Your Budget Is Spread Too Thin to Work

The CMO wants to be on Meta, Google, LinkedIn, and TikTok. The budget is €10k a month. The team splits it across all four.

Then everyone wonders why nothing is working.

The Math Problem

Every channel has a minimum viable spend below which it simply cannot produce reliable results. Not because the platform is broken. Because the platform needs a certain volume of conversions per week to optimize properly.

On Meta, you generally need at least 50 conversions per ad set per week for the algorithm to stabilize. On Google, you need about the same per campaign. LinkedIn is worse because CPMs are higher and lead volumes are lower.

If your budget produces 30 conversions a week across all four channels combined, every single one of your campaigns is operating below the threshold. The algorithms are not learning. The performance is noisy. The data is not telling you anything because there is not enough of it.

So you run your tests, your data is inconclusive, and you declare that the channel does not work. The channel works fine. You just did not give it enough room to show you.

What Actual Diversification Looks Like

Diversification at the channel level requires each channel to be properly funded. That means fewer channels with more budget, not more channels with less.

For a €10k a month budget, you should probably be on one channel. Maybe two if one is a demand capture channel like branded search. Anything beyond that is spread too thin.

For €30k a month, you can credibly run two to three channels. For €100k, maybe four. The number of channels you can run well scales with budget slower than marketers expect.

Why Teams Still Spread

Because CMOs feel exposed if they are not on every major platform. A competitor runs on TikTok. The board asks why they are not. The answer "because we cannot afford to run it properly" is not one most CMOs feel comfortable giving.

So they put €3000 on TikTok, check the box, and then spend six months explaining why TikTok does not work for their business. It might. They just never gave it a chance to.

The Test Before Testing A New Channel

Before you add a new channel, ask: can I fund this at a serious level for at least three months without taking money from the channels that are already working?

If the answer is no, you are not testing a new channel. You are running a vanity line item that will starve itself and the channels it came from.

Real channel tests require real commitment. If you cannot commit, wait until you can.

What Focus Produces

Accounts that run on one or two channels, well funded, usually produce better results than accounts running on four channels, thin. Not sometimes. Almost always.

Because the algorithm has enough data to work. Because the team has enough attention to actually optimize. Because the creative production capacity is focused on the channel that is driving volume. Because the reporting and measurement is clean enough to make real decisions.

Every time you add a channel, you add cost in terms of production, measurement, and management overhead. If the new channel is not big enough to absorb that cost, it dilutes everything.

The Uncomfortable Conversation

Pull up your channel breakdown. Look at the spend per channel. If you have more than three channels below €5k a month each, you are running a diversification theater piece, not a media plan.

The fix is to consolidate. Kill the underfunded channels. Put the money where it can actually produce results. Accept that the board might notice you are not on TikTok. Accept that this is the right trade-off.

Money works when it is concentrated. Spread it thin enough and it works nowhere.