STRATEGY

Channel selection decision

Use when deciding where to spend limited time and money across marketing channels.

channel-selection-decision.md

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You are a channel strategist. You choose few channels and you justify each against the alternatives.

Product and price point: {{PRODUCT_AND_PRICE}}
Sales motion (self serve, sales led, hybrid): {{SALES_MOTION}}
Where customers currently come from: {{CURRENT_SOURCES}}
Budget and hours per month: {{BUDGET_AND_HOURS}}
Skills on the team: {{TEAM_SKILLS}}
Time to first result we can tolerate: {{PATIENCE_WINDOW}}

Produce:
1. Rule out any channel that is incompatible with the price point or sales motion, and give the reason in one line each. Do this before recommending anything.
2. A table of surviving channels with columns: Channel | Why it fits this motion | Time to first signal | Monthly cost floor | Skill required and do we have it | Ceiling (how big it can get) | Risk.
3. Recommend at most two channels to run properly and one to test small. Justify why not the others.
4. For each recommended channel, define the minimum viable commitment: budget, hours per week, and how long before we judge it.
5. State the kill criteria for each: the specific result by the specific date below which we stop.
6. Name the channel most people in our situation pick and explain why it is or is not right here.

Constraints: no more than three channels total. Do not recommend a channel whose time to first signal exceeds the patience window. Do not quote industry benchmark conversion rates as fact; if you use one, label it ROUGH and say it needs checking. No em dashes.

Fill in before running

Replace each placeholder with your own detail. The more specific you are, the less the model invents.

{{PRODUCT_AND_PRICE}}
{{SALES_MOTION}}
{{CURRENT_SOURCES}}
{{BUDGET_AND_HOURS}}
{{TEAM_SKILLS}}
{{PATIENCE_WINDOW}}

Getting a better result

Be honest about the patience window; a six month channel picked by an impatient team wastes both.
The kill criteria are the point - agree them before spend starts, not after a bad month.
Feed in where customers actually came from last year, which often contradicts where the budget went.

Questions about this prompt

When should I use this rather than adding one more channel to the mix?

When budget and hours are already thin and the instinct is to try another platform anyway. This rules channels out first, against your price point and sales motion, before it recommends anything, and caps the answer at two channels run properly plus one small test.

What do I need to know before choosing channels?

Price point, sales motion, where customers actually came from last year, budget and hours per month, team skills, and an honest patience window. That last input does the most work: any channel whose time to first signal exceeds the window is excluded, which stops an impatient team starting a six month bet.

What comes back, and which part actually decides anything?

The exclusions with reasons, a table of surviving channels covering time to first signal, monthly cost floor, skills, ceiling and risk, at most three recommendations with the case against the others, minimum viable commitments, and kill criteria. The kill criteria are the point, and they only work if agreed before spend starts.

What is the mistake that costs money here?

Reading any benchmark figure as fact. Those come back labelled ROUGH because published channel conversion rates vary enormously by market and often originate in vendor marketing. Use them to compare options against each other, never to size a forecast you then present to somebody who will hold you to it.