Many marketing teams fall into an "activity trap," where a focus on metrics actually leads to stalled growth and a lack of real impact.
Mike Gold, Chief Marketing Officer at Guidepoint, says the solution is to do less, not more, by adopting a disciplined focus on a few big bets.
Gold's 70-20-10 framework allocates resources to high-impact projects, using two-week sprints and leading indicators to measure progress and de-risk failure.
The strategy's success hinges on building organizational alignment and reframing "no" as "not right now" to maintain team morale.
As budgets face increasing scrutiny, marketing teams can fall into a trap of mistaking activity for impact. An obsession with metrics can actually stall growth, optimizing busywork over real business outcomes. The result is a marketing function that looks productive, but with its resources spread so thin, accomplishes nothing of substance. The way out of this trap isn't to do more. It's to do less, by maintaining a disciplined focus on a few big bets.
It's a problem that prompted a recent LinkedIn post from Mike Gold, Chief Marketing Officer at research platform Guidepoint and former leader at agencies like TracyLocke, where he led creative for global brands including Pepsi, Gatorade, and Guinness. At Guidepoint, he put this strategy into practice, spearheading a direct-sale email marketing stream that generated $2 million in revenue in its first year. For Gold, the key to unlocking impact is disciplined focus. "Aim at one pain point, do it in the channels that convert, and apply the budget and talent required to win," he advises.
Motion over metrics: Gold's philosophy addresses fractured efforts by acknowledging a simple reality: "If everything's important, then nothing's important." His solution is the 70-20-10 framework, a model that fundamentally changes how teams measure their value. The model allocates 70% of resources to a handful of big bets, 20% to the always-on activities, and 10% to pure testing. "When your efforts are fractured across too many activities, you move everything just a little bit. The goal should be to focus on a few big things and move them a lot. That's the real shift: focusing on motion instead of activity," he explains.
Formula for focus: In a world of competing priorities, many leaders face the challenge of objectively deciding what qualifies as a big bet. Gold’s formula cuts through the politics by anchoring decisions to business impact. "It's a simple calculation: urgency plus performance plus fit. What is the activity that has the most likelihood of success, the shortest path to revenue, and the most urgency for our clients?
But a framework is useless without buy-in. Gold knows that turning a plan into a reality requires deliberate coalition building. In a recent go-to-market motion, he brought together half a dozen teams to agree on a single pain point. By naming the project, putting its goals up on the wall, and creating a shared Teams channel, he made sure every department understood its role in delivering business impact. His goal was to achieve such deep alignment that functional silos weren't an obstacle.
Organizational orchestra: "The reason that I believe in being very public with them, is if you don't have alignment, you will not get the participation and cooperation of the rest of the organization, and the organization won't move in concert," he says. Gold's framework draws inspiration from the rigorous, data-driven world of product management. The risk of a big bet is real, so he fosters a culture of fast iteration that prioritizes learning over perfection.
Feedback over feelings: By launching quickly and measuring impact within two-week sprints, the team aims to de-risk failure. The approach is far less risky than traditional planning because teams aren't waiting months to make a change to an ineffective campaign. "Market feedback is always more accurate than people's assumption in a meeting. The only way to get that feedback is to get it out there fast, test fast, learn fast, and begin to optimize immediately," he recommends.
Proof of progress: To make the two-week sprint viable, Gold advocates for moving the focus away from lagging ROI and toward ruthlessly tracking metrics that prove a bet is gaining traction. "Choose metrics that are close to revenue, even if it's not the final sale. Track the leading indicators that show a change in audience behavior within a specific timeframe: meetings set, demos scheduled, or inbound requests," he says.
The toughest part of the sprint is the human element. Killing a project after just a few weeks can be a recipe for resentment. That's where leadership comes in. Gold has a specific, empathetic approach for turning down ideas, reframing a "no" as a "not right now" to preserve morale. "I make sure when we table a project, the conversation comes back to the simple facts. Here's the revenue goal, here's what historically creates those opportunities, and here's our timeframe. We can always circle back. With a sprint there is less risk and more flexibility to pivot," he says.
Ultimately, Gold's framework redefines a successful year, prioritizing the impact of a few major wins over the fleeting validation of vanity metrics. It's a call for leaders to stop celebrating activity and start tracking real organizational change. "I consider a good year 10 successes on big bets. That’s it," he says. "With 10 big wins, we’ve actually made a substantive change to the company, as opposed to just pulling in a little extra pipeline or getting a few meetings scheduled. We’re done with vanity metrics like downloads and views. They don’t matter."
