Marketing Made Simple

Not long ago, I heard Pamela Dell of the Boise Metro Chamber of Commerce deliver a delightfully to-the-point talk about marketing. She took the whole daunting subject and broke it down into three steps:

• Make time.
• Have fun.
• Follow up.

How can you not love that? As a writer, of course I also love it that she also used parallel construction and made each step a declarative, two-word sentence. Very nicely done—in only six words, she made a point more effectively than some books I’ve read on the subject.

It’s so easy to get caught up in the rush of ideas. Diving deep into the details of planning, messaging, branding, strategy, and so on is important, of course. But so is coming up for air. Marketing is about connecting with people, and ideas that don’t surface don’t reach anybody.

Like many of my clients and most of my colleagues, I can get easily carried away and need to remember not to make things harder than they are. It’s that old K.I.S.S. thing. Pam’s message is a welcome reminder that the most important step in marketing is to keep doing it.