Why Most Businesses Overcomplicate Their Marketing Strategy

Let’s be real: Most founders don’t need more marketing tactics. There is a ton of content out there about how to handle your marketing — so much that it’s overwhelming.

Marketing also accounts for a large part of business budgets, adding up to nearly 10% of the cost for the average business.

It’s easy to chase trends, try to be on every platform, run ads without understanding ROI and slap together messaging that changes every other week. When you do that, it just leads to more confusion for your audience and usually, a waste of money.

Overcomplicated marketing strategies generally come from a good place — founders want to grow. But in trying to do everything, they end up doing nothing well. Let’s talk about why this happens and how to simplify your marketing so it actually works.

Related: 5 Common Marketing Mistakes You Need to Look Out For

Why we overcomplicate things in the first place

There are a few common culprits that drive marketing overwhelm.

The most common thing I see in small business owners is a sense of “shiny object” syndrome. When a business owner sees a new tactic pop up on Instagram or their peer swears by a niche funnel, too often, they just start rebuilding their whole strategy around it.

Even more importantly, too many business owners get into this situation and then have no data tracking set up. Trying new things is good, but how will you know if it worked or not? Gut feeling is definitely not enough when it comes to determining your marketing spend, and if you are too busy throwing too many things at the wall, you likely aren’t setting up proper tracking, so those experiments aren’t telling you much in the end.

If any of that sounds familiar, you’re not alone. Let’s break down what a simpler, more effective marketing strategy might look like.

Simple marketing strategies often outperform complex ones

The best marketing strategies are clear, consistent and rooted in your actual business goals. They don’t try to do everything, and instead focus on doing the right things well, consistently and with proper tracking.

To start, define your one core message. You should be able to clearly articulate what you do, who it’s for and why it matters. If you can’t say it in a sentence, your audience won’t get it either.

Next, establish a consistent cadence that is realistic for you. Whether it’s weekly emails, biweekly blogs or daily Instagram stories, consistency beats perfection every time. Resist the temptation to set too ambitious of a goal, if you realistically might not meet it. Setting a realistic goal sets up a habit, and that can build much more easily from there.

Finally, establish a feedback loop. Your marketing should be a living system. You put out a message, you watch how it performs, and you adjust accordingly. For whatever you are trying, establish a KPI that defines if it is working, and monitor it. Be willing to cut when it’s not working, and double down when it is.

Most importantly, simple marketing is sustainable. This sets up the foundation for you to continue to grow.

Related: 3 Reasons Your Marketing is Failing (And How to Fix It)

How to use data to guide your strategy

If you feel that you aren’t sure how to track the impact of your marketing, you are in the majority — more than 85% of businesses don’t track the impact of marketing on an ongoing basis. You don’t need a fancy dashboard or expensive analytics software to do this. You just need to start with a few key questions:

• Where are your leads coming from? Look at your clients who came in as prospects in the last 30-90 days, and break them down by where they came from. If you aren’t sure, this is a chance to pause and add more lead tracking into your marketing tech before moving on to the next point.

• What percentage of those leads turn into paying clients? Do the same exercise as the above, but only with those who bought.

• How much did you spend on each of these channels? This includes any labor spend working on your marketing, tech costs, ad spend, event entrance costs and more. Do your best to break that down by lead channel.

• What’s the lifetime value of a client? Look at your clients from the last six months or so and their average spend. This is the value of the client to your business.

These numbers will tell you more than any guru’s playbook ever could.

One of the most common trends to look at is where you’re investing time and money versus where you’re getting leads. For example, if you’re pouring time into Instagram but your conversions are all coming from referral emails, that’s a signal to double down on email and consider refreshing or cutting back on your Instagram strategy.

The second thing to consider is the lifetime value of your clients as compared to the cost of a lead. If you’re getting leads from paid ads but they are costing you two times as much as their lifetime value, it’s very likely you need a paid ads refresh.

Once you have this kind of clarity, you can market smarter, not harder.

Related: Your Marketing Strategy Needs an Overhaul — This Approach Is What Separates Successful Campaigns From the Rest

Growth comes from focus, not frenzy

That’s it. You don’t need a 42-step funnel or three different types of lead magnets to make this work. You just need a clear offer, a consistent cadence and a feedback loop.

It’s easy to think more marketing equals more growth, but if that “more” isn’t strategic, it’s likely not serving you.