Radical Simplicity

How to find clarity through tough choices

It’s been a great year for my consulting work at The Product Marketer. I’ve collaborated with some brilliant teams on positioning, messaging, and go-to-market strategy. And somewhere along the way, one of my clients coined a phrase about how I work that’s stuck with me ever since.

Radical simplicity.

I’ve said it so often that when I ran my Granola Crunched review of the year, it ranked as one of my most used phrases for 2025. (This week’s post isn’t sponsored my Granola - but I did love this launch.)

So it might be worth unpacking the phrase a bit. Here’s my attempt to explain what I mean by “radical simplicity”, and why it might be useful for any product marketer seeking clarity in their work.

What radical simplicity means

At its heart, radical simplicity is about deliberately stripping an idea or message down to the bare minimum needed for clarity and impact. Even when it feels uncomfortable. Even when it feels like you’re losing something.

The goal is simple: your audience should instantly understand what your product is, who it’s for, and why it matters. If you find yourself explaining, justifying, or over-contextualising, you’re missing an opportunity to make something clearer to your customers.

This isn’t about dumbing your message down or simplifying to the point of abstraction. It’s about intentional removal. You’re cutting the details that aren’t essential right now, for this audience, at this moment in their journey. You’re sequencing information so the right things land at the right time.

It’s not always fun

The process should feel uncomfortable. Radical simplicity means removing things you care about.

Features you’re proud of. Clever phrasing you personally like. Nuances that are technically true but not essential. If it doesn’t hurt a little to cut it out - or upset a colleague - you probably haven’t gone far enough.

I see this regularly with tech companies. Teams want to show off everything their product can do. Every capability, every use case, every bit of sophistication they’ve built. But trying to say everything usually means nothing lands. There’s a phrase used in the creative industry to describe removing parts of your work, like sentences, scenes, or characters, that you personally love but don’t serve the overall story: Kill your darlings. Radical simplicity should feel a bit like this.

The best product marketing seems effortless to read because someone made hard choices about what to leave out.

Focus on value, not mechanism

Early-funnel communication should focus on outcomes, not internal complexity.

The mechanism - the ‘how it works’ - belongs later. In your docs. In your onboarding. In your client check-ins with customer success managers. In your product release notes. In your deep-dive pages. But not in your top-level messaging.

Use the most accessible language possible. Say things in as few words as you can. Choose the £5 word, not the £500 word.

Avoid over-explaining

Show don’t tell.

Less is more.

If you’re explaining, you’re losing.

For long-time readers of The Product Marketer, these phrases have become almost clichéd because I say them so often. But they matter.

Radical simplicity means resisting the urge to over-explain. It means holding back. It means trusting that your customer is smart enough to connect the dots if you give them the right pieces.

Most of us default to saying more. More features, more benefits, more proof points. But every extra word dilutes your message.

It’s not just your messaging

Radical simplicity is also a lens for prioritisation.

It guides what you choose to build, ship, and shout about. Which audience you focus on winning. Which use cases you champion. Which features you actively market versus quietly include.

There’s no rigid framework here. You adapt it to your business model, company maturity, and audience sophistication. But the standard stays the same: is this the simplest effective expression of what matters?

Why it works

Radical simplicity is probably the thing my clients value most about what I deliver.

It reduces the noise. It makes products easier to understand, easier to sell, and easier to buy. It creates clarity for your team and confidence for your customer.

And in a world where AI can generate endless words, the ability to know what to leave out becomes more valuable than ever.

What it means for your product marketing work

As we head into 2026, I’d encourage you to think about what radical simplicity means for your work.

How can you say more with less? Where are you overcomplicating things? What would your messaging look like if you had half the word count? What are you holding onto that you should let go?

If I could bottle radical simplicity and sell it, I would. But all I can do is share the idea with you and hope it resonates.

Best of luck.