Simplicity is key when building your marketing function

The moment a business decides it now needs marketing, the chaos begins with new tools, random tactics, ideas flying in from every direction, no real ownership, and absolutely no sense of priority. Before they know it, they’ve built a machine so bloated that no one can operate it, let alone scale it.

I’ve sometimes gone into a business that’s never had a marketing function, handed a bunch of log ins, expected to ‘just make leads happen’.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t work that way and I don’t have a marketing magic wand. I wish I did but creating leads isn’t in the top 3 of what I’d use it for.

The majority of the businesses I work with all come to the same conclusion when everything is stripped back. The real growth comes from starting from the beginning with the customer and building the essential strategic pillars.

And because you’ve started with simplicity, adding activity when it makes sense to do so, allows for a proper process in measuring success.

What I want all start ups to know is that simplicity and ambition go hand in hand, they are not opposites and complex systems do not scale faster. They just confuse your customers faster.

Complexity creeps in faster than you think

I think the AI-led hustle culture (and maybe a bit of FOMO) creates a structure in the founder mind that everything has to be cutting edge with complex workflows in place to attract the tech-savvy customer. I see it constantly in early-stage SaaS and B2B SMEs who have:

• A tool for every micro-task

• Content being created without objective or purpose

• Reporting dashboards with more metrics than decisions being made

• Processes built reactively instead of intentionally

• Messy handovers between sales and marketing

  
  

None of it comes from a bad place. It comes from enthusiasm, ideas, and the pressure to grow fast. But speed without any of the basic strategic principles in place will always create friction.

Stripping it back to the core strategic pillars and keeping everything simple will create more clarity for you, your teams and your customers.

You don’t need more workflows, more AI agents, more content, or more ads.

You need more structure and insight.

When you simplify your marketing engine, things get better almost immediately:

• You execute faster

• Everyone knows what their job actually is

• Campaigns land cleaner and stronger

• Customers know what you do

• Spend flows to the things that actually drive revenue

  
  

What simplicity in a marketing function actually looks like

One or two well researched ICPs (not seven) with a value proposition and one or two well positioned go-to-market motions.

Which comes from a well researched strategy with a clear focus, standardised campaign and handover processes, repeatable feedback loops and a sales process.

You know who you’re targeting, what you’re saying, how you’re going to target your customer and why you’re doing it.

If it works - amazing - iterate and grow. If it doesn’t - amazing - learn, iterate and grow.

The obsession with shipping quickly creates loads of ambiguity around processes.

Putting the proper processes in place before you launch enables a speedier campaign process. Every time.

Marketing simplicity in Action

Here’s some examples of creating simplicity in marketing:

1. Solve misaligned messaging

What pain points are your solving and what are your customers saying? That’s all you really need to answer and this doesn’t need to live in a 20 slide deck. Strip it back to the core points and make sure all teams know it inside out.

2. Reduce content overload

You do not need 30,000 blogs being posted twice a day to keep out with AEO, GEO and SEO. You need a plan that resonates with your audience in a human led helpful approach. A blog a week makes more sense.

3. Remove reporting bloat

Vanity metrics can be indicators of what’s about to come but they’re not commercial metrics and don’t need to be reviewed by everyone in the company. Strip your reporting down to the 5 key commercial metrics, and make sure all teams are aligned.

How to start simplifying your marketing for growth

A simple four-step framework you can apply right now:

Step 1: Identify the essentials

What actually is actually driving revenue or supporting it? How can we optimise this?

Step 2: Cut everything that’s not essential

Tools, tactics, workflows, meetings. Anything that adds more bloat to your processes get rid of and be ruthless.

Step 3: Standardise what matters 

Create repeatable processes for the work that gets you closer to your revenue goals. For example, sales follow up SLAs, Campaign briefing etc.

Step 4: Add only when there’s a genuine gap or it optimises growth

Don’t add a tool or a process an influencer has recommended on LinkedIn without seeing if it would improve a process and not overburden what you’ve done so far. Only add when it makes sense to grow your business so you don’t overload your teams.

Simplifying everything still seem a bit overwhelming?

This is literally my job as a Fractional CMO to help simplify marketing strategy and processes in order for your business to grow. Get in touch to set up some time with me to discuss what you need from your marketing.