In the last post on minimalist marketing, which talks about staying focused, I suggested that having a marketing plan is the best strategy you can employ to simplify your marketing, and keep things simple. Problem is, most people (if they have a marketing plan) make their plans way to complicated…

Keep things simple...

I structure my marketing plans in a simple, seven-step process. I will list them here, and then go through them one by one to help you understand how this works…

1. Understand Your Market and Competition - Does the market want what I sell? Can I capture enough market share to break even? Is there too much competition for what I want to offer?
Understanding this is very important when determining your marketing strategy. That’s why it is the first step. You are, in essence, answering the question of can my product even sell in my market.

If you don’t know your market, then you will never be able to focus on what you do. You will waste time and money trying things without really ever knowing it it will work. You are throwing darts blindly into space…

2. Understand Your Customer - Who they are, what they want, what motivates them to buy, how do they buy?
Knowing the answers to these enables you to make finite decisions on how to help your customer take action.

I stipulate that this is constantly evolving, and worthy of permanent monitoring, but “guessing” on these questions means you are waste time and money. This complicates your business life.

3. Pick A Niche - If “everyone who sleeps on a bed” is your target market, you will fail.
This is critical in minimalist marketing…if you are aiming for too broad a target with your marketing dollars and effort, you will miss most of your shots and waste lots of time and money.

4. Develop Your Marketing Message - Your story…what you do, how you persuade someone to let you help solve a problem or fulfill a need…
This is critical in that you must keep this message SIMPLE. A complicated message is harder to tell. And less effective.

5. Determine Your Message Delivery Vehicles - Social media, television ads, direct mail, billboards, face-to-face networking?
This is a key juncture…it is where you can clutter your program and stifle it recklessly. Choose ONLY the mediums that effectively reach your niche targets. Nothing more, nothing less.

6. Determine Your Sales and Marketing Goals - How many sales needed to turn a profit? How many prospects needed to make enough sales?
Nine times out of ten, most small businesses I talk to never really figure out this number…

If you need to reach 1,000 prospects to make enough sales to turn a profit, don’t waste time or money doing things that distract you from this goal. Your plan should be designed to do ONE THING: enable you to talk with 1,000 prospects. Nothing more, nothing less.

7. Understand Your Marketing Budget - Once you know your sales + marketing goals, you can figure out what it will cost…
What else do I need to say here? If you don’t have the budget to reach your prospects, or spending more than you need to, then what is the point?

Work your plan. Focus on simplifying it so that your plan does it’s job. Don’t add layers of complexity that put undue stress on your business, complicate your life, and sets you up to fail.

Your plan is designed to keep things simple. What do you think?

[399 words]

If you’re paying attention, you know new hardware and software debuts every day. New social web sites seem to launch just as often.

And it seems popular social websites and technology are upgraded monthly, rendering the smart phone you purchased just yesterday obsolete…

What to do?

Well, for one thing, it is easy to allow oneself to be distracted by all this new stuff. Trust me, I know. I have this deep fear that I am missing out by not immediately adopting the latest thing, and that my business marketing will suffer as a result.

Problem is, a lot of us get swept up in the fervor, and we spend all our time trying everything.

The fear of the unknown makes us do silly and unproductive things, cluttering our marketing world.

And what we end up losing is time…time to do good work, to serve clients, to learn, to teach, to engage with our network.

Now don’t get me wrong. I am not suggesting you bury your head in the sand and ignore the latest developments. I named my company Intrepid because I want people to be bold and fearless in trying new things…

I just want you to be smart about it. And initiate tests and experiments with new technologies that actually are in alignment with your marketing strategy.

You know your niche. You know your target market. You know your customer. If there are four new technologies you want to try – I’d select one. And focus like a laser beam on that one concept – and invest enough time to effectively determine if there is merit to incorporating it into your program.

Spreading yourself too thin – by coupling too many experiments with executing your regular program – you risk flubbing ALL of it – and injuring your main marketing strategy and not ascertaining a true test of the new idea.

You should be curious about new ideas, new tactics…but it doesn’t mean you have to TRY all of them. Use your RSS reader to keep an eye on what the blogs are saying. Monitor LinkedIn groups on the subject. Engage your Twitter stream and see what that crowd has to say about it.

If at some point you legitimately determine there is merit to testing – then do it. Just don’t needlessly distract yourself.

What do you think?

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We’ve said that marketing is about storytelling. To be a good storyteller, you need to be creative. To be creative, you need to focus.

