When my budget is a tenth of a rival's, I want to pick one thing and do it properly, so I am not spread so thin that nothing reaches a working threshold.

Job context

Who

A one-person marketing function at a small company

When

At the start of each planning year

Trigger

A year of six activities with no clear result from any

Situation

Every channel has a minimum threshold before anything happens

Constraints

Leadership wants to see activity on every channel

5 Pains

• Spread thin, no channel reaches threshold

  High

  One sixth of a budget across six channels returns zero on all six.

  Root cause: Channel effect is not linear in spend

• Leadership wants presence everywhere

  High

  Absence from a channel reads as an oversight even when it is the right call.

  Root cause: Presence is visible; thresholds are not

• Does not know a channel's threshold

  High

  There is no way to know in advance how much is enough to see anything.

  Root cause: The threshold depends on the specific market and is only learned by trying

• Stopping a channel mid-way loses everything invested

  Medium

  Many channels only pay back after accumulating long enough.

  Root cause: Channel investment accumulates rather than resetting each period

• One person cannot run six things

  High

  The real constraint is one person's time, not the budget.

  Root cause: Plans are built against budget rather than against capacity to execute

5 Desired Outcomes

• Know a channel's minimum threshold

  Functional

• Defend the decision to do one thing

  Social

• Plan against capacity to execute

  Functional

• Stay long enough for a channel to pay back

  Functional

• Stop feeling everything is half-done

  Emotional

5 Existing Solutions

A solution is not the same thing as a product — a customer can hire a behaviour or a workaround too.

• An annual marketing plan

  Product

  Lists everything and has no field for what will not be done.

• Outsource one channel to an agency

  Service

  Buys execution capacity, and each agency recommends its own channel.

• Pick one channel and commit six months

  Behaviour

  The only way past the threshold on a small budget, requiring five refusals.

• Ask a company of similar size what worked

  Behaviour

  The most practical way to estimate a threshold, heard only from survivors.

• Do a little of everything to avoid the question

  Workaround

  An organisational defence that guarantees nothing reaches threshold.

2 Opportunity Gaps

• A marketing plan has room for what will be done and none for what will not, so focus is never recorded.

  Why existing solutions fail: Every plan template is a list; lists only add, never subtract, so every new priority is accepted and none is dropped.

  Potential opportunity: A plan that requires a not-doing list, approved with the same weight as the doing list.

• Learning a channel's threshold requires crossing it, and a small budget affords one attempt.

  Why existing solutions fail: Industry benchmarks come from companies that already spent past the threshold, so they say nothing about the minimum — the sample is truncated exactly where the answer is.

  Potential opportunity: Collecting the attempts that failed for under-spending, so the minimum becomes knowable.