In any marketing effort you undertake – large or small – keeping a clear head about what you’re doing, how it’s working and where it is headed are both key.
Unfortunately, most CMOs, marketing directors and managers take an approach to marketing that borders on guesswork. It’s try this today, try that tomorrow and hope that the returns come in.
And the decision-making process around this is muddled, so the thinking around it is necessarily muddled.
What you need is to transcend the seeming randomness of marketing results and aim for controlled chaos.
Getting to Controlled Chaos
The first step in getting to controlled chaos is to become aware of which elements of your marketing system are under your control and which are most definitely outside of it.
This type of discernment is essential because it allows you to focus on where your key levers are – the things you can control.
The most effective marketers know exactly which levers they can pull, which outcomes they can influence, and which factors lie completely beyond their control.
This distinction between what you can change, what you can affect, and what you must simply navigate determines where you invest your time, energy, and budget. It’s the difference between strategic action and wasted effort or needless worry. It’s the difference between proactive optimization and reactive panic.
When you understand what’s in your control – which levers you have to pull – you stop spinning your wheels on outside forces you can’t change and start making progress on the things that actually move the needle.
The Serenity Prayer for Marketers
Whether are not you are religious, you’ve likely heard of the serenity prayer. It offers a simple but powerful wisdom that marketers can learn from. To paraphrase in a marketing context:
Grant me the ability to control what I can.
The patience to influence what I can.
And the wisdom to not waste time on what I cannot control or influence.
What You Can Directly Control
These are the levers you can pull immediately—the decisions that are entirely within your power to make and execute.
1. Channel Selection and Budget Allocation
You choose which advertising channels to use: Google, Facebook, TikTok, retail media, CTV, organic social, streaming audio, local radio, and more. You decide how much budget to allocate to each channel and when to shift resources based on performance. This is pure strategic choice—no external dependency required.
2. Campaign Settings and Targeting
You control ad campaign settings: targeting parameters, bidding strategies, scheduling, geographic focus, and audience segments. These settings determine who sees your ads, when they see them, and how much you’re willing to pay. While platform algorithms influence delivery, you set the boundaries and objectives.
3. Creative Execution
You control the images, graphics, messaging, video content, and copy that represent your brand. Creative is your most powerful controllable lever. Great creative beats average media every time—and it’s entirely within your power to invest in distinctiveness, test variants, and refine your brand assets.
4. Pricing and Promotional Strategy
You set your prices, design your offers, and determine what specials or guarantees to provide. Whether it’s free shipping, money-back guarantees, limited-time discounts, or value-add bundles, these decisions are yours to make and test.
5. Product and Service Focus
You choose which products or services to promote, which to prioritize, and which to phase out. You decide how to position your offerings—premium versus value, innovative versus reliable, niche versus broad appeal. This strategic positioning is foundational and controllable.
6. Website Experience and Messaging
You control your website layout, structure, navigation, page load speed, and on-site messaging. You decide how buying and post-sale processes work, what information to provide, and how to guide users through their journey. User experience is a competitive differentiator that’s entirely within your control.
7. Measurement and KPIs
You determine what to measure, which events to track, and which KPIs to optimize for. Choosing the right metrics—and building systems to measure them accurately—shapes every subsequent decision. Measurement clarity starts with you.
8. Time and Scheduling
You control what time of day and day of week your ads show, when promotions run, and how you respond to seasonality. Proactive scheduling based on performance data is a controllable advantage.
These are the levers where action creates immediate change. When performance isn’t where you want it, start here.
What You Can Influence
Influence is different from control. These are outcomes you can affect through sustained effort, iteration, and optimization—but you can’t simply flip a switch and change them.
1. Campaign Performance and ROI
You can’t control campaign performance directly, but you can influence it significantly through ongoing optimization. Testing creative variants, refining targeting, adjusting bids, and learning from performance data all compound over time. ROI improves through disciplined iteration—not one-time fixes.
2. Audience Targeting Refinement
You can’t control who wants your product, but you can influence how precisely you reach the right people. Audience targeting gets better as you learn from performance data, test new segments, and refine based on conversion patterns. The more you learn, the more efficient your targeting becomes.
3. Seasonal Response Strategy
You can’t control demand seasonality, but you can influence your results by adjusting proactively. Ramping up budget ahead of peak seasons, preparing creative that speaks to seasonal needs, and managing expectations during slow periods all improve outcomes—even if you can’t change the underlying seasonal patterns.
Influence requires patience and consistency. It’s about making small, compounding improvements rather than seeking instant transformation. The brands that win in the long term are those that treat optimization as an ongoing discipline, not a one-time project.
What You Cannot Control or Influence
Some factors are simply beyond your reach. Accepting this reality isn’t pessimism—it’s strategic clarity. When you stop fighting forces you can’t change, you free up energy to focus where you can actually make a difference.
1. Latent Demand for Your Products or Services
You can’t create fundamental demand where none exists. If people don’t want what you’re selling—or don’t know they need it yet—no amount of ad spend will change that overnight. You can shape awareness and educate markets over time, but you can’t manufacture desire through campaigns alone.
2. Audience Preconceptions and Misconceptions
People arrive with beliefs shaped by years of experience, cultural narratives, and competitor messaging. You can’t erase deeply held preconceptions, but you can work around them by reframing, repositioning, and providing proof points that challenge assumptions.
3. Competitor Actions
You can’t control what competitors offer, how they price, how they market, or when they launch new initiatives. Competitive pressure is a constant. The only response is to focus on your own differentiation, value proposition, and execution.
4. Macro Economic Factors
Recession, inflation, consumer confidence, interest rates, employment trends—these macroeconomic forces affect demand and purchasing behavior in ways you can’t influence. You can adjust your strategy to account for these realities, but you can’t change them.
5. Demand Seasonality
Some industries have inherent seasonal patterns. Tax preparation peaks in spring. Retail surges in Q4. Travel fluctuates with school calendars. You can’t eliminate seasonality, but you can plan for it and optimize around it.
6. Platform Updates and Regulatory Changes
Changes to marketing channels—AI search features, social platform algorithms, privacy regulations, cookie deprecation—are imposed from outside. You can’t stop Google from rolling out AI Overviews or prevent third-party cookie phase-out. But you can adapt your strategy to thrive under new rules.
These uncontrollable factors aren’t excuses. They’re simply the terrain you’re navigating. Smart marketers acknowledge reality and build strategies that work within it.
Set Creativity to 11
This framework isn’t about limiting ambition. It’s about directing your energy where it creates results. When you focus on controllable levers—creative, targeting, measurement, positioning—you make progress. When you accept uncontrollable forces—demand, competition, macroeconomics—you stop wasting energy on frustration and redirect it toward adaptation.
Knowing what you can control allows you to focus your creativity, as this is one of your greatest superpowers. And strive for clarity.
Clarity is the foundation of effective marketing. Know what you can change. Influence what you can affect. And build strategies resilient enough to navigate what you cannot control.
Ready to focus your marketing on what actually moves the needle? Ambient Array helps businesses build data-informed marketing strategies that separate signal from noise. We’ll help you identify your highest-leverage controllable levers, design systems to measure what matters, and optimize relentlessly for results. Let’s talk about how we can bring clarity and momentum to your marketing mix.