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MarketingFoundational

Channel Scorecard

Compare your candidate marketing channels side by side — scored on reach, cost, effort, and your own unfair advantages — and pick the one or two that earn your next 90 days.

Created by the Groundwork teamGCreated by the Groundwork team

What you walk away with

A real document, built from everything you worked through — then critiqued the way a tough reviewer would and polished round by round. Plus a project summary that shows your work.

20 steps in the full journey.

Who this is for

Founders staring at eight plausible marketing channels and doing a little of each — a few posts here, a half-finished blog there — because nothing has forced a comparison. It usually comes up right before writing a go-to-market plan, when 'pick a channel' turns out to be the step everything else was waiting on.

What you'll actually decide

Which one or two channels get your actual hours for the next quarter, decided against explicit criteria — how well each one reaches your specific customer, what it costs at your price point, how much of one person's week it eats, how fast it produces a signal, and where your own background is an advantage — rather than against what worked for someone else's startup.

What first-time founders get wrong here

Scoring on reach alone, which crowns the biggest platform every time regardless of whether your buyer is there or you can afford to be found on it. The other is reverse-engineering the scorecard: deciding on the comfortable channel first and adjusting weights until the numbers agree. A scorecard your favorite wins in every column is a rationalization, not a comparison.

The first 10 questions

This is where the conversation starts. Each answer shapes what gets asked next.

  1. 01What are you selling — describe the product, the price point, and who it's for?
  2. 02Which marketing channels are on your candidate list — everything you're seriously considering, plus anything you feel you 'should' be doing?
  3. 03What have you already tried, even half-heartedly, and what actually happened?
  4. 04What can you realistically spend — hours per week of your own time, and dollars per month?
  5. 05Where does your target customer actually spend time, look for solutions, and trust recommendations?
  6. 06Which candidate channels give you an unfair advantage — an existing audience, credibility in a community, a network, or a skill you already have?
  7. 07For each candidate, how long until you'd see a clear signal it's working — days, weeks, or months?
  8. 08Which channels can't work at your price point — where the cost to acquire a customer would exceed what that customer is worth?
  9. 09Which channel are you drawn to because it's comfortable rather than because your customer is there — and which one repels you but fits them?
  10. 10Scoring criteria: which 4-6 criteria will you score against (ICP reach, expected CAC, effort to run, time to signal, founder fit, compounding value) — and which weighs most?

+ 8 more questions across discovery, validation, and the creative brief — each one adapting to what you've already said.

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The first five questions of any project are free — no card required.

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