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Minimally Viable Marketing

Minimally Viable Marketing: The Modern Cost of Doing Business

Jun 26, 2025 | Analytics, From Joe

(Originally published here)

Every business needs a baseline level of visibility and credibility to be taken seriously. Borrowing from the concept of a Minimum Viable Product (MVP), Minimally Viable Marketing (MVM) is the essential marketing foundation to put in place before you spend anything on ads, content, or campaigns.

That’s me, Gen X marketer in a Millennial world, making sure our clients have more than just a phone number and a business card. At Country Fried Creative, we start with the essentials — because in 2025, if you don’t have a website, people will assume you don’t exist (and they’re probably right).

Introduction

What’s the minimum amount of marketing you can do and still be a legitimate business?

That question’s been on my mind lately — not just as a marketer, but as someone who works with small businesses, nonprofits, and startups that don’t always have big budgets or teams. Over the years, we’ve all seen businesses throw money at expensive marketing campaigns, video shoots, and advertising before getting the basics right. But marketing isn’t supposed to start with complexity. It should start with clarity.

There’s a concept in the startup world called the Minimum Viable Product (MVP). The MVP concept was first coined in 2001 by Frank Robinson and later popularized by Steve Blank and Eric Ries. Eric Ries, in particular, is widely recognized for bringing the MVP concept to mainstream startup and product development practices through his book The Lean Startup.

“The minimum viable product is that version of a new product which allows a team to collect the maximum amount of validated learning about customers with the least effort.” — Eric Ries

What Ries is describing is a lean, no-frills approach to building something that works well enough to test your assumptions. It’s not the final product — it’s the starting point. The MVP helps founders avoid overbuilding by focusing only on what’s essential to learn whether their idea has real traction. The heart of MVP is a process that is centered around a simple but powerful loop: Build → Measure → Learn.

Figure 1. The Build-Measure-Learn Feedback Loop. A core Lean Startup process for testing ideas, measuring results, and learning what works. Graphic by Country Fried Creative. (Cited from Ries, The Lean Startup, 2011.)

We need the same kind of MVP lean thinking in marketing. I call it Minimally Viable Marketing (MVM). Before you scale up with video shoots, ad spend, or expensive marketing campaigns, you need a solid foundation — one that proves your business is real, credible, and worth engaging with.

MVM isn’t about clever campaigns or fancy sales funnels. It means having the essentials: a professional presence, clear communication, and the basic things a customer expects for a business. In other words, the kind of marketing that lets people know you’re open for business — and worth taking seriously.

MVM is your foundation. It’s the business equivalent of having a front door, a sign, and a way for people to reach you. It keeps you in the game.

Every business, no matter the size or industry, needs a baseline level of visibility and credibility just to be considered legitimate. I call that MVM.

In this article, I’ll lay out what Minimally Viable Marketing includes, why it matters, and how to use it as a foundation for testing and growth.

The Cost of Doing Business

MVM is a baseline and the foundation every business needs to be visible, credible, and reachable. In practice, that means a handful of essential items. If you’re missing any of these, your business risks looking unprofessional — or worse, untrustworthy.

Hey business leaders, listen up because the following is very important:

MVM items aren’t supposed to deliver an immediate ROI. They’re part of the cost of doing business.

I’m into marketing analytics and have written more about ROI than any other topic, however some things are just the cost of doing business. Expecting your website or listings to immediately create leads before you’ve built trust is like expecting a single meeting with a prospective customer to close a deal.

In accounting terms, the Minimally Viable Marketing (MVM) essentials are best treated as fixed, indirect operating costs (overhead or baseline marketing overhead). Why are these not direct costs? Direct costs (a.k.a. variable costs) rise or fall with each unit you sell — ingredients, packaging, transaction fees, billable labor hours, etc. MVM items don’t behave that way; once you’ve paid for them, they enable every sale equally. Paid ads, commission-based promotions, and per-click fees are variable marketing costs because you can dial them up or down week to week. MVM basics remain in place even if you pause all campaigns.

Treat MVM essentials like any other baseline operating overhead:

  • Budget for them first. They’re the cost of showing up, similar to rent or utilities.
  • Amortize one-time builds. If you want, spread large website or signage costs over their useful life to smooth cash flow.
  • Measure ROI on top of them — not instead of them. Once these fixed, indirect costs are in place, variable marketing spend (ads, content campaigns, events) can be analyzed for incremental return.

