Your Next Growth Channel May Already Be Creating Customers

The hardest part about cutting an expensive marketing channel isn't deciding to spend less. It's knowing where the money should go instead.

Because proving that a channel isn't performing well enough only answers half the question.

Maybe TV is costing too much for the conversions you're getting.

Fine.

You can cut TV.

But now what?

Put it into Meta?

Google?

Another referral partner?

Something completely different?

Without better information, you've replaced one uncertain allocation decision with another.

What if your existing customers could show you where to look next?

Nearly 500 purchases were hiding in a place nobody was investing in

One source immediately stood out...

ChatGPT.

Over a 90-day period, nearly 500 purchases had some relationship to ChatGPT.

This wasn't a channel the company had built an acquisition strategy around.

They weren't deliberately investing substantial time or money trying to generate customers there.

Yet customers were already buying.

That changes how you look at the source.

ChatGPT stops being an interesting technology trend and starts becoming something much more useful to a CMO:

A signal.

There's already customer behavior there.

There's already some relationship with revenue.

Maybe that means improving the information ChatGPT can find about the product.

Maybe eventually there are opportunities to invest more directly.

Maybe further investigation tells you something else entirely.

The data doesn't automatically tell you to move your TV budget into ChatGPT.

It tells you where to start asking better questions.

And ChatGPT wasn't the only surprise.

Your buyers don't care how you organize your marketing channels

Marketing teams naturally spend a lot of time looking at the places where they're deliberately spending money.

That's understandable.

If millions of dollars are going into Meta, Google, TV or CTV, those channels demand attention.

But customers don't organize their buying journey around your media plan.

They find you however they find you.

And when we looked beyond the obvious paid channels, other sources started appearing around purchases.

One was Babylist.

Another was Capital One Shopping.

There was traffic connected to Amazon.

Customers were arriving through referrals and through the link in the company's Instagram bio.

Some of those sources were familiar.

What wasn't always familiar was how much value they were actually creating.

The company had referral sources it believed were producing significant value.

The purchase data didn't always support that assumption.

At the same time, other places they hadn't valued as highly were showing more meaningful customer activity than expected.

That's a much more useful discovery than simply finding another referral URL.

Because the question isn't:

Where else did somebody click before buying?

It's:

Where is customer behavior telling us there may already be an opportunity?

Your next growth channel doesn't have to start at zero

Imagine you're deciding where to put another $500,000.

One option is a channel that looks attractive on paper.

The audience seems right.

The targeting is available.

Maybe your competitors are there.

So you develop the creative, allocate the budget and find out whether customers respond.

There's nothing inherently wrong with that.

But now imagine your existing purchase data reveals another source where customers are already finding you.

You didn't have to manufacture the demand.

They found you anyway.

That's a different starting point.

You now have evidence that at least some customers are already using that path to discover, research or purchase from you.

That doesn't prove you should immediately pour money into it.

But it gives you something the hypothetical new channel doesn't have yet:

Observed customer behavior.

That's why finding ChatGPT in the data was interesting.

And it's why finding a referral source like Babylist can be interesting for the same reason.

The opportunity isn't defined by whether the source is fashionable, large or part of your existing media plan.

It's defined by what customers are already doing there.

Sometimes the bigger surprise is what isn't working

This cuts both ways.

Suppose you've maintained a referral relationship for years because everyone believes it brings in customers.

It's part of the plan.

It's part of the reporting.

Nobody questions it because everybody “knows” it works.

Then you look at the actual purchase activity...

and the value isn't what you thought.

That discovery may be just as valuable as finding ChatGPT.

Because every dollar, hour or partnership resource committed to something that isn't producing what you expected is an opportunity cost.

And now the allocation problem becomes more interesting.

You aren't simply comparing:

TV versus Meta.

Or:

Google versus CTV.

You're asking a much broader question:

Where are buyers actually coming from... and does our investment reflect that reality?

That's the question most channel dashboards weren't built to answer.

Paid media is only part of the customer acquisition picture

Blueprint's Other Sources reporting widens the lens.

Instead of stopping at the major platforms receiving the budget, you can see additional sources associated with purchases and examine their influence on the outcome.

That's how something like ChatGPT can suddenly become visible.

Or Babylist.

Or a referral partner whose value is different from what everyone assumed.

The important part isn't seeing more rows in a report.

It's seeing something that can change a decision.

If a source nobody is deliberately investing in keeps showing up around purchases, that's worth investigating.

If a source receiving meaningful attention barely participates in them, that's worth investigating too.

And if customers consistently arrive through paths that your normal paid-media view doesn't emphasize...

You've learned something about how your market actually behaves.

The client reaction while exploring these sources said a lot.

When Capital One Shopping appeared:

“Wow.”

Not because Capital One Shopping is inherently some enormous marketing breakthrough.

Because it was another reminder that the routes customers take to a purchase aren't always the routes the marketing team is watching most closely.

