Building a gentle marketing strategy for your small business
When I haven’t taken the time to carefully plan out my marketing, and I’ve acted, instead, from a place of panic or expectation around what I ‘should’ be doing, I’ve always ended up feeling overwhelmed and burned out.
Doing marketing for the sake of doing it only makes sense for larger corporations that have the capacity and resources to sustain it. And even then, it’s not something I would recommend.
For those of you who are small, soul-led or creative business owners, this quantity over quality won’t just feel like a drain; it will also cause you to put your effort into areas that have very little promise of return.
Instead, we need to be spending our time on intentional and gentle marketing strategies. Everything we do in our business has to have a purpose and a clear reasoning behind it.
So, together, let’s have a look at how you can start to build this gentle marketing strategy that will not only feel sustainable, but that will also help you reach the marketing and business goals that matter most to you right now.
Defining what you need your gentle marketing strategy to look like
Your business and how you want to show up in your business should always be the starting point for any gentle marketing strategy.
If you’ve been feeling burned out or overwhelmed by your marketing, then it’s time to think about what you need from it, rather than what it needs from you.
Why do you need and want a slower pace to your marketing?
Just like a marketing strategy, there needs to be a reason behind what you’re putting your energy into. If you’re looking to shift your energy to a slower, more gentle-paced marketing approach, do you know why?
Knowing why you need to slow down can act as an anchor, giving you more stability and helping with sustainability. Whenever you find yourself getting carried away or panicking about something you feel you should be doing, you can return to your why and remind yourself why you’re doing things differently.
To help you find clarity about this, think about the following questions:
What will slowing down and approaching my marketing in a more gentle and intentional way offer me, both in my life and my business?
Why is this a priority for me right now? What is it that is driving this need and desire for a more gentle pace in my business?
How will a gentle marketing strategy fit into your work week/month/year?
Once you have your why, the next step is to start thinking practically about how a gentle marketing strategy could work day-to-day.
I personally like to plan my marketing month-by-month, but this is just a habit I’ve gotten into from working in marketing agencies for over a decade. I’m working on slowing this down further, so that I can focus on each quarter (every 3 months) to create a bit more space and ease.
When deciding how often to spend on marketing, it’s important to consider your energy levels as well as your time. I can tell you that from experience, you need less time than you think in order to market successfully. So, don’t be afraid to be honest about how much time you want to spend on doing marketing tasks.
Start by asking yourself:
How much time, realistically, do I have available to work on marketing tasks and plan my marketing strategy?
How often do I want to sit down and plan/implement my marketing strategy? What timeframe feels best for me, both physically, mentally and energetically?
*Remember, you can consider a yearly marketing strategy, monthly, weekly, daily, or even hourly if you like to be especially granular in your scheduling.
Knowing how much time you have to spend on your marketing gives you a container to work within. Knowing how much time you want to spend on it allows you to get clear about what that time actually looks like in practice.
Note: Be kind to yourself. It’s great to have a schedule to keep yourself accountable, but it’s also important to remember you are human and not everything will go to plan.
For me, my chronic fatigue means I can never know 100% how much energy I will have week by week, so when I think about what I want my marketing time to look like, I always factor in the flexibility to move things around or press pause at any point in order to accommodate my health needs.
Putting together your gentle marketing strategy
When it comes to constructing your gentle marketing strategy, there are a few points I’d recommend you explore.
What are your skills/what do you want to learn more about?
We want to be able to enjoy our marketing tasks; if they always feel like a chore, it can start to impact our overall feeling towards our business. We don’t want that.
Think about where your strengths and interests lie. For me, I’ve been a copywriter and a blogger for years, and I love writing, so I make sure to include a lot of blogging and email newsletters in my marketing to keep me interested.
You might be great at creating beautiful visuals, in which case you might spend more time creating imagery for social media. Or, you might love to talk, so a podcast might suit you perfectly.
