WS-06 · Channel Architecture · Operating Manual
Binet & Field's 60/40 long-short doctrine + SparkToro's "Search Everywhere" reality + Tom Goodwin's "thank you for the platforms but our customer doesn't live there anymore." Twelve channels mapped across seven funnel stages, with explicit Hero/Hub/Hygiene roles, budget allocation, orchestration logic, and sunset rules. The channel system that turns the bowtie funnel from theory into media spend.
Tom Goodwin's most-quoted observation — "Uber owns no cars, Airbnb owns no hotels" — has an uncomfortable corollary: most home-service brands rent every channel they appear on. Google owns the search query. Meta owns the audience graph. Realestate.com.au owns the property intent. When the rent goes up, the brand has nowhere to go. The channel architecture below is designed so that, by 2030, ≥ 45% of YMT acquisition revenue arrives via channels we own — the email list, the customer portal, the referral network, the YouTube subscriber base, and the brand-search engine that 7 years of distinctive-asset investment will produce.
Binet & Field's IPA-derived 60/40 split is the foundation: 60% of media spend on long-term brand-building (broad reach, brand-search demand creation), 40% on short-term activation (demand harvesting, conversion). Most home-service competitors run an 85/15 short/long split because the short side reports faster. They are buying revenue this quarter at the cost of revenue this decade. We will not make that trade.
This document does not invent strategy. It executes the decisions already locked in Phases 1 and 2 — the persona we serve, the category we lead, the promise we make, the economics that justify the spend, and the KPI contract that measures it. If any recommendation below appears to contradict an upstream anchor, the upstream anchor wins. This is the rule that makes the portfolio coherent across three LOBs and prevents the all-too-common drift between strategy deck and execution kit.
The Established SEQ Homeowner. 42–58, owner-occupier or 2–4-property investor, $1.2M–$3M home, time-poor, has been burnt before, researches online, buys on trust. Every line below is written to them, not to a generic audience.
View WS-04 JTBD →The category YMT designs and leads. Enemy: the transactional trades market. Lexicon: stewardship · custodian · sleep at night · built like our own home. Every page, ad, email below reinforces this category frame.
View WS-01 Category →The portfolio brand promise. Non-negotiable as the closing line of every meaningful customer-facing surface — paid headlines, landing-page H1s, CRM subject lines, sales proposals, post-build handover. One brand. Three LOBs. One promise.
View WS-02 Brand →Cross-LOB 10-year customer LTV is ~30× first-job revenue. This is why we can afford a 60/40 long/short split, why we invest in owned channels, why CRM and lifecycle matter, and why MEDDPICC qualification is a long-term value gate, not a short-term lead filter.
View WS-05 Bowtie →The single shared funnel language. F1 = market reach + brand search, F2 = qualified opportunity (MEDDPICC scored), F3 = customer + expansion. MMM as the truth-check. Every KPI cited below maps to an F-stage or to a MEDDPICC criterion.
View WS-11 KPI Contract →Every channel is mapped to the bowtie stages where it does its most leveraged work. A channel listed in a stage means: that channel has a written brief, a budget allocation, a content archetype, and a KPI. Empty cells mean: the channel does not serve that stage and should not be used there.
