Better to Master a Few Marketing Tools

Organizations that are using new and new-ish marketing tools effectively have mastered them. If you’re like every other person trying to keep up with the flood of new marketing options it should come as a relief to know that your greatest success is going to come through mastering 2-4 tools, rather than trying to keep up with the 20+ that you think you should be using.

Very large organizations, like Target Corp., have the resources to fully leverage every marketing tool available, but the vast majority of businesses do not. In fact most of us spent a lot of time driving ourselves crazy by trying to incorporate every social, digital, direct, indirect, print/broadcast, automated, etc. tool available. We quickly learned that the strategy turned marketing efforts into a Swiss army knife (doing a lot of things, but none of them really well) rather than a real knife (only doing a couple of things, but doing them very effectively).

A good tactic is to choose 2-4 marketing tools that align well with goals. And then have the focus, discipline, dedication, and confidence to master those tools. Only after you’ve mastered those tools and you get to the point where they are no longer working does it make sense to move on to something else. Many marketing tools, particularly social and digital tools continue to evolve, so mastery is an ongoing process.

At Smart PR Communications we do a few things well and they bring results, because we are unapologetic about what we don’t do. We sometimes receive pressure from our clients to engage in the next big marketing thing; we know you have this pressure too and we are here to tell you, stay strong. Keep doing a few things better and better.