Choosing the right marketing platforms and how to use them
After working in the world of corporate marketing agencies for the last 12 years, I’ve seen firsthand how easily people can pour both time and money into the wrong marketing channels. Often people will take a very, let’s throw it all at the wall and see what sticks, mentality and this can work, if you have a large marketing budget to support it.
For small businesses like you and me, where it’s just us on the other end of the laptop or phone, it’s neither a sustainable or effective plan.
In my previous blog, ‘Building a gentle marketing strategy for your small business’ I talked about how important intention is in a slow marketing strategy. This intention also needs to stretch to the decisions you make about which channels and platforms you use. When we don’t think about this, we place ourselves on the road to burnout.
Below I’ve pulled together a couple of key points to think about when it comes to choosing the right marketing platforms for you and your small business. Together, we’ll look at which channels not only hold the most opportunities for your business, but that also feel the best for you as a human being trying to run a whole business solo.
What is already moving the needle in your business and what evidence do you have to support it?
Before you start, it’s important you’re crystal clear about where your business already sees results from your marketing. If you’ve not yet launched then feel free to skip this part.
When we talk about ‘moving the needle’ in our business, we’re referring to what marketing task, channel or activity has helped you achieve your goals thus far.
Think about:
Where your sales have come from
Where your newsletter subscribers have come from
Where you see the most engagement from your audience
Practical tip: Most modern website platforms will offer analytics for your website. This should contain ‘traffic sources’ which will tell you if your website traffic came from organic Google searches, from social media platforms like Facebook or Instagram or through an email you’ve sent. If your website provider doesn’t have built in analytics, then you can also add Google Analytics to your website, which is a tool that offers you all this information and more. But, be warned it is very technical, so if you’re not confident with technology it might be a bit overwhelming.
One of the biggest mistakes people make in their marketing — and why marketing often feels overwhelming and like nothing is working — is because they don’t track their work. If you don’t track your marketing efforts, how can you possibly know where to put your time and energy?
Never just ‘assume’ what you are doing is working or not working. Before I started tracking what was actually moving the needle, I assumed that Instagram was my main source of traffic and income, because that’s where I was putting all my time and energy.
But, when I actually looked at it, Instagram was my 4th and sometimes 5th driver of revenue for my business. My number one channel was actually email and SEO, two areas I put hardly any effort into consistently.
Where do you feel most drawn to and feel would be an extension of your business offering?
One of the biggest changes I’ve made to my marketing mindset since adopting a slow marketing perspective, is that I’ve started to think about my marketing channels as an extension of my business.
Whenever I’m thinking about what kind of marketing to do or where to do it, I run through the following checklist:
What value do I want to offer my audience?
What unique opportunity does each marketing platform offer for this content, message or resource I want to share?
How will this marketing activity contribute to the goals and focus I have for my business?
What value do I want to offer my audience?
I never create content for marketing that doesn’t help to offer my audience some sort of value. This could be value in terms of practical tips they can action in their own businesses, value in terms of inspiration or insight into my own marketing wins and losses, or value in knowing they’re not alone in their challenges.
Once I know what value I want to offer, I get to thinking about the best ways to deliver that value, which then informs the next point.
What unique opportunity does each marketing platform offer for this content, message or resource I want to share?
Once I know what I want to offer, I think about what is going to be the easiest way for my audience to consume it.
For example, I know that my audience are very visual, they’re predominantly artists, crafters, makers or just get a lot of joy and satisfaction from aesthetics. With that in mind, I know a lot of my audience will be on Instagram, so I create visually pleasing graphics to get my message, information or teachings across.
For more in-depth content that really dives into the nitty-gritty, then blogs just like this one work brilliantly. If I want to really open up and offer more authenticity about marketing and the ups and downs, then my newsletter is the best place for that marketing content, because it feels more intimate.
It can help to create a document of all the different marketing channels you are familiar with and highlighting the pros and cons of those platforms to help you in the future. This can then act as a cheat sheet whenever you need help figuring out where to share your value with your audience.
(Tips on creating this cheat sheet are at the end of this guide)
How will this marketing activity contribute to the goals and focus I have for my business?
Any marketing you do needs to do one of three things:
Help you gain more visibility and be discovered by your ideal audience
Help you connect and build a relationship with your ideal audience
Sell to those that feel a connection with your work or offering
If you need to be making consistent sales every month, if you own a shop for example, then you might decide to split your marketing efforts into ‘slices’ of a big marketing pie. You might decide that you need more sales one quarter, so a bigger slice of your pie will go to marketing that encourages sales. You might be doing alright for sales but worried about audience fatigue, in which case you might increase the size of your discovery marketing slice and cut down on your sales slice so you’ve got a new stream of people finding your business.