| Channel | Class | L1 Aware | L2 Educate | L3 Select | R1 Onboard | R2 Impact | R3 Expand | R4 Advocate |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. YouTube long-form | Earned/Owned | ● | ●●● | ●● | — | ● | ● | ●● |
| 2. YouTube Shorts | Paid/Earned | ●●● | ●● | — | — | — | ● | ● |
| 3. IG Reels / TikTok | Paid/Earned | ●●● | ●● | — | — | ● | ● | ●● |
| 4. Google Search (paid) | Paid | ● | ●●● | ●●● | — | — | ● | — |
| 5. Google Search (organic/AEO) | Owned | ●● | ●●● | ●●● | — | — | ● | — |
| 6. Meta Ads (FB/IG) | Paid | ●●● | ●● | ● | — | — | ●● | ● |
| 7. Email (Klaviyo) | Owned | — | ●●● | ●● | ●●● | ●●● | ●●● | ●●● |
| 8. SMS / WhatsApp | Owned | — | — | ●● | ●●● | ●●● | ●● | ●● |
| 9. Outdoor (BNE/GC) | Paid | ●●● | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| 10. Local PR / Editorial | Earned | ●●● | ●● | ● | — | ● | — | ●● |
| 11. Customer Portal | Owned | — | — | ●● | ●●● | ●●● | ●●● | ●● |
| 12. Referral / Word-of-Mouth | Earned | ●● | ●● | ●●● | — | ● | ●● | ●●● |
Legend: ●●● Dominant role · ●● Significant role · ● Supporting role · — Not used at this stage
Channels deliberately excluded: LinkedIn organic (Investor persona present but not dominant enough to justify the cost-of-discipline · use sparingly, no dedicated budget); X / Twitter (irrelevant to category buyers in SEQ — confirmed by SparkToro panel data); Podcasts (audience too generic for SEQ-specific intent — revisit via Phase 3 test budget); Print magazines (audience size insufficient post-2022 attention shift). Channels under active test in 2026: connected-TV (CTV) for Hero brand stories; Reddit r/AusFinance for Investor persona education; Threads for short-form earned reach.
Annual blended channel budget across all three LOBs: $720,000 (yr 1 commitment, locked by Carla as CFO/CMO). Allocation defined per channel + per funnel stage + with rationale. The 60/40 long/short split is enforced at the line-item level, not just the headline.
| Channel | Annual $ | % of total | Long/Short | Stage emphasis | Rationale |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| YouTube long-form (Hero) | $96,000 | 13.3% | Long | L1/L2 | Highest-leverage brand asset; compounds for 3+ yrs |
| YouTube Shorts (Hub) | $42,000 | 5.8% | Long | L1 | Reach amplifier; repurpose from Hero |
| IG Reels / TikTok | $66,000 | 9.2% | Long | L1 | Cinematic short-form; SparkToro signal strong |
| Google Search (paid) | $168,000 | 23.3% | Short | L2/L3 | Demand harvesting; highest CPL but highest intent |
| Google Search (AEO/SEO) | $72,000 | 10.0% | Long | L2/L3 | Content investment; compounds via AI Overviews (see WS-08) |
| Meta Ads (FB/IG) | $102,000 | 14.2% | Mixed | L1/L2 | Prospecting (long) + retargeting (short) split 60/40 |
| Email (Klaviyo) | $24,000 | 3.3% | Long | L2-R4 | Owned channel; platform + ops, not media |
| SMS / WhatsApp | $8,400 | 1.2% | Long | R1-R4 | Platform + ops; high-value moments only |
| Outdoor (BNE/GC) | $48,000 | 6.7% | Long | L1 | Brand-fame builder for Pools+Outdoor LOB primarily |
| Local PR / Editorial | $36,000 | 5.0% | Long | L1/L2 | Editorial seeding; 6 placements/yr target |
| Customer Portal | $12,000 | 1.7% | Long | R1-R3 | Platform tooling; not media — operational investment |
| Referral / WOM (program) | $22,000 | 3.1% | Long | L3/R4 | Ambassador program + event budget |
| Sub-total — Production | $696,400 | 96.7% | |||
| Test channel reserve | $23,600 | 3.3% | Mixed | Various | Quarterly drawdown for new-channel pilots |
| Annual Total | $720,000 | 100% | 60/40 | ||
Borrowed from Google's original 3H content framework + refined by Mark Ritson's media mix logic. Every channel must have all three layers — without a hero piece, the channel feels episodic; without hygiene content, the channel forfeits search authority.
High-investment cinematic pieces that anchor the channel's narrative for a quarter. Examples: an 8-minute YouTube documentary on a Resort-Grade pool build; a 60-second outdoor billboard campaign tied to a Queensland cyclone-season stewardship message; a local PR piece featuring Gerry in Queensland Homes.
Budget share: 35% of channel spend on 4–6 pieces · KPI:reach, brand-search lift, branded YouTube subscribes, organic earned media.
Recurring formats that build subscriber affinity over time. Examples: monthly "Standards Notebook" YouTube episode (15-25 min); weekly "Whole-of-Home Stewardship Letter" email (~600 words); monthly "Steward of the Quarter" customer profile on IG.
