The 2nd November is Use Less Stuff Day. Use Less Stuff Day was borne out of a campaign to save the environment, and to save the world. Organisations like Greenpeace get involved to try to encourage us to work to save ourselves, from ourselves, and one of the best ways to handle it is by controlling our consumption of resources.

Here comes the smart marketing bit

Using less stuff in a marketing context means only investing in activities that hold your customers’ interest or will generate goodwill in the community, thus ensuring maximum return for your efforts. Using channels and platforms just because they exist is not an effective use of your time, energy or resources.

Here are 5 simple ways to use less but achieve more with smart marketing:

1. Focus on your customer base. Recognise which segment(s) brings you most profit and intensively farm them.
2. Cull your social media platforms. Dominate a few rather than drown with the masses.
3. Repurpose old content. Focus on different aspects of the story for different audiences and platforms.
4. Reduce costs to boost profit. Renegotiate contracts and payment terms with suppliers, cut-out unnecessary spending, and check you’re getting the best deals on monthly expenses like utilities and subscription services (did you know that you can share your Amazon Prime membership with one other adult?)
5. Save your energy by encouraging others to do the hard work for you. Deliver such out-of-this-world customer experience that your customers can’t resist endorsing you.

I hope these tips have sparked some ideas for your own business.

Remember, doing lots of marketing and hoping some of it works is wasted effort. Take the time to do a few things really well, then expand, if appropriate.

If you feel inspired to use less but achieve more for your business, perhaps others may too? Why not share it with your network? You can also follow me on Facebook for more smart marketing ideas.