How to Prioritize Marketing Channels When Resources Are Tight

Most businesses don't have unlimited marketing budgets. You probably don't either.

When money is tight, there’s a natural impulse: post everywhere, run a bunch of ads, and chase every new marketing trend. The logic seems sound enough—cast a wide net and hope you catch something.

And here’s the trap: you spread yourself so thin that nothing works well. Your Instagram posts are inconsistent, your email list goes out of date, and your ad campaigns get half the attention you need.

You’re busy all day. And you get nowhere.

It happens to a lot of people, and I’ve done it myself too. It’s a common, normal, and understandable error.

But here’s the good news: constraints are not the enemy. They’re a clarifying force.

One that makes you think harder about what matters. Because when you can’t do everything, you have to be razor sharp about doing the right things.

From constraints comes clarity.

So here, in this post, I’m going to lay out how I prioritize marketing for myself and my clients when resources are tight.

Impressions don’t pay your bills.

And neither do open rates, follower counts, or website visits. Reach alone means nothing if nobody buys. And that’s why it’s a lot better to have five customers that pay and come back than a thousand followers who never convert.

Will channels immediately generate revenue on the first try? Usually not, at least not without some tweaking and testing.

But from day 1, your focus needs to be on picking channels that will make you money. That’s not to say other metrics don’t matter, but rather that if resources are tight, you should focus on channels that fit two criteria:

Because if resources are tight, your job needs to be making resources less tight. And the way to do that is by relieving immediate pressure.

If you’re not sure what to do, look at the last 90 days and ask yourself:

In doing this, you’re likely to figure out what’s generating revenue now and what’s giving you the information you need to improve fast. And if you’re lucky, you’ll be able to spot obvious time sinks that are taking 40% of your time for 2% of the sales.

But, of course, even saying this assumes you have data to draw from. So you might be asking…

The basic principle still applies: do less, but better. For that, you need a filter.

You need to run every potential channel and project by your filter before you commit time and money. This won’t guarantee success, but it will reduce your odds of making unnecessary mistakes.

And you need to do this while writing down everything you can. Track your sales or leads so you can tell if they’re quality or not. You don’t need fancy software to do this: even an Excel sheet will do.

You probably have a good intuitive sense for where your audience spends time—online or offline.

If you're selling B2B software, your customers are probably on LinkedIn, not TikTok. If you're selling skincare to millennials, Instagram matters more than industry forums. If you're a local service business, Google Maps and local SEO beat almost everything else.

And at the risk of sounding like I just gave you the most obvious advice in the world: consider the alternatives.

Businesses sometimes pick channels based on what they’re comfortable with. Or what’s trendy. But both can be mistakes if they don’t also happen to be the same places customers spend time.

So start with your best guess. Then validate your assumptions.

When you have good customers, ask them where they spend time online. Depending on your line of work, you can do this through surveys or by sending them an email directly. (People want to help upstarts win, let’s not forget!)

It’s also a good idea to pay attention to what your successful competitors are doing. Watch where they get engagement, not just where they post.

Half-done marketing is worse than no marketing, because you usually end up with no results and less time.

So even if it’s really uncomfortable in the moment, it’s better to be honest about bandwidth.

Some channels demand daily attention. Like social media, for instance, requires constant work and regular posting. Paid ads are less time-consuming in some ways, but if you don’t make time to monitor and optimize, they’ll soak up cash fast.

When you don’t feel like you can commit to the level of consistency needed, pick a different channel.

Other channels are more forgiving. SEO and content marketing build over time—a great article can drive traffic for years.

It’s also a good idea to match channel requirements to team strengths. If no one is comfortable on camera, maybe YouTube isn’t the best place to focus right now. But if someone writes well, you can always make a play for content and email.

The one thing you really want to avoid is stopping and starting.

If you post on LinkedIn for two weeks, disappear for a month, then come back, that’s arguably worse than never starting.

Your timeline needs to weigh heavily in your choice of channels.

If you need customers in the next 30 days, SEO isn't going to save you. It takes months to build, and content marketing compounds slowly.

These are long-term investments, and they're valuable—but only if you can afford to wait.

Paid ads give you fast feedback. So does direct response like cold email. You'll know within a month if they're working. The downside is ongoing cost—turn off the ads, turn off the results.

Warm email can deliver quick wins if you already have a list. But if you're starting from scratch, you need a different channel first because you have to build up your mailing list in the first place.

Referrals are arguably the best form of business, but of course, referrals depend on having happy customers to begin with. That means that if your product is new, referrals won't help yet.

The danger you want to avoid here is choosing a channel that doesn’t match your timeline.

If you choose a six-month strategy when you need revenue in six weeks, you’re going to have a bad time.

I’ve shared with you three filters to choose marketing channels that are a fit. But I’d like to also give you a sense of how much time and energy to put into each channel.

For that, I’ll share with you my framework for how to allocate your limited time and budget to channels that are most likely to work for you.

Remember: when money is tight, your goal should be to make money not tight anymore.

So you want channels for which both of these facts are true:

Pick one or two channels where this is the case (or likely to be the case). Set 60-70% of your effort and budget on these channels. It’s where your best customers already come from or where they’re likely to come from. Best to focus on this even if it’s not super exciting work.

So if your revenue comes from referrals, find a way to systematize that. If your email drives sales, start tweaking sequences and winning more email leads. If local SEO brings in customers, it’s time to make some landing pages and tweak your Google page.

This seems boring. It is boring. It's also how you grow.

Many businesses want to experiment with new channels before they've maximized the ones that already work. But that’s an error that risks leaving money on the table.

It’s good to double down on what works when resources are tight, but you still need to try interesting new things, or you risk getting stuck in the mud.

So you have to balance two competing desires here:

So set aside 20-30% of your resources on a channel that makes sense, but where you’re less experienced or the payoff is less immediate.

Write down what you hope to get out of the channel—clear criteria of success like “generate 10 qualified leads.” Then run with it for a test period like 60-90 days, although feel free to adjust this depending on how quickly you can expect success on the channel.

At the end of the test, decide: Does this move to Tier 1, or do you eliminate it and try something else?

Everything that isn’t Tier 1 or Tier 2 falls here, and remains here until resource constraints loosen. These channels should get 10% of your resources or less.

If a channel generates some value but isn’t a priority, you can keep the lights on. Post occasionally, but don’t invest heavily and don’t expect a lot of business from it.

It’s also completely OK to altogether stop working on channels that don’t work. You don’t have to post to every social media site and you don’t have to run ads on all the platforms.

Review this tier quarterly. Should something move up? Should you finally stop posting to that Twitter account you haven't touched in six months?

Be direct and honest with yourself.

You don’t need to be everywhere. You don’t need to do everything.

All you have to do is be excellent where it counts most. And if that means fewer channels done better, then you will be far better off.

If you’re disciplined and clear-headed about how you spend your time and your marketing dollars, you might find out the little secret so many startups over so many years have discovered:

From constraint, comes inspiration.