Start with the unit economics, not the channel. Define acceptable CAC by segment, payback period, and LTV by product tier. Most marketers pick channels first, then try to make the math work. That's backwards. Start with the numbers that matter: how much can you spend to acquire a customer in each segment? How quickly do you need to recoup that cost? What's the lifetime value of customers by product tier? These numbers tell you which channels make sense and which don't. If your acceptable CAC for SMB customers is $500, but Facebook ads cost $800 per customer, Facebook isn't the right channel—at least not without optimization. If your payback period needs to be 6 months, but your average sales cycle is 9 months, you have a problem that no channel can solve. Unit economics are your guardrails. They tell you when to stop spending, when to double down, and when to pivot. Don't let channel preferences or 'what everyone else is doing' override the math. The math doesn't lie.

Build an attribution approach that's good‑enough, not perfect. Use primary keys (email, account) and consistent UTMs. Blend model‑based and survey‑based data. Perfect attribution is a myth. Customers touch multiple channels, see multiple ads, read multiple emails. Trying to assign credit perfectly is a fool's errand. Instead, build an attribution model that's good enough to make decisions. Use primary keys—email addresses and account IDs—to connect touchpoints across channels. Tag everything with consistent UTMs so you can see which campaigns drive which actions. But don't stop there. Use model-based attribution (like Google Analytics' data-driven model) to understand the full customer journey. Supplement with survey data: ask customers how they found you, what influenced their decision. Blend these signals together. You'll never have perfect attribution, but you'll have enough signal to know what's working and what's not. The goal isn't to assign every dollar perfectly—it's to make better decisions about where to spend the next dollar.

Calendar for compounding effects—education, proof, and offers—rather than isolated one‑offs. Most marketing calendars are just a list of things to send. That's not strategy—that's busywork. Instead, design campaigns that build on each other. Start with education: teach your audience something valuable. Then show proof: case studies, testimonials, data that demonstrates you can deliver. Finally, make an offer: a clear path to engage or buy. This sequence compounds. Education builds trust. Proof builds confidence. Offers convert. But don't stop at one sequence. Layer multiple sequences for different segments, different stages, different needs. A prospect in the evaluation stage needs different education than someone just discovering you. Someone who's been reading your content for months needs a different offer than a cold lead. Design your calendar so each touchpoint builds on the last, creating momentum toward conversion. Isolated campaigns are noise. Compounding campaigns are strategy.

Instrument the full funnel: view → engage → hand‑raise → SAL → win. Set stage‑to‑stage conversion benchmarks and alarm on drift. You can't optimize what you don't measure. Most marketers measure the top of the funnel (views, clicks) and the bottom (wins), but ignore everything in between. That's like trying to fix a leaky pipe by only looking at the faucet and the drain. Instrument every stage: views (who saw your content), engagement (who clicked, downloaded, watched), hand-raises (who requested a demo, filled out a form), SAL (sales-accepted leads), and wins. Track conversion rates between each stage. Set benchmarks: what's a good view-to-engage rate? What's a good engage-to-hand-raise rate? What's a good hand-raise-to-SAL rate? Then alarm on drift. If your view-to-engage rate drops from 5% to 3%, something changed. Maybe your content quality slipped. Maybe your targeting is off. Maybe your messaging doesn't resonate. The alarm tells you to investigate. Without full-funnel instrumentation, you're flying blind. You might think your marketing is working because views are up, but if engagement is down, you're actually losing ground.

Run weekly cycle tests: one hypothesis per audience, one message, one CTA. Kill fast, scale winners. Marketing is experimentation. But most teams experiment wrong. They test too many variables at once, run tests for too long, or don't have clear success criteria. Here's a better approach: run weekly cycle tests. Each test has one hypothesis: 'Audience X responds better to message Y with CTA Z.' Test one audience, one message, one CTA. Keep everything else constant. Run the test for one week—long enough to get signal, short enough to move fast. At the end of the week, decide: kill it, iterate it, or scale it. If it didn't work, kill it. Don't keep running bad tests hoping they'll improve. If it showed promise but needs tweaking, iterate. Change one thing and test again. If it worked, scale it. Increase budget, expand to similar audiences, build on the win. The key is speed. Weekly cycles mean you're learning fast. You're not waiting months to find out if something works. You're constantly testing, learning, and improving. This is how you build a marketing machine that gets better over time.

Treat content as product: backlog, velocity, QA, and releases. Reuse assets across channels with intentional variation, not copy‑paste. Content marketing isn't art—it's product development. Treat it like one. Build a backlog: what content needs to be created, prioritized by impact and effort. Track velocity: how much content can your team produce per week? What's your sustainable pace? Don't burn out trying to hit unrealistic targets. Add QA: every piece of content should be reviewed for quality, accuracy, and alignment with your brand. Then release: publish on schedule, promote across channels, measure performance. But here's the key: reuse assets intelligently. Don't just copy-paste the same blog post to LinkedIn, Twitter, and email. That's lazy and it shows. Instead, adapt content for each channel. A blog post becomes a LinkedIn article with a different hook. That becomes a Twitter thread with key points. That becomes an email newsletter with additional context. Same core content, different execution. This multiplies your output without multiplying your effort. You're not creating new content from scratch every time—you're repurposing strategically. This is how you scale content marketing without scaling headcount.

Report in dollars. If it doesn't move pipeline, it's brand—with intent—or it's noise. Marketing reports are full of vanity metrics: impressions, clicks, likes, shares. These feel good, but they don't pay the bills. Instead, report in dollars. How much pipeline did this campaign create? How much revenue did it influence? What's the ROI? If you can't connect a marketing activity to pipeline or revenue, it's either brand building (which is fine, but call it what it is) or it's noise (which you should stop doing). Brand building has value—it creates awareness, builds trust, makes future sales easier. But it's hard to measure directly. So track it separately. Track intent: are more people searching for your brand? Are more people visiting your website? Are more people engaging with your content? These are leading indicators of brand building. But for everything else, demand pipeline impact. If a campaign doesn't move pipeline, question it. Maybe it needs more time. Maybe it needs optimization. Maybe it needs to be killed. Don't let vanity metrics make you feel good about ineffective marketing. Demand results. Report in dollars. That's how you prove marketing's value and get the budget to do more of what works.