Your Decisions Are Shaped Before You Ever Make Them

We marketers have built entire functions around the assumption that choice happens in the moment, at the shelf, on the landing page, during the demo. Unfortunately, choice isn't a point-in-time event. It's the endpoint of a long chain of impressions, exposures, and associations accumulating long before your customer enters an active buying cycle. You're probably thinking this is just semantic. It's not. Why? Because you aren't just competing for attention in-market engineering, you're trying to shape the mental habitat in which their selection feels inevitable.

Believing that others will react as we would is the single most dangerous myth in marketing. Only human beings can look directly at something, have all the information they need to make an accurate prediction, perhaps even momentarily make the accurate prediction, and then say that it isn't so.

Yes, it's important to keep abreast of the latest technological developments and tools of the moment for reasons that are not germane to this musing. And it is equally important to read (or listen to) books that reveal the consistent and pervasive variables of human nature. Why? Because within those books are timeless truths that will help you better understand how to communicate in an impactful and even meaningful way with the audience you seek to serve.

84% of purchase decisions are made before shopping even begins, according to new research tracking 1.2 million consumer journeys across 200+ categories, meaning that by the time your prospect actively shops, the decision is already made.

Over months and years, your favorite and not-so-favorite brands build neural pathways beneath your conscious awareness so that when the buying moment arrives, what feels like a rational choice is actually the echo of impressions accumulated long ago.

You probably aren't feeling weighed down by a lack of opportunity or talent. Or maybe you are. And most of us are a bit buried under the things we haven't let go of, including the habits we've stopped questioning, the patterns we keep feeding, the noise we mistake for progress.

Corporate identity is more than your logo and color scheme. It is the entire ecosystem through which your organization presents itself to the world. While brand identity focuses narrowly on customer perception, corporate identity encompasses much more, including how employees, investors, and the broader public understand who you are as an organization.

Market sizing blends analytical rigor with strategic judgment. Demand curves defy mathematical functions, data fragments and biases proliferate, and disruptive technologies redraw boundaries overnight. Therefore, responsible practitioners run sensitivity analyses, triangulate top-down and bottom-up approaches, and openly disclose assumptions.

When resources tighten, average marketing teams scatter across channels, hoping something sticks. But we know that repeated exposure increases preference, and your audience needs multiple touch points with your message to convert, not single exposures across scattered channels.

You can't force a breakthrough campaign. You can't manufacture genuine brand passion. But you can plant seeds and create the environment where marketing mastery grows. Those seeds might not sprout for months or years. Plant enough seeds and tend the soil consistently, and breakthroughs will bloom.

• Is it testable?
• Can you prove or disprove it?
•If you reversed your hypothesis, would you care about the difference it would make to your overall logic?
• If you shared your hypothesis with any other stakeholder, would it sound naive or obvious?
• Does it point directly to an action or actions that you might take?

There's a difference between marketers who follow trends and those who create them. The gap isn't talent or luck, it's philosophy. The masters I've studied, who built empires from ideas, all shared certain beliefs that guided their decisions. What are some of those beliefs? I can't believe you asked...

When you can’t nail your routine, or when, for whatever reason, your routine doesn’t leave you feeling energized or “ready,” it’s so easy to hit the mental eject button: today’s just not my day. But this isn’t necessarily true. Yes, routines really can help. Yes, every great performer uses routines. Yes, you should probably have a few routines yourself. But they are not destiny.

Like any creative endeavor, each campaign represents an experiment with unknowable outcomes. This uncertainty bogs down marketers who expect guaranteed results before investing resources. Marketing campaigns exist in a space that resists predictability and is filled with false expectations.

We mostly hear about the winners (like Facebook and Apple), not the many entrepreneurs who tried similar approaches and failed. This creates a false picture that can lead to poor business decisions.

Picture yourself walking through a graveyard where only the fanciest tombstones still stand. Time crumbled away the simple ones. Looking around, you might think everyone buried here was wealthy. You're just seeing the survivors.

Marketers must constantly look closely at their growth engine. What looks successful on paper often conceals disastrous vulnerabilities. Here are eight (if that is too many, just read 3 or 5 or whatever works for you) questions you can ask during your investigation:
1. Are we building on rented or owned platforms? Every algorithm change, reach reduction, or cost spike exposes the fragility of platform-dependent marketing.
2. How quickly can external forces dismantle our current strategy? LinkedIn throttling reach, Instagram algorithm shifts, or rising paid customer acquisition costs can instantly transform a "solid" marketing system into a leaking structure.