A Framework for Prioritizing Marketing Approaches

With dozens of potential marketing tactics, founders need a system to filter and prioritize where to spend their limited time and money. A two-step framework can help identify the highest-leverage approaches for your specific business.

Step 1: Filter with the Three Factor Framework

First, evaluate potential marketing approaches against three high-level factors. This helps you understand the fundamental nature of each channel.

Speed: How long will it take to see results? (Weeks, months, or years?)
- Strategy: In the early days, always be working on one fast channel (e.g., cold outreach) for immediate results and one slow channel (e.g., SEO) for long-term sustainability.
Cost: How much capital does it require?
- Strategy: The marketing channels available to you are a direct function of your Average Contract Value (ACV). Higher ACV unlocks more expensive, but often more scalable, channels.
Scalability: If this works, can you scale it up to reach more people?
- Strategy: Prioritize channels that can grow with your business (e.g., PPC, SEO) over one-off events (e.g., a Product Hunt launch).

Step 2: Prioritize with the ICE Framework

Once you have a filtered list of suitable approaches, use the ICE framework to rank them and decide what to work on first. Score each tactic from 1-10 on three criteria:

I - Impact: If this works, how big will the impact be on our growth?
C - Confidence: How confident are we that this will actually succeed?
E - Ease: How easy is this to implement in terms of time and resources?

Calculate a final score (e.g., by multiplying or averaging the three numbers) and tackle the highest-scoring initiatives first. This provides a structured, data-informed way to make decisions, moving beyond gut feelings and focusing on the tactics most likely to move the needle.

Tags: #SaaS #marketing #strategy #framework #prioritization #ICE-framework #growth