One of the classic mistakes I hear is, “We don’t need a fancy website, and we don’t want to spend money on it.” That sounds thrifty, but it usually leads to a first impression that quietly turns prospects away. You can trim budgets, but you still need a site that loads quickly, explains what you do, and makes it easy to reach you.

Neglect the foundation and every campaign that sits on top of it starts to wobble. MVM gives your business a solid platform. Cover the basics first; then pursue traffic, leads, and conversions with confidence. Otherwise, you’re pouring effort into something that can’t support real growth.

The Essential Components of Minimally Viable Marketing

So what exactly makes up the MVM foundation?

Each MVM component should give someone a clear sense of what you do and how to get in touch with you — quickly and confidently.

The MVM elements help people find you, understand your business, and decide whether or not they trust you. If even one of them is missing, it creates friction. If several are missing, people won’t stick around long enough to give you a chance.

And because different people prefer to communicate in different ways — some by phone, others by email, and many through online channels — you need to provide more than one path for reaching your business. That flexibility signals you’re accessible and ready to serve a range of customers.

Here’s what I consider to be the essential components of Minimally Viable Marketing presence:

Figure 2. The core components of a Minimally Viable Marketing (MVM) presence: These essential elements help establish credibility, accessibility, and trust for your business. If any are missing, it creates friction or doubt — especially for first-time customers. Graphic by Country Fried Creative.

  • 🏢 A clear and consistent business name that’s used across all channels
  • 🖼️ A recognizable logo that signals professionalism
  • 🗣️ A tagline or brand statement that quickly tells people what you do
  • ☎️ A working phone number and voicemail system
  • 📧 A professional email address that’s monitored and responsive
  • 🌐 A modern, mobile-friendly website that loads quickly
  • 📍 Up-to-date business listings on Google, Yelp, and local directories
  • 🪧 A visible business sign if you have a physical business location

A quick finance note: This isn’t an accounting article, but since we’ve established that MVM behaves like overhead, it helps to see where the costs actually live. Some items end up as operating expenses on the income statement, while bigger one-time builds (like signage or a full website redesign) may be capitalized and amortized. Either way, they function as fixed, indirect costs — expenses you cover before chasing variable returns. The table below summarizes how each MVM item is typically treated.

Figure 3. Cost classifications for Minimally Viable Marketing (MVM) essentials. Each item functions as a fixed, indirect expense — overhead you budget for first — whether it’s a one-time capitalized asset (e.g., signage), a recurring service (hosting, VoIP), or a small setup fee (business listings).

The quality or degree to which you have the MVM essentials might be subjective — but the fact that you need them isn’t. If you don’t have these basics in place, you’re not serious about your business. Can you technically run a business without a website or email address? Maybe. But it won’t be easy, and it definitely won’t build trust. It’s the year 2025 — most of these items should be self-evident and non-negotiable.

When these foundational elements are missing, you don’t just look unpolished — you look untrustworthy. Customers start to question if your business is real, if you’re still open, or if you’re worth contacting at all. You might never even know what you’re losing because people will move on before giving you a chance. These things won’t guarantee growth — but without them, growth becomes a lot harder.

Putting MVM Into Practice

At our agency Country Fried Creative, we use something called the Digital Marketing Roadmap to help guide our clients. It’s a simple framework we created to show how digital marketing works as a journey. Whether you’re just getting started or trying to grow, it helps to see how the pieces fit together — and where to focus first.

The roadmap below outlines the key stages we walk through with most businesses: starting with branding (your logo and website), building awareness through social media and search, reinforcing your message with email and content, and eventually using ads and analytics to fine-tune what’s working.

Figure 4: Country Fried Creative Digital Marketing Roadmap. Graphic by Country Fried Creative.

As you can see, the journey starts with branding — your logo, your website, your identity. From there, it builds through visibility (social media, SEO), engagement (email and content), and eventually to advertising and analytics.

Minimally Viable Marketing lives right at the starting line. It’s just the beginning and it’s definitely not the finish line. But it’s what makes the rest of your marketing possible. Without a strong starting point — a clear brand, a professional online presence, and basic contact information — you’ll struggle to gain traction anywhere else on the roadmap.

We remind our clients all the time: marketing isn’t magic. You have to start by showing up like a real, trustworthy business. Minimally Viable Marketing is how you do that. It’s your proof of legitimacy — your way of saying, “Yes, we’re open and ready to serve.”

