Bullseye / 19 Traction Channels
A screening procedure that ranks nineteen acquisition channels, cheap-tests three, and concentrates effort on the one that works.
Breaks when The list froze in 2015, and the method needs test budget and traffic to run at all. Very early on you need one bet, not a survey.
Growth Loops
A model of acquisition in which the output of each cycle becomes the input of the next, as opposed to a funnel refilled from outside.
Breaks when Not every business has a loop. Forcing one produces a north-star metric that measures the wrong thing.
AARRR / Pirate Metrics
A five-stage funnel — acquisition, activation, retention, revenue, referral — used as shared vocabulary for diagnosing where users are lost.
Breaks when Assumes a linear one-directional flow, which flattens multi-touch B2B and pushes retention to the end where it does the least good. McClure's own funnel percentages carry his explicit “not actuals” disclaimer — never cite them as benchmarks.
Channel–Model Fit
The constraint that revenue per user and purchase frequency determine which acquisition channels a business can afford at all.
Breaks when Early on you do not know real ARPU or retention, so the arithmetic runs on optimistic estimates. Balfour gives no dollar thresholds — any you see attached to this are someone's invention.
Reach Maximisation
The prescription, following from buyer-base structure, to reach as many category buyers as possible as continuously as possible rather than concentrating on heavy buyers.
Breaks when Inverts where the buyer universe is genuinely small and enumerable — a 300-account B2B list is a case where targeting really does pay.
Ansoff Matrix
A four-cell grid of growth options formed by crossing existing and new products with existing and new markets.
Breaks when It labels rather than directs. Knowing which box you are in says nothing about what to do inside it.
Effective Frequency vs Recency
Two opposed rules for scheduling the same budget: buy enough repetition to cross a threshold, or spread continuous light coverage so an ad is present close to the purchase.
Breaks when Both break when treated as constants. The three-exposure threshold was a summary of the evidence available in 1979 and has never held as a universal number; recency assumes buying is continuous and randomly timed, which fails in seasonal and considered-purchase categories where there is a window and it is knowable. The deeper problem is that the two rules are not reconcilable — a planner citing whichever one supports the plan already chosen is using neither.
Attention Metrics
Measuring the seconds a person actually looks at an advertisement, instead of the opportunities-to-see that a media buy nominally delivers.
Breaks when It breaks on how the number is made. Attention is measured by eye-tracking on comparatively small opt-in panels, then modelled across platforms whose formats, screen sizes and viewing contexts differ enormously — so the cross-platform comparison, which is the use everyone wants, is the least supported part. Thresholds for what counts as attention are vendor-defined and not standardised, and the strongest evidence links attention to short-term sales measures rather than to long-term brand effects. Treated as currency it becomes a target, and the format that maximises measured seconds is not automatically the format that sells.
Permission Marketing
Treating the right to send someone a message as granted by them and revocable, and building an asset out of the grants rather than out of purchased attention.
Breaks when The permission is largely an artefact of the form. Consent rates move sharply with the default and the wording of the request while the offer stays identical, so a list measures the checkout design rather than anticipation, and a large permission asset can contain almost no intent. It is also capped by construction: everyone on the list already found you, which makes it a retention instrument routinely presented as a growth one.
Smallest Viable Audience
Choosing the smallest group you could serve well enough that they would miss you if you vanished, and building for exactly them instead of for everyone.
Breaks when It contradicts the two best-evidenced entries on this site and it loses to both. Double Jeopardy says brands with fewer buyers also get lower loyalty from the buyers they have, so a small audience is penalised twice rather than compensated. Mental & Physical Availability and Reach Maximisation say growth comes from broad continuous reach into light buyers, and that the efficiency of narrow targeting is usually a growth loss. Godin's own framing is that the smallest viable audience is a stepping stone, not a compromise; held as a permanent strategy it is the mechanism by which small brands stay small.