Before choosing another marketing channel, list the routes you already have to relevant people. A former coworker, a newsletter, and a community where you participate each offer different possibilities. Record who fits your audience, what communication is welcome, and what you can realistically do within the next two weeks.
This inventory should leave you with one manageable distribution test. Set aside about an hour for the first pass, and mark uncertain entries as unknown.
Define the audience and the response you need
Write one sentence describing the people you want to reach and the problem you want to discuss. For example: “Support leads at small SaaS companies who manually group recurring customer issues.”
Then define a useful response. For an early product, that might be a completed conversation with someone who currently performs the workflow. For a working product, it might be a trial user completing a specific task. “More awareness” leaves too much room to count any activity as progress.
Use that audience definition throughout the inventory. An investor who knows many founders may be a possible connector, while a former colleague who manages support may be a direct match. Record those roles separately.
When audience fit rests on something someone said, preserve their wording and its date alongside your interpretation. The FindVex guide to building a pain-point evidence sheet can help you distinguish a documented problem from an assumption about a job title.
List specific routes to people
Create one entry per route. “Former support colleagues connected to the founder on LinkedIn” gives you a group to assess; “LinkedIn” leaves the audience undefined.
Look through four categories:
- Relationships: former coworkers, collaborators, customers, advisors, and people who have offered introductions.
- Owned channels: an email newsletter, relevant website pages, or a product surface where an appropriate invitation could appear.
- Community access: groups where you participate, recurring events, and forums with relevant discussions or permitted contribution formats.
- Partner access: a collaborator’s newsletter, an integration partner’s resource page, or an organizer who has invited you to teach.
For partners, record the specific opportunity and whether it is confirmed. Their subscriber total does not tell you how many people your contribution will reach.
Attach supporting materials, such as a tutorial, working demo, template, or approved customer story, to the route that could carry them. A finished tutorial still needs a way to reach readers.
Name the person responsible for each route. A founder may need to handle their own relationships, while a partner placement depends on someone else’s schedule. Include those constraints when deciding what your team can finish.
Check which actions are welcome
Give each entry a status tied to a specific action:
| Status | What it means for this test |
|---|---|
| Ready | The proposed action is appropriate and any required permission is confirmed. |
| Needs confirmation | Audience access or permission for the action remains uncertain. |
| Research only | The route can support listening or permitted contributions, but not the proposed invitation. |
| Unavailable | The route cannot be used within the planning window. |
Permission to answer a question does not automatically cover posting a product pitch.
For email, check how contacts joined and what they agreed to receive. Mailchimp requires permission for marketing email, defines it as express, verifiable consent, and recommends retaining a record. If you use Mailchimp, having someone’s address alone does not meet that requirement. Mailchimp’s permission guidance
For communities, record the relevant rule and when you checked it. Reddit prohibits repeated or unsolicited mass engagement. It also directs users to check community rules, with moderators deciding what constitutes unwanted content in their communities. Reddit’s spam policy
An entry might say: “Relevant practitioner group; product links restricted; educational replies allowed; use for listening and answering questions.” Keep it in the inventory even if it cannot support this week’s demo invitation.
For a personal relationship, write down an appropriate next action: reconnect, ask whether an introduction would be welcome, or follow up on an existing invitation. A prior relationship needs context before you make a new request.
Estimate reach in units you can explain
Use the same planning window for every entry, such as the next two weeks. Separate three quantities:
| Quantity | What to record |
|---|---|
| Total size | Subscribers, members, contacts, or followers |
| Relevant subset | People with evidence of audience fit |
| Reach evidence | Recent exposure or a feasible contact plan, with its date and unit |
Ten people you can appropriately invite are ten possible recipients. Whether they read, reply, or agree to a conversation remains unknown. Similarly, a post’s impressions do not tell you how many qualified buyers saw it.
