How to Choose Marketing Priorities Without Chasing Every Idea
If you’re anything like me, you don’t have a shortage of marketing ideas.
You probably have ideas coming from every direction. A well that never runs dry. As you go about your day, new possibilities enter the scene from internal meetings, well-meaning advisors, sales feedback, competitors, LinkedIn posts, and that one article someone forwarded with the subject line, “Thought you’d find this interesting.”
The problem isn’t creativity. It’s knowing which ideas to entertain. And yet, this is where many marketing plans quietly fall apart.
You have my permission to choose fewer things and stand by them.
This field guide is about doing exactly that.
How to Decide What Matters This Year (and What Doesn’t)
Why “More Ideas” Is Rarely the Answer
In theory, more ideas feel like progress. But in practice, they often lead to dilution.
When marketing tries to support too many goals at once—brand awareness, lead generation, recruitment, thought leadership, retention, new offers, old offers—it stops doing any of them particularly well. Messaging gets fuzzy. Priorities shift weekly. Teams stay busy without feeling effective.
I’ve seen this across industries and company sizes. It’s not a motivation problem. It’s a focus problem.
And focus doesn’t come from inspiration. It comes from constraint. Constraint is so hard for marketing teams to achieve, but there is a way to do it. Keep reading.
Strategic Constraint Is Leverage
“Strategic constraint” sounds restrictive, but when you experience how it plays out, you’ll thank me.
When you limit the number of priorities marketing is responsible for, a few important things happen immediately. Decisions get faster, messaging gets clearer, execution improves, and results become easier to measure and explain.
Constraint forces clarity.
Instead of asking, “What should we do next?” You start asking, “Does this support the priority we already chose?”
That one question eliminates a surprising amount of noise.
Here’s how to put this into action…
Step One: Anchor Marketing to a Real Business Goal
The fastest way to create clarity is to start where marketing often gets disconnected: the business itself.
Before you choose any marketing priority, ask what the business genuinely needs this year. Put it in practical terms.
Are you trying to:
Fill a sales pipeline that has slowed?
Support a new or refined offer?
Increase confidence and consistency in inbound leads?
Prepare for growth you know is coming?
Your marketing priorities should exist to serve that outcome. Resist the urge to keep up appearances or check boxes!
If a priority can’t be traced back to a business need, it doesn’t belong at the top of the list.
Step Two: Choose One Primary Priority
Are you feeling discomfort yet? 😬 How do you choose just ONE priority?
I get it. Choosing one primary marketing priority can feel risky, especially if you’re used to hedging your bets. But in practice, it’s one of the most stabilizing decisions a leadership team can make.
Your primary priority is the thing marketing exists to support this year. It gets first claim on time, budget, and attention. Everything else becomes secondary by design.
This doesn’t mean other things disappear. It just means they don’t get to compete for center stage.
If everything is equally important, marketing becomes reactive.
If one thing is clearly more important, marketing becomes intentional.
Step Three: Identify One Supporting Priority
Okay, yes. In some cases, it makes sense to name a secondary priority. This should be something that supports the primary focus, though, without undermining it.
For example, a company might focus primarily on driving qualified inquiries, while also supporting long-term credibility through thought leadership. The key is that the second priority doesn’t dilute the first.
If the two priorities start pulling messaging or resources in opposite directions, you end up without priorities, but rather a negotiation.
And marketing doesn’t work well when it’s constantly negotiating with itself.
The Parking Lot: Where Good Ideas Go to Behave Themselves
One of the most useful tools I recommend is something deceptively simple: a marketing parking lot.
This is where ideas go when they’re interesting, but not aligned with the current priority. They’re not rejected. They’re just deferred. (Practically speaking, I put parking lot ideas in the content calendar as a separate category.)
This accomplishes two things. First, it lowers resistance. People are more willing to focus when they know ideas aren’t being thrown away. Second, it protects the plan from constant derailment.
The parking lot is how you honor creativity without letting it run the show.
A Framework You Can Reuse Every Year
If you want a repeatable way to decide priorities, use this sequence:
Start with the business need.
Choose one primary marketing priority that supports it.
Test every idea against that priority.
Defer anything that doesn’t align.
Simple doesn’t mean easy. But it does mean sustainable. Sustainable allows your team to thrive!
This framework works whether you’re planning a year, a quarter, or a campaign. And once teams experience the relief of clarity, they rarely want to go back.
What Focus Actually Gives You
When marketing priorities are clear, something subtle but important happens.
Marketing stops feeling like a constant scramble. Teams gain confidence in their decisions. Leadership conversations get calmer. Results become easier to explain because they’re intentional.
And perhaps most importantly, marketing starts to feel like it’s supporting the business instead of chasing it.
Which is exactly what it’s supposed to do.
You don’t need more ideas this year.
You need fewer priorities and the courage to stand by them long enough for them to work.
If you want help clarifying what actually deserves your marketing attention this year (and what can safely wait), I’d love to help you build a focused, purposeful plan that supports real business goals, sans noise.
Because marketing works best when it knows exactly what it’s there to do.
Next Up in the Field Guide Series:
When trends are worth paying attention to and when ignoring them is the smartest move you can make.
