---
title: "3 Things To Do More & 3 Things To Do Less"
date_published: "2023-11-13"
date_modified: "2023-11-13"
permalink: "https://www.samtomlinson.me/insights/3-things-to-do-more-3-things-to-do-less/"
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    - "Data"
    - "Ecommerce"
    - "Marketing"
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  title: "3 Things To Do More & 3 Things To Do Less"
  description: "It’s difficult to believe that it’s actually November  BFCM is around the corner, 2024 budget planning is in full swing, and the Charles de Gaulle airport Starbucks (where I’m writing this)"
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It's difficult to believe that it's actually November ̵1; BFCM is around the corner, 2024 budget planning is in full swing, and the Charles de Gaulle airport Starbucks (where I'm writing this) is changing their posters from pumpkin spice lattes to Gingerbread-based concoctions.

I've spent much of the last week in Bucharest, where I was invited to be the closing keynote at GPeC, the largest eCommerce conference in Central & Eastern Europe. Across many conversations with marketers, store owners and vendors/partners, one topic kept coming up: what should we be doing better? Where are the opportunities to thrive in the next 12-14 months?

While I don't have a crystal ball, I do have a few ideas. I've broken them up into two, 3-item lists: what we should do more of, and what we should do less.

## 3 Things I'd love to see more:

## Real, Financial Accountability:

I'm leading with this one because I believe it's just that important.

The simple reality is that most marketers have benefited from smooth seas for the vast majority of their careers (Q2-Q3 2020 exempted) - growth was largely up-and-to-the-right, interest rates low and regulation scarce. Most of us have only ever known good times.  But things change. Interest rates are at 20/30/40 year highs (depending where you live), and there are strong indicators they may be going even higher in the short-to-mid term.

Economic growth masked a lot of sins and stymied a significant amount of the philosophical evolution that we needed as an industry: evolution from (always-bogus) attribution to true, big-picture measurement; evolution from vanity metrics to real financial measures. Make no mistake: we will get there as an industry. That is inevitable. The smart money is always on the optimists, because they're the only people who ever change the world (and, if I can be sure of anything, it's that the world will change).

From a strategic and tactical perspective, this leads me to an inevitable conclusion: the organizations and people who actively invest in the tools and skills to connect marketing activities to financial outcomes will create a significant advantage.

This goes beyond the basics of accurate revenue numbers and relative lead values - those are things most advertisers have (at varying levels of accuracy).

I'm talking about metrics such as contribution margin, net-present LTV, risk-adjusted marketing return rate (MRRa), Marketing Efficiency Ratio (aMER + rMER), lead velocity and net-present pipeline value - all of which connect to both your forecast and your P&L.

I've written about the idea of net-present metrics since 2016. They're still not used to the level they should be - but then again, when the risk-free rate is