What if the hardest marketing decision is deciding what to stop?

In an earlier post, I discussed organising around intent rather than channels, because the way customers discover and research businesses has changed dramatically in the last 12 months.

That speed of change, together with discovery fragmentation, makes it critical to understand what's working and what isn’t.

That brings us to strategy and decisions.

I’ve seen it happen time and time again. There's a hesitancy around dropping activity, and marketers try to keep all those plates spinning with less.

Less budget, less resource, and less attention. It’s easier to add another campaign, another channel, more content, more social channels.

Stopping something is so much harder.

Activity becomes its own proof of productivity. Who wants to be the person who shuts it off and sales drop?

The question needs to move from “what else should we do?” to “If we stopped doing this, what would happen?”

Would customers notice?

Would sales change?

Would the sales team be disappointed if we pulled it?

Would it help us reassign budget and time to something more productive?

The last question is important because marketing resources, especially in small businesses, are not unlimited. A finite budget, finite number of people and finite attention. It’s next to impossible to do everything really well.

Doing less can create more.

Stopping low-value activity can create more time to understand customers, investigate how they and the platforms they engage with are changing, find new signals of intent, and turn an insight into something useful.

Platforms change.

Algorithms change.

Customers are changing how they discover and buy.

Competitors are changing what they offer.

New communities appear, old ones become less relevant. Something that worked brilliantly six months ago can quietly become less effective.

Your strategy, plan, and team need to be ready to respond as intent develops. Standing still on last year’s activity is as bad as chasing the next big shiny new thing when you don’t really know what value it can offer.

Create the space and the focus to test, adapt, learn, prove and protect.

Test the things that could create new value.

Adapt when evidence tells you something isn’t delivering.

Learn from what your customers are doing rather than either assuming or dictating what you want them to do.

Prioritisation is a checkpoint throughout your strategy, delivery and measurement, and sometimes the best marketing move is subtraction.