Marketing never fails.

Marketing never fails.

It just stops.

It stops because we ran out of money, enthusiasm, or patience.

Because we spent our budget and it didn’t pay us back in sales.

Because we didn’t like what we were doing, so we did the bare minimum and got minimal results.

Or because frustration, burnout, or outside pressures forced us to focus our energy elsewhere.

When that happens, our marketing didn’t fail—it never had the chance to succeed. Because we didn’t make it sustainable.

As long as we’re able to keep taking action, we can learn. We can adjust. We can improve.

And we can keep working at it until it works.

But it can’t work if we spend our entire budget on our first attempts, or on one big campaign.

It can’t work if we don’t like it, because we’ll never do our best doing something we hate.

And it can’t work if we can’t stick with it for the long-term, because we didn’t pace ourselves.

Our money, our enthusiasm, and our patience are limited. They don’t renew by themselves—we have to constantly rebuild our stock.

That means we’ve got to manage our budget carefully, and assume that nothing will work perfectly on the first try—so no single attempt should get our entire budget. And we need to focus our marketing efforts on sales over empty attention, being patient for growth but impatient for profit, so our marketing can pay for itself.

We’ve got to sustain and build our enthusiasm by doing work we like, even if it’s not perfect. And we need processes and plans to make our marketing efforts easier, more organized—and thus more enjoyable—so that we’re always motivated to do our best.

And we need to set a pace we can maintain for years to come, because everything good in life and business takes time. We mustn’t steal energy from tomorrow to overexert ourselves today. We need to build a slow, steady, and focused schedule for our work so we always know what we’re doing next, and so we always have time in our day to get our work done well.

Strategy, at its core, is just structure. The structure to balance your budget, your joy, and your pace. So you can get what you truly want.

Some people say you should hustle hard, take big risks, and bet it all on one big campaign. And if that’s the path that calls to you, do your best and keep at it as long as you can.

I prefer to focus on what I can afford, what I like, and what can last, so I can work at it until it works.

Because that’s how you make sure your marketing never fails.

By never needing to stop.