Marketing can only be understood backwards

The Friday Growth Note is back!

One of the simplest ways to move forward effectively in Marketing is to reflect on the past. Making reflection a part of my work habits has been the biggest unlock in my career.

Reflection helps me understand why campaigns were successful or not; helps me make sense of the projects I am working on now; helps me come to better decisions and focus my energy where it should be.

So what do I mean by reflection? Do I sit by a lake for hours in quiet stillness? No, although that sounds amazing.

I bake it into my daily, weekly and monthly habits.

- Daily - I am reflecting on what I was supposed to do yesterday, what got done, and where do I need to focus today.

- Weekly - I review past week performance against my goals, how I am pacing for the month and make adjustments based on the data I am seeing.

- Monthly - I zoom far out. How did last month end versus where I wanted it to? Be brutally honest about what went well and what didn’t and the reasons for that.

When I was part of marketing teams building this accountability in was easier. Having just started my own single person business - this feels a lot harder as I realized the blame for what went wrong is going to be 100% on me every single time.

One of those reflections this month was I dropped the ball on this newsletter. I spent over a year growing this newsletter to over 2,000 subscribers and then just stopped. Life got in the way is what I told myself, but I shouldn’t have stopped. But we are back now, reflecting, making adjustments and publishing every Friday.

Thanks for reading!

Adam

PS - Special thanks to Joel for the kick in the ass to bring it back.