Between ad optimizations and analytics deep dives, documentation in performance marketing feels just like updating passwords – which pops up when one expects it the least & it’s not even exciting.
Whenever someone approached me to complete any documentation at work, my instinctive reaction was frustration not because I disliked the idea of documentation itself, but because the way it was typically approached was chaotic—too many stakeholders involved, multiple versions floating around, and nothing ever structured or optimized enough to be genuinely useful.
I have a lot to say but let’s first understand why we all think of documentation as a burden?
I have understood that seeing documentation as a chore or burden is a combination of cultural, psychological and neurological factors at play. Breaking it down without any jargon and let’s find out which one are you!
- ⚖️ We have limited working memory, and documentation increases cognitive load. When solving complex problems, stopping to document feels like an unnecessary interruption
- 🧠 Some people get into a “zone” when doing deep, focused work. Interruption like switching to documentation break that state. It’s cognitively taxing to shift back and forth between problem-solving and explanatory writing or say structured thinking. It disrupts the mental flow.
- 😤 We are naturally wired to prefer immediate rewards over delayed ones. Documentation doesn’t offer any immediate payoff. It’s for someone else’s benefit—future us, or a teammate.
- 📉 No one reads documentation. If there’s no culture of actually using or referring to it, why bother? Without visible impact, motivation to do it drops.
- 🧾 Documenting things means writing clearly and accurately, which triggers anxiety in some. The pressure to “get it right” can trigger avoidance altogether.
As for me, #2 hits the hardest. I thrive in the chaos, and once I’m in the zone, my problem-solving mode takes over. That structured, documentation-friendly mindset just doesn’t come naturally in those moments.
But here’s the twist—over time, I started to realize that my resistance to documentation wasn’t helping anyone, least of all myself. The more I ignored it, the more often I found myself in repetitive loops, answering the same questions, redoing the same tasks, or scrambling for information that should’ve been easy to find. That’s when I started shifting my perspective.
What Kind of Documentation in Performance Marketing Am I Referring To?
Technically, yes—any report that presents performance data counts as documentation. But for the sake of clarity, I like to break it down into three distinct categories. My focus here is on the third one:
1. Performance Reports
These are your regular reports—daily, weekly, bi-weekly, monthly, or quarterly. They focus on actual results versus KPIs, along with suggested next steps. Think of them as status check-ins. You do it because you know it’s a part of your job.
2. Presentation Decks
These are more visual and often tailored for internal teams or leadership. They include similar data but framed within a larger narrative—covering planning, execution, governance, and sometimes long-term strategy. For example: a media plan or a quarterly/annual performance review deck.
3. Growth & Gaps Documentation (My Focus)
This is a living record of every action taken to drive performance—what worked, what didn’t, and why. This isn’t just about tracking; it’s about building a knowledge base that can inform and elevate future campaigns.
Why Is maintaining Growth & Gaps Documentation in Performance Marketing so Important?
Some of you might already be thinking, “Isn’t this just redundant?” But the difference lies in strategic reflection and connection. Unlike raw data or automated reports, this type of documentation connects the dots—across campaigns, across teams, and over time. It captures not just what happened, but why it happened, and how it can be replicated or improved.
In performance marketing, it’s known that no strategy remains effective forever. Hence, analyzing both success and failure is key to sustainable growth. What worked in the last quarter may flop in the next.
Even if you’re only focused on replicating success, you still need to deconstruct that success. Without that, you’re just guessing—hoping lightning strikes twice. But when you break it down, learn from it, and document it, success becomes something you can repeat, and even improve upon.
How to Start Documenting?
To help you get started, here are 2 most basic scenarios with questions worth asking (intentionally avoiding here the common questions regarding creatives, tracking, communication, performance comparisons etc.). These aren’t just for post-mortems—they’re for spotting patterns, learning quickly, and scaling wisely.
| If a campaign failed | If a campaign worked |
| Were the KPIs unrealistic? And why. | Were KPIs realistic and well-defined? How? |
| Were external factors (market trends, competition, etc.) responsible? | Is there scope to scale? Is the success repeatable? |
| Were there gaps in market research or strategy or aligning the execution across teams? | What concerns or motivations did converting users express? |
| Where in the funnel did we lose users? | Were users exposed to the brand through other (non-digital or digital) touchpoints? |
| Has the target audience’s behavior changed compared to past analysis? | What optimizations positively impacted the performance and what impacted negatively? |
| Did any part of the campaign perform at all? | What market trends or competitive gaps worked in our favour? |
| Any scope to refine and relaunch instead of scrapping it entirely? | Do converters have repeat actions? Will they need ads to come back again? How far are they from loyalty? |
| Any major activity carried out by any other team either online or on website/app? | Did users promote the brand (e.g. word-of-mouth, social sharing)? |
| What was the before & after impact on organic? | What actions can be taken to retain the users? |
Now let’s focus on how to seamlessly integrate it into your day-to-day performance marketing workflow.
Overcoming these challenges in performance marketing requires a combination of mindset shifts, process changes, and may be incentives 😉. While the incentive part is something for higher management to tackle, here are a few practical ways to address the first two:
- Create Ready-to-Use Templates & Automation: It simplifies the documentation process, reducing mental effort and time investment. Do note that it will take a while to perfect the template for all possible kinds of use cases.
- Assign Clear Ownership, But Make It Collaborative: The “micro documentation” approach allows for more involvement and hopefully habit-building. Break the documentation process into smaller, manageable sections based on expertise and the owner takes the responsibility of stitching it all together.
- Integrate Documentation into the Workflow (Not After It): When documentation becomes part of the process rather than an afterthought, it feels less like an interruption.
- Normalize “Imperfect” Documentation: It reduces the pressure of perfectionism and writing anxiety. Perfection comes with time—start with something, and improve it as you go.
Still Not Feeling the Need to Do It, Right?
I get it—documentation often feels like a job responsibility that’s beyond what’s explicitly stated in JD or discussed. It’s easy to push it aside. Two things that work for me:
- The idea of delivering significant impact through my work whether or not I’m part of the system
- Every learning and every mistake comes at a cost—and in performance marketing, that cost is our marketing budget
It’s over to you now! 🚀
Here’s the gist, shifting a team’s mindset around documentation in performance marketing can be a game-changer—for productivity, onboarding, and even innovation.
Study failures to uncover blind spots, understand what didn’t work, and sharpen your future strategies and analyze successes to identify the drivers behind your wins—so you can repeat, refine, and scale them.
Thank you for taking the time to read my blog. If you have any insights, thoughts, or stories to share, feel free to reach out via the contact form or leave a comment below.
Stay Motivated!