I may live in San Francisco, but I am not a Giants fan. I am a St. Louis Cardinals fan, stubbornly and unapologetically. The Cardinals are the youngest team in the majors and in a rebuilding phase which has been both exciting and frustrating.
One of our breakout stars this year is Jordan Walker, who nearly led the league in homers before the All-Star break when he won the Home Run Derby. That got him a lot of attention, especially from opposing teams’ pitching coaches. They studied the videos and updated their scouting reports. Pitchers changed how they approached him. The pitches Walker had been crushing became much harder to find. His success changed the way competitors played against him.
This is baseball. The moment something starts working, the other team begins looking for a way to stop it. Growth strategy works the same way.
Keep Your Eye on the Scoreboard
A baseball team’s objective is simple: score more runs and win more games.
A website should have an equally clear job:
- Generate qualified leads
- Sell products
- Book appointments
- Grow subscriptions
SEO rankings, ad clicks, impressions, engagement, and AI citations matter. But they are not the final score.
You can win the traffic report and still lose the game.
The Box Score Tells You What Happened
Baseball produces an enormous amount of data. Hits, walks, strikeouts, pitch counts, exit velocity, runners left on base, and dozens of other measurements all appear in or behind the box score.
Our growth box scores contain rankings, impressions, click-through rates, conversion rates, lead quality, revenue, and increasingly, AI referral traffic.
The box score matters because it reveals patterns. It can show you where performance improved, where opportunities were wasted, and where the lineup is struggling.
But the box score does not make decisions for you.
Data can tell you that something changed. It still takes judgment to understand why.
The Scouting Report Tells You What to Do Next
A scouting report is not merely a record of past performance. It is an attempt to decide what to do next.
The same should be true of growth data.
Examples:
- A page is still ranking, but its search result is no longer earning clicks.
- A competitor has closed a content gap you previously owned.
- An ad campaign still generates traffic, but the leads are less qualified.
- AI answer engines are citing deeper, more specific sources.
- Buyer attitudes have shifted, changing which offers feel relevant.
Competitors are studying what works too. If you gain an advantage, you should expect them to respond.
A successful strategy does not stay successful simply because you leave it alone.
Adjust Without Rebuilding Your Swing
Jordan Walker and his coaches do not respond to every bad game by rebuilding his swing from scratch.
Sometimes the adjustment is smaller. Lay off a particular pitch. Change the approach with two strikes. Look for a different location. Study what pitchers are doing in certain counts.
Growth adjustments can be equally focused. Rewrite a search title or meta description. Refresh an aging section of content. Add evidence that makes a page more useful to answer engines. Tighten ad targeting, add negative keywords, or improve the connection between the ad and its landing page. Shift budget toward the part of the lineup producing runs.
Sometimes you do need a new strategy. More often, you need to stop chasing sliders down and out and make pitchers come back into the strike zone.
Slumps happen
All great hitters have their slumps. A bad week does not automatically mean the swing is broken. A temporary rankings dip does not mean the SEO strategy has failed. Three poor leads do not prove that an entire ad campaign should be abandoned.
The question is whether you are seeing:
- A few bad games
- A real slump
- Evidence of a deeper problem
The answer comes from reviewing enough data, looking for patterns, and understanding the context. The data should make you curious before it makes you destructive as the risk works both ways. Don’t panic over a short slump, but don’t ignore a pattern because the strategy worked last season.
You Do Not Need the Biggest Payroll
The Yankees and Dodgers spend ridiculous to stack their lineups and assemble a starting rotation that is nearly invincible. But then there are teams like the Milwaukee Brewers and Tampa Bay Rays with comparatively tiny payrolls that won more games this year. The Rays just bumped off the Yankees in the playoffs!
How do they do this?
- Better scouting
- Player development
- Finding undervalued talent
- Smarter roster construction
- Disciplined matchup decisions
Smaller companies can do the same. They can own a narrow but valuable content category, buy only the searches that demonstrate real intent, develop expert content that generic competitors cannot reproduce, and move quickly when the data reveals an opening. Over time, those decisions turn content into a long-term asset.
You do not need the biggest payroll if you have the better scouting report.
It is a long season
You need the scoreboard to know whether you are winning. You need the box score to understand what happened. You need the scouting report to prepare for what comes next.
Then you need the patience to tell the difference between a slump and a strategy that truly needs to change.
Growth strategy is a long season. Competitors adjust. Search algorithms change. Buyer attitudes change. Some ideas get hot, and others fall into slumps.
The goal is not to find a strategy that never needs to change.
The goal is to build a team that knows how to adjust. Let’s go Cardinals!