To focus, you simply cannot be distracted by the dozens of little tasks that consume an entrepreneur’s typical day.

Invoicing. Research. Follow-up. Admin. Thank-you notes. Phone calls. Scheduling appointments. Email. More email. Vendor management. Subcontractor management. The list goes on and on.

Here is the problem as I see it: to run a business, you have to perform a series of daily, mundane tasks. Difficult to get around them. But they do distract you from the important work. Some people use these tasks as excuses for why they procrastinate. The biggest problem isn’t that these pesky tasks exist – it is that we allow them to distract us. We let these tasks get in our own way. They clutter our mind.

But just how in the heck do you free your mind – and free up time – from these tasks, enabling you to focus on the important work of marketing your business?

1. You can hire staff to handle them. If you can afford that.
2. You can outsource them to a virtual assistant. When I tried this, I spent as much time managing the VA as I did performing the tasks myself.
3. You can read from thousands of articles full of tips on how to do better time management, efficiency improvements, etc.
4. You can download/purchase from hundreds of applications and software that promise to help you better manage your administrative chores.

All good solutions. If they actually work for you.

But at the end of the day, most of these are just band-aids, or a different coat of paint on the same problem. And you still have to focus time and energy on them, even if you are using the most innovative and hip software solution!

Honestly, the first step is to acknowledge the problem, recognize that it is happening. This is a big step. Then, I really think it comes down to an attitude change, a commitment to re-channel your focus, a devotion to a new way of doing things when it comes to these tasks. Here are some of my thoughts on the subject:

1. Don’t fall behind. Get a system and process in place, and keep up with it. Falling behind and then having to spend hours to catch up is not a good way to do it. So, devote a few minutes EACH DAY to keep on top of things. Don’t let them pile up.

1.5. Or, devote two hours a week, at a fixed point in time, and do ALL of your admin work in one fell swoop. This way, you are free to spend most of the week focused only on creative work that matters.

2. Determine your creative time, and NEVER do admin work in that creative space. When are you most creative? In the morning hours before lunch? Evenings? Just know this, and never let ADMIN work intrude on that time and space.

3. List all of the things you feel you need to do on a daily basis. Review them carefully. What tasks can be eliminated? Refined? Outsourced? And ask yourself seriously, how much of this is stuff I do to procrastinate and avoid the hard creative work, or to avoid that difficult customer?

4. Move to the cloud. To be honest, what has helped me the most is moving the management and storage of all of my administrative data to internet-based sources. This way, I can do the tasks from anywhere, whenever I want to. This frees up large chunks of my time to focus on my real work.

5. Gary Vaynerchuk says that to be successful, stop wasting valuable time building your dream business by watching Lost. He says it in virtually every speech I have seen. And he’s right. However, we all love to break away for a little mind blow and watch TV or listen to some music. I find this to be a very good time to bang out the mindless administrative work I have to do (when you see me tweeting about music, I am usually sending invoices and doing other admin tasks).

6. Don’t put admin tasks on your daily To Dos. Your real work is being creative. So don’t let that focus drift by stacking your To Dos with meaningless admin work. Decide that admin tasks are NOT work, your real work anyway.

7. A lot of experts recommend closing your current day by investing a few minutes planning out the coming day. I think this is great advice. What I recommend is coupling your admin work with this daily planning process. Set aside a few minutes – at the end of the day – or right after lunch when the food is digesting – and quickly bang out these tasks. You need to carve out large chunks of uninterrupted time to focus on the real work that matters.

8. There is a growing acceptance of the notion of checking your email just a few times a day, so as to not let email distract you from work. Another idea is to couple checking your email with your admin tasks, and group these functions as one thing so again, not to distract you from the real work.

Let’s be honest, some of this work is completely necessary to our core business function. All I am really saying here is think through your admin process, manage it much better, and then maintain. I don’t think you should systematize your creative process, but I sure think you can do this with your daily admin tasks.

It is worth it to dedicate time in the short-term to get this right. Having a simple routine will free up time to focus on the meaningful creative work, or just to free up time to do whatever you want… Most of the time, we let these tasks get in our own way. Stop doing that. And create!

What do you think? Any better/other ideas?

[To read the entire Minimalist Marketing series, CLICK HERE]
[cartoon by @gapingvoid]
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cartoon by @gapingvoid

Do any of the following scenarios apply to you?

