Hey 👋

Welcome to Neighbourhood Post issue #058 - easy to implement digital marketing ideas, straight through your metaphorical letterbox.

I hope you’ve had a good week.

Today we’re talking about how we can overcomplicate things, and I got to play with Lego. Win-win.

Less > More 🤯

Are you ready for a Friday morning brainteaser?

It’s an easy one.

Look at the photo below. It’s a bridge made of Lego.

Using only what you see, how would you balance the bridge?

You added the spare brick to the left hand column, didn’t you.

I knew you would.

You’re correct, well done! ✅

You made the same move as 99% of people.

But did you spot the alternative solution: remove a brick from the right hand column?

The result would be the same.

But only 1% of people take a brick away.

It’s an illustration of how the human brain naturally looks to solve problems - through addition not subtraction.

If the situation clearly calls for subtraction, we’ll subtract.

But if we’re faced with an equal choice of addition or subtraction, we’ll always add something.

It highlights the importance of knowing how our brain works when we make decisions.

What if, against all our better instincts, less is better?

You may have heard of the Pareto Principle (AKA the 80/20 rule).

80% of output comes from 20% of input, or in marketing terms 80% of success comes from 20% of your activity.

The problem is working out which 20%.

It begs the question:

What if the answer to your sales and marketing challenge is to do less, rather than more? To spend time understanding what you can leverage to bring disproportionate results.

Sometimes doing less can be a competitive advantage.

Rick Rubin, author and founder of Def Jam Records, takes a minimal approach to social media - posting once per week and archiving each post after seven days, so his Instagram profile always shows just one post.

Posting less becomes a compelling reason to pay attention to what he says.

In a world that demands more, less is a competitive advantage.

Let’s take this from the theoretical to the practical…

If you’re juggling 6 different marketing channels, ask yourself:

“If I spend twice as much time on half the channels, would results go up or down?”

Chances are you couldn’t be 100% confident one way or the other.

So test it for a short period of time.

You might be surprised.

That’s all for now.

Until next week.

✌️

Before you go - we’ll never use these newsletters to directly sell you our services, but we’re always here if you need any expertise or support 👍