Pick One Channel and Actually Win It

It’s the first week of January. Your team is back from holiday break. You’ve got fresh pipeline targets for the year.

Here’s what’s about to happen: everyone will be excited to try lots of stuff. So you’ll spread resources and effort across several channels—and in 3 months, wonder why none of them work.

Because you build expertise in zero channels.

You can’t tell what’s working because nothing runs long enough to generate signal. Your team context-switches between platforms instead of mastering one. Hiring an agency isn’t a magic bullet—you still have to spend many, many hours with them getting them up to speed. Not to mention—budget.

Starting 2026 Strong

I hope you already have 1–2 channels that work. If you don’t—finding those 1–2 channels that produce meetings repeatedly is a great goal for Q1 or even 1H 2026.

Because once you’ve found them, you can spend aggressively on those channels and know it’ll work.

• Not “build a presence everywhere.”

• Not “test everything.”

• Not “diversify our pipeline sources.”

Win decisively in one or two places.

What Channel Selection Actually Requires

1) Time to competence > theoretical TAM

LinkedIn might reach your entire market. But it takes time to figure out what content drives meetings—and for some, it may never drive meetings (in spite of what you read from LinkedIn influencers).

If you’re going to do it—do it right, get some expert help.

If you don’t have the time to figure it out, LinkedIn is the wrong channel.

Cold email might feel pedestrian. But if you can generate 10 qualified meetings in the first month, it’s the right channel.

2) Repeatability beats home runs

A channel that produces 3 meetings per week consistently beats one that occasionally produces 15 meetings then goes dark for a month.

You need a system you can feed:

• More effort → more meetings

• More spend → more pipeline

• Predictable conversion rates → something you can model

3) Your team’s actual skills matter

If nobody on your team can write, content marketing will fail. If your founder hates events, conference sponsorships will underperform. If your team can’t cold call, SDR hiring will waste money.

Pick channels that match what your team is actually good at, not what worked at their last company.

The Three-Channel Mistake

“We should focus on 2–3 channels” sounds reasonable. It’s what every growth advisor says.

It’s wrong.

Here’s why: each channel requires different skills, different tools, different measurement systems, different optimization cycles. Running three channels well requires three times the expertise, not 50% more.

Most companies can’t even run one channel well:

• They measure the wrong metrics

• Their creative is mediocre

• Their follow-up is inconsistent

• Their attribution is broken

Adding more channels just means doing three things poorly instead of one thing well.

And if you think you’re going to hire that person who is great at social and Google ads and YouTube shorts and Instagram and cold outreach tooling and brand positioning… yeah, good luck. That person might exist. Anyone who says they are that person definitely isn’t.

How to Actually Pick

Start with channels that compress time-to-signal

What’s your timeframe? Do you need to know if something works within 4 weeks, or 4 months?

Here’s a rough breakdown:

• Outbound email: ~4 weeks to initial signal

• LinkedIn outreach: 1–2 weeks

• Paid search: 1–2 weeks (if you have budget)

• Content marketing: 3–6 months minimum

• SEO: 6–12 months (and this is a fast changing space)

• AEO (Answer Engine Optimization): ?? nobody knows yet

• Events: 3+ weeks prep, then 4–8 weeks follow up to prove out

If you can’t afford to wait, cross slow channels off the list.

AEO is hot right now—but be wary of anyone who says they’re an “AEO expert.” This is brand new. There’s no settled playbook like there is for SEO. Yet.

Identify your constraint

• If you have money but no team: paid channels that scale with budget (Google, LinkedIn ads, agencies running outbound).

• If you have team but no money: channels that scale with effort (cold outbound, partnerships, content).

• If you have neither: you probably shouldn’t be focused on growth channels yet. Can you raise capital? Maybe focus there.

Run one real test

Not a “let’s try this for two weeks” test. A real test with:

• Minimum 4 weeks runtime

• Clear success metrics defined upfront

• Enough volume to generate signal (1000+ emails sent, 100+ cold calls, $3k+ ad spend)

• Someone who actually knows the channel running it

Most “tests” are just excuses for half-effort.

Biggest risk in Google Ads? Underspending. The algorithms don’t learn, and you walk away down $2k thinking “it doesn’t work”—but if you had spent more, it might have.

What Actually Works in 2026

Email is still underrated

Every ops and sales leader checks email constantly. Good cold email—actually personalized, offering genuine value—still gets 5–15% reply rates. Mass campaigns can hit 1–2%.

Don’t believe the haters. The problem isn’t that email doesn’t work. The problem is that most email is terrible:

• Generic templates

• No relevance

• Pitching immediately

Skyp exists because email done right still outperforms almost everything else for B2B.

Warm intros still beat everything

One warm intro from a mutual connection beats 1,000 cold emails. Partnerships that generate qualified referrals beat paid ads by 10x on CAC.

If you’re not systematically asking customers for intros, you’re leaving meetings on the table.

You can also run email campaigns to your network asking for intros. These small batch campaigns always outperform mass campaigns—and each positive reply could be worth multiple referred customers.

Paid channels work if you have margin

Google Ads, LinkedIn Ads, and agencies running cold outbound all work—if your LTV supports $2k+ CAC.

• If you're selling a $5k ACV product, paid channels will bankrupt you.

• If you're selling $50k+ ACV with good retention, paid channels scale.

The Channel Compounding Effect

Channels compound with each other, but only after you've won one first.

• Great content makes your cold emails work better

• Cold outbound feeds your retargeting pool

• Partnerships amplify your SEO

But you can’t start with “compounding channel effects.”

You start with one channel that produces meetings this month. Then you layer in the second channel to amplify the first.

Your Digital Presence Matters

If you cold email someone, they will visit your website. And probably click your LinkedIn profile.

Do they suck?

I talked to someone last year who claimed to get 1–2 meetings a week with no website. I think he’s the only one.

If people get an email from you or click through an ad, the website has to match:

• Language

• Design

• Fonts

• Clarity

Otherwise you can send the best email or target the best ads—and never see a conversion.

What We’re Doing at Skyp

We’re going all-in on two channels in Q1 2026:

• Direct outbound to sales ops teams. We know the ICP. We know the pain points. We can send 500 personalized emails per week that actually get replies.

• Collaborations and partnerships. CRM integrations, enrichment tools, intent data providers. Newsletter collabs like last year’s with Kyle Poyar. Warm traffic that already understands the problem.

It’s hard not to do stuff—not to want to post to LinkedIn, run YouTube ads with Veo3 creative, or chase every shiny tactic people talk about.

But we’re keeping it focused and simple. We’re sending outbound emails and building partnerships until those channels stop producing qualified pipeline. Then we’ll consider what’s next.

Your Move

Stop pretending you’re going to win at five channels simultaneously.

• Pick the one channel where you have the highest probability of generating meetings in the next 30 days.

• Go all-in.

• Measure ruthlessly.

• Scale what works.

Only add the second channel after the first one is producing predictable pipeline.

Execution beats strategy. One channel done well beats three channels done poorly.

If the channel you’re betting on is outbound, Skyp helps you run it like a system instead of a scramble. A single goal prompt lets you draft unique emails with a common structure, so you get variation without losing consistency. That makes it easier to run a real 4-week test, learn what’s working, and scale the winners—without drowning in “random acts of outbound.”