1. You spend too much time on social media apps like Twitter and Facebook, telling yourself that you are “learning” from your community. When in fact, you are just horsing around, or broadcasting one-way…

2. Under the guise of research and learning, you read too many books, most of which don’t really apply to you, or what you do.

3. Or more likely, you read a lot of books with the intention of learning, and do not implement ANYTHING that you learn.

4. You subscribe to 250 blogs in your RSS reader, telling yourself that you need to know what others in your space are doing. And you spend hours sifting through clutter and don’t spend enough time actually reading, or learning.

Yeah. Me too.

DISCLOSURE: Let me make this clear. I am NOT suggesting that you stop reading – and learning – to improve your craft. I am suggesting you make more careful choices about what you read – and then take steps to implement things you learn – things that will have measurable impact.

In fact, you are a fool NOT to read more. Learn more. And apply what you learn. I just think too many of us do not practice good habits when we seek to learn (In fact, I could make the point that practicing minimalist marketing should free up valuable time to learn more…).

So, here are a few of my ideas on ways to simplify your learning, and get more out of the time investment:

1. Limit the amount of industry blogs you follow on your RSS reader. A lot of them say the same things. Winnow your list down to the ones that really teach, engage their community, and make you think. Perfectly cool to subscribe to “new” blogs to check them out, but if they don’t add any value, remove them. I also make it a practice to schedule time each day to review feeds on my RSS. Waiting several days and having to scan through hundreds and hundreds of new feeds isn’t conducive to productive time.

2. Cut down the amount of books you read. Wow, this is hard. And I don’t like to suggest reading less. I just want you to read smarter. These days, it is easy to get online reviews of books – enabling you to find the books that really seem to make a difference.

3. When engaged on the social web, ONLY spend time focused on your two marketing goals: initiating conversation with the right people (prospects, customers, referral partners), AND sharing other people’s content.

4. When you do read a book with the intention of learning something to improve your craft, make a conscious effort to do whatever it takes to record new ideas to implement later: make notes in the margins, highlight key phrases, record audio notes, or do what I did once, which was take a photo of a page I wanted to remember…

5. And then implement them! I mean, really. What’s the point of investing all that time and energy?

6. Make careful decisions about who you network with face-to-face. I have a passion for meeting people at an event, and then suggesting a meeting over coffee to explore synergies. Sometimes these coffees lead to business, new referral partners, or can just be solid learning experiences. But over the years, I have had a lot of pleasant coffees that while the conversation was enjoyable, it didn’t result in any value (for my marketing learning). With my limited time, I have to be more selective with whom I spend time with. You should do the same.

Remember, the goal of minimalist marketing is to simplify, to cut away the clutter so that you can focus on the core work that matters, and leads to more profits. This includes the learning you do…

What do you think? Agree? Disagree? Do you have any other ideas?

[the original MINIMALIST MARKETING post]
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We’ve all experienced it.

You went to a website, but didn’t take action. You read a sales brochure, but tossed it aside when you finished reading. Or you said “Let me get back to you!” after a sales person pitched you.

Why didn’t you take any action? Why didn’t you buy?

Well, there could be dozens of reasons. But one common reason might be the message – and message delivery – was too complicated. And you didn’t know how to proceed.

This happens all the time…

1. The potential buyer can’t find the “Buy Now” button on the website. There was too much crap on the website.
2. There isn’t an easily identifiable “call to action” on the brochure. All the “Pulitzer” prize-winning copy and photos, and design elements look great. But it is all clutter.
3. The seller didn’t make the simple ask. Oh sure, the seller said a lot of cool stuff, used a lot of big words, but never actually asked for the sale…

My co-host Stone Payton and I had Theo Jamison on our High Velocity Radio Show recently. She was speaking about some simple, yet profound and meaningful, actions a business could take that would have a dramatic and positive impact on their customer experience. I mean, seriously, these were simple and inexpensive ideas…

Stone said something like “and I bet the business said it was too simple to work, right? Only complicated solutions could possibly work.”

He’s right. Why do we make things so complicated in business? Process can be simple. Design can be simple. Systems can be simple. Sales can be simple.

We have a tendency to think that fancy design, bells + whistles, and flowing flowery language are impressive and make potential customers say “ohhhhhhh.”

But most of the time it clutters and confuses.

You have something to sell. It is something that people need. It can make their life better, their business better. So why do we insist on making it harder – and more complicated – for people to buy?

Minimalists strip away the clutter to focus on what matters, on what is most important. So, strip away all the clutter so that your customer can buy from you. Without having to crawl through a complicated maze of words, pics, buttons, ads, graphics and platitudes to do what they really want to do – become your customer.

