5 Ways to Simplify Marketing and Boost Results

Do you want to boost your impact as a marketing pro? Learn to make complex things simple. It’s an often-overlooked but essential superpower that every great marketer needs in their arsenal. 

Why Simplicity in Marketing Matters

Information Overload

You’ve seen social media feeds. They’re loud. People are already overloaded with information in their day-to-day lives; your goal as a marketer is to cut through, not add to, the noise.

Complexity Creates Confusion

Customers buy things they understand. If you can’t state your objective clearly and concisely, the customer will move on to someone who can explain it better.

In the Battle between Creativity and Clarity, Clarity Wins

As creatives, we can get caught up in the beauty of language or the aesthetics of design and forget the business of marketing. You want to create beautiful, effective marketing. In the war between creativity and clarity, clarity wins, every time.

So, what can you do to simplify your marketing message so that it comes through loud and clear?

5 Key Ways to Simplify Your Marketing

Simplify Your Writing

It’s time to let go of your aim to meet the maximum word count. After you’ve written copy, look for ways to make it more concise by removing unnecessary fluff. Frankly, you’re going to have to unlearn some of what you learned in college writing classes and get your work down to what will land a punch. Writing for marketing is more like poetry than prose; you want the fewest words said in the best order.

Eliminate Technical Jargon

Aim to remove any words that only an insider in your industry would know. This can repel a potential customer and make you seem out of touch with their needs. Instead, show your customer how you can solve their problem in language they can relate to and understand.

Simplify Processes

Whether the process for working with you is five steps or 25 steps, you want the customer to know and understand what it’s going to be like to work with you. Your process of serving customers might be more sophisticated than your competition, and it might even be better. Take that sophisticated process and boil it down to three or four steps, each of which should matter to your customer, so that they can see clearly what happens next when they reach out to you.

Eliminate Complex Choices

The cereal aisle at the grocery store gives some people decision paralysis. All of those choices can overwhelm the average shopper. Your menu of options can have a similar effect if it is overly complex.

When casual dining and fast-food restaurants adopted the value menu, they took fast-food marketing to the next level. Today, the most successful chains have very simple menus that make ordering fast and easy.

How can you simplify your product or service menu so that your offerings make immediate sense to the customer?

Simplify the Call-to-Action

Do you remember the movie, What About Bob?, starring Bill Murray? Murray’s character has an extreme case of decision paralysis coupled with loads of phobias. His psychiatrist recommends following the advice in his book and taking baby steps to manage his life choices.

As your customer makes their own life choices, whether that’s choosing a college or becoming a foster parent or building a custom home, your goal is to break that giant goal down into bite-sized pieces. You don’t (usually) ask someone to marry you after a first date. Find the simplest and most logical first step that can help them move toward a sale, and then use your marketing to move them further along to becoming your customer.

If you feel overwhelmed by the degree of complexity you’re facing with your marketing, Spire’s team of marketing strategists and content creators specialize in making the complex simple. For help, sign up for an assessment or connect with a member of our sales team. We look forward to seeing how we can work together!