Simplicity Is the Best Strategy
‘Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away,’ said Antoine de Saint-Exupery, and how right he was! It’s true not only for literature and art, but for marketing as well, which come to think of it, has become an art.
Keeping Things Simple Is Not Simple
The Web gives the illusion that it has unlimited space, and that vagueness predisposes marketers to create loads of content instead of focusing on making a few high quality pieces, to use multiple calls to action instead of just a single great one, to run two or more marketing strategies at once instead of focusing all their time, energy, and budget on one awesome campaign.
If you take the time to look at the brands that are prospering and at the marketers that sell their products in the millions, it won’t take you long to figure out that although they might use different approaches to marketing, they all believe in simplicity. Apple, Facebook, Google, Amazon, eBay. Different businesses, different marketing strategies, but all perfect examples of ‘applied simplicity,’ from their name and logo, to their branding, marketing, web design, and advertising campaigns.
Achieving Simplicity
Okay, so simplicity is good. But how do you achieve it? It’s certainly not easy, because simplicity requires focus and determination. Consider the followings tips.
- Focus on your niche, more specifically, on the narrowest market possible.
- Create one message that permeates all you do online, from web design to article writing and marketing, and believe in that message, and be faithful to it.
- Do away with ‘approximate’ keywords. Use only highly-accurate, highly-relevant keywords.
- Simplify your web design, creating a minimalist website whose focus is on the content.
- Maintain a more compact and detailed marketing database.
- Write clearer, better headlines and calls to action.
- Offer great stuff for free.
- Monitor, measure, and analyse everything, from web traffic and responses to blog posts.
