Back to the Channel Recommendation Engine guide

Channel Recommendation Engine

A scored recommendation across SEO, paid search, paid social, LinkedIn, content, and email, ranked by fit for your specific industry, sales cycle, and budget, not a generic list.

Channel Recommendation Engine

Live

Scores twelve acquisition channels against your deal size, audience, budget and timeline, then allocates the budget across the ones you can actually fund properly.

Who you sell to

Audience

Average contract / order valueThe strongest single signal in this model. A channel that works at 50,000 rarely works at 500.

Sales cycle3 months

Currency

What you have

Monthly marketing budget

Media and programme spend, excluding salaries.

Team sizeUsed to check whether the recommended mix is executable, not just affordable. Most channel plans fail on capacity rather than budget.3 people

When do you need results?

Compounding channels score poorly against short windows. That is a property of the window, not of the channel.

Assets you already haveSome channels are gated on these. Outbound without a sales team and product-led growth without a self-serve trial both score badly for good reason.

Best fit

Paid search

100 / 100 fit score

Channels to fund

what $20k/mo covers properly

Fastest to impact

1 mo

Paid search

Execution load

125 hrs

vs 360 hrs of team capacity

The recommendation

Start with Paid search, which scores 100 out of 100 against your constraints, the strongest fit for your deal size, audience and timeline. The mix balances capturing demand that exists today against creating demand for later, which is the combination that holds up over more than one quarter. Prove one channel before adding the next: two channels half-funded produce two inconclusive results and no decision.

Suggested allocation

Weighted by fit score across the channels your budget can fund.

Paid search25%

Paid social25%

LinkedIn advertising25%

Outbound & ABM25%

Fit scores

Every channel, scored against your constraints.

Paid search1001mo

Paid social1001mo

LinkedIn advertising1002mo

Outbound & ABM1002mo

Email & lifecycle1001mo

Events & webinars1003mo

Partnerships & affiliates904mo

Content marketing746mo

Your channel plan

In priority order, with the first move for each. Prove one before starting the next.

Paid search

1 month to impact20 hrs/mo to runcapture

$5,000

25% · fit 100

Captures demand that already exists. The only channel that reliably produces pipeline in its first month, which makes it the default starting point when you need proof rather than scale.

First move

Bid on the ten terms closest to purchase intent, including competitor names. Ignore broad category terms until the narrow set is profitable.

Watch out for

Volume is capped by how many people are already searching. When you have captured that demand, more budget buys progressively worse traffic rather than more of the same.

Deal size sits in the range where this channel's economics workReaches your audience type effectivelyBudget is comfortably above the level needed for a readable signal

Paid social

1 month to impact25 hrs/mo to runcreation

$5,000

25% · fit 100

Reaches people before they start searching, which is most of your market most of the time. Creates demand rather than capturing it.

First move

Retarget site visitors first, because it is the cheapest audience you will ever buy and it validates the creative before you spend on cold reach.

Watch out for

Creative fatigue is faster than most teams plan for. Without a production cadence, performance decays within weeks of launch.

Deal size sits in the range where this channel's economics workReaches your audience type effectivelyBudget is comfortably above the level needed for a readable signal

LinkedIn advertising

2 months to impact20 hrs/mo to runcreation

$5,000

25% · fit 100

The only paid channel with reliable firmographic targeting. Expensive per click, defensible when the contract value is large enough to carry the cost.

First move

Target a named account list rather than a job-title audience. The targeting precision is what you are paying the premium for, and using it broadly wastes it.

Watch out for

The cost per click is several times other platforms. Below about eight thousand in contract value the arithmetic rarely works.

Deal size sits in the range where this channel's economics workReaches your audience type effectivelyBudget is comfortably above the level needed for a readable signal

Outbound & ABM

2 months to impact60 hrs/mo to runrelationship

$5,000

25% · fit 100

The only channel where you choose the accounts rather than waiting for them. Pipeline arrives on a schedule you control, which matters when the plan has a date attached.

First move

Build the named account list with tiering before writing a single message. Outbound without a real list is cold email with extra steps.

Watch out for

Labour-intensive and heavily dependent on the quality of the list and the relevance of the message. Volume without either produces a damaged domain reputation.

Deal size sits in the range where this channel's economics workReaches your audience type effectivelyBudget is comfortably above the level needed for a readable signal

Every channel, scored

Including the ones that do not fit, because knowing why a channel is wrong for you is as useful as knowing which is right.

Channel	Fit	Verdict	Time to impact	Effort
Paid search	100	strong	1 mo	20 hrs
Paid social	100	strong	1 mo	25 hrs
LinkedIn advertising	100	strong	2 mo	20 hrs
Outbound & ABM	100	strong	2 mo	60 hrs
Email & lifecycle	100	strong	1 mo	20 hrs
Events & webinars	100	strong	3 mo	50 hrs
Partnerships & affiliates Takes about 4 months to matter, past the horizon you set	90	strong	4 mo	30 hrs
Content marketing Takes about 6 months to matter, past the horizon you set	74	strong	6 mo	45 hrs
SEO & organic search Takes about 7 months to matter, past the horizon you set	70	viable	7 mo	40 hrs
Local search & directories Not a natural fit for this audience	68	viable	2 mo	12 hrs
Product-led growth Needs a product that can be evaluated without a human	66	viable	3 mo	40 hrs
Community & developer relations Not a natural fit for this audience	43	poor	5 mo	45 hrs