Isn’t it a joy to encounter a useful device that is ingeniously easy to use, a complex subject you’ve been struggling with clearly presented in a way that is easy for you to get, or an idea so clever in its simplicity you exclaim, “I wish I had thought of that!”? In the complex, information-overloaded world we live in, simplicity stands out. In the B2B marketing world, simplicity is an essential tool to get your message out and make it stick. But it is hard work. Where do you begin?

Start with your customer’s perspective. Sure, your product or service has a lot of great things going for it—but they don’t care. They are more interested in how it’s going to solve their problems and relieve their pain points. Don’t confuse features with benefits. Once you have figured out what’s important to your customers, how do you communicate that simply?

Frenchman Blaise Pascal once said, “I would have written a shorter letter, but I did not have the time.” Being simple is being concise and to the point. It takes time, work and some tough editing decisions to get there. In your branding and messaging it means finding your core. In his classic marketing book Positioning, Al Ries described how companies try to own a single word or phrase in the minds of customers. The quintessential example is “safety” for Volvo. The goal in finding a company’s brand essence is to express its value proposition in as few words as possible—three or less if we can. In advertising you want to identify one main point the ad delivers on the brand. That’s right: ONE. The point needs to be relevant and distinctive. It’s tough getting to the core, but it’s certainly worth the focus of your B2B marketing efforts.

Finally, make it easy for your audience to receive your message. Have you noticed how much easier and intuitive it is to use several features on your smartphone than it is to learn the handful of functions available on your office phone? Your website, for example, should be like the smartphone; make it simple for people to navigate and find what interests them. Steve Krug’s book Don’t Make Me Think has several good tips for simplifying Web usability.

Trimming down your messaging to a few simple basics will require some labor and tough choices. But in the end, your efforts will have paid off in creating content that will promote your brand clearly and efficiently and draw more attention.