What do you think?

[my original Minimalist Marketing post]
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[pic from borderfilms on flickr]

Alicia Arenas

I had the real pleasure and honor to be invited by Intrepid friend Alicia Arenas to contribute a guest post to her blog, Sanera, the People Development Company.

In the spirit of March Madness, Alicia has a fine collection of marketing thought leaders assembled for a daily publication of some great, thought provoking content on marketing. Her series is called March Marketing Madness. I am honored to be included in this list. My sincerest thanks, Alicia!

HERE IS MY POST, called “Unclutter Your Marketing.”

P.S. By the way, Alicia’s blog is really good stuff. You should subscribe to her RSS feed.

People love a good story. Stories teach. Stories draw people in. Good stories make you stick around to see how it ends. More importantly, good stories are remembered. And MOST importantly, good stories are retold…

And yet, so many entrepreneurs fail to market themselves effectively with storytelling. Why do they fail at this? I happen to have a theory.

[And I am not talking about those who DO NOT use storytelling in their marketing.]

My theory is they are too exhausted from trying to tell too many stories. All at once. See, they are reaching for too broad a market, casting too large a net. And in the end, they will confuse the market – and exhaust themselves – and do a poor job targeting – and reaching – their core target audience.

A minimalist strips away all the clutter and excess, enabling them self to focus only on what matters most. As marketers, we need to apply the same principle to our message.

If we are telling too many stories, the message will be lost. Those we are fortunate enough to have listening to us will be confused.

This process is simple:

1. Identify your MAIN target market.
2. Determine the ONE message that will move that market to action.
3. Deliver your message – your story – to that market, free of clutter and distraction.

Simple.

What do you think?

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[The original post on Minimalist Marketing that inspired this series]
[photo by _marmota on flickr]

cartoon by @gapingvoid

Have you ever attended a networking session, and encountered this scenario? Say a mechanic gets up to speak, and he says “A good lead for me today is anyone you know who owns a car or truck.”

What the?

Hearing this is like nails on a chalkboard for me. I have a feeling this guy is thinking this is good for him, in that he is casting a wide net to catch ALL fish.

But sadly, this is a sign of a completely LAZY marketer. Someone taking the easy way out. And my guess is his business is struggling. I mean, seriously. What does he think I am going to do, give him my entire rolodex?

In fact, this mechanic is doing the exact opposite of what he should do to grow his business, and find MORE customers. He needs to do what will feel quite counter-intuitive to him – laser focus on one specific niche.

What happens when you cast too wide a net? You find very few clients.  And what happens then? You take on TOO MANY of the wrong clients. And then you are overwhelmed with too much “bad” work, and probably for too small a fee.

Either way, applying some minimalist principles to your targeting process will pay big dividends to your marketing program.

Focus on ONE type of prospect. Just one. In the case of the mechanic? Don’t narrow your focus to Fords. Narrow your focus to Ford pick-ups.

[This doesn't mean the mechanic can't help fix a Chevy should it pull into the garage - it just means his marketing focus should be on Ford pick-ups...ONLY.]

But this only works under two conditions:

One, that you become the best in the market at fixing Ford pick-ups. You should become known as the go-to guy in the event anyone’s Ford pick-up needs servicing. I mean it…the best in your market.

And two, you are going to have to adjust your marketing program to target owners of Ford pick-ups. This is easier than casting a large net, I promise. But it does require some creative thinking, some strategy, and a sustained effort over time to reach out and build real relationships with owners of Ford pick-ups.

The other minimalist impact on your marketing as a result of narrowing your focus? You then also simplify your marketing message. What you say to Ford pick-up owners is different than if you had to speak to ALL car and truck owners. [And if you don't understand this concept...call me. We need to talk.] But if you are targeting too many people, you probably have too many marketing messages. As a result, your message is muddled, and your marketing suffers…

Narrowing your focus to a specific niche simplifies your marketing, and makes it less complicated. Selling is hard enough. Don’t make it more complicated than it has to be.

What do you think?

[See the original post that inspired the Minimalist Marketing series]
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cartoon by @gapingvoid

I am as big an advocate of fully engaging on the social web as anyone…

By this, I mean that you should blog. You should read other blogs via your RSS reader, and be a part of conversations on those blogs. And you should be active on all those other social web tools such as Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Flickr, YouTube, Foursquare, etc. etc…

But you know as well as I do that if you are not careful, you can lose control. And your activity on the social web will be ALL CONSUMING. And you can spend HOURS playing in the sandbox and not advance your business goals.

