a single source, nothing corroborates it

Pick the tool one person can operate

Choose the marketing platform that is simplest to run rather than the one with the most features, because a system only one employee can change stops every campaign the moment that person is unavailable. Test a new message with whatever is already at hand, a few interviews, a poll, a webinar built around it, rather than committing to a six-month branding project, and judge any cheap first option on whether it is available now, commits you to nothing and does not block the goal.

The method

1. 01

   Pick the marketing platform that is simplest to operate rather than the one with the most features, because a platform only one person can change stops your campaigns whenever that person is unavailable.

2. 02

   Test new messaging with whatever is already at hand - a few informal user interviews, a LinkedIn poll, a webinar built around the message, or the trial of a cheap testing tool - rather than committing to a branding project or an enterprise experimentation platform.

3. 03

   Judge the cheap first option by three tests: it is available now with little time or money, it commits you to nothing so you can upgrade later, and it will not actually block the goal.

What it returned

• 629

  A client running 629 automated Marketo processes had one person among 150+ employees able to modify them; after that person left, Kogan migrated them to HubSpot in a week, the surrounding Salesforce automations took two more weeks, and the episode cost the marketing team six weeks and sales three weeks of downtime. The replacement had 20 processes - 97% fewer - with the same capabilities, and a later bug took four minutes to fix.

• $100k

  He intervened on real proposals for six-month branding projects and experimentation platforms costing over $100k and months to implement, and names VWO's trial as the sufficient alternative.

Sources

• Do it in jeans firstGreg Kogan · gkogan.co · 2025-01-04
• Simple Systems Have Less DowntimeGreg Kogan · gkogan.co · Principles for Simple Systems · 2020-03-02