There’s an old saying that too many cooks spoil the broth. This is equally true for businesses, particularly smaller ones. While it’s essential to grow to continue early success, it’s also important to keep realistic with your aims.

Whether it’s launching new products, starting a PR/marketing/advertising campaign or adding sections to your website, taking on too much will leave you thinly spread and, ultimately, less effective.

Instead, concentrate on one or two growth areas, and make them as strong as they can possibly be. This will allow you a solid grounding for increasing activity at a later date.

Product Launches

Look at two of the biggest and most successful companies around today – Apple and Microsoft. When they launch a new product, it’s usually no more than 2 different products. The iPhone, the iPod, Windows Vista, Xbox – although there may be different versions of the same product for different markets, essentially it still equates to one product line.

This is one of the main reasons why these two companies lead the market in their fields. They keep the new products launched to a minimum for a simple reason – don’t confuse the market. This ensures that people aren’t wondering which version is better – instead, all they need to decide is which colour to go for.

Keep your own product launches restricted to a minimum and build their brand loyalty first. Then expand.

Less is More

One of the more common mistakes that I’ve found in the past is from clients looking to have a huge PR campaign when, in reality, all that’s needed is a smaller, more targeted one. This isn’t necessarily the client’s fault – more the programming that we tend to receive that bigger is better.

However, unless you have a huge budget to employ multiple PR agencies, or one that can provide you with dozens of bodies for your account, having a large PR campaign is invariably just pouring money down the drain.

Additionally, it can lead to a confused message coming from your business – is Product A better than Product B? Why should I use Product C over A and B?

Instead of confusing your target audience with multiple PR campaigns all being run at the same time, concentrate your efforts on your limited product launch instead. Reach the audience – consumer and media – that you’re after, knock them for six with an excellent product and promotion, and you’ll find your results will be far stronger than if you throw everything you have at a wall and hope some of it sticks.

Sure, you don’t want to stand still in business. But you don’t want to run too fast or spend money unnecessarily or for the wrong reasons either. If someone tells you that you need to spend so much on something, ask why. If the answer is because bigger is better, say “Thanks, but no thanks – I’d rather concentrate on quality over quantity.”

After all, quality still counts. Doesn’t it?

photo credit: Nick J Webb

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