Strategy & planning
Put your marketing budget where the customers actually are
A ranked, measurable plan for which channels get your spend, in what order, and why.
Channel strategy is the decision about where your marketing money goes: paid search, social, SEO (search engine optimisation), email, referrals, AI search (showing up inside answers like ChatGPT and Google AI Overviews), and which deserve your budget first. Most businesses guess at this, spread spend across too many channels, and never give any one enough to work.
I have spent over a decade making these calls, on paid media at global agencies and running full marketing functions in-house. I start from how your buyers actually find and choose what you sell, then match channels to that, to your margins, and to your budget. You get a ranked plan with a reason behind every choice.
What you get
- A ranked channel plan: where to spend first, what to test next, what to ignore for now, with the reasoning
- A clear role for every channel: which capture ready buyers, which create demand, which bring people back
- A starting budget split across channels, with a target cost per lead or sale for each
- The GA4 (Google Analytics 4) tracking plan so each channel's results can be read honestly, not guessed at
- A 90-day sequencing roadmap showing what goes live when, so you are not launching everything at once
- A monthly review rhythm for moving budget toward the channels that are actually paying back
How I do it
- 01
Map demand before channels
I start with how people actually look for what you sell: high-intent search, social discovery, referrals, AI search (showing up inside ChatGPT and Google AI Overviews). Channels follow that, not the reverse.
- 02
Score each channel on fit
I weigh every channel on cost to enter, time to first result, fit with your margins, and how it pairs with the others, then rank them so you know what to fund first and what to leave for later.
- 03
Set the role each channel plays
Some channels capture ready buyers, some create demand, some bring people back. I define the job of each and the handoffs, so they support each other instead of competing for the same click.
- 04
Attach numbers and measurement
Each channel gets a starting budget, a target cost per lead or sale, and the tracking to read it honestly in GA4 (Google Analytics 4), so you see what each one returns rather than guessing.
- 05
Write the plan and review rhythm
You get a written strategy with sequencing and a 90-day view, plus a simple cadence for reviewing results and shifting spend toward what works.
A few tools I’ve already built
Quick examples you can try right now, to show the kind of thing I make. When your business needs something specific, I build it custom.
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Ad Waste Audit
Paste your search terms and get the wasted spend as a number, a negative-keyword list, and the fixes ranked by impact.
“Staff were lovely but check-in took forever.”
Insight Analyst
Paste survey answers or reviews and get back the themes, the sentiment, the quotes that prove each theme, and a written summary, in minutes.
Leads
143
+22%
Cost/lead
$6
-14%
Visits
8.4k
+31%
Client Report Builder
Turn the month's ad, social, and site numbers into a branded report with a written read of what changed and why, not just charts.
What it does for the business
You stop spreading the budget thin and start concentrating it where it returns the most. Every channel has a clear job and a target to hit, the tracking is in place to tell you which ones are paying back, and you have a sequenced plan instead of scattered experiments. The practical result is more customers for the same spend, and a clear answer the next time someone asks where the next rand should go.
The stack I use here
- Google Ads
- Meta Ads
- GA4
- Looker Studio
- Google Search Console
- HubSpot
Common questions
Ads are one channel. Channel strategy decides whether ads are even the right place to start, and how search, social, SEO (search engine optimisation), email and referrals fit alongside them. It is the plan that tells the spending where to go. Once it is set, I can run any of those channels or hand the plan to your team.
It matters more when the budget is small. The common way a small budget gets wasted is spreading it thinly across channels that each need more to work. The plan concentrates spend on the one or two channels that suit your margins and your buyers, so the money has a chance to return something.
The strategy is usually ready in one to two weeks, depending on how much research the market needs. Results depend on the channels chosen: paid search can show leads in days, while SEO and AI search build over months. The plan is honest about which is which so you know what to expect and when.
Want this for your business?
Tell me where you want more customers. I read every message myself and come back to you, usually within a day.