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I recently saw a post on LinkedIn from a digital marketing agency boasting about how many “tasks” they completed last year in a recap carousel. Something like, 879? Sure, we'll call it that.
I stared at it for a bit, and a few reactions came to mind.
1. What is the goal of the post and who is this post for?
Are clients or prospects supposed to care how many tasks you completed? What does that do for them?
Why should anyone care that you completed “879” tasks last year?
Was the post for the project manager who added them all up from [insert whatever project management tool]?
Was it for the team who pulled the levers?
Was it to show competitors how “busy” they are, even if it’s just work for work’s sake?
It was confusing to me why prospects or clients would care about the number of tasks completed. And I found it interesting that time was spent tallying them up and getting approval on something like this, when showcasing meaningful wins and business outcomes seems like the obvious move.
If I went into a client meeting and told them “Hey, guess what, I completed 54 tasks since we last met.” I wouldn’t expect them to reply with anything other than “So what, what are you talking about. Can we leave now?”
In my experience, the number of tasks completed is inside baseball; useful for internal operations, but irrelevant to clients.
What actually makes a partner sticky is strategic partnership: digging deep into the goals of a business, understanding its financial model, and aligning marketing efforts to outcomes leadership actually cares about.
2. This… is good for me
This is why I do what I do. I’ve wanted to steer away from a mindset and vendor model that prioritizes billable hours and busy work over the heavy strategic lifting and marketing alignment that C-suites and boards actually care about.
Tasks are inevitable, and there’s nothing wrong with them, they are what make things happen. And I love making things happen.
But, leading with tasks is leading with a bottom-up mentality. It diminishes value. Completed tasks could lead to amazing outcomes, but they shouldn’t be the headline.
Bottom-up = task-driven and aimless.
3. Think from a different POV
I have the luxury of having a wonderful wife who has worked in finance roles for well-known brands, one of which is an American staple known around the world.
Hearing the finance person’s perspective of marketing teams has been priceless information for me.
There’s often a communication gap between marketing and finance.
Finance (the people who write the checks) think in terms of:
- Revenue
- Expenses (for the resources, for the tools, for the campaigns - everything)
- Margin (which will likely vary by product and service, and is super handy to know as a marketing and sales partner!)
- ROI
- Forecast accuracy
Marketing often talks about:
- Campaigns
- Impressions
- Engagement
- Tasks
There’s a disconnect in the language.
Finance is trying to understand how expenses turn into value (revenue and profit).
Marketing is often describing the activity that happens along the way.
I have seven years of experience reporting directly to Founder CEOs and working with leadership teams -- in-house, agency-side, and in my own business via Gravity Labs.
At the end of the day, I’d be surprised if anyone in the boardroom is thinking:
"How many tasks did we complete this quarter? Oh wait… what about last year!?!?"
They’re asking:
“Did the business hit its goals?”