With slow marketing, we aim to deliver quality over quantity, so it’s always more valuable - and enjoyable - to create marketing materials and content that we are actually good at and enjoy creating.
Plus, people can tell when you’ve enjoyed creating something. If you’ve forced yourself to create a piece of content for the sake of creating it, your audience will be able to feel it.
What feels manageable and sustainable for you right now?
The answer to this question can change constantly. What I had the capacity for three years ago is not what I have the capacity for today. What I have the capacity for today may be more than I have for next month, or maybe even less.
When deciding on what feels manageable in my marketing, I like to write down all my ideas and see how each one feels in my body.
I recently had some great ideas for podcast episodes, but my fatigue is flaring up right now, so I know I wouldn’t have the capacity needed in order to create something I’d be happy with, so it’s been put on the shelf for now.
Think about what feels exciting and what feels like a chore. Pay attention to any resistance that comes up for you. I guarantee at some point you’ll have great ideas, but think “I really can’t be arsed to do that”, and that’s ok.
Those ideas aren’t going anywhere, and if you’re resistant to them now, it might be that they’re not meant to be brought to life at this point, but could be great for something in the future.
Get clear about what your marketing goals are for you in this season of your business and go from there.
Every type of marketing offers something different.
I spoke about the role of social media marketing in a previous post here, and within that, we looked at a few alternatives to social media based on your marketing goals.
Which marketing channel and platform you choose to use depends on these goals. Just like any strategy, roadmap or plan, you need to know what you’re aiming for before you decide how to get there.
If your marketing goals are around awareness…
Then you’ll want to choose:
The platforms or channels that you think the majority of your audience will be active and engaged with.
Where you like to show up in your own time. I’ve made Pinterest a part of my marketing strategy because I think a large number of my target audience is on there, but also because I spend a lot of time on their pinning painting ideas, business ideas and the occasional wedding inspiration, even though I have no plans to get married.
If your marketing goals are around engagement or community generation…
Then you’ll want to choose:
Channels that allow you to start and participate in conversations with your target audience or others in your niche.
Channels that allow for cross-audience conversations, such as Facebook groups, live chat features or in-person meetups.
If your marketing goals are about educating your audience…
Then you’ll want to choose:
Platforms or channels that allow you to create educational content such as guides, infographics, free courses, workshops or webinars.
Channels that allow you to showcase your expertise and knowledge and build your standing as an authority in your niche.
If your marketing goals are about generating leads or interest in your products or services…
Then you’ll want to choose:
Platforms or channels that allow sales channels such as Instagram and Facebook shops, Etsy and other marketplaces, FloDesk and other email providers that support direct sales functions.
Platforms or channels that allow you to showcase the beauty, benefits or appeal of your products or services in a way that will connect with your audience. If you sell artwork, for example, visual platforms that help get your work in front of people who will connect and want to purchase it might be your number one priority.
Maintaining your pace and avoiding the trend-trap
Marketing and selling, especially for small businesses, can be extremely nervous system activating. It can easily generate panic and stress in the body and mind if we don’t ensure we’re setting boundaries and staying grounded.
Right at the beginning of this post, we found clarity around ‘why’ we wanted and needed a slower pace with marketing. This should be your anchor as you set out to create your own gentle marketing strategy.
It’s this anchor that will help you to avoid those trend traps, keeping you away from marketing for the sake of marketing. This anchor will remind you why you want to be marketing with more intention, space and ease and help you to slow down when things feel like they’re getting away from you.
If you need a bit of extra help and support to keep you rooted in your why, and would like advice and guidance on building a slow, gentle marketing strategy time after time, then The Slow Marketing club newsletter might be for you.
Every two weeks, I visit you in your inbox to share how I’m building and navigating my own gentle marketing strategies. I also offer practical tips and tricks on how to market in a slower and more intentional way, so you can always ground yourself whenever you feel the marketing panic set in. Sign up below!
