Methodology
Marketing Miles Per Gallon
How much marketing you get out of every asset you create. It is the decision that most changes what a small team can produce.
Marketing Miles Per Gallon is how much marketing you get out of every asset you create: build one substantial thing, then break it into smaller pieces and distribute them until the asset is spent.
It is a measure of output per asset rather than output per week. We named it because it is the single decision that most changes what a small team can produce, and things worth doing deserve a name.
The four steps
- 01Build the tankOne substantial asset: a guide, a piece of research, a shoot, a recorded conversation. Something with enough in it to be worth returning to.
- 02Break it downPull the asset apart into the pieces already inside it. A guide holds a dozen social posts, several email sections, a handful of graphics and usually a video script.
- 03DistributeRun those pieces across channels on their own schedule, each linking back to the asset. The asset gets found; the pieces do the finding.
- 04Measure the mileageAsk how far one asset traveled, not how many things were posted. The number that matters is output per asset, not output per week.
The problem it solves
Ask a small marketing team what is hard and the answer is almost never “we have run out of ideas”. It is “we cannot keep up”.
That sounds like a staffing problem. It is usually an asset problem. A team working from a content calendar is committing to produce something new every week, which means every week starts from nothing. A fresh canvas every single week. Nobody sustains that, and the work gets thinner as the quarter goes on because the easiest way to hit a weekly number is to lower the bar.
The alternative is to front-load the thinking. Build one substantial asset properly, then spend the following weeks taking it apart. The hard part happens once.
What one asset actually yields
The claim sounds like an agency line until you do it once. Take a guide with eight or nine sections:
| Piece | Comes from | Roughly |
|---|---|---|
| Short posts | One per section, each carrying that section’s argument on its own rather than summarizing it | 8 to 10 |
| Longer articles | The two strongest sections, taken deeper than the guide had room for | 2 |
| Graphics | Any comparison, list or sequence already in the text | 3 to 5 |
| Emails | The introduction is one. The conclusion is a different one | 2 |
| Video script | The whole argument, compressed to five minutes | 1 |
| FAQ and sales answers | The questions you had to settle while writing it | 5 or so |
That is comfortably more than twenty distributable pieces from one act of creation, and every one of them points back at the asset. The asset gets found. The pieces do the finding.
The cost of the guide does not change. The number you divide it by does, by roughly an order of magnitude. That is a cheaper lever than any hiring decision, and it is available at any size.
Building an asset that comes apart well
This is the part that makes it a method rather than a cleanup exercise. You decide how the asset breaks up before you build it, which changes what you build.
- One argument per section. A section that makes three points cannot leave the guide intact. A section that makes one can be lifted whole.
- Write the sections to stand alone. No “as we saw above”. Each one should survive being read by someone who has never seen the rest.
- Put the structure in early. Comparisons, sequences and lists are the pieces that travel furthest, and they are almost free to extract once the thinking is done.
- Say something arguable. An asset with no position produces pieces nobody quotes. This is the difference between an asset with high mileage and a long document.
- Record the questions you had to answer. They are the FAQ, the schema, and the thing sales stops having to improvise.
How this differs from repurposing
Repurposing is something you do to content after the fact: an article exists, so someone turns it into a carousel. It is useful and it is not the same thing.
Marketing Miles Per Gallon is a decision made before the asset exists. You are not salvaging value from something already finished. You are building a thing designed to come apart, which is why the pieces are good rather than merely derived.
Where this shows up in our work
It is the operating assumption behind everything we run. A quarter of Managed Marketing is one substantial asset and the distribution that comes out of it, not a calendar of unrelated posts. Organic Marketing is the same logic applied to search and social.
It is also why our first question is rarely “what should we post”. It is “what do you know that is worth building properly”, because that is the question whose answer determines everything downstream.
The term was named on episode 17 of Demand & Brand, and it has survived every engagement since.
Where to start
Pick the thing you know that your competitors would not say out loud. Build it properly, once, in whatever form suits it. Then spend a quarter taking it apart instead of starting over every Monday.
If you want to see what that looks like on a real calendar, here is a quarter mapped out. If you would rather we ran it, tell us what is not working.
Common questions
What is Marketing Miles Per Gallon?
Marketing Miles Per Gallon is how much marketing you get out of every asset you create: build one substantial thing, then break it into smaller pieces and distribute them until the asset is spent. It is a measure of output per asset rather than output per week.
How do you calculate Marketing Miles Per Gallon?
Count the distributable pieces produced from a single asset. One guide typically yields a dozen social posts, two longer articles, several email sections, a handful of graphics and a video script. The asset costs the same either way, so the count is the whole variable.
Why does Marketing Miles Per Gallon matter for small teams?
Because staying visible looks like a staffing problem and is usually an asset problem. A team that asks "what do we post this week" burns out. A team that asks "how far can this asset travel" can hold a cadence for a year without adding headcount.
What makes a good asset to break up?
Something with a real argument and enough substance to be worth returning to: a guide, original research, a recorded conversation, or a shoot. Thin assets do not break up well, because there was never more than one idea in them.
Is Marketing Miles Per Gallon the same as content repurposing?
Repurposing usually means reformatting something after the fact. Marketing Miles Per Gallon is a planning decision made before the asset exists: you build it knowing how it comes apart, which changes what you build and how you structure it.
Would you rather we just ran it?
Zangardi Studio is Patrick and Vanessa Zangardi, with a bench of writers, designers, developers and editors behind us. Most clients buy the whole engine. Any capability can be bought on its own.