Tough Love for Marketers: Law of Diminishing Returns

Branding, Insights, Multimedia / 02.06.17 / Arvin Sepehr

Marketers At Their Best Are The Only Ones That Matter

Marketing at its best is a matter of informing. It is the act of making those who will benefit from a service or product aware of that service or product. It is the utilization of abstract or intangible strengths to meet concrete and tangible needs. Like any other helpful entity, the extent to which it is helpful is sadly the depth of harm to which its abuse will sojourn. Marketing can put an end to something awful while helping sustain that which will solve problems. And as long as we live in world where the power to do good is just as influential in doing bad, marketers without self-awareness and a sense of vision broader than Sam Folk’s pre-epiphany dreams will keep getting in their own way, sabotaging their own goals.

Marketing well takes power and intuition. The power to communicate and listen, to observe and notice patterns, and to act appropriately in response to those patterns. The best marketers are too good at pattern recognition to wait for trends to form. Their intuition enables them to see the trends before they happen. Their experience and familiarity with humanity is rooted in cultural philosophy, much deeper than mechanics and excel sheets that only inform them of how many days they’ll be able to rent the yacht on their next vacation. I say rent because the bottom-feeder-decent-sized-fish-in-a-mediocre-sized-pond will never be able to afford a yacht. Bad marketers might make money, but they won’t make a lot.

In case my prose is too emotional, let me land the plane, albeit dramatically: you’re not a professional marketer until you know the law of diminishing returns and abide by it. Over saturating those poor souls who once found you beneficial and trustworthy enough to fork over their e-mails is the first version of unfortunate Tinder-girls who once handed out their phone number to a deceptive, Yacht-renting (see how I tied the two together?), Ferrari-Selfie taking expletive who came across as genuine upon first impression.

After a certain point, it doesn’t matter what you’re marketing. It doesn’t matter how good or necessary it is. Over saturating your market is the clingy equivalent of texting the person with whom you went on a first date way too many times to see if they’d like to go out again.

If you’re a marketer with aspirations of being known for your marketing strategy, institute the law of diminishing returns, put down the Yacht Charter Fleet brochure, and start creating content worth being treasured by you and your customers.


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