The stop doing list, and why it pays for the engagement
The most valuable deliverable in most marketing engagements is a short list of things to switch off. It is also the one nobody asks for.
iStudios, Strategy practice
Every marketing operation of a certain age carries activity that continues because it started. A partnership renewed on autopilot, a channel added for a launch three years ago, a report generated weekly for someone who left, a retargeting pool that has been serving ads to existing customers since a tagging change nobody noticed.
None of this is anyone's fault. Organisations are much better at starting than at stopping, because starting has an owner and stopping has a risk.
How to find it
- List every recurring spend and every recurring report. Next to each, write the decision it informs. Anything with a blank is a candidate.
- For every channel, ask what evidence would justify switching it off. If no evidence could, it is not being managed, it is being maintained.
- Look at overlap: several tools doing one job, several audiences reaching the same people, several reports disagreeing about the same metric.
- Check the tagging. A surprising share of retargeting budget is spent reaching people who already converted.
Money saved by stopping something is worth more than money earned by starting something, because it carries no execution risk.
Why it is hard to sell
A stop doing list is uncomfortable to receive. It implies previous decisions were wrong, it frequently affects a relationship somebody values, and it produces no new dashboard to show anyone. It is also, in our experience, where the majority of the recoverable value in a first engagement sits.
We put it in the first deliverable rather than the last, because by the last one everyone is too invested in the new plan to hear it.