Trapper Keeper Effect

It’s not the plan that matters – it’s the execution.

Every August my dad would pack all 9 of us up in the van on a Saturday and drive over to K-mart for some back to school shopping.

Markers. Pens. All the Garfield Folders you needed.

A new Jansport backpack if you weren’t one of the unlucky ones getting a hand me down.

And a brand new Trapper Keeper.

I loved back to school shopping. Coming home with all of you new things. You felt organized, prepared and ready to start the year. This was going to be the year!

But after the first week of school reality settled in. There was homework to do, earlier bedtimes, earlier alarms in the morning. It was time to do the actual work - and I hated schoolwork.

All the magic was gone and the realization that I actually hated school settled in.

The Trapper Keeper effect.

The same thing happens in marketing orgs everyday.

Teams get caught up in the excitement of creating a new content strategy, the buzz of brainstorming sessions, and the satisfaction of a well-laid plan. But the true test of a marketing team’s is in their ability to execute.

Ideas are plentiful, but execution is the secret sauce. That’s where the magic happens – not in the perfectly crafted spreadsheets or the colorful PowerPoint slides, but in the gritty, sometimes monotonous day-to-day grind.

The truth is most marketing teams fail at execution and that's one of the biggest reasons for lack of growth. Why does this matter so much? The known and predictable realities of your business are often very small. The unknown however is vast and often where all of the big opportunities lie.

And this is why execution is so important. Executing allows you to try things at a faster pace — shipping new campaigns, testing marketing channels, testing messaging variations, designs, etc.

The faster you can get to answers, even when the answer is failure, the closer you are to finding success. To discover the big opportunities for their businesses to grow.

In this example, Team A ends up shipping double the amount of experiments as Team B. If we just assume a 10% success rate on these experiments, then Team A will have uncovered 12 new growth initiatives that work over the year vs 6 from Team B.

Double the number of things they can continue to refine and scale.

So how do you keep the excitement going past all your initial planning. Here are 3 ways:

1. Work in shorter cycles – 2-week sprints: Breaking down your projects into 2-week sprints can make tasks feel more manageable and keep momentum high. It’s a lot easier to stay focused and motivated when you’re constantly hitting small milestones and seeing progress.

2. Break down goals into monthly or weekly goals: Large goals can be overwhelming. By breaking them down into monthly or weekly targets, you create a series of attainable steps that guide your progress and keep you on track. This approach provides a clear path forward and helps maintain focus.

3. Celebrate small wins: Don’t wait until the end of a project to celebrate. Acknowledge and reward the small victories along the way. This can boost morale, keep the team motivated, and reinforce the value of consistent effort.

So, next time you find yourself enamored with the planning phase, remember that the Trapper Keeper effect can lull you into a false sense of accomplishment.

Because at the end of the day, it’s not the plan that matters – it’s the execution.

Thanks for reading,

Adam