Commit and launch your primary channel

A wide channel mix looks sophisticated until the budget scatters and every graph flat-lines. I learnt that lesson launching a consultancy podcast, LinkedIn ads and cold email in the same quarter. We logged activity but gained little pipeline. The fix was brutal focus: pick one lane, run it at full tilt for ninety days and judge it on revenue, not excitement.

This chapter shows how to commit to that primary channel and launch with discipline. You will set a ninety-day learning window, run a last-minute sanity check, lock a minimum volume into the calendar and define success or exit criteria before spend starts. The process turns a marketing gamble into a deliberate test that either scales or ends quickly—leaving cash for the next bet.

Each step ends with a bridge so the plan flows from commitment to launch without detours.

Choose one channel that fits your current growth phase. Early agencies often pick targeted cold email; mature consultancies may choose Google Search. Announce the choice to every stakeholder. When sales, product and finance know the plan, side projects lose momentum.

Block competing tests for three months. Post a public notice in Slack: “No new paid channels until ninety-day review.” This ceiling funnels creative energy into the committed lane. Weekly retrospectives refine lists, bids or copy but never the channel itself. Pivoting lane mid-quarter resets learning and doubles spend.

Finally, book three review dates at day thirty, sixty and ninety. These checkpoints keep small problems from compounding into wasted quarters.

Next you will run a quick sanity check to confirm the maths still works before launch.

Open the cost ceilings you calculated in Chapter 1. Compare expected click, lead and meeting costs for the chosen channel. If any forecast exceeds the ceiling, adjust the offer or pause the launch. Better to fix forecasts now than rewrite copy with spend already live.

Run a one-day pre-flight audit. Verify tracking tags fire, landing pages load in under three seconds and attribution joins to your CRM. Broken analytics steal learning and hide progress. Test one advert against a hidden audience for one hour to catch spelling errors and misplaced UTM parameters.

Finish by scanning competitor activity. If five rivals flood the same keywords, prepare a differentiator—price point, speed promise or niche proof—to avoid bidding wars.

With maths and mechanics confirmed, the next task is to guarantee enough volume for reliable insight.

Calculate the impressions, calls or emails needed to reach at least one hundred conversion events by day ninety. For cold outbound that might mean three thousand tailored emails if reply rate holds at five per cent and meetings at one in three replies.

Translate the total into daily or weekly quotas. Block calendar slots: each SDR sends thirty custom emails before lunch or the ads account spends €150 every weekday. Track volume completion first, results second. Without throughput, optimisation talk is guesswork.

Use a simple dashboard that shows “planned versus actual” volume. If output slips two days in a row, the team fixes process before debating creative.

Once volume cadence is set, you need rules that declare victory or exit without drama, handled in the next section.

Define one headline metric that links directly to revenue. Outbound measures booked meetings. Search ads measure qualified leads. Set a numeric threshold and a date. Example: maintain cost-per-meeting below €600 by week six.

Write an exit rule alongside the success goal. If cost-per-meeting stays above the threshold after two creative cycles, pause spend and redirect budget to the next sequenced channel. This pre-written rule removes emotion when numbers disappoint.

Document a fallback queue so the team knows where cash goes next. Perhaps organic LinkedIn thought-leadership or a niche podcast sponsorship. Clarity prevents a return to spray-and-pray if the first bet fails.

Exit and success criteria complete the launch plan and lead directly into execution, summarised in the conclusion.

Channel commitment works because it concentrates focus and learning. You have selected one primary lane, sanity-checked costs, scheduled the required volume and set unambiguous success and exit rules.

The launch now moves from slide deck to calendar. For ninety days every euro and every cold-outreach hour aim at the same target. Weekly tweaks sharpen performance; checkpoints decide scale or switch.

When the window closes you will know, with data not opinion, whether the channel deserves more budget or if the next level in the sequence should unlock. That disciplined clarity is the difference between controlled growth and chaotic spend.