5 Lessons Essentialism Taught Me About Marketing Strategy
Greg McKeown’s Essentialism is one of the best books I’ve read in a long time.
While it’s not a book about marketing per se, the lessons in it apply to prioritizing just about everything we do in life.
So if you’re feeling pulled in a million different directions and not making the progress you want to see on your goals (marketing or otherwise), this is an idea you should pay attention to.
At its core, essentialism is the disciplined pursuit of less. It’s about determining where our highest point of contribution lies and focusing all of our efforts there.
It sounds simple — figure out what’s most important and do it — but most of us know how incredibly difficult it can be to make that choice in the first place, let alone stay focused among all the distractions and competing priorities we have in our business.
That’s why today I wanted to break down five of the biggest lessons I learned from reading Essentialism and how to apply them to your marketing strategy.
That way YOU can start focusing on what matters most and starting seeing the results you’ve been waiting for.
Stop trying to get more things done
McKeown begins the book with a very important note.
Essentialism isn’t a productivity strategy for you to get MORE things done. Instead, it’s about getting the RIGHT things done.
The philosophy of essentialism is all about distinguishing the “vital few” from the “trivial many.”
We have so many choices to make: which goals to care about, where to focus our time and attention, crafting a plan for how to achieve those goals.
We can choose to do just about anything — but not everything.
When we figure out where our highest contribution lies, and when we make a habit of pausing to ask ourselves whether we’re investing in the right activities so as to operate at the level, we can start to make a bigger impact both in our daily lives and in the long term.
Marketing Lesson: Stop dipping your toes into starting a blog, increasing your follower count on three different social media channels, learning SEO strategy, and running Facebook ads.
What are the “vital few” activities that have the most impact in your marketing strategy?
Reframe the way you think about trade-offs
The way we typically think of trade-offs is in terms of sacrifice.
You can spend your money on an expensive gym membership or on a bunch of whiskey, but you can’t do both.
You can spend time watching Netflix or practicing an instrument, but not both.
That’s Econ 101, right?
McKeown suggests that, instead of asking “What do I have to give up?”, we instead reframe the question as “What do I want to go BIG on?”
In my eight years of studying economics, even at the graduate level, no one told me to think like that.
But it’s true; essentialists know that diving deep into one carefully chosen activity is the only real way to move the needle in the way that we want to.
It’s not about the scarcity of resources, but about the opportunity to pursue something impactful to its greatest extent.
Marketing Lesson: Stop spreading your time and budget across a million different projects.
Which part of your marketing strategy do you want to go BIG on?
Clarify your expectations with “essential intent”
What does “winning” look like in your organization? McKeown says the answer to that is the one decision that makes one THOUSAND decisions.
That’s because an essential intent offers both clarity and inspiration into your day-to-day activities. What does your team stand for? What should their goals be? What does success look like in their role?
When you know your essential intent, whether for your whole business or a smaller part of it, you can make sure that everyone is working to advance that goal.
Marketing Lesson: Have a content mission that clearly describes what it looks like to win! I love starting with this simple template from the Content Marketing Institute:
The content we produce helps our company accomplish [goal] and [goal] by providing [adjective] and [adjective] content that makes [audience description] feel [emotion] and [emotion] so that they can [task] or [task].
Just remember to make your essential intent meaningful, specific, and measurable.
Celebrate small wins
Two primary motivators for people are achievement and recognition of achievement.
Everyday progress in meaningful work, even in the form of a small win, can make all the difference in people’s feelings and performance.
This is one that I’m just coming around to appreciate in my own life. Instead of trying to accomplish everything all at once, a more effective strategy is to start small and celebrate incremental progress.
An essentialist hones in on accumulating small and simple wins in areas that are essential.
It reminds me of the story about Steven Martin learning to play the banjo, and about James Clear’s popular talk about getting 1% better every day.
Focus on consistently moving the needle just a little bit and those wins will start to add up.
Marketing Lesson: Determine the smallest amount of progress that will be useful and valuable to your essential intent. Then take time to recognize and celebrate those wins for yourself and your team.
Protect the asset
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again… The most productive thing you could possibly do is SLEEP.
I didn’t always used to think like this. In fact, I used to think Bulletproof coffee — yes, the one where you blend coffee with grass-fed butter and coconut oil — was the antidote to sleeping only 3-4 hours a night in college.
Then I would look for the best tricks and “hacks” to make myself more productive. What a waste.
Instead of spending time trying to find the perfect project management app, the essentials for productivity really come down to sleep, food, and fitness.
Sleep isn’t just a luxury for people with a healthy work-life balance. Essentialists see it as completely necessary for operating at high levels of contribution.
If your job involves thinking and producing (e.g. marketing and any other job in the knowledge economy), then you can’t afford not to prime your body to focus and do its best work.
That’s because your brain is your biggest asset. And if you take your work seriously, then you have to protect the asset.
Marketing Lesson: Seriously, start prioritizing sleep. You’ll find yourself more focused, more engaged, and able to execute at a higher level every day.
***
Here’s a recap of those lessons applied to marketing:
Determine the “vital few” activities that have the biggest impact on your marketing strategy.
Stop spreading yourself too thin and ask what you want to go BIG on.
Describe your specific, measurable, and inspirational “essential intent.” What does winning look like?
Celebrate small wins and “minimum viable progress.”
Protect the asset — get some SLEEP!
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