The B.R.E.W. Framework: How We Decide Which Marketing Ideas to Pursue

At any given time, marketing teams are flooded with endless ideas and opportunities. Emerging technologies, channels, strategies, and tactics are constantly surfacing. It’s simply impossible for any team to chase every single idea.

What should you do instead? How can you evaluate each idea and determine which ones deserve your resources?

We’ve faced this challenge too.

That’s why we realized the need for a consistent method to assess ideas. Not just to identify the best ones, but also to clarify why we were pursuing them in the first place.

While getting things done is important, it’s equally crucial to be strategic. Avoid wasting time and resources on initiatives that won’t drive meaningful results.

This led us to create the B.R.E.W. framework.

What is the B.R.E.W. Framework?

The B.R.E.W. framework stands for:

• Business potential
• Reach
• Effort
• Who

B.R.E.W. Framework for Vetting Marketing Ideas

Let’s break down each component:

B: Business Potential

“How effectively can you pitch your product?”

We rate every marketing idea on a scale of 0-3 based on how critical our product is to solving the problem.

• 3 — Our product is an irreplaceable solution to the problem.
• 2 — Our product helps significantly but isn’t essential to solving the problem.
• 1 — Our product can only be mentioned briefly.
• 0 — There’s no clear way to mention our product.

Scoring Business Potential

R: Reach

“Who will see this and how many?”

Reach isn’t solely about numbers—it’s also about relevance. A viral tweet or TikTok video might generate millions of views and a dopamine rush, but if the audience is random, it’s merely noise.

For instance, I once went viral on Threads. Yet, I didn’t gain even a single new follower.

My viral post on Threads

Compare this to an article written by my colleague Louise on tracking AI traffic. The keyword she targeted had minimal search volume:

Almost no search volume for the keyword “track AI traffic”

However, her article was read by decision-makers, even influencing them to adjust their workflows:

A DM from a fellow marketer saying how he started tracking AI traffic based on our blog posts

E: Effort

“How much time and resources would this require? And is it worth it?”

Evaluating effort involves more than just estimating hours. Consider the hidden costs and implications:

• Time: How long will this realistically take to complete?
• Manpower: Do you have sufficient internal resources available?
• Dependencies: Are you reliant on other departments, external vendors, or technology?
• Risk: What’s the likelihood of unforeseen challenges or things going wrong?
• Opportunity cost: Every minute spent on one idea is a minute lost elsewhere. Could your effort be better allocated?

Instead of avoiding ambitious, high-effort ideas, start by asking: “What’s a lower-effort version of this we can test first?”

For example, our two-day conference, Ahrefs Evolve, is a massive marketing effort requiring at least half a year of planning and execution. It involves coordinating with external vendors and internal teams like design. The cost exceeds $400,000.

But we didn’t dive straight into this project. It took years before we decided to host a conference. We began by sponsoring events, then transitioned to hosting light networking sessions at our office.

The journey of Ahrefs’ event marketing

We only scaled and increased complexity after proving value at each step.

W: Who

“Do you have the right people or skills to execute this idea effectively?”

Without the right individuals—or even an internal champion to lead the charge—even the best ideas can stall or fail.

Critically assess your team’s capabilities. Transparently acknowledge strengths and gaps upfront. If necessary, bring in freelancers, consultants, or agencies.

For example, when our Chief Marketing Officer Tim Soulo wanted to build links to his content, he hired an agency instead of relying on the team.

Our CMO hired an agency to help build links

Not because the team lacked knowledge, but because redirecting their time and attention would have detracted from other tasks.

He determined it wasn’t a good use of resources and decided to outsource it to an agency with established SOPs and processes.

1. Targeting the Keyword “Blog Post Ideas”

Before we created B.R.E.W., I once pitched the topic “blog post ideas” to the content team.

There was a simmering feeling within the team that targeting this keyword wasn’t the best use of my time. Not only was it an extremely beginner-level keyword, but its search volume was also on the decline.

Decline in search volume for the keyword “blog post ideas”

It makes sense: with LLMs, who still needs an article to generate blog post ideas? The idea was shot down.

In fact, this was one of the triggers behind B.R.E.W. We wanted to stop evaluating marketing ideas by gut instinct and instead create a process for vetting them.

Here’s how I would evaluate the topic today using B.R.E.W.:

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B.R.E.W	Score	Reasoning
Business Potential	1	You can use Keywords Explorer to generate ideas, but it’s not 100% necessary.
Reach	Decent	Ahrefs’ Keywords Explorer shows a Traffic Potential of 2,300, which is pretty good. However, its actual search volume is declining. A Google search for the topic also shows a “Sources from the web” SERP feature that lists plenty of ideas. Real click-through rates for this topic must have declined significantly. Further, it’s an extremely beginner keyword, so we’re reaching newbies—not our ideal customer (or perhaps in the future).
Effort	Low	I can whip out this post in a day or less.
Who	Me	We have a content team (yes, me) that can make this post.

