Because adding another channel to the confusion rarely makes things clearer.
Modern marketing tends to follow a strange habit.
When something isn’t working, we add something.
Are sales slow? Start a newsletter.
Is engagement down? Make more videos.
Have leads dried up? Launch a webinar.
Still nothing? Maybe try TikTok. No one really knows why, but Dave from Sales saw something about it on LinkedIn.
Soon, the marketing plan looks like a kitchen drawer full of cables. Everything is there for a reason, but no one remembers what that reason is.
Tactics Are Easy. Clarity Is Hard.
The problem usually isn’t a shortage of marketing tactics.
We have more channels, platforms, tools, data and technology than any previous generation of marketers could have imagined.
The hardest questions are actually much simpler.
- Who are we trying to reach?
- What problem are we solving?
- Why should they choose us?
- What are we actually trying to achieve?
If those answers aren’t clear, adding more tactics just creates more confusion.
Strategy Should Make Things Smaller
As I explore in Episode 15 of The Overthinker’s Guide to Modern Marketing, marketing has become extraordinarily complicated.
But good strategy should do the opposite.
It should narrow down the options, set priorities, and let people ignore what doesn’t matter.
Strategy isn’t just a long list of everything you could possibly do.
It’s deciding what actually matters. And sometimes, it means telling TikTok it will have to get by without you.
For more on why marketing has become so complicated and why simpler thinking might produce better marketing, listen to Episode 15: Why Marketing Has Become So Complicated.
Because your marketing probably doesn’t need another tactic.
It needs a clearer reason for using the tactics you already have.
