Bullseye Channel Selection

Scenario: B2B SaaS founder with no traction strategy

Trigger: "We built a project management tool for construction teams. Launched 3 months ago. Have 40 paying customers from personal outreach. Need to get to 500 in 6 months. Budget: $3,000/month for marketing. What should we do?"

Process: (1) Brainstorm all 19 channels — note the founder dismissed Trade Shows as "not for us" (flagged as schlep bias; construction expos are where this audience lives). (2) Rank: Column A = Sales (SDR outreach), Trade Shows (construction expos), Targeting Blogs (construction-industry blogs). Column B = BD (integration partnerships), Content Marketing, SEM. Column C = Viral, Affiliate, Community. (3) Inner circle: Sales, Trade Shows, Targeting Blogs. (4) Tests: SDR with 100 cold emails ($500), booth sponsorship at one small construction meetup ($800), paid sponsorship on top 2 construction blogs ($700). (5) Two weeks later: sponsored blog posts had clear winner — $40 CAC, 25 signups. Focus: double down on Targeting Blogs, expand to 5 more blogs, build library of 3 guest posts per month.

Output: 4 markdown files in working directory, clear channel winner with evidence, next-4-weeks plan.

Scenario: Consumer app stuck in Engineering as Marketing tunnel

Trigger: "We built a free calculator tool that ranks on Google for 'loan calculator'. Drives 50k visits/month but only 200 signups. Engineering team keeps building more calculators. Growth has plateaued. What now?"

Process: (1) Brainstorm forces the founder to consider channels beyond Engineering as Marketing. Notes: "Viral Marketing — we haven't even thought about this; our calculators could include share hooks." (2) Rank: Column A = Viral Marketing (embed calculators as widgets on finance blogs), Content Marketing (loan advice articles with calculator CTAs), Email Marketing (nurture the 200 signups). Column B = PR, SEM, Targeting Blogs. Column C = Sales, Trade Shows, Offline Events. (3) Inner circle: Viral (widgets), Content, Email. (4) Tests: 3 widgets on blogs ($0 — engineering time), 5 long-form articles ($1,500 freelance), email drip sequence (existing 200 contacts). (5) Content articles converted 4x better than widgets — focus on content, commission 2 articles/week.

Output: Founder breaks out of "just build more calculators" loop. Discovers Content Marketing is the real channel; Engineering as Marketing was actually serving SEO, not acquisition.

Scenario: Repeating Bullseye after saturation

Trigger: "Targeting blogs worked great for us for 18 months — got 40k users. But now CAC is climbing and new blog partnerships aren't producing the same volume. Growth is flattening."

Process: Recognize this as the Law of Shitty Click-Throughs — the channel is saturating. Run Bullseye again, this time weighted by the test data already accumulated. (1) Brainstorm with the history in mind: "We know blog-style content works — which channels amplify that?" (2) Rank: Column A = PR (media coverage amplifies existing content), Content Marketing (owned publication), Community Building (turning blog readers into evangelists). (3) Inner circle: PR, Content, Community. (4) Tests: 1 HARO pitch per day for 30 days, launch own publication with 8 articles, seed community in Slack. (5) PR produced biggest lift — TechCrunch feature = 8,000 new users in 48 hours.

Output: Channel rotation handoff from Targeting Blogs → PR, with Content Marketing as supporting channel for PR amplification.