Ever feel like marketing is an uphill battle?

Like you're pushing a boulder up a mountain, just trying to get your product or service seen?

Traditional marketing is a struggle for many businesses—and it’s often because they treat marketing as a random set of tactics instead of a cohesive system. 

They throw money at ads, chase trends, and jump from one tactic to the next.

If that sounds familiar, know that you're not alone. 

There’s a lot of noise out there from experts who tell you what you should and shouldn’t be doing, and it’s not easy to tune it out. 

It’s also easy to fall victim to bright shiny object syndrome—when you jump from one tactic to the next and get distracted by all the things you could be doing.  

But here at Lean Marketing, we’re all about doing more with less. 

And to be a lean business, you need to eliminate waste, focus on the essentials, and prioritize the actions that generate the fastest return on investment.

Marketing isn’t a set of random tactics—it’s a system.

That means getting laser-focused on the activities that move the needle. 

It’s about working smarter, not harder—creating marketing that pulls customers in, scales effortlessly, and compounds over time.

So what does all this look like in practice?

I've recorded a podcast where I break down the 9 principles of Lean Marketing in full - giving you the exact playbook to follow to be a Lean Business. 

l'll dive into the principles of Lean Marketing below—and how they can help you get bigger results by doing less. 

Lean Marketing Principle #1: Make Your Marketing So Valuable That People Would Pay for It

Most marketing is spam—annoying, self-serving, and forgettable. Great marketing gives before it asks.

Every piece of marketing that goes out should do the following: 

• Teach something useful.
• Entertain and engage.
• Build goodwill before you sell.

A simple way to know if your marketing is valuable is to ask yourself: would someone pay for my marketing if I charged for it? If the answer is no, you’re not creating real value. One great example of Lean Marketing Principle #1 in action is HubSpot—they built an entire business by giving away high-quality content for free. Their audience trusted them long before they bought anything, and that trust carried over into long-term growth.

Lean Marketing Principle #2: Integrate Marketing Into Everything You Do

Most businesses treat marketing as an afterthought. They build a product, then figure out how to sell it. That’s backward.

Marketing should be embedded into your product, sales process, and customer experience from Day 1.

Apple doesn’t just sell iPhones. They bake marketing into their entire experience—from sleek packaging to unboxing videos to ecosystem lock-in.

Marketing is more than ads. It’s how your customers interact with you at every touchpoint.

If you integrate marketing into your entire business, selling becomes effortless.

Lean Marketing Principle #3: Find Your Market Before Creating Your Product

Most businesses build a product first and then hope people want it. Without product market fit, you’re fighting an uphill battle—one that you’ll most likely lose.

Your order of operations should begin with finding the market first. Identify that market’s biggest pain points and then create a product that solves those pain points.

Want proof of this process? Just look at Airbnb—they didn’t start by building fancy tech. They saw a market of people who needed short-term rentals and built their product around that demand.

The best businesses don’t create products and hope people buy. They identify a need and build solutions around it.

Lean Marketing Principle #4: Use Tools & Automation to Scale Smartly

I’m a big believer in leveraging technology as a tool. It removes friction and amplifies results. 

One of the best ways it does that is through automation. Automation is critical for businesses looking to scale, and it’s especially important for automation to be integrated into marketing.

Let’s look at some of the ways you can use technology to automate your marketing:

AI is a powerful tool that can streamline everything from content creation and automate customer interactions. Ignore it at your own risk, as adopting AI is becoming a must for anyone looking to future-proof their business.
CRM tools can nurture leads and increase sales. They free up valuable time spent on outreach and follow ups, while also ensuring that important touchpoints don’t get missed.

Analytics tools show what’s working and what’s not. What gets measured gets managed, and setting up analytics reports will ensure you eliminate waste and put your resources into high-leverage activities. 

The right tools let you do more with less—so you can focus on strategy instead of busywork.

