By The Essentialist Marketer · June 8, 2025
Introduction
Scroll through any marketing blog or attend any industry conference, and you’ll be bombarded with a seemingly endless list of “must-do” tactics. You need to be on TikTok. You need a chatbot. You need to be doing influencer marketing, content marketing, video marketing, and a dozen other things, all at the same time. The sheer volume of options is overwhelming, leading many business owners to either chase every new trend or freeze in a state of “analysis paralysis.” But what if the problem isn’t the number of options, but our inability to choose? The digital marketing world sells you a buffet, when what you really need is a single, well-prepared meal.
The Current State of Things
The current state of digital marketing is one of abundance. There are more channels, more tools, and more data than ever before. This is often presented as a good thing—more opportunities to reach your customers. The prevailing wisdom is to “diversify your marketing mix,” to have a presence on multiple platforms to mitigate risk and maximize reach. Gurus and agencies alike will show you charts of all the available channels—social media, SEO, email, paid ads, and so on—and suggest you dabble in a little bit of everything.
The Immediate Risk
The most immediate risk of this “all-the-things” approach is a complete lack of impact. When you spread your time, budget, and energy across too many channels, you end up being mediocre on all of them. Consider a software-as-a-service (SaaS) company that was told they needed to be on every social platform. They dutifully created accounts on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and even Pinterest. They posted the same generic content to all of them, a few times a week. The result? A handful of likes, a few random followers, and zero new leads. They were busy being “on” social media, but they weren’t actually connecting with anyone.
The Problem: The Paradox of Choice
The core problem is a well-documented psychological phenomenon known as the “paradox of choice.” The more options we have, the harder it becomes to make a decision, and the less satisfied we are with the choice we finally make. The digital marketing landscape is a perfect example of this. With hundreds of potential channels and thousands of tools, the task of creating a marketing plan can feel impossible. This leads to one of two outcomes: either you do nothing, or you do a little bit of everything, hoping something sticks. Both are recipes for failure.
The Problem Deepens: Chasing “Shiny Objects”
This abundance of options creates a culture of “shiny object syndrome.” Every few months, a new platform or tactic emerges and is hailed as the “next big thing.” Remember Clubhouse? For a few months, it was all anyone in marketing could talk about. Businesses scrambled to create a presence, convinced it was the future. Then, just as quickly, the hype died down, and everyone moved on to the next shiny object. This constant chasing of trends is exhausting and unproductive. As marketing expert Mark Ritson has said, “The answer to the question ‘What’s the next big thing in marketing?’ is usually ‘The last big thing, done properly’.”
The Far-Reaching Implications: A Strategic Void
The obsession with options and tactics has created a strategic void in many organizations. Instead of starting with the fundamental questions—Who is our customer? What problem do we solve for them? Where do they spend their time?—businesses are starting with the tactics. They’re asking “Should we be on TikTok?” instead of “Is our target audience on TikTok, and if so, how can we provide value to them there?” This tactical-first approach leads to a fragmented, inconsistent, and ultimately ineffective marketing effort that fails to build any long-term brand equity.
The Counterintuitive Solution: Choose Your Battlefield
The solution is not to find a way to do more, but to give yourself permission to do less. The counterintuitive approach is to ruthlessly filter your options and choose your battlefield. Instead of trying to be everywhere, your goal should be to dominate a single channel where your ideal customers are most concentrated and receptive to your message. This requires a shift in mindset from “fear of missing out” (FOMO) to “joy of missing out” (JOMO). Be happy to ignore the platforms and tactics that aren’t a perfect fit for your business.
How do you choose? Start with your customer, not the channel.
1. Who are they? Be incredibly specific about your ideal customer profile.
2. Where are they? Where do they go to get information? Where do they hang out online?
3. How can you reach them? Which channel offers the most direct and effective path to that audience?
Choose one, and go all in.
Addressing Objections: Won’t I Miss Out on Customers?
The fear is that by choosing one channel, you’ll be ignoring a large chunk of your potential market. But the reality is, by trying to reach everyone, you end up resonating with no one. A focused strategy allows you to tailor your message and your content to a specific audience on a specific platform, making you far more effective. Once you have established a strong foothold and are generating consistent results from that one channel, you can then thoughtfully and strategically expand to a second one.
Final Thoughts
The digital marketing industry wants you to believe that more is better. More channels, more tools, more options. But the truth is, more is just more. It’s more confusing, more expensive, and more likely to lead to failure. The path to effective marketing is not through abundance, but through deliberate constraint. Choose your filter, choose your battlefield, and have the courage to ignore everything else.
Take the Next Step
Feeling stuck or overwhelmed? The experts at Appture Digital Media can help you cut through the noise and build a marketing strategy that actually works. Contact us today for a free 30-minute consultation. Be sure to provide your company URL and social media profile links so we can review your issues and make an informed assessment. Visit us at www.appturedigital.com to get started.
