Run the channel tournament
Five candidates, four weeks, one scorecard, no sentiment. Phase 3 already made organic your incumbent, so it enters the tournament like everything else — otherwise you are testing around the bet you have already placed.
Target: 5 channels tested to a decision
Inside this
- Pick five candidate channels45m
Where your ICP already gathers, not where you are most comfortable posting — and count the channel Phase 3 built as one of the five, scored on the same card as the newcomers.
- Define the four-week test for each1h
Volume, budget, and the number that counts as a pass. Written before you start, not after.
- Run all five in parallel for four weeks20h
Parallel, not sequential — sequential testing takes five months and the market moves.
- Score each on signups, CAC, effort and ceiling1h
Ceiling matters most: a channel that works but caps at 20 signups a month is not the winner.
- Work out what the winning channel costs per paying customer1h
Price your own hours in. A channel that is free only because your time is unpriced is not free.
- Report what share of new signups the top channel brought30m
The phase exit is one channel at 40% or more. Below it you have not found the winner, you have a spread.
- Kill the bottom three without negotiating15m
The sunk cost is already sunk. Half-running four channels is how companies stall here.
- Rent the expensive channels once before you build one4h
Appear on somebody else’s podcast, channel or newsletter in your space and watch what their audience does. If it is one of their better performing pieces, that is a real signal for a fraction of the cost of finding out yourself.