Priorities & strategy
More marketing activity won't fix an unclear growth strategy
Activity is easy to add and hard to evaluate. When direction is unclear, adding more of it mostly increases the cost of finding out.
Several plausible growth options, no shared basis for choosing between them.
Activity is a comfortable substitute for a decision
Launching a channel feels like progress. It creates artefacts, dashboards and momentum. It is also the least reversible way to discover that the priority was wrong.
Unclear strategy rarely announces itself. It shows up as a plan where every line item is defensible and no line item is decisive.
The test for a real priority
A real priority declines something. If a growth plan adds five initiatives and removes none, it is a wish list with a budget attached.
Ask what the plan assumes must be true. If nobody can name the two or three assumptions the whole thing rests on, the plan has not been examined yet.
Sequence beats volume
Most growth-stage businesses do not need more initiatives. They need the same initiatives in an order where each one makes the next one cheaper to run and easier to read.
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