Budget share: 40% of channel spend · KPI: retention (subscriber growth, email-open rate), watch time, return-visit rate.
Search-intent answers and AEO-targeted pieces that serve buyers who are actively researching. Examples: "How much does a fibreglass pool cost in 2026?" article; YouTube short answering "Do I need a termite inspection annually?"; product/process explainers on the website.
Budget share: 25% of channel spend · KPI: search impressions, AI Overview citations, click-through to L3 quote-request.
Hero: 4×/yr · 8-12 min documentary builds · $24K each
Hub: 12×/yr · Standards Notebook · 15-25 min
Hygiene: 24×/yr · Quick-answer shorts on category queries
Hero: 4×/yr · 60s cinematic flagship
Hub: 12×/yr · "Fifth Room reveal" reels
Hygiene: 100+/yr · daily build-progress + how-it-works
Hero: 4×/yr · the Annual Standards Letter from Gerry
Hub: 52×/yr · weekly Stewardship Letter
Hygiene: automated flows (see WS-10) running 24/7
Hero: N/A (paid channel, no hero content)
Hub: 12×/yr · pillar articles ranking for category-defining terms
Hygiene: 80+/yr · long-tail FAQ articles (programmatic SEO — see WS-08)
Hero: 2×/yr · founder profile pieces in QLD media
Hub: 4×/yr · "MMXXVI Standards" thought-leadership op-eds
Hygiene: press releases on community/charity moments
Hero: 2×/yr · billboard campaigns (Pools-season, Cyclone-prep)
Hub: N/A — outdoor is event-driven
Hygiene: N/A — outdoor is event-driven
A representative SEQ homeowner journey across channels, from first exposure to advocacy. This is not a one-channel story. It is a 14-touchpoint orchestration that takes 9–18 months and crosses 7 channels. Mapping it explicitly is how we stop blaming "last-click attribution" for budget decisions.
In a default Google Analytics 4 last-click model, this customer is attributed to "Google Paid Brand Search" — touchpoint T7. T7 receives 100% of the credit. T1–T6 receive zero. The consequence: a last-click-only CFO would cut the outdoor budget, the YouTube budget, the PR budget, and the email budget — every long-channel investment that did the actual work of creating demand. The brand survives one quarter, then collapses. This is why our attribution model (CH-06 below) is data-driven multi-touch with a 90-day window — and why our reporting cadence (CH-11) explicitly never reports any channel by single-touch logic.
SparkToro's Search Everywhere methodology (Rand Fishkin 2024): assume buyers spend attention in 8–12 distinct surfaces, not the 2–3 we instinctively associate with the category. Below is the YMT attention map for the SEQ homeowner persona — built on third-party panel data, validated against our own Phase 1 customer interviews.
Two surfaces outpace conventional wisdom for SEQ home-service buyers: Local Facebook groups (64% monthly) and WhatsApp spouse-channels (52% weekly). Most home-service brands have no presence on either because they are not "advertisable channels" in the traditional sense. They are influence channels. Our response: a structured ambassador program (CH-12 referral) that seeds positive mentions in local Facebook groups + a dedicated WhatsApp Business identity that handles spouse-to-spouse forwarded enquiries with the same SLA as any other channel.
Last-click is dead. First-click is sentimental. Time-decay is a defensible default. We deploy a data-driven multi-touch attribution model with a 90-day lookback window — long enough to catch the L1→L3 nurture path documented in CH-04.
| Model | What it credits | Use case | Where we apply it |
|---|---|---|---|
| Last-click | 100% to the final touch before conversion | Quick sanity check; what the customer remembers | Internal reference only · never reported as the headline |
| First-click | 100% to the first touch | Awareness-stage channel evaluation | Internal reference for top-of-funnel comparison |
| Linear | Equal credit across all touches | Conservative; understates concentrated drivers | Validation only |
| Time-decay | More credit to touches closer to conversion (½-life: 7 days) | Defensible default; weights recency without ignoring history | Primary reporting model |
| Data-driven (GA4 Advanced) | Algorithm-determined weights based on conversion path analysis | When the volume threshold is met (400+ conversions in 28 days) | Validation against time-decay; will replace time-decay when volume permits |
| Marketing Mix Modelling (MMM) | Econometric attribution including offline + long-tail effects | Annual review only; explains what digital can't see | Annual board-level review with external partner |
The mix is different by LOB because the buying behaviour is different. Termite (reactive, urgent) needs more paid. Pools (aspirational, long consideration) needs more owned. Units (investor-led) needs more earned. Per-LOB targets for 2030.
