Channels and the Committed Lane
This is Layer 3's channel strategy: the one channel we commit to for filling a building, why, and what every other channel is for. The principle comes from Product-Channel fit in Layer 1; this is its instantiation. The discipline is First Round's: you only need to win one lane, but you have to actually fund it; the common failure is spreading a small budget across many channels and starving all of them.
The committed lane: high-intent search
The call: high-intent search (Google, paid and organic) is the primary, funded-first channel for filling a building. It gets funded to the top of the envelope before anything else.
Why, from Product-Channel fit: a monthly lockout is a toured, high-consideration purchase. The people worth reaching are the ones already looking for a place to practice, and high-intent search captures exactly them at the moment of intent. Cold interruption (broad social to people who aren't looking) converts poorly for a considered purchase, no matter how cheap the clicks.
Why, from Channel-Model fit: with member LTV around $16,000 (Portland-measured), we can pay up for high-intent clicks. We are not cost-per-acquisition constrained, so the premium price of search is not a problem; the binding constraint is visit volume, not click cost.
The Salem evidence makes this concrete rather than theoretical. In February the Google "Salem" search campaign spent $551, and that cohort produced the only real organic move-in batch we have (ten move-ins, signed in February on a March 1 start). When search was switched off after February, move-ins fell to zero even as Meta spend quadrupled onto a traffic objective. The channel that was working got turned off; the replacement spend was on the wrong tool. See the Salem instance for the full diagnosis.
The supporting cast (secondary, never co-primary)
- Meta, on a leads or conversions objective only. Meta's job is to reach the findable niche who aren't actively searching yet. It must run on a leads or conversions objective, never a traffic objective: a traffic objective tells Meta to buy the cheapest clicks and landing-page views it can find, which do not convert (the Salem traffic line is the proof). Cap Meta below search.
- Local presence and partnerships. Music shops, gear retailers, venues, all-ages spaces, schools, scene nodes. Low spend, community-manager driven, supports the engine rather than leading it.
- Organic and SEO. Earns the same high-intent search queries over time. Slow and compounding; it is time spent, not budget, and it reinforces the paid-search lane.
- Referral and community (the second act). How a full market sustains itself, built from day one by the community manager, but it compounds too late to fill the first building, and referral (give-50/get-50) is untested. Run in parallel; do not time the fill on it. See the cold-start playbook.
What each channel is for
| Channel | Role | Objective | How it's funded |
|---|---|---|---|
| Google high-intent search | Primary engine | Capture in-market intent | First, to the top of the envelope |
| Meta | Secondary | Reach the findable niche | Leads/conversions only; capped below search |
| Local presence / partnerships | Support | Scene presence | Low; community-manager driven |
| Organic / SEO | Support | Own the high-intent queries | Time, not budget |
| Referral / community | Second act | Compounding word of mouth | Parallel; not the fill engine |
The open debate: Google quality vs Meta volume
The one thing this doc does not yet settle is whether Google's reliable but lower-volume conversions beat Meta's high volume of cheap instant-form leads. Google converts more dependably; Meta produces many cheap leads whose conversion to move-ins we currently cannot see. That decision depends on closing the attribution gap in Layer 4 so Meta leads can be traced to move-ins. Until then, the lane stands as written: search primary, Meta secondary on a leads objective, and Meta is judged on move-ins, not on lead count.
How this generalizes to the next building
What makes this a doctrine and not a Salem one-off is the split between what holds everywhere and what is set per building.
- Constant: high-intent search is the engine; Meta is leads-secondary and never traffic; community and referral are the second act. The Product-Channel logic holds wherever the product is a toured monthly lockout.
- Per market (set in each building's instance): the specific search campaigns and geo, the budget envelope, the local partners, and whether organic has any base to build on. St. Louis and future buildings inherit the doctrine and fill in those parameters.
Per-channel detail
paid-meta.md— Meta specifics (note: under reconciliation; older creative and campaign info is stale).creative-log.md— the running creative record.mms2026.md— a past campaign (festival was 2026-06-21), archived.- Marketing skills:
paid-ads,ad-creative,copywriting,content-strategy.
All channel copy follows the voice and the guardrails: plain, concrete, and never running down the alternatives.