Stop Hunting for Channels. Start Building a Customer Journey.
Effective marketing isn't about picking a winning channel; it's about designing a customer journey so frictionless and an idea so remarkable that the channels become secondary.
Sam Frentzel-Beyme
Founder & CEO
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Chasing a new marketing channel before you have a remarkable story is a waste of money.
Having a remarkable story with no clear path for your audience is a waste of a great idea.
Durable companies earn the trust of a specific audience first, then build the journey that serves them.
The Channel Churn
There is a familiar and expensive cycle of desperation in scaling companies.
A founder decides they need to “get serious about marketing.” They read about the success of a competitor and conclude, “We need to get good at TikTok,” or “We need to rank on SEO.”
They pour time and money into mastering a channel, see fleeting results, and then, six months later, abandon it for the next “silver bullet.”
This is channel churn.
It’s a symptom of asking the wrong question.
The right question is not, “What channel should we use?” It is, as Seth Godin teaches, “Who is it for?”
Before you can acquire customers, you must choose who to serve.
The Minimum Viable Audience
The most common mistake is trying to speak to everyone.
A remarkable product or story is, by definition, not for everyone. It is for a specific group with a specific problem — your minimum viable audience.
These are the people who will not just tolerate your message, but embrace it, share it, and become its champions.
The goal is not to find a channel that reaches millions. It is to earn the trust and attention of the thousand people who truly need what you do.
When you focus on serving them with obsessive intensity, they will carry your story across any channel for you.
The idea makes the channel work — not the other way around.
The Customer’s Journey, Not the Company’s Funnel
Once you know who you are for, you must map their journey.
Peter Drucker taught that the purpose of a business is to create a customer. The customer does not care about your marketing funnel. They care about their own path to solving a problem.
Is that path frictionless?
Is it helpful?
Is it clear?
Your job is not to force them through your process. It is to illuminate their path.
That means understanding the questions they ask at each stage — awareness, consideration, decision — and providing the right answer in the right place.
A great marketing system is simply a series of answers that reduce friction along the customer’s journey.
The Channel Portfolio Matrix
With a clear audience and a mapped journey, you can finally select your channels with intelligence.
A portfolio approach brings rigor to this process. Not all channels have the same job.
We use a simple Channel Portfolio Matrix:
Y-Axis: Cost per Interaction (Low → High)
X-Axis: Customer Journey Stage (Awareness → Decision)
This framework forces clarity:
Are you overspending on decision-stage channels without feeding them awareness?
Are your awareness channels too expensive?
Is your mix balanced across the journey?
The matrix turns a chaotic list of tactics into a structured, manageable portfolio — where every channel has a specific job in service of the customer’s journey.
From Insight to Action
Define your minimum viable audience in one clear sentence.
Map the last customer you won. What were their five key touchpoints?
Plot your current marketing activities inside the Channel Portfolio Matrix.
Hold a 25-minute meeting focused only on a single customer’s experience.
Evaluate your marketing budget: are you funding a journey or disconnected channels?
Replace the phrase “our funnel” with “our customer’s journey” for one week.
A channel is a temporary tactic; a well-served customer is a permanent asset.
