January always feels optimistic for marketers and business owners.
New budgets.
New goals.
New plans.
And yet, most marketing strategies quietly start breaking by February.
Not because people didn’t work hard.
Not because the ideas were bad.
But because the plan was built around possibility instead of constraints.
This week’s email is about resetting your marketing systems so the rest of the year feels calmer, clearer, and far more predictable.
Here’s our top tips to kick off January across all areas of the funnel!
🧠 STRATEGY — Annual Planning Based on Constraints
Most annual marketing plans fail for one simple reason:
They assume unlimited time, unlimited attention, and unlimited energy.
In reality, you have:
Finite budget
Finite team capacity
Finite customer attention
Great strategy doesn’t start with goals.
It starts with constraints.
When constraints are defined early:
Decisions get easier
Trade-offs become obvious
Execution speeds up
One of the most powerful exercises I do every January is creating a “Stop Doing List.”
Not a to-do list.
A stop list.
One channel to deprioritize.
One audience to pause.
One metric to stop obsessing over.
TL;DR:
Strategy becomes effective the moment you define what won’t be done.
Key Takeaway:
If your strategy doesn’t clearly say “no,” it isn’t finished yet.
📊 PPC — Resetting Your Ad Account Structure
Most ad accounts don’t suddenly fail.
They decay.
Extra campaigns get added “temporarily.”
Tests never get cleaned up.
Naming conventions drift.
Intent gets blurred.
Eventually performance feels inconsistent, and people blame the algorithm.
January is the best time of year to reset.
A reset doesn’t mean deleting everything.
It means simplifying:
Fewer campaigns
Clear intent separation
Cleaner naming and structure
Simple ad accounts scale better than clever ones because problems become visible faster.
TL;DR:
Complex ad accounts hide inefficiencies. Simple ones expose them.
Key Takeaway:
If your ad account is hard to explain, it’s probably hard to scale.
📧 EMAIL — Cleaning Your List Post-Holiday
Post-holiday email lists are almost always inflated.
Seasonal signups.
One-time buyers.
Discount-driven subscribers.
This is where many brands panic, but they shouldn’t.
List cleaning isn’t about “losing subscribers.”
It’s about restoring signal.
Smaller, more engaged lists:
Improve deliverability
Increase open rates
Make future campaigns work better
Email is a relationship channel.
Respect attention, and revenue follows.
TL;DR:
Email performance improves when attention is respected.
Key Takeaway:
A healthier list will always outperform a bigger one.
🔍 SEO — Topic Cluster Planning
Most SEO content fails because it’s created in isolation.
Random blogs.
Disconnected keywords.
No clear structure.
Topic clusters solve this by forcing clarity.
Instead of asking, “What should we write next?”
You ask, “What do we want to be known for?”
A strong cluster:
Has one core page
Supporting content mapped by intent
Internal links that reinforce authority
Q1 is when topical authority is decided, even if the content ships later.
TL;DR:
SEO momentum comes from structure, not volume.
Key Takeaway:
Plan the content ecosystem before publishing the first post.
🌍 WILDCARD — Predicting the Year’s Macro Trends
You don’t need a crystal ball to market well.
You just need to notice pressure points:
Rising CPMs
Noisier inboxes
Higher scepticism
Shorter attention spans
The brands that win this year will:
Simplify faster than competitors
Focus deeper instead of wider
Build systems that survive platform changes
TL;DR:
Complexity is becoming a tax.
Key Takeaway:
Clarity is turning into a competitive advantage.
🤖 BONUS - AI as a Planning Assistant
AI works best as a thinking partner.
Not a decision-maker.
Not a strategy replacement.
Use it to:
Stress-test annual plans
Explore second-order effects
Simulate “what if” scenarios
TL;DR:
AI accelerates thinking, but it doesn’t replace judgment.
Key Takeaway:
Use AI to think wider, not to think for you.
🛠 TOOLS TO TRY THIS WEEK!
These tools will help you get ahead if you use them in your workflows and across your teams.
Notion - Use it to document:
Annual priorities
Constraints
Stop Doing Lists
Strategic assumptions you’ll revisit quarterly
Asana - Best used for:
Translating strategy into execution
Limiting work-in-progress
Preventing “strategy drift” during the year
Miro - Ideal for:
Visualizing topic clusters
Mapping customer journeys
Stress-testing systems before launching campaigns
Talk soon,