Lean Marketing Principle #5: Build Marketing Assets That Work for You 24/7

One reason why most businesses struggle with marketing is that they start from scratch every campaign. Smart businesses build marketing assets that compound over time.

Marketing assets are things that you own—like lead magnets, books, evergreen content, and automated sales funnels. Rather than chasing down leads and sales, marketing assets bring them to your door.

They work for you 24/7—constantly attracting new leads in the background. And while the initial effort to create assets might be labor intensive, it’s nothing compared to the countless hours and dollars saved from other lead generating activities. 

My book The One-Page Marketing Plan generates leads every day—years after I wrote it. You don’t have to be a bestselling author to take advantage of assets for your business. You just need to figure out what it is that will bring those leads in time and time again.

Lean Marketing Principle #6: Branding Comes From Selling—Not from Fancy Logos

Your brand isn’t built through graphic design. It’s built through customer experience.

Many people think of their brand as the logo, colors, and tagline that define their company.

But your brand is less about what you say it is and more about what your customers believe it to be.

Great branding is a byproduct of consistently delivering value. Nike, Apple, and Coca-Cola didn’t build their brands by designing better logos—they did it by selling products people loved.

Long story short? How you sell, deliver, and serve your customers defines your brand. 

Lean Marketing Principle #7: Marketing Is a Process, Not an Event

Marketing isn’t about one-off campaigns. It’s about consistent, repeatable actions that compound over time.

The best marketers aren’t the most creative—they’re the most consistent. So it’s time to stop thinking of marketing through the lens of creating the next viral campaign.

The ones who win are the ones who show up and do the work. They do the daily, weekly, and monthly marketing actions that compound over time. 

Think of it like working out. You don’t get fit from one workout—you have to show up every day, week after week. 

Marketing is no different. So let’s stop treating marketing like a random event and build a repeatable process instead.

Lean Marketing Principle #8: Stop Pushing, Start Pulling

Most businesses rely on push marketing—ads, spam, and cold calls that people ignore. The smarter approach? Create a pulling force with content so valuable that customers seek you out.

Imagine waking up to emails saying: "I saw your post, and it really resonated. How can we work together?"

That’s something I experience almost every day—and that’s the power of pull marketing.

Here’s how to create a pulling force through your marketing:

• Create content that solves real problems.
• Be consistent—trust builds over time.
• Engage your audience—foster real connections.

This kind of marketing not only builds trust and authority, but it also attracts the right audience. You create a community of people who share your values rather than chasing people who have no desire to work with you.

When you stop pushing and start pulling, marketing becomes effortless, and customers come to you.

Lean Marketing Principle #9: Test, Measure, and Continuously Improve

Last but not least is Lean Marketing Principle #9, which speaks to the power of optimization.

Small improvements may not feel like progress in the moment, but they lead to massive impact over time. 

Marketing isn’t a one-time effort—it’s an ongoing process of testing, measuring, and optimizing.

Too often, businesses say, “We tried marketing, and it didn’t work.” 

But what exactly didn’t work? Was it:

• The ad that wasn’t getting clicks?
• The landing page that didn’t convert?
• The email sequence that didn’t drive action?
• The checkout page where people dropped off?

Like manufacturing, marketing has multiple steps, and one weak link can break the entire system.

So if something isn’t working, lean into the power of testing and figure out how to improve it. 

1. Break it down – Identify which step is underperforming.
2. Test & optimize – Make small, data-driven improvements.
3. Track key metrics – Focus on Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) and Lifetime Value (LTV) to measure profitability.

A 5% increase in conversions or a 10% drop in acquisition costs can massively impact your bottom line. Small improvements compound into big results—if you commit to continuous optimization.

How to do More with Less

These nine principles of Lean Marketing aren’t just ideas—they’re a proven framework for simplifying, optimizing, and scaling your business. But knowing them isn’t enough—implementation is what drives results.

If you’re ready to put these strategies into action, we can help. Our Marketing Accelerator is designed to guide you through each step, ensuring you execute at the highest level.

Which principle will you start using today?

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