The Case for Doing Less, Better

Why the Minimum Viable Marketing Is a Smarter Starting Point Than It Looks

The Idea That Changed How We Build

In 2011, Eric Ries wrote The Lean Startup and gave the world a phrase that would soon appear on whiteboards, pitch decks, and Post-it Notes across every corner of the tech world: “minimum viable product.”

The idea was simple: ship something small, something functional, and then learn. Don’t wait until the product is perfect. Don’t drown in overdesign. Create the smallest usable version of the thing you’re trying to build, put it in front of real people, and see what happens.

The logic behind it was rooted in experimentation. But beneath that was something more powerful: respect for momentum. A belief that action, even imperfect action, is more useful than a beautiful plan sitting in a drawer.

Why We’ve Left Marketing Behind

It’s an idea that reshaped how people build software, test products, and launch new ventures. And yet, despite all the buzzwords and borrowed language, the principle hasn’t made its way into one of the most bloated, over-complicated areas of business: marketing.

Because unlike product development, marketing hasn’t been treated as something you can prototype. It’s been treated like a performance. Something polished and public. Something that reflects your credibility. And that pressure (to look put together, to execute perfectly, to avoid “getting it wrong” in front of your audience) makes it feel impossible to start small.

So people wait. They tinker. They tweak a strategy doc that never gets used. They map out a customer journey with nine stages before they’ve even spoken to ten people. They convince themselves they need better branding, or new photography, or an automated funnel… all before saying something clear, in public, to the people they’re trying to reach.

Fifteen years later, most small businesses still haven’t applied the core lesson of “minimum viable” to their marketing.

And it shows.

Overstuffed strategies fall apart within weeks. Campaigns stall before they launch. Teams get stuck in execution limbo because they’re trying to build something they don’t have the capacity to sustain.

What Minimum Viable Marketing Actually Asks of You

Minimum Viable Marketing is a response to that reality. It doesn’t ask you to lower your expectations. It asks you to start with something you can finish and learn from.

That’s the part most people miss. MVM isn’t just about doing less. It’s about doing something specific, on purpose, and with a structure that helps you understand what worked. It’s not a smaller version of your entire marketing plan. It’s a decision to test a single, clearly defined piece of it, so you can scale from evidence, not assumption.

Designing Within Constraints

To put that into practice, you need constraint, not as punishment, but as a design tool.

Ask yourself:

• What exactly am I trying to learn or prove?

• What’s the one message I want to test?

• Who is this for, and where will they see it?

• What’s the smallest version of this that’s still meaningful?

Learning Before Scaling

And once you’ve launched, resist the urge to immediately move on. MVM only works if you let it teach you something.

After you ship it, ask:

• Did the right people see it?

• Did they respond the way I hoped, or in a way I didn’t expect?

• Was the message clear, or did it get lost?

• What part of this is worth building on, and what can I discard?

A Smarter Model for Real Businesses

This is how you build marketing that fits. Not just marketing that looks good on paper, but marketing that lives well inside your business, at your pace, with your voice, for your audience.

The businesses that learn fastest are the ones that launch before they’re fully ready, pay attention to what happens, and adjust quickly. That’s the mindset MVM creates. One rooted in clarity, movement, and focus.

Because that’s what marketing is supposed to be: a way to test your thinking in the real world. A way to see what makes people stop and care. Not a museum of polished assets, but a living system that evolves through contact.

That doesn’t happen when everything is theoretical. It happens when you choose something narrow enough to finish and meaningful enough to matter.

Minimum Viable Marketing is how you get there.

Start small. Focus hard. Learn fast.

Then build with confidence.