For direct relationships, count identifiable people and the thoughtful messages you have time to prepare. For a newsletter, inspect relevant subscribers and recent comparable sends. For public posts, record recent comparable exposure where available, and leave audience fit uncertain unless you have supporting evidence.
If you have no history, write “unknown; needs a small test.” Multiplying guesses about fit, visibility, and response rate produces a forecast you cannot defend.
Record overlap too. The same people may receive your newsletter and follow your posts. Keep results for each route separate, and deduplicate identifiable respondents before reporting a total. When anonymous audiences cannot be deduplicated, say so.
Choose a route that can answer your next question
Review the ready entries first. Look for documented audience fit, an appropriate invitation, and preparation your team can finish within its time budget.
If two routes look promising, compare the work each requires and the response each could produce. Would either help you understand the workflow, test a product task, or decide what to try next? Also consider whether you could repeat the activity without exhausting the relationship or audience.
A large audience with unknown fit may justify an exploratory test. A smaller group with clear fit may be better for learning why people would use the product. Either would need further testing before you could judge its acquisition cost.
Keep permission separate from this comparison. Audience size cannot make an ineligible action ready.
Worked example: choosing among three assets
Imagine a two-person SaaS team building a tool that groups support tickets into recurring issues. Its immediate goal is to understand how support leads review those issues today. The scenario and all numbers below are hypothetical.
| Asset | Evidence and next action |
|---|---|
| 18 former colleagues | Six appear to lead support teams based on prior contact; reconnect individually and confirm their current work. |
| 600 newsletter subscribers | 45 identified themselves as support practitioners; check whether the invitation fits their subscription scope. |
| 3,000-member community | Relevant discussions; promotional invitations prohibited. Use for research and permitted contributions. |
The community’s membership count contributes nothing to the planned invitation test. The newsletter remains a possibility once the team confirms that the proposed message fits subscribers’ expectations.
The founders choose to reconnect with the six former colleagues. Each relationship gives them enough context for a specific request, though their information about the person’s work may be stale.
They plan to send six individual invitations over two weeks, with a three-hour budget for preparation and follow-up. A useful result is a completed conversation with someone who currently performs the workflow. Before starting, they decide that two such conversations would justify preparing another small batch. This is their planning threshold, not a benchmark.
Suppose three people reply. Only one still handles the task, and that person completes a research conversation. The record shows six invitations sent, three replies, and one qualifying conversation. The team also updates the stale role information. If the relevant person had only replied, the completed-conversation count would still be zero.
The result falls short of the team’s threshold. Before repeating the test, they should check the remaining contacts’ roles and revise the list. They cannot explain every nonresponse or infer a general response rate from this small group.
Warm relationships may help with discovery, but the team still needs a separate test to learn whether strangers show interest.
Copy this inventory card
Use one card per route, or turn these fields into spreadsheet columns:
Asset and owner:
Specific audience and problem:
Evidence of fit, with date:
Proposed action:
Permission or relationship context, with check date:
Status: ready / needs confirmation / research only / unavailable
Total size and relevant subset:
Reach estimate, unit, time window, and basis:
Known audience overlap:
Supporting material and preparation required:
Useful response to record:
Result that would justify repeating or revising the test:
Time budget and review date:
Observed results, recorded separately from estimates:
Decision after the test:Keep “eight relevant people replied last month” separate from “eight may reply next month.” The first is an observation; the second needs an estimation basis.
If the test sends people to your website and you use Google Analytics, add consistent UTM campaign parameters where appropriate. Google documents how those parameters identify referring campaigns in acquisition reporting. You still need to record whether visitors completed the useful action. Google’s campaign URL documentation
Complete three cards and schedule one test
Complete three cards today. Select one ready route, name its next action, and put the review date on your calendar. If none is ready, assign the confirmation task that would resolve the most useful uncertainty.
Before running the test, check that the invitation matches the destination, the route permits the activity, and someone owns the follow-up. At the review, compare the observed result with the decision rule you wrote in advance. Record whether you will repeat, revise, or park the route.
