One channel beats five: the case for going narrow first
Spreading across every channel feels productive and ships nothing. Why your first GTM motion should be a single, scored bet.
Every early-stage team I've worked with has, at some point, run a version of the same week: a LinkedIn post on Monday, a cold email batch on Tuesday, a podcast pitch on Wednesday, an SEO blog post on Thursday, and a paid ad experiment on Friday. By the end of the week, everything moved a little — and nothing moved enough to learn from.
This is the spread-thin trap, and it's one of the most common (and most forgivable) mistakes early teams make. It feels like progress. It is usually the opposite.
Why spreading thin feels productive
Doing five things gives you five chances to feel like something is "working." But with limited time and budget, five half-effort channels each get roughly a fifth of the attention they need to actually prove or disprove anything. You end up with five inconclusive experiments instead of one conclusive one.
Score your candidates before you pick
Before committing to a channel, score each candidate against your beachhead segment (see "Everyone" is not a customer if you haven't picked one yet) on three dimensions:
- Reach — can you actually get in front of a meaningful number of this segment through this channel?
- Cost to test — how much time and money to get a real signal, not just a vanity metric?
- Speed of signal — how quickly will you know if it's working?
The highest-scoring channel is your bet for the next four to six weeks. Everything else gets parked, not abandoned — you can come back to it once the first channel is proven or disproven.
What "properly" looks like
Going narrow doesn't mean doing less work. It means concentrating the same amount of work into one motion until you have a real answer:
- A defined weekly volume (e.g., 50 outbound conversations, not "some outbound")
- A consistent message, so you're testing the channel — not five different messages at once
- A clear success threshold decided before you start, so you're not tempted to move the goalposts
When to add a second channel
Add a second channel only once your first one is producing a repeatable, predictable result — not before. At that point, you're not "spreading thin," you're scaling something that already works, and you can apply the same scoring exercise to pick what's next.
Where to start this week
List every channel you've considered, score the top five against reach, cost to test, and speed of signal, and commit to the highest scorer for the next month. Everything else waits.