Nail the 6 Things That Matter Most So You Set the *Right* Goals in 2025

if you’re in 2025 planning and are looking for ways to unlock higher profitable growth than last year, please learn from my annual planning mistakes so you don't have to go through the pain of making them yourself.

long story short: in the early days on the way to a >$100M acquisition, i had no idea how to do it right.

i thought it was just about setting ambitious goals and assigning owners so there was singular accountability.

necessary? yes. sufficient? unfortunately not.

what I learned actually matters is doing the work to pick the right goals—ones that directly grow the net asset value of your business.

otherwise, you’ll waste time chasing vanity metrics that look good in meetings and on twitter but do nothing for your bottom line (guilty).

after making every mistake in the book, here’s what i’ve learned.

tl;dr?

1. identify the 5 things your brand needs to nail

2. have all goals ladder up to strengthening those things

so in hopes this makes your 2025 far more profitable, and less distracted by short term vanity metrics, here are the 5 things to orient 2025 goal setting around:

1. Measurement: Ability to invest in “brand” and “direct response” with performance measures tied to each

Fully accountable, and deduplicated/deterministic, model for direct response

Account for classic gotchas

• Retargeting ROAS bloat
• Retention ROAS bloat
• Click-based or search-based optimization/measurement

Measurement: Ability to understand contribution margin on daily basis AND assets you’re investing in for long-term profitable payout

• Daily contribution
• Expected LTVs of New Customers
• 180d Brand Value

2. Content: Ability to create content that successfully and uniquely connects with customers in a unique way, at high volumes

• Either in-house or agency
• Doesn’t always have to be social video content - could be the unboxing experience, could be some other creative takes here, but has to be a conversation piece for your target audience

3. Product: Great, differentiated product

This is a given, but can often be forgotten as the thing that makes all the marketing stuff even have the chance of being effective.

4. Content to support product:

• Ability to show the value of your product from a rational perspective.
• Eectiveness conveying how the product occupies a unique space in the market
• Either in-house or agency
• Doesn’t have to be ads if you are well distributed - could be investing in in-store messaging, sampling, etc

5. Distribution

Media:

Ability to dynamically and efficiently run media in a way where you can understand performance in major buckets DISTINCTLY

• Top of Funnel (no exposure to your brand),
• Mid Funnel (some exposure to your brand, but limited intent),
• Bottom of Funnel (exposure to your brand, and intent),
• Retention (customers of your brand)

Understands the value of exclusions and also when to loosen those requirements (hint: not often).

This team is either making the creative, or is extremely tight with the creative team (both brand and direct response creative) - this includes Organic Social AND Email

Sidenote: Can be agency or in-house - doesn’t need to be a full-time role, so I’d recommend you hire multi-talented creators to run media, or run through an agency where someone can manage multiple channels and you’re not paying for full-time head unless you really need to

Need to be data-driven, and really understand how the running of media has evolved (Advantage plus, Pmax, etc.)

Wholesale:

Need to be able to get your product in front of folks in the real world, full stop

E-commerce:

Need a site that properly displays your products and hits your major brand notes without getting in the way of the shopping process.

Not overly discounted.

Easy, standard shopping flow where your product and content are your differentiators.

6. Operations + Mftg:

need to have 70%+ product margins,

~10% fulfillment cost as % of revs (for most types of brands, some are infrastructurally limited here, just means you have to get more creative)

Headcount: target <15% of topline revs, ideally 10% or less -- Include agency fees, contractor fees, etc. in this calc

Conclusion:

Some of these likely seem obvious, but I was always surprised when looking back at how the goals didn't ladder up to each of these components directly.

Hopefully you can learn from my mistakes and have 2025 be the best year you've ever had.

Happy Thanksgiving and BFCM - go get 'em