The simplest marketing strategy: Simplicity itself

I could pick on just about any category. But I’m harping on the medical devices category because few segments fall so short in developing the best marketing strategy.

Just make it simple, stupid.

Medical devices always seem to muck that edict up. The companies, some of the largest entities in the world (and many we’ve worked with), make things so complicated it’s no wonder so many products fail.

And it’s not that their products aren’t great. In many cases, they save lives. But as you can read here in one of our web stories, they brand every single product separately from each other. They come up with names that make only a little sense. And have no relationship to each other.

You can implement that marketing strategy if you spend a lotta money to promote. It’s the P&G model, a house of brands instead of a branded house. That’s an expensive and horribly inefficient way to market.

Simplicity remains the single most efficient and effective way to promote your brand and products. You see, most of us are wary of marketing. We subconsciously filter out messaging we receive on a daily basis.

And filtering out anything too complex is easy. Putting up artificial hurdles – like brand names all across a portfolio – is a marketing strategy doomed to fail.

“When developing a marketing strategy always aim for simplicity. Editing yourself is an art. And in these times when we all find most of our information from that computer in our pocket, we simply lack the patience for any kind of complexity.”

The best marketing strategy makes it easy for audiences

Simplicity is the golden rule all across the marketing board. Apple has built the world’s most powerful brand based on simplicity. So has NIKE, in a way. Pharmaceutical companies struggle to gain any traction with consumer audiences because of their lack of simplicity.

The question marketers must ask themselves is what problem are they solving. How do they really think their product will become preferred? Are they serving the parent brand? What’s the goal here?

When developing a marketing strategy always aim for simplicity. Exclusion is an art. And in these times when we all find most of our information from that computer in our pocket, we simply lack the patience for any kind of complexity.

Rounding back to medical devices. We have worked with many of them. One of them, Integra LifeSciences, had fallen into that marketing strategy trap. And target audiences couldn’t navigate its many offerings. So we recommended that they give products a descriptive name that salutes the Integra brand.

The simplicity in this strategy led it to become a multi-billion dollar company. And one its target audiences can’t ignore.