Places, intermediaries, referrals and search ads are untouched by it. The rules bite where you write to people who have not asked you to.
General orientation, not legal advice. The details differ by country and change; check what applies where your recipients are.
The rules for writing to people who did not ask: cold outreach rules for founders →
Five mistakes that burn the budget
Each of them produces activity that looks like marketing. None of them produces a figure you can decide on.
Picking the channel you personally use. The channel you spend your own days on is rarely the one your customers are on. The question is not where you feel at home, but where your audience already is.
Treating reach as a result. Views, clicks and followers are intermediate steps and can be bought. The only figure that justifies a channel is the paying customer at the end. Everything before that is a running total.
Starting five channels at once. Split across five, the budget is never enough for a reliable result anywhere, and your own time is not enough for any of them. Three tests in parallel is the ceiling for one person.
Booking your own time as free. Four hours a week on a profile is around eight hundred a quarter at a fifty-an-hour rate. Leave that out and every unpaid channel looks cheap, and the choice rests on a false basis.
Switching a channel off before it has been measured out. Four weeks is enough for search ads and nowhere near enough for articles. Fix the run time in advance, otherwise the impatience of week three decides the choice.
Frequently asked questions
Which marketing channel is best for founders?
There is no best channel, only the one that fits a particular audience. The choice hangs on a single question: does your group actively search for what you do? If yes, search ads are the fastest route and articles the most durable one. If no, places where the group already gathers, intermediaries with existing access and referrals get you there sooner. For the first ten customers no channel is needed at all, only direct personal contact.
How much budget do I need to start?
Less than most people assume, but the amount has to match a figure you work out beforehand. The ceiling comes from the contribution margin over the customer relationship, not from a percentage of revenue. For a first four-week test, ten times that ceiling is enough, because it reaches several customers rather than one lucky hit. More important than the size is the cap: one amount, one end date, no extension without figures.
How many channels should I test at once?
Three, and no more while you are working alone. A single channel gives you no comparison, and without a comparison you cannot tell whether a result is good or bad. Beyond four, neither the money is enough for reliable figures nor the time for clean execution. Deliberately include one channel you consider unlikely: it wins more often than the assessment beforehand suggests.
How do I know a channel is working?
By one number: the cost per paying customer, with your own working hours priced in. Below the ceiling you set beforehand, the channel works. Above it, it does not, however good the click figures feel. Check the speed of return as well: a customer who only covers their acquisition cost on the fourth order is a cash problem for a solo founder, even if the sum works out over five years.
Do I need social media at all?
Only if your audience is there and you can spare three to five hours a week over months. Unpaid reach on someone else's platform is the most time-intensive form of marketing and the only one that can be taken away from you at any moment without being asked. For local services, a complete map listing, real reviews and three places in the area usually deliver more than a weekly post.
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