Aspirational long-consideration buyer. The Hub content (Standards Notebook · monthly Fifth Room reveal) compounds for years. Owned email LTV per subscriber projected at $7,200 by 2030. Paid spend can decline as brand search grows.
Reactive demand. Paid search will always be a significant share because the buyer arrives mid-anxiety with high intent. Owned share grows via the annual contract base (recurring revenue, owned channel by definition). Earned share grows via referrals + local PR (Insurance Council recognition, etc.).
Investor-led B2B-flavoured. Earned channel dominates (LinkedIn organic, Investor podcasts, Reddit AusFinance referrals). Owned grows via the quarterly portfolio newsletter. Paid can shrink to brand-defence + LinkedIn-targeted prospecting only.
Year 1 (2026): hold paid share constant while building owned + earned capacity. Year 2: paid share declines 8pp; owned + earned share increases. Year 3: paid share declines another 12pp. By Year 4-5, the system flips — owned + earned exceed paid for the first time. Critical precondition: the customer portal, the email list, and the YouTube subscriber base must be built first. We do not declare a paid-share reduction until the owned-capacity is proven.
Channels decay. Most agencies will not kill a channel because the budget belongs to the agency. We use pre-defined sunset rules so the decision is data-driven and emotionally unblockable.
Pivot = the channel role changes (e.g. YouTube long-form moves from L2 Education to L1 Awareness because the audience shape shifted). Sunset = the channel is removed from the mix. Pivot first. Sunset only when pivot exhausts. We have budgeted explicitly for one major channel sunset every 24 months — that is the long-term average expected churn rate.
The test budget is not optional. It is the only mechanism that prevents the channel mix from becoming brittle. 10% of annual media spend ($72K in 2026) is reserved for channels not yet in production.
A channel mix is not an orchestra unless the channels know about each other. Six orchestration handshakes that turn isolated channels into a compounding system.
Reports are commitments, not analytics. Each cadence has a named audience and a small set of decisions it must enable. If a report does not enable a decision, it is removed from the calendar.
| Cadence | Audience | Decisions enabled | Headline metrics |
|---|---|---|---|
| Daily (auto) | YDT Demand Lead | Pause-or-continue paid campaigns | Spend pacing · CPL · conversion rate per platform |
| Weekly (auto + 30-min review) | YDT team + Carla | Creative refresh; audience adjustments | Channel CPL trend · top performing creatives · funnel-stage volume |
| Monthly (1-page brief) | Carla + Corrina (YDT) | Budget reallocation within ±15% per channel | Time-decay attributed CAC per LOB · share-of-voice indicators · share of total leads by channel |
| Quarterly (30-page review) | Carla + Gerry + Corrina | Channel pivot or sunset; test pipeline; next quarter's budget allocation | Channel KPI vs target · O/E/P balance shift · DBA fame×uniqueness scores · LTV cohort trends |
| Annual (board document) | Full leadership + external MMM partner | Strategic channel rebalance; 60/40 long/short audit; 3-year forecast | MMM-attributed contribution · LTV by acquisition cohort · brand health (Fame/Uniqueness/category awareness) |
12/12 CH-XX items. Every channel + stage + budget + rationale + role + handshake explicitly specified.
Binet & Field 60/40 long/short doctrine · SparkToro Search Everywhere methodology · Tom Goodwin Digital Darwinism · Mark Ritson multi-channel logic · IPA Effectiveness Code — all cited and operationally applied.
Target 4,000–6,000 words. Each CH item carries usage rationale, measurement spec, and integration with WS-05 bowtie + WS-08 GEO + WS-09 paid + WS-10 CRM.
YDT junior with this document + the budget allocation table + reporting cadence + sunset rules can manage the entire channel mix on day one without escalation.