Marketing Minimalism – Do Less Marketing. Better!

I am on a mission to help bricks and mortar business owners around the world create better, more profitable marketing, which is why I wrote the High Impact Marketing Manifesto and created the High Impact Marketing Club.In the Manifesto, I outline four fundamental cornerstones to developing High Impact Marketing for your business.  In this article, I want to focus on Cornerstone #2: Do Less Marketing… better!

At first glance, this may appear to be a contradiction or even blasphemy for a marketer to even utter these words, but it was none other than Albert Einstein who, when describing how to develop a good theory, is said to have asserted, “everything should be kept as simple as possible, but no simpler.”

For much in life, this is not bad advice.

For example, for the past two years I’ve been working out with nothing more than a cannonball with a handle (a.k.a. the kettlebell).  My trainer is Pat Flynn, who during these two years has become an internationally recognized expert on fitness minimalism and kettlebells, taught me the importance of doing the least amount of training to get the most benefits.  I am now a firm believer I can maintain a decent level of fitness and conditioning with nothing more than a single, heavy kettlebell and a place to walk, sprint or crawl.

Compare this approach to all the fancy gadgets and gyms I could be spending my time with or in (as a side note Pat’s Chronicles of Strength blog is quite the interesting read and is recommended if you’re looking for a different approach to getting fit).

While I didn’t realize it initially, I’ve taken the same stance with marketing. I’m a strong believer in doing fewer things in my marketing for more effect, instead of doing more things with potential negative side effects.  I call this “marketing minimalism.”  I realize for some reading this, I just threw a glass of ice water on them and this concept may sound odd coming from a 16 year marketing-consulting veteran.  Others may have an intuition the path to better marketing results is by doing less.  Either way, hear me out.

I’m not proposing you work from a mountain top (unless this is by choice) and I’m not promoting slothfulness or laziness when it comes to crafting your marketing campaigns.  I am, however, suggesting you reach your marketing goals by doing less marketing – better.  This is not about doing “only a little bit of marketing” when you need to boost sales, but instead is about ignoring all the things you could do and doing what you should do to attract the ideal prospect or customer to your business.

It’s realizing not all marketing tactics and strategies matter equally and determining which will enable you to connect with your “ideal” prospects and customers best.   High Impact Marketing is about how narrow you can go with a laser-focused message and implementing selected strategies and tactics which create the most rewards.

It’s about not having to constantly find new customers, but rather serving existing customers with more.  It’s much more effective to create and supply more services/products (either self-created or from a strategic partner) to your satisfied customers than it is to have to get a new customer.

High Impact Marketing is about the LEAST amount of marketing required to reach your goals.  So for example if you want to generate 1,000 leads for a new product, what is the minimum amount of marketing you need to do to accomplish this goal?  How can you be as effective (e.g. doing marketing the right way) and efficient (doing the right marketing at the right time) as possible in developing your messaging, media choices and marketing targets?

I’ve built the High Impact Marketing foundation on this “less can be more” approach and can sum it up this way.  High Impact Marketing:

• Uses the fewest components to produce the most results.
• Clears away the clutter and rises above the noise bombarding your audience.
• Is about getting laser-focused on your audience needs and wants connecting your products and services with them.
• Creates more value for prospects and customers, while consuming less of their time to understand your message and respond.
• Eschews the world of shiny objects and gets you to focus on the time-tested marketing principles which will never go away.

High Impact Marketing focuses on helping business owners, like you, be more effective and efficient with your marketing.

High Impact Marketers become “masters of exclusion.”  They’re focused on what works and disregard everything else.

The Manifesto was written for the bricks and mortar business owner and is a pithy and powerful guide to creating better, more effective marketing.  It was designed to be read in its entirety in one sitting and I cannot stress enough just how important the four cornerstones and 27 building blocks I share are.