Growth isn’t just about what you start.
It’s about what you stop. What you reimagine. And what you systematize to evolve faster than the market around you.
This isn’t a list of surface-level tactics.
It’s a deep reset on how media orgs evaluate, prioritize, and execute across the business.
Let’s walk through the full framework.
🔍 Step 1: Conduct a Portfolio-Level Strategic Review
Most media teams evaluate one campaign at a time, one channel at a time.
But this reactive mindset misses the bigger picture.
Adopt a portfolio strategy mindset:
- Map your strategic value chain
- How does each newsletter, channel, or series contribute to acquisition, retention, upsell?
- Label initiatives as:
- 🔹 Core Drivers (direct revenue or audience growth)
- 🔸 Supportive Assets (indirect value: trust, thought leadership)
- ⚠️ Legacy Initiatives (misaligned or stale)
- Use a balanced scorecard approach
Evaluate every initiative across 4 dimensions:- Financial performance (ROI, CPA)
- Audience engagement (loyalty, return visits, time spent)
- Strategic alignment (fit with 2025 priorities)
- Opportunity cost (what it blocks)
- Run scenario models
- What if we shut this down?
- What if we doubled down?
- What would we launch if this didn’t exist?
This turns planning into a strategic audit, not a wishlist.
🤖 Step 2: Leverage Automation and AI for Continuous Optimization
Annual audits are dead.
Modern strategy requires real-time responsiveness.
Build a living, breathing data system:
- Automated dashboards (Tableau, Looker, GA4, Omeda)
Track: audience churn, LTV by channel, cost per engaged minute, etc. - AI-powered forecasting
Predict:- Which segments are on the verge of churn
- What content formats are losing value
- Which CTAs or journeys correlate with revenue or drop-off
- NLP for qualitative signal
Analyze:- Comments and support tickets
- Survey free-text responses
- Social sentiment shifts
This transforms your planning process from static to streaming. You don’t just plan in Q4 — you adapt all year.
🧯 Step 3: Embed Strategic Redundancy
Decluttering doesn’t mean burning it all down.
True strategic maturity includes redundant flexibility.
Build intentional overlap:
- Redundant pilots
- Test two ways to achieve the same goal
- E.g., two versions of a product-launch newsletter with different tone and CTA
- Pre-exit wind-downs
- Sunset in stages, not all at once
- Slowly de-resource underperformers while testing successors
- Scenario-based reserves
- Keep lightweight versions of dormant channels/platforms
- Ready to reactivate if conditions shift
This is resilience planning for a volatile media world.
💰 Step 4: Apply Zero-Based Budgeting
Don’t adjust last year’s budget.
Start from zero. Force the hard decisions.
Treat every dollar as venture capital:
- Cost deconstruction
- What’s the true cost of this podcast series?
- Can we maintain outcomes with 70% of the spend?
- Value benchmarking
Set thresholds:- CPA under 30% of LTV
- Engagement rate above 10% per episode
- Audience segment size justifies translation/localization spend
- Pitch-to-fund
Require teams to make a case:
“This initiative deserves investment because it contributes to X and returns Y.”
If an initiative can’t justify its spend, it shouldn’t scale.
🧠 Step 5: Build a Culture of Strategic Subtraction
This is the hard part:
Most teams are conditioned to add, not subtract.
Volume is mistaken for value.
Make sunsetting a badge of honor:
- Celebrate retirements
- “We sunsetted X and freed 15 hours a week to invest in Y.”
- Normalize pruning as growth.
- Post-mortem discipline
- Why didn’t this initiative thrive?
- What signals did we miss early?
- Internal suggestion box
- “What’s not pulling its weight?”
- Let team members nominate initiatives for review
- Align incentives
- Tie KPIs to outcomes, not activity
- E.g., “We cut 2 stale workflows and grew referral traffic by 18%”
When teams know how to let go, they unlock creative headroom.
🚀 Step 6: Reinvest in Moonshots
What do you do with all that freed capacity?
You aim higher.
Go bold — but targeted:
- Emerging tech
- AI personalization
- Blockchain-based access passes
- Generative video + interactive storytelling
- Underserved markets
- Young readers
- B2B micro-niches
- International segments with high LTV
- Strategic partnerships
- Bundle content with aligned platforms
- Co-create events, tools, or reports
Decluttering isn’t the point.
Reinvestment is.
Final Thought: Redefine the Closet
True strategic evolution happens when you stop seeing planning as a list of new projects…
…and start seeing it as a system — one that’s evaluated, optimized, and realigned constantly.
✅ Treat initiatives like a portfolio
✅ Let AI automate your signal loops
✅ Keep strategic redundancy alive
✅ Start budgets from zero
✅ Sunset proudly
✅ Reinvest courageously
That’s how media companies stay relevant — and stay ready.
Not just for 2025, but for whatever comes next.
✉️ Forward this to a colleague working on next year’s budget. Or reply and tell me: what’s one initiative you’re retiring in 2025 — and what will you build in its place?