This is again where that cheat sheet can come in handy. You’ll be able to look at the features for each platform and decide which ones have the best features for the job. For example, Instagram and Facebook have ‘shop’ features that can make selling through social media quick and easy. Or, if you’re looking to build a stronger connection between your audience and your products or business values, then newsletters may be a better channel.
Remember, your marketing needs to feel like an extension of your business values and offerings. This means that whatever you choose it needs to compliment what you’re trying to offer. It needs to feel like a natural choice and not like you’re trying to force a square peg into a round hole.
Where is your audience hanging out?
When it comes to choosing marketing channels, you also need to keep in mind where your audience is hanging out, whether that be online or offline. There’s no point shouting on social media, if all your ideal customers are busy reading blog posts or watching long-form YouTube videos.
Striking this balance between what works best for us and our business, and where people are hanging out, can be the trickiest part. But, it’s important that we don’t feel like we have to be somewhere that doesn’t feel aligned with how we want to show up in our business, just because it offers a bigger audience.
The good news is if we do all of the intentional planning we’ve been doing in the last few points, the risk of marketing somewhere your audience is absent from is very minimal. Most people are spread out across multiple different marketing platforms these days. I personally am always on Instagram, TikTok and also reading Substack posts and listening to podcasts. Very few people just consume media from one channel and have done with it.
The best way of finding where your audience is though, is through experimentation. Pick just one platform to test out and see how things go. Don’t be afraid to switch things up, even if you’ve put a lot of time and energy into one area, it’s not going anywhere.
This fear of not being seen is especially prevalent in the world of social media. Social platforms need you to use them as much as possible in order to make money from you, so it’s in their best interest to make you feel like you have to show up all the time, even when it doesn’t feel good.
I have a tarot Instagram account for my previous business that I haven’t posted to in months, and yet people are still following me. I’m still getting traffic to my website from Instagram, I’m still visible. Even after months of not posting or engaging. So, if you want to take a break and try another platform, don’t worry about taking a step back for a little while. Everyone will still be there when you return.
How much budget do you have for marketing, if any?
Small businesses and solo creative business owners usually have a very small or non-existent budget for marketing, hence why we’re always pulled towards social media, because, for the most part, it’s free.
But, with ever changing algorithms and platforms like Meta purposefully limiting reach in order to get us to pay for ads, it’s worth keeping in mind how much, realistically, you can achieve without spending a penny.
It’s also worth thinking about your ‘budget’ in a more metaphorical way. Your budget doesn’t just have to be about money, it can also be about time and energy.
This is something that really propelled me to start The Slow Marketing Club and transform my own perspective and habits in marketing. I was diagnosed with an autoimmune disease that causes chronic fatigue and so I had to be especially careful when deciding what to reserve my limited energy for. It meant I couldn’t go all in as I would usually and I had little choice but to be extremely intentional with what marketing platforms I chose to invest my personal ‘budget’ in.
Think carefully about how much of your time you are willing to give to your marketing and match that capacity to the channels that meet your needs.
Tips for creating your marketing cheat sheet
If you want to create a cheat sheet that you can use going forward, to help you decide which marketing channels to experiment with in each season of your business, then here are some things to make a note of:
How much effort does each channel ask of you? - This can vary depending on what you do and do not enjoy doing or creating.
How easy is the channel to track and how can it be tracked? - Some channels like social media have good built-in analytics tools, but if you want to track your customers or subscribers right back to their original source, you may need a bit of technical knowledge.
Is there a cost attached to the marketing channel? - Include things like subscriptions for plans, for example many email platforms offer tiered plans based on how many subscribers you have so having more subscribers may cost more.
Do you enjoy showing up on that platform? - The channels you love to show up on will always be the channels that help you move the needle the best and in the most sustainable way.
Which marketing stage does it help the most with? - All marketing channels will be able to help with all the core stages of marketing — Discovery, Nurture, Sales — if used strategically, but some are definitely better suited to some stages than others. For example, paid or organic social are great ways to be discovered by people outside of your current eco-system, but can fall short when it comes to direct selling. Or, email marketing can be a wonderful nurture and sales tool, but due to its nature, doesn’t work as well as a discovery tool unless it’s combined with other channels or tactics.
What unique features and functionality does each channel have? - Try and highlight anything that makes each channel unique and sets it apart from the others, to give you a better idea of what you have to play with in your tool box.
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One of my own intentional marketing channels is my newsletter. In the past I’ve run weekly, monthly and even quarterly newsletters and this time around, I wanted to do enough to really get the business off the ground, but not too much that I felt drained by a weekly commitment.
Every other week I drop into your inbox to share my personal experiences and experiments with marketing, as well as offering coaching prompts and the occasional actionable tip or trick to help you sustain a slow and intentional marketing strategy.
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