When I first started in this business back in the late ’90s, a company could still get away with not having a website. But it’s 2025 now, and that’s no longer the case. Your website is the hub of your entire online presence. In reality, it’s more important than a physical street address (although you’ll need that for legal reasons) and definitely more important than a phone number. As a Gen X business owner, I still use the phone, but many younger customers don’t. If a phone call is the only way to reach you, you’re going to get left behind. MVM ensures you’ve got all the modern-day essentials covered.

Applying the MVP Mindset to Your Marketing

Let’s go back to the MVP (Minimum Viable Product) concept for a moment. If you’re already familiar with that, then you know MVP is more than a checklist, it’s actually a way of thinking and a methodology for operating strategically with limited resources and learning as you go (see Figure 1 at the beginning of this article). Just like a MVP, your early MVM efforts should focus on testing assumptions, gathering feedback, and evolving based on what you learn.

Here are some ways to bring the MVP mindset into your MVM foundation:

  • Test and Learn: Once your website and listings are up, try small experiments. Change a headline. Adjust your call to action. Test one social post against another. Use basic analytics to learn what’s working. Refer to some of my other articles (listed in the resources section below) on ways to do that.
  • Focus on Core Value: Your tagline, homepage, and listings should clearly answer: “What problem do you solve, and why should someone choose you?” If that’s not obvious, fix it before expanding.
  • Avoid Channel Bloat: You don’t need to be on every platform. Start with one or two where your audience actually hangs out. Do those well first.
  • Create Feedback Loops: Add a simple contact form. Ask new customers how they found you. Review your website analytics to see what pages people visit most. These early signals will help you focus efforts.
  • Mitigate Risk: MVM helps you avoid the trap of over-investing in marketing before you’ve proven what works. Think of it as buying clarity before you buy scale.
  • Think Long-Term: The pieces you put in place today — your site, message, and presence — should support your long-term goals by establishing a foundation.

Remember, the goal isn’t to get everything perfect from the start — it’s to learn what works and adapt quickly.

👉 Example: A local business might notice through website analytics that most visitors are viewing a particular service page. By updating their homepage to highlight that service more prominently, they see an increase in inquiries. That’s a small, low-cost change driven by data — exactly the kind of iteration MVM makes possible.

Minimally Viable Marketing gives you a smart, focused way to start. It helps you avoid overcomplicating things early on and gives you room to learn what actually works before scaling up. When you apply MVP thinking to marketing, you prioritize clarity, feedback, and traction. That’s how you reduce risk, stay efficient, and build a foundation that can support real, lasting growth.

Conclusion: If You’re Serious About Business, Start Here

When someone reaches out to me for help — whether they’re launching a startup or trying to revive an existing business — I always start with Minimally Viable Marketing. No matter how exciting the project sounds, if the fundamentals aren’t there, we can’t move forward.

If I get pushback on the essentials — like having a real website, a monitored email address, or up-to-date listings — that’s usually a red flag. I’ve learned over the years that if someone isn’t willing to meet the basic expectations of their customers, they’re not going to be a good client for us either. It’s not just about how they market — it’s about how seriously they take their business.

Minimally Viable Marketing proves you’re real, you’re ready, and you care about how your business shows up.

TL;DR: Minimally Viable Marketing

  • ✅ MVM is your professional foundation — visible, credible, and accessible
  • ✅ These basics don’t generate ROI on their own, but without them, nothing else will
  • ✅ If your website, listings, or communication channels are missing or outdated, you’re sending the wrong signal
  • ✅ Your business needs more than one way to be found and contacted
  • ✅ Skip this step, and growth will always feel out of reach

Call to Action: Check Your Foundation

Here’s your next step: look at your business like a new customer would.

  • Is it clear what you do?
  • Can someone reach you easily?
  • Do you appear professional and trustworthy at a glance?

Not sure if your MVM is working? Ask someone who doesn’t know your business to Google you and try to make contact. Watch what happens.

Clean up your basics, get your MVM in place, and give your future marketing efforts something solid to stand on. Because if you want to grow, you don’t just need more marketing. You need better marketing. And that starts with a real foundation.

 

Resources

Next Article:

A Better Marketing Manifesto

A Better Marketing Manifesto

We need better marketing. You may be thinking, “I’m sick of ads, Joe. Why do I want more marketing?” Well, I said “better” marketing, not more marketing. Marketing helps people find things.

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