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We eventually concluded that since it was so low-effort, the payoff was worth it, and therefore, I wrote the post.

2. Programmatic SEO for ‘Top Websites’

In 2023, we launched “Top Websites”: a page showing the top 1,000 most visited websites in the world based on our organic search traffic estimates.

Ahrefs’ Top Websites page

This is how we scored it:

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B.R.E.W	Score	Reasoning
Business Potential	2	While it doesn’t show off our product in action, it heavily features our data and advertises how you’ll need Ahrefs to see search traffic for other websites.
Reach	Very High	Not only do the keywords “most popular websites” and “most visited websites” have tons of traffic potential, but we can also rank for each website’s brand. However, the traffic may not be of the highest quality.
Effort	Medium	Developers were needed, but LLMs made a lot of the work easier (e.g., copy).
Who	Our Product Manager	We have a dedicated product manager to see this project through.

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Here’s a fun fact: this project was actually in the pipeline for years. But it was considered too high-effort—we needed developer resources, copy, design, someone to lead the project, and more.

So, it was never prioritized.

However, things changed. The team grew bigger, so we had more developer resources. We hired a product manager whose responsibilities included programmatic SEO projects.

The advancement of LLMs also made everything easier. For example, we could generate copy for each page without having a poor copywriter writing with glazed-over eyes.

The lesson here: just because a project didn’t score well the first time with B.R.E.W., doesn’t mean you totally give up on it. It simply goes back into your backlog of ideas.

Revisit them once in a while and re-score them. Some of these projects become possible when your team grows, your resources improve, and technology advances.

3. Ahrefs Evolve

In 2024, we organized a 500-person, multi-day conference in Singapore called Ahrefs Evolve.

Here’s how we scored it:

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B.R.E.W	Score	Reasoning
Business Potential	3	The conference is literally Ahrefs Evolve. Since it’s our conference, we can promote our brand and toolset heavily everywhere.
Reach	Medium	Reaching 500 people isn’t a lot. However, these 500 people will likely be decision-makers or people who can influence them. Many of them will also be our customers, with whom we can build closer relationships. They’re even flying down (if they’re not locals) to the conference in Singapore. Talk about commitment.
Effort	Very High	Organizing a conference is no small matter. Lots of coordination between internal teams, external vendors, sponsors, and speakers; a lot of planning and execution; a lot of marketing so that tickets can be sold and sponsors want to sponsor the conference; a lot of fire-fighting as Murphy’s Law dictates. However, we’ve built up to this over the past years. We’re not starting from scratch. We can re-use existing resources and update and upgrade them.
Who	Shermin	We have a dedicated event marketing manager.

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If we had scored our conference from the beginning, it would never have been done. Effort would have been extremely high; we would have to learn and start everything from scratch (and hope to not lose too much money); and we would have to redirect someone from their responsibilities to do it (without any experience!).

Indeed, it was probably the case for many years as we watched our competitors and other SaaS companies launch their own conferences.

However, by reducing the effort and making something smaller first, it reduces the complexity and can serve as proof-of-concept for the channel.

In fact, this is probably how we would have scored our first networking sessions (SEO Beer and Snacks):

Show 10 entries Search:

B.R.E.W	Score	Reasoning
Business Potential	2	Since it’s just networking, it doesn’t have high business potential. But we can increase its business potential by adding branding elements to the meetup (e.g., giving away swag, using branded standees, inviting enterprise clients so we can build goodwill with customers, etc.).
Reach	Low	Networking sessions are typically small. However, they are extremely targeted as the chances of random people turning up are very low.
Effort	Low	We already have an existing venue: our office. We just need to send out invites and get people to come.
Who	Shermin	We have a dedicated event marketing manager. But even before that, I had experience organizing networking events.

Final Thoughts

To get a green light, your marketing idea should be balanced in terms of these four factors.

For example, if there’s a chance to get insane reach, but the business potential is low and effort is high, then it’s probably not worth it. On the other hand, if business potential is high and effort is low, then the idea might make sense even if reach is low.

In the end, no one can tell you whether an idea is good or bad. It’s up to you to vet, score, and evaluate them to see if they have legs.
And remember: even if an idea doesn’t have legs now, it doesn’t mean it’s not viable forever. Things change, and a backlogged idea can become the next idea to execute today.