How to unstuck your marketing when growth plateaus

Executive overview

Marketing stalls when you keep running the same tactics on the same channels — audiences adapt and results decay. The fix is rarely just adding new channels.

The bigger lever is radically changing how you use channels that already worked for you.

Why marketing gets stuck

• Results plateau because competitors adopt the same tactics, not because the audience disappears
• Familiarity breeds indifference — audiences tune out strategies they've seen repeatedly
• Adding new channels helps, but fixing existing channels drives more impact

The channel grid framework

• Map current channels and their performance against channels you haven't tried
• Identify which existing channels drove revenue but have slowed down
• Prioritise reinventing those channels over simply expanding to new ones

Reinventing existing channels

• Blogging plateau: stop publishing new posts; refresh and update existing ones instead
• Paid ads plateau: redirect budget toward a high-impact creative asset (e.g. a flagship video) rather than incremental campaign tuning
• The goal is to zig when others zag — do something drastic enough to stand out

Applying AIDA to break through

• AIDA: Attention, Interest, Decision, Action — the hook is everything
• Memorable creative (e.g. Squatty Potty's unicorn video) wins attention because it's remarkable, not because it's optimised
• Hooks are the fundamental unit of marketing; change the hook before changing the channel