2024 is upon us, and I couldn’t be more excited about GIVING UP.
I’m halfway through Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals, and this book’s theme is hitting hard.
What are humans if not time itself? And if we live 4,000 weeks on average, how can we hoard info and obligations as we do and still be functional, fulfilled people?
So, I’m starting Q1 by giving up unrealistic marketing expectations. Engagement rates, search traffic, tiks toc-ked… it’s all noise that doesn’t move my bottom line.
Here are the only 3 numbers I care about next quarter:
- Sales calls booked
- Networking events attended
- Email subscribers joined
Focusing on 3 controllable inputs dovetails nicely with Quarterly Goals. Start with a small effort, execute that repeatedly until it’s second nature, and then iterate or swap your lowest-performing effort every 13 weeks. Push a snowball, become an avalanche.
That’s it! This is how we stop drowning in hours of marketing tasks. I call this Pragmatic Iteration and it works when – a big caveat here – you admit to being human.
Which means…
- Identifying 3 numbers (KPIs) that significantly impact your bottom line
- Prioritizing inputs, conceding outputs (how zen of us)
- Doubling down on 1-3 experiments, no more
- Diligently executing your plan week-to-week
- Kicking the urge to remap mid-quarter
- Being less precious about asset production
Embracing marketing’s ephemeral nature and ditching every “should” isn’t easy. But just like meditation, you’ll strengthen the right marketing “muscles” and reduce the friction that makes weekly tasks a slog.
You probably have one metric in mind already.
Need a sounding board?
Book 20-minutes to noodle over your marketing pipeline together. You’ll walk away with at 2-3 actionable tasks to tackle next.