The Biggest Marketing Lesson I've Learned

When you start working professionally in the digital marketing space, you start taking notice of the products and services you interact with online. I can no longer mindlessly scroll through my social media apps or email inbox like I used to. I’m constantly aware that I’m being targeted and marketed to.

There are a lot of brands I admire from a marketing perspective, regardless of whether or not I’m a customer. For instance, I’ve never bought anything from Dollar Shave Club, but I enjoy their video content. I’ve never ordered a meal from Hello Fresh, but their influencer-based ads are ubiquitous in my news feed these days. I don’t own anything from Ban.Do, but they make beautiful emails that I almost always open.

Marketing is not a one-size-fits-all concept. The creative possibilities are endless, and what works for one brand is in no way guaranteed to work for another (even if they are in the same industry). But at the end of the day, I believe all marketing— or at least good marketing— hinges on two main ideas.

Simplicity & Specificity.

Why simplicity?

I adhere to Donald Miller’s theory in his Storybrand framework that states if you confuse, you’ll lose.

Many marketers fall into the trap of providing as much information as possible to prospective customers about you or your products.

For instance, you’ll cram 10 products into one email blast for a limited time sale. Or maybe you’re an agency and your main sales page is a mile long and includes every single detail of your services.

Sure, it’s great that you have a huge sale going on or that you provide tons of value to your clients… But trying to tell (or sell) your customers everything is actually the best way to get them to buy nothing.

Our attention spans are dwindling, our inboxes are filling up, and our Instagram feeds are never-ending. People don’t want to have to think. It’s our job as marketers to do the thinking for them.

And really, customers don’t care about you or your business as much as you do. They are coming to you to find a solution to a problem - not to discover 20 more problems they didn’t even know they had.

Why specificity?

Instead of overwhelming your customers with tons of resources or products or solutions, it’s our job to break things down and make the customer journey as easy as possible.

For example, my company sells books online. That’s our end game. We used to send out promotional emails all the time that went a little something like this…

Subject line: Save 50% off Graduation Gifts - This Week Only!

…and then in the email, we’d have 6 of our best books and gifts for graduates listed with links to the store product pages.

Easy, right? These “round-up” emails do okay. Not terrible, but no a best performer by any means. Let’s say this one made $3k.

And then, we tried this one:

Subject line: Prepare your grad for the road ahead with our bestselling graduation gift

...and in the email, we featured one book. Yep, one book. It was on sale for $8.99.

That email made $7k in one day.

Because we removed the paradox of choice and told people what specifically they should buy, they listened. They weren’t overwhelmed by multiple products. The call to action was clear, and they didn’t have to think too hard about what product was right for them.

Plus, when you niche down and only focus on one product, you can really sell that product.

In that email, we were able to include supplemental content like customer reviews and endorsements, a video trailer, the table of contents info, interior shots of what the book looked like inside, and a brief excerpt from a chapter.

When you tailor down your messaging to the most simple and specified it can be, you eliminate doubt and have more room to go deeper into the “why” of your product or service. And by doing so, you’re able to likely fulfill your brand’s mission and serve the needs of your customer better.