It has happened to me. And I am working hard to figure out ways to simplify my presence and activity there. Without sacrificing the benefits.

Here is my best advice to you in terms of how you should view the social web as a marketing strategy for your business:

FOCUS ONLY ON ENGAGING AND SERVING PEOPLE.

If you only do this, you will be on the right path to getting the results you want on the social web. Here are some tips to apply minimalist principles to your social web strategy:

Keep Connections Relevant. It really is quality over quantity. Who cares if you have 100,000 followers if none of them care what you say? Don’t focus time and energy on just racking up hollow follower counts (and do the things listed below, and your list will grow naturally).

Look out for a few key words. If you help authors, you should be searching for messages that contain the word “authors.” You will find someone who needs your help – if you are looking and listening.

Strike up sincere conversation. Don’t just send out one-way sales messages. Find people you can help or want to know, and talk to them. It is these conversations that will lead to business opportunities.

Share with your community. If you are not trying to generate a meaningful conversation, then you should be focused on sharing meaningful content. This helps your network, and can lead to conversations too…

That’s it. Your time on the social web really should be kept that simple. Make it a goal to connect in a meaningful way with ONE person a day. Before long, you have quite a powerful network.

Too often, we get distracted and just lose our way. We get caught up artificially growing our followers, or playing with shiny new tools, or focused on self-promotion.

So keep it minimal. Keep it simple. It is easy to lose sight of your real business purpose on the social web. Keep your goals, and the activity you do on the social web, simple. Follow only the right people. Read only the blogs that help you advance your cause. Do this, and you’re on the right path!

What do you think?

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Every day, I visit dozens and dozens of websites. And I run the gamut from great design to crap. But what I find the most frustrating about many of the sites I visit is the pure chaos that ensues when I get there. By this I mean there is so much happening on that page, that I am not sure what to do or where to go when I get there. In other words, there is too much clutter.

Now, full disclosure here. I am NOT a web designer – I rely on my design team to execute my vision. Like any vendor, there are those who are good at what they do, and there are those who are not. And there are probably lots of schools of thought here, and I welcome discussion on the subject.

As part of my exercise in studying and appreciating minimalist marketing, I want to have a conversation about what I, as a typical consumer, feel is necessary when visiting a website – and the value of applying minimalist principles to this part of your marketing arsenal.

The lens I want you to view this exercise through it NOT that you dig your own site design, but that your TARGET MARKET is able to navigate and take the intended actions you want them to. We often don’t test and see how our customers are actually going to use our site, and if they find it cluttered and complicated.

Here is my suggested list (add more in comments please) of things to think about when it comes to keeping your web presence not only simple and minimalist, but effective:

1. Don’t clutter up each blog post with a ton of images, videos, and other graphics. Keep it simple for the RSS readers. There is a reason it is called really simple syndication…
2. Is the description of what you do to serve and help people clear and simple?
3. And is that description easy to find?
4. Is your call-to-action easy to find, and is it easy to take action?
5. Do you have way too many advertisements? Earning money from web ads is cool, but don’t let the layout and design of your paid ads distract from true purpose of your website.
6. Do you have too many widgets, plug-ins, and other whatzits that are distracting visitors from the true mission of the site? Use only those that advance your goals…
7. Are your blog categories, tags, topics simple and organized? Or are they a complete mess, where half of your posts are “uncategorized?”
8. When you incorporate video, are your videos a distraction? Or are they an important supplement to the message you are trying to deliver? Think carefully before inserting a video and determine whether it helps make the point you are trying to make. Don’t add video just because it is cool…
9. Same goes for audio and podcasts…
10. Is it easy to find the RSS subscribe button?
11. We all love bells and whistles, flash, and fancy schmancy graphics. But are they really necessary?
12. Does your navigation bar make it easy for visitors to find what they need?
13. If you incorporate e-commerce in your site, is your process simple, clean, and easy to execute?
14. Do you use email forms? Do they ask for more information than is necessary? Keep those simple and easy to complete, and only ask for the essential data you need.
15. You are wise to have a professional design your site. But don’t let them build you an overly complicated design full of clutter. Simple can be beautiful. And remember, the #1 website on the planet has less than 40 words on it…
16. Less focus on bells and whistles, and more focus on SEO and keywords will serve you well…

What do you think? Am I off base here? Am I missing anything?

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[photo by _marmota]