Attribution tells you who got credit... Influence can tell you who helped

The source that gets the purchase isn't necessarily the only source that mattered.

Someone might discover your company through paid media, research you somewhere else, come back through an organic source and purchase.

The final source is useful information.

But it isn't the entire story.

That's why Other Sources becomes more useful when you can examine purchase influence alongside the purchase itself.

Internally, once purchase influence was added to the reporting, one of the immediate reactions was whether those influence values could become another way to identify what deserved attention.

Because now you're not merely asking:

Where did the transaction finish?

You're getting closer to:

What sources keep appearing around people who eventually buy?

That can reveal a source that looks small under traditional attribution but plays a meaningful role earlier in the decision.

And it can expose the opposite.

A source may generate plenty of activity without appearing to participate in enough valuable outcomes to justify the attention it's receiving.

For a CMO deciding where the next dollar should go, both are useful.

Cutting TV doesn't tell you where to put the money

This is where the problem becomes expensive.

Suppose the numbers make you question whether TV deserves its current level of spend.

You can stare at the TV efficiency problem all day.

It still won't tell you where to reallocate the money.

And if you make that decision from the same handful of channels you've always considered...

You may never even evaluate the opportunities already sitting in your customer data.

ChatGPT wasn't on the media plan.

Customers were still there.

A referral source may not be getting much attention.

Customers may still be there.

Another partnership may have a great internal reputation.

The customers may not be there in the numbers everyone assumed.

That's the value of looking beyond the channels you're buying.

You're not asking the market where you could spend.

You're asking your customers where they're already showing up.

The data doesn't make the decision for you

Finding hundreds of purchases connected to ChatGPT doesn't mean:

Cut TV. Put the money into ChatGPT.

Seeing strong activity from a referral source doesn't mean:

Double the partnership tomorrow.

That's not what the data can prove on its own.

It gives you something more useful than a blind recommendation.

A hypothesis backed by actual customer behavior.

Now you can investigate why the source is working.

Whether the customers are incremental.

Whether they have similar economics to customers from your other channels.

Whether the source can scale.

Whether more investment actually produces more customers.

And whether performance holds as you increase that investment.

That's a much better place to begin an allocation decision than:

“Where haven't we tried spending yet?”

What are your customers already trying to tell you?

Most companies probably have a handful of sources everybody talks about.

They're on the budget spreadsheet.

They're in the weekly meeting.

They're in the dashboard.

They're the channels everyone immediately debates when somebody says:

“We need to move money.”

But there may be another group hiding underneath them.

Sources that aren't receiving much attention but keep participating in purchases.

Referral relationships whose actual value doesn't match their reputation.

Emerging discovery behaviors that haven't made it into the acquisition strategy yet.

Those are the places I'd want to see before moving a meaningful amount of budget.

Because the most interesting growth opportunity may not be the new channel somebody pitches you next quarter.

It may be the source already creating customers while nobody is looking.

Before you move the next dollar, find out where your buyers already are

If you're questioning the efficiency of TV, paid social, search or any other major investment...

Knowing what to cut is only half the decision.

You still need somewhere better to put the money.

Blueprint helps surface the sources associated with real customers, including the ones sitting outside the channels getting most of your attention.

So instead of guessing where the next opportunity might be...

Start with where buyers are already showing you there's something worth investigating.

FAQ

What are “Other Sources” in marketing attribution?

Other Sources are customer and purchase sources that sit outside the primary paid channels a marketing team may normally focus on. Depending on the business, these can include referral partners, organic sources, emerging discovery platforms and other paths customers use before purchasing. The value isn't simply identifying more sources. It's understanding whether those sources are actually associated with meaningful customer outcomes.

How can marketers identify new channels worth investing in?

One useful starting point is existing customer behavior. If buyers are already discovering or purchasing through a source without significant deliberate investment, that can create a data-backed hypothesis worth investigating. It doesn't automatically mean the company should increase spending there, but it provides evidence for where additional testing may be warranted.

Should you move budget from an underperforming channel into a referral source that's generating purchases?

Not automatically. Purchase activity can identify an opportunity, but marketers still need to understand incrementality, economics, scalability and whether additional investment actually increases the desired outcome. The source data helps determine where to investigate rather than making the allocation decision by itself.

What's the difference between attribution and influence?

Attribution generally assigns credit for a conversion according to a defined model. Influence looks more broadly at whether a source participated in the customer journey associated with the outcome. That distinction can matter when customers interact with multiple sources before purchasing and the final source doesn't tell the entire acquisition story.

Why can referral traffic be valuable for budget allocation decisions?

Referral data can expose places where customers are already finding a company without being a major part of the paid-media plan. It can also challenge assumptions about partnerships believed to be valuable. Looking at the purchases and influence associated with those sources can give marketers better evidence about which opportunities deserve further investigation.